by Nicole Fox
I rolled my eyes a little, surprised still by how stubborn she was proving to be. “You can let me do this,” I told her. “There's nothing else for it. Now go.”
Finally, finally — with one more sad look into my face — Jess started to walk away. I breathed a sigh of relief as I watched her go. Now for Katia…
I turned towards the woman right when I was sure that Jess was far enough away. I reached down and grabbed the box I'd been carrying, fidgeting with it. Inside were the explosives that Dorian had brought for me to use on Katia. The goal was to bring down as much of the headquarters as I could with Katia. I wasn't worried; I figured Dorian must have done his job well.
But before I could detonate the explosives, suddenly there were people swarming out f seemingly every available opening. I cried out in surprise as I was jostled left and right by armed ... FBI agents?
Somehow, they must have tracked down Katia Sin already, and they were here to arrest her. I could practically weep with relief. I dropped the box of explosives and put my hands up above my hand, ready to comply with anything the FBI agents said to me.
Katia flung herself at me, her eyes flashing maniacally. “You little—” She started to say.
But before she could make contact with me, one of the FBI agents intervened, pulling her back away. The man was reading her her rights before I even knew what was really happening.
I looked around, trying to figure out just what was going on. One of the agents separated from the crowd buzzing around Katia and Silas and came over to me. It was Gabi, I realized, staring at her in shock.
“So we meet again,” she said wryly, a small smile twisting her face. She nudged at the box with the toe of her boot. “All the packages were already delivered, so what's in the box?”
I paled a little as I looked at her. “Explosives,” I admitted. “Pretty low-level explosives, and I haven't started the timer or anything yet.”
“What were you planning to do?” Gabi asked with a bit of a frown.
I shrugged, looking away from her. “The only way Jess could ever truly be free was if Katia and Silas were both dead,” I told her. “So I planned to, uh, take care of that problem.”
Gabi narrowed her eyes at me. “You mean to tell me that you were actually planning on dying for Jess's sake?”
Before I could respond, two of the other agents were there as well. “We'll need to ask you some questions about your involvement in all of this,” they told me. “Right now, you're being arrested under charge of...”
I hardly listened as the man droned on about my rights. Instead, I fixed my eyes on Gabi. I wanted to say that she owed me one, that I needed her help to get out of this situation, but at this point, I'd lost track of who owed whom. And I knew I probably deserved to go to jail, after the role I'd played in delivering the packages to Katia. It was about time all of this caught up to me.
I let them handcuff me, not fighting back at all.
Chapter Thirty-One
Thorn
I drummed my fingers restlessly against the table in the questioning room as I waited for them to send someone in to interview me. I knew they were giving me time to think things over, to decide what I really wanted to tell them. The thing was, I planned to just tell them the truth. I should never have helped Katia with anything; I knew that now.
Especially since I'd gone against Dorian's wishes in doing so.
Mostly, I wondered what Dorian would do now, with the Sigma Saints in disarray. I wasn't exactly sure what sort of evidence the feds thought they had on Katia and Silas now. Katia at least would be going back to a more secure prison for the rest of her original term; she wouldn't be getting out any time soon. But I had to assume that Silas was somehow being implicated in all of this as well…
The door swung open and Gabi stalked gracefully into the room, falling into a chair across from me. “Well, well, well, Thorn Riley,” she said in her silky voice. “I have to say, I'm impressed. Nabbing not one but two women out from under the nose of Silas Eaves takes skill. Are you sure you aren't an undercover agent as well?”
I snorted, twisting my fingers together. “It didn't really take skill when it came to freeing Jess,” I pointed out. “If it had, I wouldn't be sitting here.”
Gabi leaned forwards. “I'd like to believe you're innocent in all of this,” she said, her eyes glinting a little. “But you're going to have to give me a reason to let you go.”
I bit my lower lip. Surely she couldn't be suggesting that she wanted to just let me walk clear of all of this, right?
“Do you know how Katia Sin escaped from prison?” she asked.
I frowned and shrugged a little. “Not entirely, no,” I said. I hadn't paid close enough attention to the news story; I'd been more shocked to learn that Katia was already out of the prison. But when I thought about it, I was even more surprised. I could remember a few flashes of the video tape in my head, and I didn't recall there being any blood or anything like that. If Katia hadn't fought her way out using the guns… “No, I have no idea how she got out,” I said, realization dawning on me.
Gabi was trying to help me out of this.
“What do you know about Silas Eaves?” she asked, switching gears a little.
“Most of what I know about him is hearsay,” I admitted. “I've heard he's not a very pleasant guy and that he's been involved in a lot of the top schemes of the Sigma Saints. But I don't know that much about him personally.”
“And yet you were there in the Sigma Saints' national headquarters talking to him and Katia as though you were all best buds.”
