But it wasn't anger that it stemmed from; it was need. I needed someone to know, to understand, to see why I am the way I am.
He claimed he could take it. Well, I needed to see for myself if that was true.
Wolf watched me for a long moment, reading me, then slowly moved off the bed and walked to the dining table. He sat down and moved the cursor down. I knew the exact moment that it happened, the second his eyes relayed the message to his brain and he knew what he was looking at. He physically jerked backward in his chair, his entire body going ramrod straight.
I expected him to look up at me, to see disgust and horror and pity in his eyes. But he didn't. One of his hands balled into a fist on the table, the other moved the page down more.
He wasn't breaking.
He wasn't falling apart.
He was handling it.
God.
God.
On a loud sob, I flung myself back on the bed, burrowing under the blankets, curling up on my side, and letting the pain leech out of me.
The bed depressed a few minutes later and a cool draft hit me as the blanket was pulled up. The next second, I was wrapped up tight against Wolf's massive chest, his arms a familiar anchor around me.
"Took it," he murmured during a short respite in my embarrassingly loud sobs. "Doesn't change anything," he went on, his hand moving up to stroke my hair.
If I was paying attention, I would have felt the crack in my walls; I would have felt him start to slip in. But I wasn't focusing on that. I was focusing on the strange mix of grief and gratitude swirling through my system.
We stayed that way for a long time as my body wore through some of the long-buried pain, until I was too tired to do anything but sleep. And with Wolf there, wrapping me up tight, it was the first night in almost nine years that I didn't wake up screaming.
But I did wake up alone.
Wolf was gone.
But this time he left a note.
It was a message that changed everything.
J-
He can't get away with it.
- W
ELEVEN
Wolf
The second I realized what I was looking at, I wanted to slam the laptop shut, throw it across the room, and hunt down the mother fucker.
But she was watching. She was watching and searching for any tiny sign that it was sickening me, that it was too much for me to handle. And it was sickening. It was too much for anyone to handle. Up until that moment, I could only guess. I could only assume what happened to her. Not that it was a huge mystery. If it involved Lex Keith and someone female, well, let's just say that everyone knew what went down there.
It was one thing to know it.
It was a complete other to fucking see it. On the internet.
How many times had she tortured herself with the images?
How many times did she relive it?
I knew the answer to that, though. She relived it every single night of her fucking life. She relived it whenever she felt a man's hands on her. It was in every training session where she learned to make herself too strong, too fast to be a victim again. It was in the way she kept everyone from getting close enough to learn the bloody details and therefore offer her pity.
I climbed into bed and held her until she cried herself dry then fell into what seemed to be a dreamless sleep. I waited for just before dawn, left her a note, and headed out the door.
That bastard made her scream.
He made her uncomfortable in her own skin.
So now he needed to scream.
And have the luxury of his skin taken away from him.
I had to go hunting.
TWELVE
Janie
I read the note twice before it sunk in, then charged to the door to check outside for his truck. Harley and Chopper flew out the door to go hunt and sunbathe or whatever it was they did. I simply started to freak the eff out.
He couldn't go after Lex. Even with my bugging out and culling his army a bit, I was sure there were many left. It would never be a fair fight. Wolf might have been a Goliath, but he wasn't bulletproof. If he went in there all hot and irrational, he was going to die.
I couldn't let that happen.
I went back into the cabin and found Wolf had left his cell, presumably for me, on the counter in the kitchen. I snatched it up and hit the only number I could think of.
"Malcolm," he answered, sounding distracted.
"I need to talk to Cash right now," I said into the phone, my tone a little hysterical as I swatted at my cheeks. I knew, I just knew that my eyes would never stop leaking once the dam gave way.
"Jstorm?" he asked, immediately alert.
"Right now," I said again and I could hear him on the move.
"Everything okay?" he asked and I closed my eyes tight, shaking my head even though he couldn't see me. "It's Janie," I heard him say. "She needs to talk to Cash."
"Hey kid, what's up?" Cash's easy voice reached my ear, sounding back to his old self.
"You need to get your brother and Repo and like... everyone else at the compound and you need to go and find Wolf. Like... right now, Cash."
"Calm down," Cash said and I took a deep breath.
"What's going on?" Lo's voice asked in the background and the knife stabbed into my chest.
"Wolf is hunting Lex Keith."
There was a pause. "When?"
"I don't know. He was gone when I woke up. He left a note. That's all I got."
"Fuck. Shit. God damn it," he said, his voice low and I got the confirmation I was looking for: Wolf on the hunt was about as bad as things could get. "Be there as soon as possible," he said, sounding almost soothing suddenly. "I'm bringing Lo to sit with you," he informed me then hung up before I could object.
Having done all that I could do, I wrapped my arm so it wasn't so incriminating and climbed back into bed and waited.
"Janie?" Lo's voice reached me a while later. "You in here, babe?"
I couldn't do it. I couldn't face her. I was a mess. I burrowed deeper into the blankets.
