I bent double, heaving for air. I was dead. I couldn’t go left or right or I’d run right into them. I couldn’t make it back up the slope without my hands. That only left the water.
And I couldn’t swim with my hands cuffed. Fuck.
Part of me almost gave up. I pictured myself just standing there, head bowed, waiting for them. A quick bullet to the back of the head and it would all be over.
But then Annabelle had no chance at all. My hands tightened into fists.
I started to wade out into the water. I didn’t have a plan except to hide. But there were was nowhere to hide except under the surface and I couldn’t hold my breath for long.
My boots sank into the thick mud of the lake bottom. The water crept up my ankles, my calves, my thighs, warm from the sun but still cool enough to make me shiver. Behind me, the guys had almost reached the shore.
I was immersed up to my chest, now. I threw myself forward to start swimming...and immediately started to sink. Fuck! I’d been right: swimming was impossible. My hands jerked uselessly at the handcuffs. I rolled onto my back and went completely under the water, gulping in a mouthful of it. No!
I kicked hard and my head broke the surface. I coughed and choked, blinking through the water. My toes could only just touch the bottom, now. I could tread water like this for a few minutes but I was dead as soon as they saw me. The only chance was to stay underwater.
By now the sun was so low that the surface of the lake was almost black. Simple, primal fear took over. No creature wants to drown itself. I can’t!
But then I heard shouts, right at the shoreline. I took a lungful of air, pushed my legs out from under me...and slid under the water.
I couldn’t see much but I could make out indistinct, moving shapes at the edge of the lake. They knew I’d gone in the water: that was the only place I could have gone.
My only chance was if they assumed I’d drowned and walked away before I ran out of air. For about thirty seconds, I thought maybe that would work. Then a beam of blinding light lit up the water in a huge fan shape above me. Shit! One of them had a flashlight. And they were going to make sure I was dead. All they had to do was to wait for a few minutes and I’d either have to show myself or I’d drown.
By now, my lungs were straining. When I dived, I’d still been out of breath from my run down the hill, plus my chest was still battered from inhaling smoke and red-hot air. My brain was screaming at me to breathe and it was harder and harder to fight the response to surface. If I surfaced, I was dead. But if I stayed down, I’d die anyway.
The flashlight beam swept over me again and again, back and forth. I was starting to panic, now, my wrists jerking at the handcuffs, the metal cutting deep. I twisted underwater, thrashing like a fish on a line. Don’t surface. Fight it. Fight it. Maybe they’ll give up.
But it was useless. They were professionals. They were going to make sure. The flashlight stayed on the water and I felt myself weakening. Dying. My vision darkened. My lungs felt as if they were going to burst. My whole body strained to take a breath—
Something scraped the back of my hand. Something plastic and hard. It had to scrape twice more before I figured out what it was.
The straw. The straw I’d kept from that fucking milkshake at the diner. All my thrashing had shaken it half-out of the pocket of my cut and now it was catching on my thrashing hands.
My chest burning and aching, I thrashed and twisted to try to shake the straw fully out of my pocket. When it was mostly out, I managed to knock it with my cuffed hands and it floated free. But I still had no way to get it to my mouth.
I had to chase it down to the lake bottom, lunging for it with my jaws and taking in mouthfuls of lake water each time I missed. It bounced off my lips twice before I managed to crush it between my teeth, swim up and poke it above the surface.
Of course, the thing was full of water. Blowing it out was the hardest thing I’d ever done: I had no air left to use. But I finally blew the water free and then I had no choice but to inhale: a huge, deep lungful. If I’d gotten it wrong and the tip was still below the surface, I was about to drown myself….
Air. Cool, sweet air. It felt like my tortured lungs were sucking up all the air in the night sky. It filled me up right down to my toes. Then I slowly exhaled, trying not to move the water at all.
