“Oh my God!” I couldn’t stand. My wobbly legs wouldn’t hold me up any longer. There was a chair beside me and I literally melted right into it.
Avalyn took the seat beside mine and put my hands in hers. Then, she started to tell me how everything would work as we communicated with Toby. He could hear me just fine, but she would be speaking for my brother.
My head was spinning by the time we were done with the back and forth question and answer session. The things I learned were that the woman wasn’t the only one holding Deck captive. I think we’d all suspected that, but it helped to know. He also made sure I knew that Deck was not there of his own free will like the woman who had him was attempting to make me believe. I didn’t have the heart to ask him about the baby though because it already felt incredibly awkward to be chastised about doubting my husband by a strange woman who was supposedly speaking for my dead brother. Good luck wrapping your brain around that bit, because it was one of the reasons that I still thought I might be going crazy. This woman knew too much though. There was no way this wasn’t real, unless she was a plant, and how the fuck would they have been assured I’d go see her. I’d never bothered with a psychic before in my life.
We made arrangements for Avalyn to update me if Toby found a way to get her more information and then I had to leave to go pick up the girls. As I was on my way, I gave my phone the voice commands to search for private investigators that weren’t necessarily local to here. I found one near Detroit who would do what I asked for the fee that I offered and that was good enough for me.
What the hell did I need a P.I. for? Well, knowing my family, they would have me committed to a hospital on a 72 hour hold the moment I mentioned that I talked to Toby, then they’d go search down and try to destroy Avalyn. It wouldn’t matter that she refused my money and just wanted to help. They’d think I finally lost it all together. Instead, I now had an investigator acting as my front for the information I was about to hand deliver.
When I got to the girls’ school, I had to wait in the pickup line for another 15 minutes before they would come out. I ended up sending a text.
Ever: I hope I’m not bothering you…
Ava: Just feeding fucks on the lawn
Ever: That sounds personal
Ava: Damp it! This ducking phone hates me.
Ever: Looks like your phone is confused about ducks and fucks.
Ava: lol I was feeding actual D U C K S on my lawn.
Ever: I knew that from the beginning, it was cute watching you fight autocorrect. Lol
Ava: You’re a brat!
Ever: Would you mind if I talk to you once in a while about things? If I tell the people in my life that I talked to my brother today, they’ll think I’ve gone completely insane and lock me up. If I don’t talk, I’m afraid I’ll burst.
I waited a moment, and nothing came back. Then my phone rang in my hand and startled me to the point I dropped the damn thing and had to become super-bendy woman and contort myself to try to get it out from under the seat I was sitting in. I had giant, milk-filled boobs! They did not mesh well with the steering wheel that was in the way. When I finally managed to squirm my way to the phone and lift it triumphantly in my hands, the ringing stopped. I glanced down at the screen to see who had been calling only to watch it light up and ring again.
“Hey, sorry, karma just kicked my ass. You rang, I dropped my phone and it slid under my seat.”
Ava’s laughter was good to hear. “Oh my God, I think you might just be my people, Ever!” We both ended up laughing at our phone fuck ups before Ava spoke again. “I wanted to call so that nothing got lost in translation with the way I text. You can talk to me any time. I know this is a strange situation and requires you to suspend your belief or expand it. It’s something that will never be easy to speak about with others. It requires you to have to convince them to believe when you’re still wondering if you experienced something real. I totally get it. Remember, I told you I went to doctors and thought my family had mental issues instead of gifts.” She chuckled. “Well, I think they had a bit of both, but that’s beside the point.”
It was my turn to laugh. “Sounds like my family, only their special gifts are a different skill set entirely.”
“What’s it like being a motorcycle club princess?”
“I wouldn’t know,” I answered honestly.
“Oh, I thought Toby said…”
“He did. I have an unusual story about how I came to my family and it wasn’t really a happy one, so I was never treated like a princess the way my sister was. I can, however, tell you all about what it’s like to be an old lady.” I saw my girls barreling toward the car then. “It will have to be another time because my girls are about to hop in the car. I’ll call you later though, when everyone’s settled in for the night.”
“I’d really like that, Ever.”
“Me too,” I told her and then hung up just as Amber threw the back door open. She jumped inside as and threw her bookbag in the floorboard then hopped in the seat. “Hey, my beautiful girls!” I called out to them as Ashton followed suit and got buckled in. “How was your day?”
“You seem happy, Momma,” Ash mentioned while looking at her sister as if it was the weirdest thing ever to see me happy. It struck me then that I hadn’t been doing a very good job of reassuring my girls. What I thought was passing for normal simply wasn’t our normal and it wasn’t something I was capable of faking.
“I made a new friend today,” I told them.
“Oh! Maybe you can have a sleepover and we’ll order pizzas and watch movies,” Amber added excitedly.
“Maybe one day,” I placated her. “We can still do pizza and movies tonight if you want.” Both girls cheered, and for the first time in almost a year, things felt normal and my hope didn’t feel so false.