"Honey." Her hand landed down on my shoulder. I flew up in the bed, crashing into the headboard. "It's me. Hey, it's me," she did in the 'soothing a scared animal' voice. I tilted my head up to the ceiling, taking deep breaths, willing the tears to stop flowing, trying to lock it all down. "You alright, honey?"
Oh what a loaded, loaded question.
I didn't want to lie to her, but what choice did I really have?
I tilted my head down, getting my first good look at her since I left almost nine days before. "Your face," I gasped, a spiraling feeling in my stomach. I knew she had been beat up, but it was another thing to see it. I'd seen Lo all kinds of battle-weary over the years, in various degrees of beat up. She always wore it well, like a badge of honor, never once even suggesting that it somehow made her less of a warrior for getting her ass handed to her here and there. But it wasn't the same. When it wasn't a fair fight, when it was one of her demons popping up out of nowhere and trying to drag her back down into hell.
"Back is worse," she shrugged, as was her nature. "Your arm," she said, gesturing toward the gauze. "Burn right?" she asked and I felt my head snap up. She knew. She knew. "Know you like a little sister. Did you really think I'd miss the Jstorm signature? No one does explosions like you, babe."
Of course she knew. What an idiot I was to think I would get away with it. I raked a hand through the bird's nest I called hair. "You knew. How long?"
"Since about the minute after I picked myself up off the ground."
I exhaled loudly. "You weren't supposed to be there. You were supposed to be at Reign's. I told Summer..."
"No effing way," she laughed. "Oh, that makes so much more sense now."
"What does?"
"That ridiculous dinner party. None of us understood why the hell we were there except that Summer threw a holy fit at any of us who said we weren't going
to be able to make it."
"I wanted to keep you all safe," I admitted.
"While you created chaos."
"I didn't want any of the friendleys thinking it was any of the other friendleys doing the dirt," I said, referring to Hailstorm, The Henchmen, Richard Lyon, and the Mallick family- all the organizations that, while they did less than legal things, had a moral compass. I didn't want any of them to start pointing fingers and causing a war where there had always been peace, even camaraderie.
Lo was quiet for a long minute, looking like she was struggling for the right thing to say. "That night, babe, that night is burned in my memory," she said and I know she didn't mean the night of the bombing. She meant the night that she found me when I was sixteen. "When I close my eyes, some nights, I still see it clear as I did then. You were too young to be that broken. Sixteen with scars a grown woman would never be able to walk around wearing. And not just all these ones," she said, running her hand down the tattoos on my arm, tattoos I got to cover up what was underneath. "I mean the ones you wear on the inside. I didn't know you. You couldn't even speak to me your face was so swollen, but I knew you. I understood. Our souls spoke in the same language- the language only women can fully understand, babe. And the second I picked you up off that street, I knew I would give anything to see you able to carry your own weight again one day, to see you smile or laugh, to see you start to heal."
"I tried, Lo," I said, my voice a desperate whisper. I did. I tried so hard to brush it off, to bury it deep and move on, to be a better, stronger woman. I tried every day of my life.
Her hand grabbed mine and held tight. "No. You didn't try. You succeeded. It took a long time, years, but you healed from the outside in. But because I spoke your language, babe, I knew that there were some scars, the ones marked deep down on your soul, that might never heal. I understood that. I never expected you to live one day like all of that never happened to you. It would be hypocritical of me to expect that of you when I didn't expect it of myself."
"Lo..." I said, shaking my head. She was going to tell me about her past. She thought that by telling me, by letting me in, that maybe I would feel comfortable enough to do the same. But I didn't need that. I didn't need the gory details.
"I was wrong to hide it. I was wrong to think that what happened to me would define the way others would see me. It wasn't my fault that I married someone who wasn't who I thought he was. It wasn't my fault he beat me, that he pushed himself on me. It wasn't even my fault that I stayed. I was young. Older than you were, babe, but way too young to deal with that. I didn't see a way out. But when I finally did, I took it."
"Lo," I broke in, needing to tell her that I had already found out about him. "I know about Damian Crane."
Her body jerked and I could see betrayal crossing her face. "Cash told..."
"I snooped, Lo. I know I shouldn't have, but I could never sleep. There were only so many books I could read, so many articles I could browse. I looked into all of you at the beginning. I knew you were married. I knew you left him. I didn't know he beat you." My lip trembled slightly before I forced it to relax. "But you're right- it didn't change the way I thought about you. It doesn't define you. You're you. You're the baddest bitch I've ever met and you taught me so much about how to be strong, how to overcome, even though I didn't know there was something like that for you to overcome, I think I felt it. I felt it in my gut."
"Wolf is hunting Lex, isn't he?" she asked, sounding like she already knew the answer.
But I gave it to her anyway. "Yes."
"I know it's not right of me, but I really hope he finds him before Reign, Cash, and Repo catch up."
I exhaled a sharp breath, thankful she said it so I didn't feel so wrong to think it. "Me too."
"Then let's just sit here and be not-right together, yeah?"
"Yeah," I agreed, snuggling back down into the comfort of the big, warm bed.