The flashlight beam swept over me. I hoped the straw looked like a reed in the darkness. If not, they’d know exactly where to put the bullet. I hung there almost motionless, toes just scraping the bottom, head craned back, straw just above the surface….
And eventually, the flashlight went out.
I forced myself to give it another few minutes before I surfaced. When I was sure there was no noise from the shore, I waded out.
Once the night air hit me, I started to shiver. My jeans and cut, saturated with water and mud, felt like they weighed about a thousand tons. All I wanted to do was get under a hot shower and put on something dry.
But I had to warn Mac and the others. My cell phone was dead, drowned by the lake. I’d need to climb the hill, get to my bike and do it in person.
But first I had to do something about the cuffs. I couldn’t do the climb without hands and I sure as hell couldn’t ride with my hands behind me.
I’d seen people in movies maneuver their cuffed hands around from behind them to in front of them. It didn’t look too difficult.
It fucking is. I’m not some lithe, ninja-trained, CIA contortionist. I’m built for strength, not gymnastics. I wound up on my back in the cold mud, trying to pass my tucked-up legs through my hands, and it took me at least ten minutes to pull it off. The whole time, I was picturing police kicking down the door of the clubhouse.
When my hands finally slipped over my boots, I let out a long sigh of relief and pushed myself to my feet. By now, so much black mud had been crushed into the back of my cut that the Hell’s Princes logo wasn’t even visible.
I struggled up the hill, grabbing onto roots and branches, straining to see through the gloom. There’s never been so welcome a sight as when I saw my Harley gleaming in the darkness. I climbed on and started her up. Riding in cuffs was going to be interesting: I couldn’t reach both clutch and throttle at the same time. But I’d make it work.
I rode for the clubhouse, pushing my bike as hard as she’d go. But halfway down Main Street, I could see the red and blue flashing lights.
I was too late.
I pulled into an alley across the street and watched, helpless, as Mac, Hunter, Viking and the others were led out in cuffs. They didn’t see me, but even from the alley I could hear my name, again and again. Irish.
He fucking sold us out.
He’s dead, if I ever see him again.
Volos had done it. My friends were heading to jail and they’d be there for years given the amount of coke involved. And they blamed me.
I slumped against the wall of the alley. The club was gone...and it was all my fault.
51
Annabelle
We drove for hours on back roads, way out into the country. There wasn’t a street light or a lit-up house anywhere, just impenetrable blackness beyond the windows. I was too scared to cry, or ask where we were going, or do anything other than stare straight ahead.
After a while, he began to play with me.
I don’t mean sexually. I mean, he started to fiddle and toy with me, like a guy with a new gadget. He shoved a finger into my hair, just behind my temple, and plowed towards the back of my head, watching the way the strands moved. He looked down my tank top but not in the same, leering way a normal man would. He hooked his fingers in the front of it and hauled it away from my body, tugging me a little forward in my seat, not caring if a few threads snapped, and simply raised his head to look down at my breasts. It was as if he’d bought a doll and wanted to see what was under its clothes.
And throughout all this, I didn’t respond, didn’t move or stop him. I knew that anything I did was likely to make him s
nap into violence again. I sat as rigid and passive as I could while my heart beat faster and faster. I prayed for the journey to end. Wherever we were going, it couldn’t be any worse than this.
I was wrong.
When the car stopped, Volos hauled me out and led me up a hill towards a huge, dark building. I couldn’t see any windows at all. It looked industrial but we weren’t in an industrial part of a city...we weren’t in a city at all, from what little I could see in the darkness. There were no lights, no traffic noise, just fields.
He took me through a door and into a room with long tracks on the ceiling, from which dangled hooks. Even at a time like this, the mechanics still caught the attention of my weird brain. There was something familiar about it but I couldn’t remember what it reminded me of.
Volos pushed through some strange, soft, rubbery doors and—
The light was the first shock. Everything was painted white and every surface was being blasted by violently bright lights that hurt my eyes. The room was huge, cold and completely alien. There didn’t seem to be a soft edge anywhere.
