by Sophia Gray
I lifted my arm, indicating to those behind me what I was preparing to do, then I slowed my motorcycle. The bike hummed and rumbled until it came to a stop beside Chevy along the side of the road. Behind me, the Hellriders did the same. Their impatient motors idled and grumbled, as eager to go into battle as the men sitting upon them.
“What the fuck?” I demanded, not interested in wasting time on idle chit chat. As the words left my mouth, I noticed his expression. Grim was the only thing to say about it. Not a good sign.
Running his hands through his windblown hair, Chevy looked like the last thing he wanted to do was tell me what was going on. I wasn’t necessarily known for shooting the messenger, but I did have a temper, and if he told me something I didn’t like, there was a good chance that I was going to blow my top. It was unlikely I’d just throw a damn punch in his face—unless it was his fault, whatever his bad news was—but there was a pretty good chance I’d lose it, at the least.
“Fucking spit it out!” I practically shouted at him. There wasn’t time for dallying. I was on a damn mission, and urgency was important to me now. The longer Jamie was in hiding and the longer it took me to retaliate against the Chaos Disciples, the riskier it became.
Chevy flinched but nodded. He cleared his throat. “Alex just called me. Said he couldn’t reach you.”
I froze. Alex was watching Kato and Jamie. He was just a kid, but he was eager to please me and as loyal as they came. Plus, I felt bad sending a barely-legal man into battle with nothing but a chip on his shoulder and the intense need to please.
Now I was wondering if I had fucked this all up. “Alex,” I repeated. It wasn’t a question.
Chevy nodded. He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Yeah. He…uh, he said…Jesus, he was fucking dying, Pax.”
My eyes widened. Dying? “How? What the fuck happened?”
Running a nervous hand through his hair again, Chevy tried to find the words to explain. Or maybe he was looking for the words that were the least likely to send me off into a spiraling rage, a rage I could already feel building. If Alex was dying…
“I don’t know,” he began, then winced and tried again. “I mean, he was dying because he was shot. Took a damn bullet to the gut, can you believe that shit? Just a fucking kid and already writhing on the floor, bleeding out—”
“How in the fuck did Alex get shot?” I demanded, trying to bring Chevy back on track, especially since there were two other people in that house that I was infinitely more concerned about. Callous, maybe but honest.
Honest like the itch to rev up my bike again and ride out—not to the Chaos Disciples but to that house tucked into the woods up there. To rescue Jamie.
Chevy shook his head. “I’m a little fuzzy on the details, but the gist is that they found him. The Chaos Disciples. They came in shooting up the place, and Alex got hit.”
“What about Jamie? Kato?” I could feel my anger building, but alongside it was something else, too. A much scarier feeling: panic, fear. Was Jamie alright? Was she alive? Had the Chaos Disciples managed to kill the very people I was trying so hard to protect?
When Chevy didn’t have an immediate answer—as in half a billionth of a second—I reached across my handlebars to grab him by the collar of his shirt. I jerked him forward, and he stumbled a little until he was half an inch from my face. He must have seen something terrifying in my eyes as I said, “Speak!” because he nodded quickly, eyes wide.
“They’re alive!” he got out as quickly as humanly possible, the words tumbling to get out of his mouth fast enough. “Both of them! The Chaos Disciples came, and Alex got shot, but they wanted the other two alive. Alex said he watched them get dragged out. They left him for dead, which he probably is by now.”
I might mourn later for Alex, but right now, I was too preoccupied with the people who were still alive. Namely, the tall, womanly nurse with her spitfire personality and her smooth skin.
I released Chevy abruptly; he stumbled back a little, rubbing at his neck. I didn’t think I’d choked him, but I also wasn’t really paying attention. My mind was on other things. “Have you heard from them?”
“Kato?”
Making a frustrated sound that was also laced with anger and annoyance, I said, “No, you dumb shit. The Chaos Disciples. Have you heard from them? Have they called in a ransom, left some sort of kindergarten stupid ass threat? What, have they said? Anything?”
Chevy was already shaking his head quickly. “No. At least, not that I’ve heard of. I know all of this only because Alex called me. I was the only one that picked up.”
Anger fired through me, making my whole body practically shake with it. The urge to break Chevy’s face in was so intense, I actually had to take a second and just breathe. “The Chaos Disciples haven’t been in contact with us?” I clarified one last time.
Chevy shook his head. “No, boss. Not that I’ve heard of. I’m not sure them taking Kato was a ransom kind of thing.”
No, it was a taking what is mine kind of thing, I thought darkly.
My eyes narrowed at him. “If the Chaos Disciples didn’t call you and Alex told you they were taken alive, then why the fuck did you waste time flagging me down?” I demanded, my voice rising to an angry crescendo that was enough to make me sound like the fucking devil himself. “We’re already fucking heading to the Goddamned Disciples! We could be there by now!”
