“Surprised you got this big bastard to cooperate,” Dray remarked. Blue smiled, showing a whole lot of teeth and Dis sniffed, clearing his throat.
“He didn’t. He was aiming for Blue and I jumped him from behind. I choked him out the way you showed me,” Disney gave me a look and I let my pride shine right on through.
“Scrapper to the last, ain’t you Puddin’?” I asked looking up at him.
He nodded, “It was just him and one other dude that broke in to the out building with our rooms in it. Duracell shot the other guy; he was going to shoot me in the back while I was choking the shit out of this one.” He was looking the man hanging from the ceiling up and down before eventually tearing his eyes from him and meeting Trig’s.
“I wish I’d been in the main building, maybe if…” Trigger was already shaking his head.
“Don’t even think it. Just do me a solid, and go look after our girl. You did good Dis. You did real good.” Trigger pounded the equally tall, but way lankier younger dude on the back. Dis made for the door, Blue keeping pace. Silent as ever.
“See you back at the house bro!” Duracell called and Blue waved over his shoulder. Those two had the weirdest fucking dynamic, but none of us had quite figured it out yet. Truthfully, it was none of our damn business.
As the gravel outside crunched beneath the departing Jeep’s tires, I turned my attention back to our guest. His hands were cuffed in front of him, the hook from an engine hoist mounted to the center beam that was the spine of the outbuilding’s ceiling, held the links between the manacles fast. His arms were stretched high above his head and he’d been hoisted so his feet hung a good four to six inches off the ground.
He had a blue bandana between his teeth and his hair hung in a long ass fucking braid down his back, wisps escaping and flying around his face. Someone had relieved him of his jacket and cut, which lay in a heap on the floor beside him. The moniker of the suicide king made bile rise hot and furious along with my rage, scalding the back of my throat. I racked my neck from side to side and found the Nord’s gaze fixed on me; I met it with a hard stare of my own.
Dragon pulled a metal chair from against a wall and walked out to where he was in front of, but a decent enough distance away from the man. He set the chair down and sighed.
“Got some questions for you boy,” he said as he pulled out his cigarettes and shook one from the pack. He pressed it between his lips. When he spoke again it sent the cancer stick bobbing as he fished for his lighter.
“’n how you answer is gonna have a direct bearing on how you’re treated from here on out,” he punctuated his proclamation by lighting his cig.
“You get me?” He snapped his lighter closed, and rolled his dark eyes up to meet the bastard’s. The bastard hanging from our ceiling like a side of beef.
The Nord snorted and turned his head. Dray went up and pulled the gag out of his mouth. The Nord spit and kicked out at Dray, barely glancing his shoulder as the younger, more agile man ditched off to the side. I growled but The Nord was speaking.
“Man, fuck you!”
Dragon cocked his head to the side and dropped into the seat, slouching, leaning way back. He hooked a thumb into one of his front belt loops, and cigarette grasped between index and middle fingers, took a thoughtful drag.
His dark eyes raking the other man over in contemplation, he exhaled, the smoke curling up towards the ceiling before he said dryly, “Now you see, so far we’ve treated you with as much hospitality as we could muster. I mean sure, you been hanging there a while, but you ain’t been beat on and you sure ain’t dead. So you might be a bit uncomfortable, but I’m just trying to have a friendly chat here is all. Think we can do that?” The Nord’s expression was stark, as blank as a slate that’d yet to be written on.
“So, what made you boys decide to pay us a house call?” Dragon asked.
The Nord turned his head to the side and stared off into space, pointedly refusing to answer. Dragon’s mouth turned down at the corner and an eyebrow went up, he didn’t look at all surprised or amused in the same expression. Trig’s hands fell on my shoulders, fingers wrapping around my collar and I let him take my coat. I rolled my shoulders and stripped my shirt over my head, and then I cracked my knuckles on both hands, squeezing them into fists, getting a feel, making myself ready.
“Like I said, how this is gonna go is going to be completely up to you. We ain’t gotta do this.” Dragon contemplated the stubbornly silent man and finally after several moments of silence sighed out.
