Had he killed Gail? Was he some kind of murderer? She thought of her men, of Falzone and the others and that woman Meredith.
“Meredith?” she whispered, and his eyes widened.
“Yes, I killed her, too. She’s dead.”
Avana knew that Meredtih was alive, but obviously he didn’t know. He maybe didn’t know that her men helped to find her, and that they were looking for Avana now. They would come. She needed to buy herself time. To keep him from raping her, beating her. He was sick in the head and she couldn’t help her body’s reaction to all this information she was getting. She shivered and he reached out and stroked her skin.
“You will obey, pet, and soon enough, the games will begin, and your lessons will start.”
“What do you want?”
He ran his palms along her body and she wiggled and tried pulling from him. He gripped her side, scratching her skin, bruising it and she cried out, but then felt so weak. The damn head injury was making her too weak to fight him.
“I can’t keep my eyes open,” she whispered, blinking them open and closed.
“Rest, you’ll need your strength for when you wake again, we begin training.”
She closed her eyes, as more tears fell, and she panicked and felt so sick to her stomach. She had to be smart. No one was going to find her. Meredith should have been dead, but he held her for months. She couldn’t handle being raped and beaten. Not again. Not after what Ben had done to her. She wasn’t strong, she was fearful and had no self-confidence. She was going to die. She thought to herself and then her men popped into her head. Frankie and that determined look as he trained her. Woodrow, who added his own techniques, then Spade, intense, throat strike technique he thrilled into her head before he stripped her pants off of her, made her grab onto the punching bag and made love to her. She cried some more, then thought of Nathan, and all he went through with Talia, and now this, too? They were all different after finding Meredith, yet they didn’t know Austin was the killer. Neither did she. She thought about Bronco. Oh God, Bronco was fierce and so commanding when he sparred with her on the mats. He taught her a few moves, sneaky and effective. She tried thinking of them and heard Cole’s voice. His commanding orders as she learned, as well as when he thrust into her when they made love. It wasn’t fair. She went through so much with Ben, with her cousins and the danger, then their friends, too. This was bullshit. She had to fight and not give up. She wasn’t going to be a victim. No, no not ever again. Killer or not, she would fight this time. Fuck it, die fighting him, because she wasn’t going to be alive when he took from her body or tried to play his sick games. Rest. She needed to rest and to plan her own attack. She would make her men proud, everyone who knew her, and knew her fragility would be shocked. She wasn’t going out this way. No. no, no, no, I won’t let Austin win.
* * * *
Spartan’s cell phone rang and he answered it. “Where?” he asked and looked at the others. Two days. Two fucking days and searching in woods in that three-hour radius and nothing yet.
“Fuck, that’s north of here. There aren’t any cabins anywhere in that area that we were made aware of,” he said, then covered the mouthpiece.
“Damon said they found the fucking car. It was parked inside of a shit shack makeshift garage on the end of the property of some farmer. He called it into police because he was out there fixing fences and noticed the tire tracks.” He continued to speak to Damon and nodded.
He looked at his watch. “We can be there within the hour and with gear. Okay, we’ll meet you there with a team. We’ll pull them together now,” Spartan said, then looked at Nathan and the team. Spade swallowed hard.
“The car was located an hour from here. It will take us time to gather a group, a team to search that area, but the old man he spoke to said there are several cabins throughout ten miles of land, but only two have been sporadically used he thought. Mentioned seeing fresh tracks but not any vehicles or people,” Spartan said to them.
“It’s more than we have looking for a needle in a haystack here. By the time we got to that direction it would be days from now,” Nathan said.
“So we pack it up, get a team, your choice of men, and move in searching that ten miles?”
“Yes, let’s get people to try and pinpoint the locations of those three cabins and get moving,” Nathan said, and they headed out.
Two hours later, frustrated and in radio contact with six other teams of men from SoJ, and family and friends of Cesar and Damon, and they got another clue from the Texas Rangers.
“They said they caught a signal coming up this ridge, three miles. It has to be him. The fuck thinks he won’t be found,” Tat said to them.
“He doesn’t realize he’s being hunted that’s why. Let’s move, as darkens comes in, it can provide the cover we need to infiltrate that cabin,” Bronco added.