The urge to punch him had returned. Because I really was angry. Fucking pissed. Now that I knew what was going on, I wished I could go back and undo it. At the very least, the last ten fucking minutes we’d wasted slowing down, pulling over, and talking about it.
That was ten minutes longer that the Chaos Disciples had Jamie. And Kato, a small voice in my head reminded me. I acknowledged it, but I also acknowledged that he wasn’t my main priority. Yes, I wanted Kato to survive, and I’d try my damnedest to save him, but there was no question that if there was a choice and I could only save one, the only choice was Jamie.
I rationalized that it was about need. Jamie needed me in a way that Kato did not. He’d chosen this life, signed up for the dangers that went with it. But Jamie? That damn woman had stumbled into it like a blind duckling looking for her fucking momma. Instead, she found me, a man hell-bent on seducing her—and succeeding in the best kind of way.
But whatever I wanted from her, I couldn’t shake the feeling of responsibility I had. If she’d never even met me, she never would have gotten into this kind of trouble in the first place.
Hell, I’d even been at the point of getting her out of this life when things went south. The Disciples attacked her, and that was that. Trouble. It didn’t help that I slid inside her, between those long legs of hers, and fucked her until we were both spent.
How the fuck am I going to let her go now?
I revved my bike, preparing to blaze a hot trail of rubber down the road towards the Chaos Disciples’ headquarters. Now more than ever, I needed to get there as fast as I fucking could. How had this managed to fucking happen? I would have to worry about it later, I told myself. Now I just had to get there.
Before I roared out of there, Chevy called to me. “What about Alex?”
I could hear the bikes behind me at various stages of revved and ready. Some were still impatient, maybe more so than before thanks to what happened to not just one, but two of our own. Some, however, seemed to have settled a little.
Glancing behind me, I noted the eyes of my boys on me. They wanted to know what I would do for our own when we died. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a good answer or one anyone was bound to like.
“Alex is already dead,” I said grimly. “We focus, now, on those still alive.”
For a second, Chevy looked pissed, then he deflated like a kid’s birthday balloon. He nodded once. I kicked the bike into gear and then drove off once more. I didn’t glance back to see if Chevy was saddling up to join us or not. At this point, I wasn’t sure if I gave a damn one way or the other. I wanted the
extra body, sure, but if his heart wasn’t in it, then I’d rather have him staying at home like the good little housewife he was currently portraying.
I didn’t have to check for the others. I could hear the roar of their motorcycles at my back, and the noise urged me forward. Ride! Ride harder!
The day had started off with urgency, but that urgency had shifted to something closer to desperation. The Chaos Disciples had not only Kato but Jamie, too. God only knew the kinds of things those assholes could be doing to her, to the both of them. And the longer I left them in the cruel hands of the Chaos Disciples, the worse it would be.
I didn’t have the time to dawdle or to linger or even to mourn. I had to get there and save one of my men and the woman that most definitely belonged to me now.
Get there in time, I thought, as close to praying as I ever got. Just get there in fucking time. Ride like the damn wind and hope it’s not too late.
Chapter Seventeen
Jamie
They threw both me and Kato in the back of the car, which looked a hell of a lot like the one that ran me off the road, but maybe I was just in shock and putting things together because surely there couldn’t be multiple assholes out there out to get me.
Next to me, Kato was just barely conscious. His breathing was shallow, and there were beads of sweat dotting his brow. He looked on the verge of passing out, which freaked me out more than I’d like to admit. In all honesty, he being conscious was about the only thing keeping me from losing my shit.
I didn’t want to be alone with these men.
Two sat in the front of the car, but one had muscled his way into the backseat with me and Kato, which meant it was really cramped with a man on each side and me trying to angle away from them both. Which was impossible. There wasn’t enough room. So I caved and ended up leaning farther into Kato because I would not touch this other man, especially since he had a damn gun.
He was the one who had dragged me to my feet and away from Alex.
Poor Alex, I thought, my heart clenching in remorse. I didn’t have to be a nurse to know that he was either already dead or well on his way to it. Even if he’d been rushed to the ER right away, there was no guarantee that he would have made it. But he would have had a chance. They could give him plasma, take out the bullet, and maybe fix the internal damage he’d suffered. And at the very least, they could have given him pain medicine. He wouldn’t have to sit there on the kitchen floor, slumped over and clutching his stomach, as pain ripped through him.
It just wasn’t right.
“You’re cute,” commented the man with the gun, and suddenly, I felt like vomiting.
Revulsion rolled through me, hot and slimy. I tried to angle further away from him but Kato was all but unconscious now and as a big man, he took up a lot of the seat. I felt panic flare as I silently wished for Kato to stay with me. Impossible, I know, but I was desperate.
“You’re awful,” I managed to get out, my voice a croaking noise that was unfamiliar to my own ears. That was probably the terror shining through because there was definitely no denying that I was utterly terrified.
