Shield

by Anne Malcom

He didn’t know what made him move his gaze.

  And then he saw her. She was swinging her legs, with boots much too big for her hanging off them. He didn’t think she was doing that for any reason other than she must’ve been doing that before.

  Before the man and the blood.

  Luke saw her face. It was the girl from school. Cade’s pretty sister who didn’t look at all like she belonged to this. Luke watched her. Watched innocence seep out of her like water from a fast-emptying bathtub. He watched the hurt that didn’t even seem to fit on such a small face take over.

  He clenched his fists on top of his knees, itching to clasp the door handle. To do something to help her.

  His dad would help her. It was his job. He kept people safe.

  He’d somehow keep her safe.

  Because he was watching her, that frozen moment of when a little girl had something sacred stolen from her in the backyard of her childhood, Luke did not see that his father had finished the conversation with the men.

  Not the bleeding man, of course. That man wouldn’t be having any more conversations.

  He didn’t notice until the car door opened, slammed closed and his father started reversing out of the lot. Luke whipped his head around, hating that he had to leave the girl. He focused on his father’s hard-jawed profile.

  “What are you doing?” he demanded.

  His father didn’t look at him. “Taking us home.”

  Luke gaped at him. “You’re not doing anything?” he spluttered. “You’re not helping them?”

  You’re not keeping her safe? was what he didn’t say.

  There was a long silence, long enough for his father to direct them out of the parking lot and back onto the open road. Long enough for Luke to realize that he didn’t even get one glimpse of that little girl.

  One last glimpse.

  Because the next time he saw her, she wouldn’t be a little girl at all. She’d be changed, matured beyond her years, something ripped from her soul that would ensure the absence of carefree happiness.

  “Yeah, I’m not doing anything,” his father murmured, little more than a whisper. “And that’s how I’m helpin’ ’em.” The last part was barely audible.

  “What are you talking about?” Luke’s harsh adolescent yell somehow didn’t seem as loud as his father’s muted whisper. “You have to help! That’s what you do. That’s your job.”

  His father finally looked at him then. Luke thought he glimpsed something like shame, but it was quickly replaced by something just as unfamiliar.

  Anger.

  “No, son. My job is to keep Amber safe. Keep you and your mother safe. That’s exactly what I’m doing. I’ll hear no more about it.”

  “But—”

  “I’ll hear no more about it!”

  Luke flinched at his father’s cruel tone. He didn’t want to be quiet. He wanted to yell, scream at his father that he was doing it wrong. Being wrong. Beg him to at least take him back so he could do something for that little girl.

  But he did none of those things. Instead he folded his arms across his chest, staring out the window and trying to blink away the tears that inexplicably rose behind his eyes.

  No, Luke could not remember when he started respecting his father less. But he could remember when he stopped respecting him altogether.

  That moment right then.

  And he’d always thought it’d been because of the injustice of letting outlaws make their own justice, which turned out to be revenge. Thought it was encouraging lawlessness.

  Or maybe he’d forced himself to think that.

  Because it was actually none of that.

  It was because he’d driven away from that little girl before Luke could do anything.

  Before Luke could protect her.

  Present Day

  Rosie

  I was roughly yanked out of the bed of truck that I’d been hurled into an hour before. My arm caught on a protruding piece of metal, sharp pain followed by the warmth of blood radiating from my bicep.

  I didn’t flinch, keeping my body slack as they muttered to each other in Spanish. My eyes stayed squeezed shut, but I keenly took notice of my surroundings: the smells, the crunch of gravel, not dirt, beneath their feet.

  They didn’t know I was awake. Nor that I could understand how they were arguing over who would “fuck the mouthy American first.”

  Of course, they counted on me still being unconscious for that particular rape. They’d make sure I was awake for the rest of them. They’d try not to hurt me too badly, or bruise my face. Couldn’t damage the merchandise before they sold me.