Chapter 24
December
Deck
My brain was fucking much, mush, hush… I started laughing at myself. The euphoria was back again, but before I could really become fully cognizant, I was smacked in the face, hard.
“What the fuck did she give him this time?”
“Don’t know, she’s always going on about how it’s some special brew the doctors cooked up for her so she wouldn’t damage him as much this time.”
My eyes rolled at first, but once they were able to focus, I recognized the face staring angrily back at me. “Is she dead?” I managed to ask.
“No,” was the curt reply.
“That sucks,” I mumbled.
The man laughed at my response instead of hurting me. “You have no idea how much it really does.” He moved away from me and started talking to one of the other men present. It was only then that I registered there were other, real people in the room with us. I thought maybe the voices I heard earlier were just someone on speaker phone. “Get him packed up and ready to go within the hour. We need to be gone before she catches wind that we’re here. I’m not letting her stop his transfer back to his people this time.”
“Back to my people?” I parroted and then fell off as I laughed myself straight to the fucking floor.
“Find out what she gave him so we can have a doctor on standby to fix it!” The demand was shouted at whoever else was left in the room. I had no clue because the world tilted sideways. Maybe I was the one who tilted sideways. The cold floor against my cheek felt good though, so I wasn’t going to question it.
“Come on you fucking lump of useless shit!” A man growled the words at me as I was lifted by two sets of hands and dragged to my feet. I could have sworn I heard the rat-a-tat, ping, pop of gun fire. It almost sounded like music to my ears until someone banged my head into the wall. Then everything faded to a blackish nothing.
Before the lights went completely out though, I could have sworn I heard my brother calling out to me. That was weird because I hadn’t seen Jay since his son Pike was born. “Jay,” his name came out more like garbled nonsense and I’m not sure if he even heard me because t
he ping of bullets hitting too close to home sounded once more and then I was out.
Chapter 25
Too late
Double-D
We were too fucking late again.
“I swear to you, I saw him going out the back. I called to him but he looked completely out of it. They tossed him into the back of a black sedan and took off out of here like a bat out of hell.”
“Then what are you still doing here?”
“Hard to follow when the only car I had access to back there was blown to shit,” he growls in frustration. “So fucking close! How the hell do we go home to our family, to Ever, and tell them that we just missed getting him back?”
“We don’t. That’s not a fucking option,” I snarled back at him.
He ran both hands through his hair and tugged the shit out of it as he did. “What now?”
I took my cell out and hit one of my top three contacts.
“Keys,” she answered immediately.
“We were about 10 seconds too late,” I admitted.
“Noooo!” She whined into the phone.
“Listen, J-Bird caught sight of them putting into a dark sedan. Gonna put you on with him, get what details you can, and track them.”
“On it,” she answered as I handed my cell over to Jay.
“Look who the fuck was slinking through the basement while we raided the place!”
“You can’t hurt me! Declan will kill you! I’m carrying his baby! He loves me!” The stupid bitch was shouting down the whole place as we all stood there and watched some of our men from our other chapters dragging her ass out.”
They brought her directly to me. “What do you want us to do with her?”
“She’s coming with us,” I informed them.
“Do you know who I am?” She hissed in my face, or as close as she was allowed to get to it.
“I sure as fuck do.” I glared down into her eyes and finally, saw the fear that she had been missing in this situation. “The question is, do you know who I am?”
“W-what? Why would I know who some dirty, old biker is?” I laughed at that, as did some of the other men standing around. Her eyes darted this way and that as she took in everyone’s reaction.
“Well, it’s really funny that I’m the one here deciding your fate, considering that boy you took is like a son to me. In fact, in the eyes of the law he is my son,” I paused for effect. “In-law,” I finally added and watched as her eyes grew rounder with her surprise. “That’s right! It’s starting to sink in, isn’t it? The woman you’ve been attempting to taunt with your sick and twisted little games and pictures, she’s my daughter.”
“She’s a whore!” The woman spat, clearly unconcerned for her own safety.
“Nuh-uh. She’s married to the man. Been so for a whole lot of years. Speaking of years, you helped take her man away from her for damn near a whole one. Took him away from his kids, his parents, his brother, our family.” I spread my arms out, indicating all the leather-clad, ‘dirty’ bikers she had surrounding her. “What do you suppose the punishment is for stealing a year of a man’s life? You stole a year of my grandbabies having their daddy with them too. What the fuck do you think the punishment for that is?” I was screaming in her face and the bitch just smirked at me.
“Doesn’t matter because you can’t kill me if you want your precious Declan back. My brothers will demand a trade, at the very least, and that’s if they haven’t killed him already.”
“You better hope like hell they haven’t. If we find out any further harm has come to him, I will rip that baby from your belly and make your death so slow, the year I draw it out will feel like a goddamn eternity!”
“You would kill Declan’s baby?”
“No, I’d take it from you and never even give you a chance to see it. I’d toss it to some poor sap family who can’t have their own and my daughter and son-in-law would be told DNA was done and it wasn’t his.”