A while later, getting in beside me, but on her side to avoid chafing her sore back, she broke the silence. "One night, Cash came in while I was sleeping and picked up one of my books..."
"Oh no," I groaned, smiling at the awful thought. Lo, badass leader lady that she was, was also a hopeless romantic. This was proved by the fact that she devoured endless smutty romance novels. It was something I used to tease her about all the time.
"Then he started reading one of the sex scenes. Out loud."
At that, I felt a laugh, inappropriate given the situation, but uncontrollable, burst from my lips. I threw my head back and let it wash over me, an image of the sexy blond biker sitting there reading a dirty scene to an embarrassed Lo crossed my mind... it was just too good. "Were you mortified?"
"Words can't even describe."
"Did he tease you about it?"
Her smile went soft. "No. He tried to force me to relax, not be embarrassed. Then, well, stuff happened."
I felt my smile turn a little devilish, "Stuff, huh?" I asked with an eyebrow wiggle. "Is he as good as the word on the street?"
"God, babe... so much better."
I laughed. "It's good his STD check came back clean last month then."
It was her turn to burst out laughing. "We should probably stop monitoring him so closely from now on."
"Hey, if he's got nothing to hide then he shouldn't..."
"I think I love him, Janie," she broke in, the words tripping over one another. When I didn't immediately respond, she gushed on, "I know it's fast. It's... too fast. It doesn't make sense and..."
I shook my head, silencing her. "Lo, when has love ever made any kind of sense?"
"I think he loves me too," she admitted, her voice a little hopeful.
"He fucking better," I said immediately and she smiled. "He doesn't see what a prize he's got with you, he's an idiot. I mean... he is and idiot..."
"Hey," she broke in, trying for offended, but she was smiling too much.
"I'm kidding. He's good people, Lo. You know I'd tell you otherwise if I didn't think he was."
"Janie... I know he's got a wicked reputation of being a vicious son of a bitch," she started, watching my face for a reaction, "but I think Wolf is a good man too."
I felt my face go soft and could see the anticipation on her face. But it was too soon. I didn't have anything to tell her yet, not really. Her and Cash moved fast and furious, both of them with the balls-to-the-wall personalities that they had. It didn't surprise me that once they got over their initial hangups about each other that things progressed quickly. She had a whole night's worth of stories to tell me. I had next to nothing.
So I stayed silent and listened while she talked.
Eventually, she tired from pain, me tired from tears, we both drifted off to sleep, Harley and Chopper standing guard by the door.
We woke up with no word from Cash, though he had promised Lo he would keep her updated. A knot of fear and panic twisted tightly in my stomach. Why weren't they keeping in touch with us? Was there simply nothing to report? Or were things bad and they didn't want to tell us, worry us?
Lo attempted to keep the mood upbeat. She cooked. She caught me up on the goings-on at Hailstorm and in the town in general since I went MIA. In a town as wild and mostly lawless as Navesink Bank, a week out of the loop meant there was a lot that went down that you missed.
She passed out that night, I stayed up and read, trying to pretend I wasn't freaking out inside.
Her cell rang early the next morning, making her fly up on the bed, awake in a split second and fishing her phone out of her back pocket. "Cash?" she asked almost frantically into the cell. There was a pause, her face both fell and twisted in amusement, a combination I didn't know how to interpret. "As if that's possible." Another pause. "What's up, Shooter?"
If she had been looking at me, she would have seen my entire body jolt.
Shooter.
There was only one person around with the name Shooter.
I knew him from rep
utation, being a contract killer, the best damn sniper I had ever seen.
I also knew him from the night of the bombing.
--
It all started on a night when I couldn't sleep. I sneaked out of the barracks and moved across the quiet grounds to get to the command center where I could get some privacy. Then I powered up the laptop and I just screwed around for a few hours. I wasn't looking for anything in particular when I found a forum that had a thread by a woman named Alex who had information on Lex Keith and was looking for someone else with either more information or a way to bring him down.
And, well, I couldn't help myself. I opened the thread and I scrolled down. Not only was Alex a brilliant hacker, she was dedicated. With the sheer amount of information she had on Lex, from browser histories to where he got coffee, to the names of the foster families he had lived with growing up. From the looks of it, she spent years collecting the information. Some of it was useless, just nonsense. But she had other things too. She had information on the rape kits from women who claimed Lex Keith had assaulted them. Worse yet, she had pictures and videos that she must have stolen from Lex's hard drive.
I was a page in, stomach churning, when I came across them.
The pictures of me.
The pictures he took when he had me.
Eight years before, I was sixteen. I was young and invincible, fearless. I paid no attention to the warnings my mother gave me about walking alone at night, about the buddy system, about the parts of town not to cross into. We had the Third Street Gang to worry about, after all.
The ironic thing? I had passed by the Third Street guys a mile or so back, sitting on their stoop, watching their hookers walk up and down the street. I had been catcalled, my young ego taking the harassment as a compliment and I offered them a saucy smile over my shoulder. They didn't chase me. They didn't do anything but nudge each other and offer me an invitation that I didn't even need to decline.
Wolf (The Henchmen MC #3) Page 10