As I blinked, I saw shoulder-height metal rails. They made it seem claustrophobic even with the room’s huge size. It was a little like being in a line at a theme park, the room designed to funnel you a certain way. Only where a theme park is all about fun and lightness, this room had been sucked clean of everything remotely comforting. Some rooms, like Mom’s trailer, made you feel good. This had no feel at all, as if it wasn’t even designed for people.
Volos stayed outside the rails but roughly pushed me forward between them. They guided me into a metal box barely wide enough to stand in. Doors closed behind me and, for a second, I was trapped. Then Volos heaved on a lever, cursing at its stiffness, and the metal doors in front of me hinged open. That’s when I saw her.
She was walking towards me, but on the far side of the metal barrier. She was about my age, maybe a year or two younger. She had long brown hair that fell like mist, right down to the middle of her back.
She was utterly naked.
Every step was precise. As if she’d experienced what happened if you walked too quickly or too slowly and she never wanted to experience it again.
Her eyes were focused on the middle distance. She clearly saw me, standing almost right in front of her, but her eyes stayed straight ahead, not even glancing. I saw her chest rise and fall more quickly, though, and her lips tightened as she passed.
She was too scared to look.
And as my eyes adjusted to the harshness of the lights, I saw more women behind her. Seven, eight, ten, more. All naked. All following the first at neatly-spaced intervals.
Volos’s hands pushed me forward. My sneakers squeaked on the floor and I saw it was black rubber, almost like a gym. What is this place?!
I turned a corner and saw a line of….
My brain didn’t want to process it. Cells. I mentally branded them cells.
Except they weren’t like a prison cell. They were too long, too narrow. Volos pushed me into one, slammed the door and secured it with a padlock, and left me there.
That’s when I noticed the smell. It permeated the whole place, soaked into the walls and floor by years of use. Not a smell a person should ever experience. The smell of not just fear but absolute loss of hope.
I allowed it in, then. I couldn’t shut it out any longer. I let my brain put together the pieces: the huge, echoey room, the guiding barriers, the rubber floor….
This wasn’t a cell I was in. It was a stall, designed for a cow.
And this was a slaughterhouse.
52
Carrick
When the cops had left, I sneaked across the street and into the compound, then into Scooter’s workshop. And there, armed with a hacksaw, I finally managed to get the cuffs off. Then I used a spare rear view mirror to take a look at the back of my head. It was a mess: I had a powder burn from the gun going off so close, and there was a deep, bloody wound across my scalp where the bullet had grazed me. It wouldn’t kill me but it hurt like hell.
I slapped a dressing on it—it was the best I could do, for now. I was soaked and exhausted but there was no time to rest. I had to move. I had to get Annabelle back. I headed for my bike—
And stopped.
I had no leads. I had no one to go to for help. I had nothing. I was just one guy.
My eyes fell on the line of Harleys parked in front of the clubhouse. A line of cold, silent steel when it should have been a row of growling, thumping engines and guys climbing onto them to do battle.
Annabelle’s words came back to me: families lean on each other. I’d been trying not to lean on the club ever since I’d joined. I’d given and given and never taken back: not until she showed up. She’d been the one thing that I’d loved more than the club, the one thing that had gotten me to ask for help: to rescue her on the highway and to confront the Blood Spiders’ president at the sawmill. And it had worked.
Then Volos had shown up and I’d pushed them away again. I’d been convinced I had to protect them, that I had to deal with this on my own. And look where that had gotten me.
I slipped off my cut and looked at it. Then I wiped my hand across the back, clearing away the mud until the Hell’s Princes logo was visible again.
I needed the club. And since I was the only one left, it was up to me to get them back.
I climbed onto my bike and rode for the Sheriff’s Office.
The Haywood Falls Sheriff’s Office isn’t big. Just a few rooms for paperwork, a parking lot out back and the holding cells. I knew the guys would still be there: no way the State Police would get off their asses and organize a prison bus to ship them all out in the middle of the night. But in the morning, they’d be gone.