“Go to it Rev, don’t hurt him too bad or too quick,” Dragon ordered. I nodded, Doc’s voice filtered out from the corner just at the edge of The Nord’s vision.
“Oh there ain’t nothin’ Rev can do that I can’t fix. I can put him back together enough to take plenty of what we dish out and have him comin’ ‘round for a round two.” The Nord’s eyes widened a bit as Doc ejected some liquid from the tip of a hypodermic needle.
I went to the bigger man and Dray caught him around the legs, holding him fast like a heavy bag for me. It wasn’t fair sport, but then again, I had no problem letting the deepest darkest part of me take the reins here. There was no guilt for what I was about to do. None at all. The image of my girl’s tearstained face, of Everett’s low and strained voice telling me that one of these fucks had a gun pointed to my Red’s head, in her face and that she fucking told the SOB she forgave him! Knowing he was going to pull the trigger, knowing he was going to snuff her out and take her from me for-fucking-ever…
No, there wasn’t one iota of guilt as I let my first punch fly. If anything, there was a surge of utter satisfaction. The Nord gave an oomph of surprise as my kidney shot landed and he writhed, flopping like a landed fish for several moments. I knew how much that shit hurt but there was no sympathy to be had. Not from me, not from my brothers. He was going to die tonight; we just didn’t need him to know that. We needed him to believe he had a chance at survival. We needed to give him a glimmer of hope to hold on to, that if he told us what we wanted to know, what we needed to know, that the pain would stop. That he would be tended to, that we might even let him go.
I worked him over methodically, but he was one tough son of a bitch. Doc finally stepped up, a scalpel in his hand and cocked his head to the side considering, after about an hour of us getting nowhere.
“Think we should be thinking more like Reave.”
We all went very still and I swallowed hard. Doc was one of the milder mannered brothers. For him to go there, to even be standing here, was a testament to how far and how deeply losing his woman affected him. The Nord, tried feebly to raise his head, he was bleeding pretty freely from his nose and a cut on his cheek, another above his eye.
“Doc…” I said but the older man wasn’t listening to me.
“You killed my woman,” he said softly, “She had kids, grandkids… What am I supposed to tell her grandbabies? Huh? What do I say to her daughter, to her granddaughter, her grandson?” he asked softly.
“You tell them she was a whore,” The Nord sneered.
Duracell snorted, “That was really original. Hey Doc, step off man, I’m tired of playing with this fool. I got a better idea.”
Doc was staring daggers up at the Nord, who was staring right back and smiling pretty fucking evilly. Doc stepped back and let Duracell, who was holding a handheld little Taser, step up. Duracell smiled, and it was that smile he usually reserved for the girls back at the club when he was tryin’ to get some. He fired up the little Taser with a loud crackle and for the first time, The Nord looked uneasy.
Duracell started with the soles of the dude’s feet. He started talking, then screaming when the pain, mixed with the smell of his own flesh cooking, got up to his nose. Took everything I had not to gag. None of us let a damned thing show. Truthfully, I didn’t think Duracell had it in him to get that evil. At any rate, we got what we fucking wanted but it wasn’t pretty.
When Dragon was sure he’d told us everything, he p
ut the fucker out of his misery by blowing half his face off, and half his fucking brain with it, with his fucking hand cannon. We all stood lost in our own thoughts for a minute before Dray swore, low and fierce.
“Fuck!”
“Think he was lyin’?” Doc asked, and he half sounded hopeful.
“No.” I said dispassionately.
“Who the fuck you think it could be?” he asked.
“No one at the club,” Trigger was scowling, “Not a brother or one of the Ol’ Ladies but someone near the club…” My partner was scowling one of the deepest and fiercest scowls I’d ever seen on record from him, and I’d seen some real doozeys in my time.
“A fuckin’ rat. Huh. Didn’t see that one comin’,” Dragon uttered and we all exchanged looks.