They agreed. Nathan felt anxious and on edge like nothing he ever felt before. His fear was that they would be too late. That Austin would have raped their woman, abused her, or even beaten her to death. Too many hours passed. It ate up his insides as he swallowed hard.
“Be ready. As ready as we can be for the worse to find up there,” he said to his team.
“She’s strong and she will fight,” Spade said.
“She’s built up her confidence. I’ve seen it training her and in the last few days with all of us,” Frankie said.
“I won’t let it end like this. She’s special and we just got this started. It doesn’t end like this. I know it here and here,” Bronco said, hitting his chest with his fist and then his gut with his fist after.
“She’s so small and sweet. He’s six feet two, and a killer. It will be a fucking miracle. We need a miracle,” Cole said.
“We’ll get one. She’s alive. I feel it,” Woodrow stated.
“Let’s go get our woman, and kill this mother fucker,” Nathan said.
“Ooh-Rah,” Tat chimed in, and everyone said it again together.
“Ooh-Rah.”
* * * *
She was shaking profusely, and she didn’t know if it was out of fear, out of the injury to her head, or of her plan of attack against him. She breathed through it, holding onto him, then laying her head on his shoulder. She ignored the kisses to her forehead, the feel of his palm over her bare ass in the thong panties she wore, or how her breast wasn’t completely in her bra, indicating that he may have touched her as she slept. She ignored it all, sensed he hadn’t touched her private parts because nothing felt touched, or injured. She swallowed hard.
“Why did you pick me?” she asked him, as he set her feet down and she gripped the bathroom vanity. He brushed her hair from her head, it was knotty, sticky with blood she felt still coming from her head. She didn’t dare look into the mirror to see her swollen lip and cheek. It hurt badly.
“Because you’re perfect. You’re sweet, beautiful, and trainable.” He pressed his lips to hers.
She moaned and pretended to feel worse than she really was right now. The adrenaline was pumping. She was gathering her strength.
“I’m small, and shy. Not strong enough for a man your size,” she said shyly.
He reached around her waist and held her in front of him. He towered over her in his boots, and he ran a palm along her ass and one to her breast. “You were with six large men. I saw them touching you, accompanying you home.”
“No, friends. Just friends. I don’t date, Austin,” she said to him, and then lay her head against his chest. He stroked her back. She gathered her strength.
“That makes me happy to hear. I’ll take my time. You’ll see, you’ll enjoy the games.”
She shivered
“May I use the bathroom please?” she asked.
He smiled, and then cupped her cheeks hard, making her gasp. “You know, don’t you? You feel it, right?” he asked.
She got the chills from his words, his tone, and those deadly eyes. “Feel what?”
“My power over you, pet.”
She stared at him and he lowered and lowered and when he went to press his lips to hers, she rammed upward with all her might, palm flat and hard, thumb pointed and struck him in the throat. He released her, grunted and covered his throat and she punched him in the crotch hard. When he came down, she kneed upward, breaking his nose as blood splattered. He slammed his arms at her wildly and she chopped into his throat again with her arm and ran past him. His fingers, scraped her shoulder, and she felt the burn and turned and struck him again. He roared in anger as he came at her and she tried to avoid his attack, using her size to duck and scramble, and then caught sight of the huge knife on the table. Just like Frankie trained her. Disable to get time to run, to fight or to grab a weapon, and she did and as he came at her, she screamed and stabbed him in the stomach. He reached for the knife, and she was worried that he would still fight that like some low rate horror movie, he would pull the knife out and stab her with it and win, so she kicked at the knife, shoving it deeper and then knocked him to the ground, looked for anything else to use on him as she screamed and roared, pulled up and grabbed at her ankle. She slammed onto the ground, and he climbed up her legs, she kicked and screamed bloody murder, hitting him in the face, the head, when the doors burst open and her men appeared with a bunch of other men.
He yanked the blade from his gut as he knelt up roaring, and she scrambled backward, someone grabbing her just as the sound of gunfire erupted, filling Austin with bullets and rendering him dead.
She was crying, shaking profusely as strong arms hugged her and pulled her into Nathan’s lap. He caressed her cheeks and her face, along with Frankie as he spoke to her.
“You’re safe, baby. You did it. You fought him and stayed alive. You did it,” Frankie said to her, as Spade put away his gun and lowered to his knees along with Cole, Woodrow, and Bronco, who each caressed her and comforted her.