“But it is,” she argued.
“Says you, and even if that’s true, you missed the point where I don’t give a fuck. We’ll sell the fucking baby just so it never causes an ounce of hurt for our family.” I would do no fucking such thing. I had no doubt that Ever would raise that child as if it were one of her own if it turned out to be Deck’s. The cunt in front of us didn’t need to know that though.
The bitch spit in my face. She missed, but she still attempted it. Jay stepped up then and slapped the shit out of her. Normally, I’d say she had what was coming to her, but she was pregnant, and the truth of it was, we didn’t know if that baby inside of her belonged to my son-in-law or not.
“You’ll get your turn with her,” I told Jay as I pulled him back a little. The little cunt’s eyes flared with interest.
“Don’t even think about it like that, bitch. I wouldn’t go near your dirty, used up snatch, even if I was drugged and held hostage.”
“Funny, that’s exactly what got me like this.” She had the nerve to look down at her belly and then smirk back up at him, telling us what we’d already figured out. The idiot didn’t realize she was digging her own grave even slower. She just admitted to raping a brother in order to get pregnant by him.
“We don’t need the hassle of dealing with her right now. Get her back home, lock her down in the pit, and I don’t want anyone else to know she’s there until we get back.” I’d given the order to Tank, the sitting President of the Charleston Chapter of Aces High MC. If we had our way, he wouldn’t be president for long, but I had definitely overstepped by giving him a direct order in front of the men. He simply winked at me, since she couldn’t see the gesture, to let me know all was good.
“I’ll escort her back myself, and don’t worry, I know her punishment gets doled out by family. We’ll keep her healthy-ish until you get back.”
“What does that mean?” The dumb bitch asked.
“What?”
“Healthy-ish!” She screeched. “He said, healthy-ish. What the hell does that mean?”
“It means whatever the fuck he wants it to mean. Now shut your fucking pie-hole or we’ll shut it for you. The men don’t want to deal with a headache from you for hours on end.”
I turned my back on her and pretended she wasn’t there. Jay was practically coming out of his skin in front of me. “Calm, easy, take some deep breaths, brother. As soon as Keys calls back with the info we need, we have to be steady to ride out and go get him.” If only life worked the way we wanted it to.
Two hours, that was the amount of time it took for Keys to get back to us with the news that the trail went cold. She was trying to pick it up again, but thought that maybe they had pulled a switcheroo in a blind spot that she wasn’t able to track because the car itself disappeared never to be seen again until the third day when the local news agency reported a massive car fire about an hour from where we were posted up waiting.
“What do we do now? Are we sending everyone home?”
“Is your brother with us yet?” I asked Jay. He didn’t bother responding. “We’re too close, and I am not going home empty handed again. If you need to get back to your family, I understand. We have plenty of guys who have the time, or don’t have anyone to fuss over them for the holidays anyway.”
“I already talked to Christina. Pike won’t know the difference if we have Christmas two days or two months from now. He’s still too young. She doesn’t mind waiting.”
“All right then,” let’s put feet to the ground and go find some heads we can knock in for information. The sooner we get home, the better.”
It took two more weeks of dead ends, bruised fists, and yanking rats out of holes and we still had nothing until Ever called me that day. “I’m sending you an address. You need to get there now and bring my man home!”
“What the hell? What address and where did you get it? We can’t just go without planning and it needs to be verified.”
“Sending you everything you need. Verify en route if you need to, but if you don’t mo
ve now, we run the risk of losing him again.”
“We’re going to have a talk when I get back about where your information has been coming from.”
“You don’t have time for this,” she fussed once again. “Check your texts. I sent the same info to Jay too.” She hung up so no further discussion could be had.
It made sense that she’d sent the address and info to her brother-in-law too because Jay was already on his bike and headed out. “Let’s go,” I yelled as I hopped in the truck we had brought with us. There was no telling what shape we would be bringing back Deck in and I honestly couldn’t even chance leaving him to a prospect or a lower level club member. We were having to take a deeper look at all of our members these days, because there was an obvious leak in the system considering they had stayed two steps ahead of us this whole time. The woman, she wasn’t that fucking smart from what I’d seen. There was no way she was managing it on her own considering all the fuck ups she’d made.
Plus, there was Durbin. We had tracked him down and managed to get the information from him before. We weren’t in time to extract Deck that time, but Durbin was the first to tell us that the information pipeline was leaking like a sieve. Jay and I were the only ones to get the address this time, which made it easier to get there in time, for once.
We stopped just a ways up the road and hid our bikes while some of the men, including Jay, got a head start on foot toward the house, the rest jumped into the truck bed and we rode out. “Please be there,” I kept chanting under my breath. Merc, who had come up just yesterday to relieve his son and send him home to his wife and kid, was watching me, but not saying a word as I drove.
“I know you’re doing this for your daughter and our grandbabies but thank you for never giving up on my son.”
Everlasting (Aces High MC - Charleston Book 6) Page 14