“I made a deal with Katia,” I said, shrugging a little. “Silas Eaves was keeping a good friend of mine as a captive. I told Katia that she could have my life if Jess walked free.”
“And the explosives?”
“I meant that quite literally,” I said, smiling sharply. “I told Katia that she could have my life if Jess walked free. I planned on setting off the explosives and ensuring that Silas and Katia were both caught in the mess. I wanted to ensure that they weren't able to hurt anyone else in the future.”
“Vigilante justice,” Gabi muttered under her breath, a small smile on her lips.
“I'm not sure if it was justice or not,” I said truthfully. “That's for you all to decide. I just knew that based on what I know about the two of them ... well, the world would have been a safer place.”
“Except that you admitted yourself that you don't really know much about Silas Eaves and that what you do know is based off hearsay,” Gabi argued.
I stared at her, wondering if she was actually helping me at all or if this was just hearsay. I thought suddenly of Dorian, of his insistence that Katia and Silas be removed from their positions of power in the Sigma Saints, about how the organization needed to be rebuilt without them in it.
“You need to talk to members of the Sigma Saints,” I told her. “There are plenty of people who want Katia and Silas removed from their positions. People who think that the organization has become too much of a criminal activity lately, full of brash and impulsive, and bloodthirstyleaders.”
“And who might you suggest I talk to?” Gabi asked, leaning forwards again.
I shook my head, leaning back casually. This might doom me, but I had no desire to be the snitch. “You'd have to talk to one of the Sigma Saints,” I told her again. “But I'm not one of them.”
There was silence in the interrogation room. I could tell Gabi wanted to ask me more, to get me to snitch the names of everyone involved in the organization, but I couldn't do that, no matter if it meant I was going to jail or not. That would just make new enemies for me and continue to put Jess in danger. I hoped, of course, that Dorian had already spirited Jess far away from here, got her set up back at home. But even there, she could be found if someone had a big enough grudge against me.
I refused to be their snitch.
To my surprise, Gabi stood up and walked around the table, offering me a hand up. “Well, in that
case, Thorn Riley, I have no further questions for you,” she said. “I'll make sure that all charges against you are dropped.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Thorn
Dorian jumped to his feet when I walked into the hotel room, looking exhausted, as though he'd been up all night waiting for me to return. “Where the hell have you been?” he snapped, striding over to me and pulling me into his arms.
I collapsed a little against him and then pulled away. He continued to eye me critically, looking for signs of injury. “Dorian, I'm exhausted. Can we just sleep on it and leave the story-telling for tomorrow?” I grimaced. “I need a shower too. Jail cells are not the cleanest places in the world.”
“You were in jail?” Dorian snapped, catching my arm as I made to walk past him. “What happened? Who paid your bail?”
“There was no bail,” I said wearily. “I was only in jail because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time when the feds showed up. But Gabi got everything straightened out for me and let me go.”
Suddenly, there was a noise from the doorway of the bathroom. The next thing I knew, Jess was flinging herself into my arms. “I thought for sure that you were going to jail,” she sobbed into my shoulder. “Or if not, I thought that Katia was going to find some way to kill you after all. What happened? I left right as the FBI were swarming, but they were so focused on all of you that I had time to get out.”
I sighed, just reveling in the feeling of having her close to me again for a moment. I could see Dorian raising his eyebrows at me from over her shoulder, but I chose not to respond to that.
“I need a shower and a nap,” I told both of them. “Everything's going to be fine, and I'll tell you all about it when I've revived myself a little. But I need a shower and a nap before I'll say anything else.”
“Of course,” Jess said immediately, pulling back away from me. She leaned up shyly to kiss me, though, glancing over at Dorian and blushing a little when she was done. “Sorry,” she said. “I've just missed you.”
I pulled her back into my arms and kissed her resoundingly, sucking at her lips and forcing my tongue into her mouth, claiming her as mine. Even though I had no intention of starting anything right now — not when I was so tired, and not in front of Dorian — I cupped her firm asscheeks with my hands and pulled her in close so she was pressed against me.
Finally, we broke apart, both of us panting for air. I couldn't stop myself from leaning down and gently kissing her forehead, a tender gesture that I would never normally have allowed myself. Knowing that she was safe and that she was here ... it was all a bit surreal.
I broke away from her and went to shower.
Later that afternoon, we all sat down together for lunch. “Gabi was a federal agent the whole time,” I told the other two. “And I suspect that Rian was as well ... I don't think they were really sisters, I think that Gabi was trying to get her free because they needed her information in the case they were building against Silas. And that explains why Katia was so dead-set on not letting her go.”
“Hmm,” Dorian said. “But how did Katia find out that she was a double agent?”