“You did it, baby. You’re so fucking strong. We heard your screams from so far away and we ran and ran, and, holy fuck, you’re alive,” Spade said to her.
She sobbed in their arms until jackets were placed over her, and Spade looked at her head injury and determined she needed to go right to the hospital.
Epilogue
Avana stood over the gravesite, her men were feet behind her, giving her the space she needed to say good-bye to her friend Gail. She had been a sweet young woman, searching for Mr. Right, and one poor decision put her in the grasp of a madman, a killer who preyed on the weak. If Avana had learned anything after Ben, it was that she no longer wanted to feel weak, insecure, and lack in self-confidence. Coming to Repose, training with Frankie, had empowered her to gain the capabilities of giving herself a fighting chance when attacked by a monster.
She swallowed hard. It wasn’t fair or acceptable, the way evil walked this earth ready to prey on the weak and unknowing. Gail was one of over a dozen victims killed by Austin Marquis. Meredith and Avana were now the only survivors of a serial killer, and that wasn’t exactly a title, or reputation she wanted to be known for.
She placed the rose onto the gravesite, having had missed the actual ceremony and burial because she was recovering in the hospital from a major concussion, and anemia after blood loss. She felt uneasy about all of it. About surviving when she had almost given up without a fight, focusing on that lack of self-confidence she always had. Then her men came to mind, and gave her that kick in the ass she needed to fight and to remind her that she was no longer a victim, and had never wanted to be one again. She turned around and walked toward her men, and stopped in front of them. She looked at all six of them. Her heart heavy, yet her pride, her trust, and love in them stronger than anything she ever felt before.
“Thank you,” she said to them.
Nathan squinted. “No need to thank us. We know how upset you were missing the actual funeral,” he said to her.
“I don’t mean that.” She looked at each of them. At Frankie and that sweet tender smile. At Cole, always looking so fierce, eyes squinted, mean expression of seriousness, then at Spade, the tattoos that stuck out on his arms and that angry, worried expression as he looked at the bruises on her face. Then to Bronco as he took her hand and brought her knuckles to his lips, kissing them, as his muscles pushed against the tight material of his blue shirt. She smiled then looked at Woodrow, and his shoulder-length hair, his hands in his pockets, looking uncomfortable to be here at a cemetery—a place they expressed hating after losing so many fellow friends and soldiers. “When I was in that cabin.”
“Don’t,” Spade said.
She smiled softly and reached out and placed her palm against his chest and caressed him. “When I was in that cabin, there was a bit of time I gave up, that I felt unconfident to get out of that situation. That the fear, the old me, the woman who lacked in self-confidence after Ben and the abuse, reappeared and made me question my capabilities.”
“Oh, baby,” Bronco whispered.
She shook her head.
“I didn’t let those thoughts win, and I didn’t allow those old fears, those feelings of inferiority and weakness overcome my wants, my desires and dreams. No, something clicked. Came to mind, and reminded me of what I’m capable of and I planned. I gathered my strength that not only came from within me, but came from here,” she said, and covered her heart with Spade’s hand.
“I thought of each of you. I heard your voices, remembered your instructions, your training, and your encouragement and belief in me and I fought, and was ready to die fighting because of each of you. I love you so much, and no matter what happens in life, know that I love you, and you were with me, encouraging me to fight, to not give up and to be strong. Know that.” She looked at each of them. She knew they talked about not being there, not protecting her, but promised to always be there for her for now on and forever. Spade hugged her tight and she kissed his neck, and then each of her men took time to kiss her and she smiled.
“Let’s get out of here.” She said.
“Thank God,” Woodrow said, and led the way down the path and out of the cemetery.
When they got to the truck, Frankie picked her up and placed her into the back seat. “Where to next, gorgeous?” he asked.
“Hmm,” she whispered, and then cupped his cheek and leaned closer to kiss him softly. When she pulled back, she smiled. “To bed, where else?”
“Oh yeah, my thoughts exactly,” Bronco said, and they got inside and Cole pulled her onto his lap and kissed her deeply, and her mind no longer focused on such sad, negative thoughts, but on the future she had with her six sexy, bad ass SoJ soldiers, and their own happy ever after.
THE END
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Sons of Justice 12_Confident in Love Page 15