  Then I’d be raped again. But it would be by someone different. Someone richer, most likely. Maybe I’d get brutalized on a private jet, surrounded by beautiful things. But a woman may as well be surrounded by filth—she always would be at the moment a man took something brutally that should never be taken. That was never his to take.

  In the States, back home in civilization, there is a reported rape every six minutes. That’s just what’s reported. Here, who the fuck knew. Who the fuck knew how often a woman had that innocence, which she didn’t even know she had, stolen.

  She’d know she’d had it the second it was taken. The absence of it would eat her up inside.

  Which is why I’m here. To hopefully take it right back.

  Along with their manhood if it was a slightly less shitty day.

  It didn’t look like it was going to be difficult. The idiots didn’t even notice me swapping out my dosed beer for the one I’d stashed in the corner behind me. I always chose a seat with a view of the door and my back to a wall. A little of my brother’s advice sticking, or just common sense in this particular line of work.

  I let myself be groped and roughly tossed around, gritting my teeth when the dirty paws of some animal cupped me between my legs. Even though I was prepared, even though I knew I was in control, it didn’t make that moment any less degrading, didn’t mean it didn’t take a tiny slice of my dignity from me. Every time it happened, I was back in that room—he was touching me, violating me. It was almost too much in those few seconds before I got a hold of myself. And I did. Remembering that I couldn’t stop what happened to me in the past, but I might be able to do something for someone else who hopefully would never know what I did for them.

  The stench of sweat and human waste was thick enough to choke on in the room they planned on being their house of pleasure and my house of horrors. I could taste the sorrow and the pain of the women who came before me. Or maybe I was imagining that because I knew those women were lost. No matter what I did now, they would be lost.

  There was money to be made, after all—trafficking in human beings was the third biggest business in the world. Almost one million people were trafficked among international borders annually. Eighty percent of them women, half of them children. And of that almost one million people, eighty percent were trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation.

  They were gone the second they were put in this room. The second they took a sip of the drink laced with rohypnol, GHB, or ketamine, or a cocktail of all three.

  Not me.

  I was already lost in a different way, in a way that meant I could at least prevent someone else being taken, even if I couldn’t save the ones who’d come before.

  My bones and muscles protested with the way they handled me, but it was good, because them being rough gave me the opportunity to press a button stitched into the thick leather cuff at my wrist without them noticing.

  No sound came when I pressed it, but I knew what it did.

  I had about seven minutes, give or take, depending on how much of a distance Lucian kept when he followed us from the bar.

  I’d run into them by chance, him and his team. It was the first time people like these assholes had tried to drug me. Lucian and the boys came in to try and save me. My captors were all dead by the time they arrived, guns drawn.

  I grinned at them. “Sorry, boys. You snoo
ze, you lose.”

  And it began. They were all ex-military, all here for reasons that weren’t important to anyone but themselves. They were here to escape something. And it just so happened that the best way to escape something was to kill people who deserved to die. Our operation was just that, traveling around Venezuela mostly, with me as the bait.

  Which was what I was right then.

  I lost a handful of breaths as I was hurled onto broken and cold concrete, the impact winding me. I stayed still, braced against the pain. I was used to it.

  I mentally scheduled myself in for a tetanus shot and maybe a round of penicillin to be safe. I immediately changed the maybe to a definite when rancid breath kissed my cheek and an equally rancid tongue ran along my face.

  “Cunt tastes good,” he declared in Spanish.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of black as a figure entered the structure that could be roughly classified as a shack. After I kicked the man with the knife off me, breaking his neck in one swift movement so he collapsed gracelessly at my feet, I glanced up and found my initial guess of a newcomer was correct.

  A very familiar one at that.

  His icy eyes regarded me levelly, thick tattooed arms crossed as he leaned leisurely against the wall, not speaking, not interfering, just watching.

  “Perra!” a voice snarled.

  My attention moved from the newcomer to another attacker. I skirted the body at my feet to dodge the knife that was hurtling toward my neck. My dodge meant that I sank my own penknife into the man’s own neck before he knew what was going on.