“I don't know,” I admitted. “There's a lot that still doesn't make sense to me about this. All I know is that...” I glanced over at Jess. “Well, we're free. As far as I'm concerned, the packages were all delivered, I upheld my end of the bargain I made with Gabi, and Jess is safe. I'll have nothing more to do with the Sigma Saints.”
Dorian frowned at me. “What about when the organization is under new leadership?” he asked. “I have a meeting already set up with—”
“No,” I said, holding up my hands. “I don't want to hear anything more about it. My days of belonging to a biker gang are over.” I grimaced a little. “I guess you could say that I've lost any feelings of immortality that I ever entertained.”
Dorian smiled a little at that. “Well, that at least is a benefit from all of this.”
“What are you going to do instead?” Jess asked. I couldn't read her expression, but there was something in her voice that I responded to.
I shrugged at her. “I haven't decided yet,” I told her evenly. “I'm keeping my options open.”
The thing was, I didn't really want to be separated from her. After everything that had happened, I realized I had developed some very real feelings for her, and having nearly lost her to Silas and everything else had really cemented those feelings for me. I had no idea what she was thinking, though. She had her nice, ordinary life to go back to. I doubted she wanted me to have any part in her future, not with all the mayhem I had caused in her life over the past couple weeks.
“Well, if you need buddies to ride with sometimes, you know where to find me,” Dorian said, smiling a little. I had a feeling he knew exactly where my thoughts were turned, what I'd like to do with my future. But he was nice enough not to blurt it out. Jess and I would need to have a serious talk at some point, but the lunch table wasn't the place to do it.
“So what did Gabi say about the box of explosives anyway?”
I shrugged. “She called it vigilante justice and didn't say anything more about it. The more I think about it, the more all of it seems strange to me. Katia clearly didn't use the guns in her escape from prison, and—”
“Well, she couldn't have used the guns,” Gabi said, slipping into a seat at the table with us. She shrugged at my surprise. “I knew I needed to talk to you a little more before you left town, but not in the interrogation room, where anyone could hear. So I had you tailed back to the hotel.”
I rolled my eyes. “Okay. But what do you mean Katia couldn't have used the guns? You delivered the packages, didn't you? All the pieces were there.”
“When I took the packages from you, yes, all the pieces were there. But mysteriously enough, when they ended up in Katia's possession, the parts necessary to actually fire the guns were missing. Basically, all she got were some little toy guns. I doubt you would even have been able to use them as water guns.”
I stared at her. “How did you…”
“But how did Katia escape, then?” Dorian asked, a look of consternation on her face. “And why didn't she come after you? She must have known you had something to do with it.”
“I think she suspected Thorn had done it, given his earlier moral qualms about the mission,” Gabi said, shrugging. “That's why she was so keen to make a deal with you in exchange for Jess's life.”
“But how did she escape, then?”
“Easy,” Gabi said with a little shrug. “She picked ten of the most brutish guys that she could find, armed them all with what everyone thought were real guns, and overpowered the guards at the gate. Unfortunately, most of the others died in the escape attempt.” Her face twisted into a sneer. “Katia didn't care, though. All she cared about was getting herself out of there and back to safety.”
“So what was the whole point of your ... mission?” Jess asked suddenly.
“Silas Eaves,” Gabi said grimly. “He got away with murder and whatever else when we managed to put Katia behind bars. I'm still not sure how he walked away from that one. But this time, he won't be so lucky. Not after everything with Rian.” She cocked her head to the side, staring at Jess. “You could testify as well. Get him locked up for even longer.”
Jess laughed a little, shaking her head. “And then I'd have a whole host of Sigma Saints loyalists coming after me,” she said.
“We might be able to arrange something for you,” Gabi said. “You've heard of the witness protection program, I'm sure...”
“Sure,” Jess said, sounding a little surprised. “But would you really extend that to me, after everything that...”
“If you testified against Silas, yes,” Gabi said firmly. “You'd have to leave behind your family and everything that you've ever known, though.”
Jess winced and shook her head. “I couldn't do that,” she said. “My brother Brent...”
I reached over and put a hand over hers, sensing her dist
ress. “That's not an option,” I said, as though I had any right to have a say in this.
Gabi shrugged a little. “It was worth a try,” she said. She narrowed her eyes at me. “I'm holding you at your word, though, Thorn Riley. You aren't a member of the Sigma Saints anymore. Don't get caught up in another scheme with them or we'll have no choice but to prosecute you.”
I nodded at her, and she turned to Dorian. “And Dorian Barrows, you'd better make sure that this new organization of the Sigma Saints quits causing us so many problems, do you hear?”
I stared at Dorian. “You guys know one another?” I asked. “Have you been working together on this all along?”
Dorian shrugged. “That's part of being in a leadership position in one of the most well-known gangs in the country,” he said. “You have to know who to pay off.”