The Nord had told us that there weren’t supposed to be that many men at the club; that it was just supposed to be a few of us guys and the women. That the Cunt’s VP had given the order, but they all knew the orders came from Griz. They were told to go in and take all of the girls out. No one had bet on any advanced warning coming through, that a sniper would get two of them before they even breeched the front door. He’d said they’d been assured that six guys would be enough.
“Seriously, who the fuck you think it could be?” Doc said, and he looked like he was past his fucking limit for tonight.
“We never would have had any warning at all if Data hadn’t hooked up those fucking cameras down the drive and off the back fence,” Trig grunted, “That’s what makes me say none of our boys or women are the rat, they all knew about the cameras, but The Suicide Cunts didn’t or they would have avoided them. I mean, shit, they would have been easy as fuck to avoid if they knew they were there but they walked right on by. Data called immediately, blathering on about motion sensors texting him, which let me and Reave get into position before they hit. Let us warn Dis and the guys out back.”
“They had way more information than they ever should’ve had in the first place. We need to find that leak,” Dray stared dispassionately down at the body on the floor.
“Cops have wind of a war going on, we’re going to have to lay low for a while, and if those cock suckers have any sense at all, they will too. We know if any of ‘em got away?” Dragon glanced from one face to the next.
“I got two out front.”
“Chandra took out one, Everett got another, Reaver hurt the one that got him bad but I finished him off.” I ticked them off on my fingers as I listed them off.
“Then this piece of shit makes six.” Duracell put his foot against The Nord’s cooling body and gave it a shove.
“Right. Let’s get this place cleaned up, this big bastard buried and go the fuck home.” Dragon’s tone brooked no argument and none of us were going to give him one anyways. We dug a hole out in Cicada Woods and made quick work of burying the brute. It was kind of a shame; he’d been a decent opponent in the ring and had had some promise. Not anymore.
I helped Trigger move the damned body; it was going to be an exceptionally long fucking night for all of us.
Chapter 27
Mandy…
I lay in Zander’s bed in his club room facing Everett, our hands clasped between us as we spoke in the dark, like when we were children, sleeping over at one another’s houses. It was comforting in that way that all childhood things were, but instead of discussing which Disney princess we wanted to be or what we wanted our Prince Charming to be like, the things that passed between us tonight carried much more weight.
We had all been with Hayden while the boys held their club meeting with The Kraken out front. The woman had always been small in a physical way, but her presence which had always been vibrant and bold was simply less. It scared me. Made me face the reality that one day, it could be me lying there staring off into space, despondent, lost… which made me realize just how much Zander and I connected, how much we went together because the mere thought of him being gone, just there one moment and gone the next, like Reaver, like Chandra… Well, not only did it have my heart squeezing down tight in my chest, it had bile rising in my throat and had sent me running for the nearest bathroom.
Everett had supported me and held back my hair, and when we returned to Reaver’s room, Ashton had gone and Hayden was alone for the moment. Evy and I had resumed our places, curled on the floor, against the wall, huddled together in our misery while we waited, when Ashton had come back and said decisively and in a tone brooking no argument that we were all going to Florida.
Evy being Evy had balked, and it was the first time I had ever seen Ashton not only stand up to anyone and not just cave in but do it fiercely. She hadn’t minced words. At all. In fact she’d even sworn a few times. I’d never seen anything like it out of the fragile, small woman, and by the time she’d finished and collapsed onto her hind end in the middle of the carpet, gasping and bursting into tears, I think both Everett and I would have been willing to agree to anything to give Ashton even one small measure of comfort.
Everett sighed out, her breath rushing across the small distance between us carrying with it the faint smell of mint. We’d brushed our teeth before coming to Zander’s room. It was late, so late as to be early and we’d left Ashton with Hayden, hugging her friend from behind while the woman broke and fell into more weeping against Cutter.
“I’m no motorcycle club queen Mandy,” Everett said quietly. “That was Chandra.”
She sniffed and her blue eyes filled up with tears. We’d all been crying off and on and I suspected it would continue for days to come.