If I was going to do this, I had to do it now.
If Annabelle had been there, she could have come up with some elaborate break-out plan: cutting steel bars, disabling cameras, all that shit.
Given that it was just me, I figured I’d better just do what I’m good at: brute force and intimidation.
I walked right in the front door and pointed Caorthannach at the guy sitting at the front desk. He gaped at me: at the shotgun, at my dripping, mud-stained body, at the expression on my face. “What the hell is this?” he asked, terrified.
“It’s a bloody breakout,” I told him. “What the fuck does it look like?”
Sheriff Harris came out of his office and saw what was going on. “O’Harra?!” He put his hands out to pacify me. “What are you doing?” He looked from me towards the holding cells at the end of the hall. “I thought you made a deal! I thought it was you who—”
“I didn’t make a deal,” I snarled. “Get over here. Both of you, walk in front of me.”
“Easy, son,” Harris told the front desk guy. “Do as he says.”
I collected up two more officers who were filing reports in the office and marched all four of them down the hall to the cells. To my relief, Harris made sure no one tried to be a hero: I didn’t want to shoot anyone. As I came into view, a ripple went through the big holding cell where all the Princes were standing. “What the fuck?” muttered Mac.
I directed the Sheriff’s staff into an empty cell and had Sheriff Harris lock them inside. “Now open up that cell and let my club go,” I ordered.
Sheriff Harris shook his head.
I raised Caorthannach.
Harris angrily pushed the shotgun aside. “You’re not going to shoot me,” he muttered.
He was right. I wasn’t. Harris had been a friend of the club for years. He’d played along to protect his employees, but now it was just the two of us he was calling my bluff. I could feel myself losing control of the situation. “Let them out!” I snapped, desperate.
“I can’t do it,” said Harris. His eyes were sad. “I’ll do a lot for the club but there’s a limit. I can’t just let an entire cell full of suspects walk out of here. I’d lose my job.”
Shit. All the bluster drained out of me. I lif
ted Caorthannach again...then lowered it. That gun had scared plenty of people over the years but it didn’t scare him. Intimidation wasn’t going to work. Not this time. It was over.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” said Harris softly. “But the best thing you can do is turn around and walk out of here. Keep to the back roads, you might make it out of the state.”
He was offering me a way out but that wasn’t what I needed. I needed my club. And it was going to take more than scaring him to get them back.
I dug down deep, feeling for all the things I’d locked away a long time ago, the things Annabelle had reawakened. My voice softened. “He’s got my girl, Sheriff. A real evil bastard. I got to get her back. And I need my club to do it.”
Harris looked into my eyes for a long time...and I saw him slowly soften. He let out a long sigh, then lowered his voice. “You gotta hit me.”
“What?”
“It’s the only way the feds will buy it. It’s gotta look like I fought you. So hit me. Hard. Then take the key. It’s in my pocket.”
I blinked at him, dumbstruck. Then I rotated Caorthannach so I could hit him with the wooden stock.
“Don’t get the face,” he said quickly.
I nodded. And swung the shotgun at the side of his head. He crumpled and I caught him and lowered him to the floor. Then I dug in his pocket, pulled out the key and unlocked the holding cell’s door.
No one moved. Mac and the others just stared at me, eyes narrowed.
“I didn’t rat out the MC,” I told him. And I filled him in on Trent and the deal I did make, and how Volos had tricked me. When I reached the part about him planting the coke, I saw Mac’s hands tighten into fists.
“He has Annabelle,” I told them, looking from face to face. “I don’t know where. I don’t even know where to start looking. I need your help.” I drew in a long breath. I needed them to go into this with their eyes open. “But you walk out of that cell, you’re all increasing your sentences. Everyone’s going to be after us: cops, feds. We’ll be fugitives. They’ll shoot first.”
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