His mouth tugged down into a frown. I saw the hand on the gun tighten around the grip. It was sitting in his lap now, but earlier, he’d had it pressed against my head.
“You say that now,” he said in a nasty little voice. “But I think maybe later you’ll be singing a different tune.” He even waggled his eyebrows, like that was supposed to be sexy. Or intimidating. Either way, I was further disgusted, and the shiver that ran down my spine was most definitely not one of desire.
Not that this idiot could tell the difference.
His eyes dropped down my body, making a leisurely trail back up. Then he winked at me. “That’s it, baby. I can tell your body already wants it.”
Horror rolled through me. I hoped that he wouldn’t actually do what he was alluding to, but after all these guys had done—another wash of regret filled me as I thought of Alex in the kitchen—what would stop them?
“Stop fucking with the girl,” came a voice from up front. He was the guy in the passenger seat, and he swiveled around to face me. He had a squished sort of face, squarish with mangy hair half-filled in along his jaw and atop his head. Even his teeth were stained yellow, making him look so much like the kind of bad guy you expected from the movies that I almost laughed, except that his eyes were sharp, almost pretty, and they were cold as ice.
The man beside me snorted. He looked almost sniveling in comparison to the one in the passenger seat, but I reminded myself that he had a gun in his lap and all the power. “I’ll do whatever I want. Huxton said he wanted her alive. Wasn’t specific beyond that.”
My spine straightened, and I inched further from the man sitting next to me. Unfortunately, Kato’s body prevented me from gaining any actual distance, but it didn’t stop me from trying.
The front passenger glanced in my direction, frowning a little. Hope flared inside me. Maybe he had some sort of moral compass? Clearly not enough of one to be worried about things like kidnapping and killing someone who was just barely grown enough to be considered a man. But maybe he at least didn’t agree with…with…
I couldn’t even let myself think it. I just hoped that this man would stop anything worse from happening.
Then my hopes proceeded to be dashed.
“You want to fuck with her? Whatever. But we wait until we get her to HQ. I’m not getting my ass chewed because you’re a horny bastard.” He grunted, then added, “And I don’t want to see that shit.”
He turned around then as my heart dropped into my stomach. This was not good. I trembled with fear, though I clenched my hands into tight fists in an effort to conceal it. I didn’t want these assholes to know how scared I was, how terrified I was that this monster was going to…to touch me.
The only one I wanted touching me was Pax.
He’ll come save us, I told myself firmly because otherwise, I was sure I was absolutely positively going to panic. He’ll come for us because Kato’s one of his men. And he cares about me. I know he does.
It almost sounded like a delusion that I was trying to convince myself of, but despite the strange way it had come about, I honestly believed that Pax cared for me. I wasn’t naïve enough to think it was love or anything as ridiculous as that, but I thought it was at least affection. Maybe even more than that.
“Hear that honey?” the man beside me asked, leaning forward as I leaned back until there was nowhere left to go. I was practically in Kato’s lap at this point. “All I got to do is wait a little bit. Then your sweet, sweet ass is mine. And I’m going to enjoy taking it for a test drive.”
I shuddered with disgust, bile rising in my throat. I had half a mind to just puke on him, but my fear kept that plan at bay. There was no telling what he might do. Pull the gun on me? Kill me? Probably not, since it seemed like they wanted me alive, but I couldn’t be sure.
I was sure of nothing right now.
I just hoped and prayed that Pax found us before Kato’s wounds proved to be too much and this monster decided it was time to have his way with me.
# # #
We drove through downtown before taking one of the backroads—it might have just been an alley, actually, since it was barely big enough for the one car and we came out on the other side between two buildings. We ended up on another street that looked to be a deserted, seedy part of town.
Charming wasn’t exactly a word I’d use to describe it.
More like dilapidated. Run down. Condemned. I thought that people probably still lived here, though I would hazard a guess that a lot of them were squatters or just passing through. Either way, there was little doubt in my mind that the kind of people who lived here weren’t going to think twice about the car as it drove through the neighborhood with two unwilling passengers, one unconscious, in the backseat. We probably didn’t register as a blip on their radar.
We took a couple more turns before finally reaching the end of the stre
et. It just ended, as opposed to making a clean turn or evolving into a cul-du-sac or whatever. Instead, it was like whoever was building the road just ran out of money and shrugged their shoulders, dropping everything and leaving right then. It was an odd sense and made everything around it feel just as incomplete.
When the car came to a stop at the abrupt ending of the road, I was surprised. “Where are we?” I muttered.
The guys in the front got out, ignoring my question, and it was the man with the gun beside me who bothered to answer. “Home sweet home, honey. Don’t tell me you don’t like it?” When I scowled at him, he let out a snide chuckle. Then he grabbed me harshly by the upper arm and jerked me across the seat. My body struggled of its own accord for just a second, before he shoved the gun in my face again.
“Bitch, don’t make me shoot your stupid ass. Boss won’t like it.”