“Out of all of us, you’re the strongest right now. You’ve always been…” I told her.
“I don’t want to be the strong one this time.”
“I know, but one thing, one day at a time. You and Shelly paid closest attention when it came to arranging Grinder’s funeral and Shelly…” I sighed this time, “I think it’s you and me this time, Sis. Hayden needs Ashton, Shelly isn’t in any shape, so that leaves just you and me.”
“How are we supposed to do all of this and keep the shop going?” I chewed my bottom lip.
“Shop isn’t going to fall apart without us. We’ll just need to hire some more help to run the counter and the coffee part of things. I can do the chocolates from any kitchen. We might be a bit light on cakes and pastries for a while, but those were never really our big sellers… Well except the Chocolate Croissants but those should ship just fine too.” I went on and on, figuring this and mapping out that and Everett relaxed marginally after a while and began planning and thinking with me.
I think all of us were more than a little overwhelmed and who could blame us? We’d lost three people close to us in the span of a month. Two of them in less than twenty-four hours, and one of those right in front of our eyes under threat of having our lives taken. I was willing to think about just about anything other than that.
Eventually, as the sky began to lighten outside, Everett and I both fell asleep out of just sheer exhaustion. I jolted awake, the blinds and curtains drawn over the high window turning the room to cool twilight. I frowned, unsure of what had awoken me but then I felt it again, the press of lips to the back of my shoulder where my nightgown didn’t cover with its thin spaghetti straps. I turned my head, Zander placed his hand on the same shoulder and smoothed it down my arm.
“Shh, just me,” he said softly. He had stripped down to just his boxer shorts and lay on his side, his front to my back, head propped on his right arm.
“How long have you been back?” I asked quietly. The club had that stillness to it, the kind that any building got when most, if not all of its inhabitants were still fast asleep.
“About a half hour ago.”
He leaned over me gently and captured my mouth with his, the warmth and strength of his body enveloping me. I sank gratefully into the kiss and couldn’t help the tears that welled in my eyes as once again my mind drifted, carried on a wave of fear and ‘what if’, borne to that dark place in the far reaches of my mind
that whispered it could happen to you.
“Hey, hey, hey…” he cupped my cheek with his hand and smoothed his thumb through the wet track left behind by my tears.
“I apologize,” I said, but it came out warbled and piteous. Zander groaned and kissed me deeply, as if he were bent on kissing away my pain, bent on reassuring me with his body rather than his words. I couldn’t deny that being close to him right now, as improper as my upbringing would have it, appealed so strongly to me that I simply didn’t care. I needed him, I needed to be close to him to have him hold me, kiss me and caress me. To reassure me that it was okay, even if things were so terribly uncertain in so many areas of our lives right now.
Our kiss heated, hands smoothing over skin, gathering material, him pulling and me pushing, all in a bid to get more skin on skin contact. We were rushed but not feverish, the intensity somewhere along the lines of a gentle but still rolling boil. Zander pressed me back into the mattress and kissed every bit of me he could reach before gliding inside me. He looked down into my eyes from inches away and we met in the middle, my neck craning so that we could kiss again. He rolled his hips, withdrawing gently to surge forward again, deliberately, with strength but without being rough.
He made love to me. Both of us taking our time, kissing, touching, intertwined and intimate for far longer than I could have imagined possible. He murmured between kisses how much he loved me and I felt a surge of joy despite the heavy burden of sorrow on both of our souls. When I came, it was different than all the other times I’d been with Zander. Rather than a wild passionate explosion, this time, it was a sweeping, gentle thing that was so much more profound than any other time before. He kissed me as I shuddered beneath him and cried out into my mouth with his own release.
I held him to me, and we lay together like that for a long time, breaths coming at an uneven cadence as we slowly came down. I felt muzzy, incredibly satisfied, fluid and as relaxed as I’d ever been. I was positively drugged on his love and it was the most incredible and exquisite feeling I had ever known, made even more so by what he blurted out next…
Fractured & Formidable: The Sacred Hearts MC Book V Page 24