  His eyes widened in grotesque surprise, a wet gurgling noise coming out of his mouth. I held his frantic and desperate gaze, keeping my grip tight on the handle of the knife.

  “Yeah, you didn’t expect to meet your end in this room, did you?” I hissed at the small amount of darkness remaining in his eyes. If you looked really closely, you could see the evil draining out of him, sinking into the soil, searching for a new home and a new landlord. His warped and ugly soul would follow and meet a man named Lucifer. I hoped.

  Or maybe that was just my mind taking creative license in the midst of murder. My teachers always said I had an ‘active imagination.’ And ‘problems with authority.’

  They weren’t exactly wrong.

  I held his eyes a beat more. “It’s been a profound honor killing you. If only it had been a lot sooner and your death a lot longer.” I sighed. “But a girl can’t get everything she wants.”

  Another thick and wet sound escaped from his body as I yanked the knife out, then stepped away from the spurt of blood that came with the gesture.

  “Hit the carotid artery,” a flat voice observed. “Nice.”

  My would-be attacker turned victim collapsed ungraciously on the ground, the smell of fresh excrement filling the already rancid air.

  I screwed up my nose.

  People shat themselves when they died, something they did not show you in the movies. Then again, good always triumphed over evil in the movies, and the girl always rode off into the sunset with the hero.

  This particular girl rode off into the sunset alone to make sure her particular hero stayed far away from her. She’d already turned him into the villain; no use ruining what remained of his life.

  I whirled, shaking thoughts of referring myself into the third person out of my head. I was already half crazy, I so didn’t need to go full Charlie Sheen.

  I glared at the owner of the voice.

  “Yeah, I know how to kill someone. I’m not in kindergarten,” I snapped, then regarded him, tilting my head and holding my scowl. “You didn’t feel like, I don’t know, helping me?”

  Gage looked at me, then at the two bodies at my feet, with a blank, unblinking gaze.

  “You didn’t exactly need help,” he replied, digging in his pocket. “And I’m rather attached to my balls. Don’t like the thought of you ripping them out because I decided to get all chivalrous and help you kill a man. Feminism and all that.”

  He put his smoke between his lips, the flicking of his Zippo replacing the quietness of death that hung in the air. I’d quickly gotten used to that, though it didn’t mean I liked it. Death was ugly, whichever way you spun it. Killing someone evil didn’t make you good. It did exactly the opposite. Murder was murder.

  Gage wasn’t wrong. Him helping me would’ve been the most annoying thing he could’ve done, apart from just being here in general. Any other man in my brother’s club would’ve rode in, guns blazing, testosterone overdosing, determined to save the girl they saw as their little sister.

  Not Gage.

  He was the exception to the rule.

  He was the exception to a lot of rules.

  I took the smoke he offered me, even though I didn’t particularly want it.

  I needed it.

  Just like after getting laid, you needed a smoke after killing someone. A bowl of pasta wouldn’t go astray either. Neither would an orgasm. But I wasn’t looking to Gage for that. Even if he did brave the ‘no touch’ rule Cade had plastered all over me, I didn’t think even I had enough kink in me to handle all of that.

  Murder, sex, and food. The basis of life. They all worked together in some kind of twisted threesome.

  “You found me,” I observed, taking a long and unpleasant inhale.

  He grunted in agreement.

  If it was anyone else, I would’ve been surprised. In regular circumstances, I excelled at hiding my tracks. My most recent exit had been under more than regular circumstances; therefore, I more than excelled at hiding my tracks.

  But like I said, Gage was an exception to a lot of rules.

  “You going to tell my brother where I am?” I asked, blowing out another plume of smoke while wiping my knife on the thighs of my jeans.

  Gage regarded me, and I squirmed under his gaze. He was one of the very few people who made me uncomfortable when he looked at me. His glassy stare always seemed to push right through whatever mask or costume I was wearing at the time and see the ugly truth. Gage lived the ugly truth, his past dark and twisted and full of things that would even give me nightmares. I didn’t even know the details—I could just tell. A piece inside that had fallen off, been ripped out. And they may operate the same by appearances, but there was something wrong in there.

  The kind of wrong that Jeffery Dahmer and Charles Manson had. But Gage channeled his in different directions. Not the ‘right’ ones, by far, but what was right anyway?

  “No,” he said in answer.

  That time I was surprised. “No?” I repeated, dropping my smoke and crushing it amongst the blood and dirt at my feet. “You came all this way, to this shithole in the middle of the jungle, spent all this time on what I can only assume is my brother’s request, and now you say you’re not going to tell him? Bullshit.”

  Gage didn’t move, didn’t blink. Like a shark. Except if sharks stopped moving, they died. I didn’t know of anything that could kill Gage.

  “Your brother didn’t send me.”

  “Yeah,” I spat sarcastically.

  He shrugged. “Believe what you want.” His tone communicated the fact that he couldn’t care either way. “I was curious.”

  I gaped at him. “You came to Venezuela, in the middle of rebel-owned territory, dirtied your boots, just because you were curious?”

  The corner of Gage’s mouth turned up, the closest he’d come to a smile. “In case you hadn’t noticed, haven’t had much cause to get my boots or my hands dirty with all this straight-and-narrow stuff we’ve got going on.” He glanced down to where a trail of blood had pooled at the toe of his motorcycle boots. “I like getting dirty.”

  It was comical how uncomical that statement was coming out of his mouth. It wasn’t sexual. Not by a long shot. It was cold and calculated.

  I crossed my arms and his glance flickered for a second to my chest, where I’d unintentionally pushed up my boobs. It only stayed there for a moment, then moved up to my eyes, unintereste
d.

  I wasn’t offended. I was used to it. Gage barely looked at any woman with any real interest. Sure, he’d fuck a club girl if the occasion arose, but he wasn’t really interested. Like the way a man might regard a freeze-dried meal when he had nothing else to eat—yeah he’d have it, but only out of need, not out of actual want.

  “You were curious,” I probed.

  “Yep,” he agreed. “’Course, I knew you’re prone to goin’ walkabout, but this time felt different. Had some time on my hands, checked out your place.” He gave me a look. “You did a good job of cleanin’ up, babe. Almost perfect. Most likely anyone else, save a cop with a black light, wouldn’t have noticed anything. I’m not anyone else.”

  No, you’re not. A bitter taste of dread climbed up my throat. Not for me, of course. Gage would never say a word to a soul to rat me out. Definitely not to the cops, and it seemed not even to my brother. He was loyal. To family. To me. But not the cop who had spent the last decade trying to bring down the club.

  I’d unwittingly handed him the evidence that would do what Cade had been wanting to do for the last decade.

  Bring Luke down.

  I struggled to keep my composure, watch Gage for any signs that he knew. But that asshole had the poker face to end all poker faces. We could’ve been talking about motorcycle parts for all he gave away.

  “And you didn’t run to Cade,” I said, a statement, not a question.

  He shook his head. “Not exactly my style. Would’ve, if I had any inkling you were in trouble. Well, a different kind than usual,” he added. “But had a pretty good idea you were alive.” He gave me a pointed look. “You are. Will say I’m impressed.”

  I raised my brow. “Impressed?”

  “Your current line of work.” He nodded to the bodies at my feet.

  Of course he would be impressed with anything that had to do with blood and murder.

  “Curiosity satisfied, and you’re not telling Cade?”

  “You left for a reason. I’m guessing a good one?”

  I nodded.

  “Then no. I understand what you’re doin’. Maybe not the specifics, but enough to know that it was the only choice you had. Runnin’ away from demons is a hard job. I’m not the one who’s gonna make you face them. Doesn’t work that way. You gotta face ’em yourself.”