And a split second later, the entire kitchen exploded behind him.
This time, Cain was the one shaking his head and trying to clear his ringing ears as he rose back up to his feet. After the flash of light from behind him, the darkness of the surrounding land was absolute. He had no idea where the shot had come from.
A moment later, however, Cain saw a muzzle flash light up, maybe twenty yards away, and staccato gunfire raked across the smoking ruin of his kitchen.
The men who'd just blown up part of his house must be trying to make sure that they left no one behind, he thought fuzzily to himself as he rolled over, into a low crouch among the tall grasses. But even as they poured lead into his house, they must not have realized that he and Bucky had dived clear, leaping outside to escape the blast.
Moving carefully, Cain slipped through the tall grass towards the man still firing his gun in towards the house. From the ruins of the house, he could hear screams and cries in between the chatter of the rifle. Clearly, people were still alive, and the gunman looked as though he was trying to aim at those cries.
Cain's path took him in a circular orbit, bringing him behind the still-firing man. His open hands itched, his fingers tensing and loosening. He wished desperately that he had some weapon, a knife or his bat, but he was unarmed.
But unarmed didn't mean that he wasn't still dangerous.
Finally, Cain guessed that he was close enough to the man to catch him unawares. Like a vengeful shadow, he burst up from the long grass behind the man's dark figure, his hands reaching out for his target.
One arm looped around the man's throat, pulling tight immediately to cut off blood flow and his windpipe. Without waiting even to make sure that his strike landed, Cain brought his other hand around in a downward arc, knocking the assault rifle out of the man's arms, taking advantage of his moment of surprise.
The rifle fell away, slipping out of the man's suddenly nerveless fingers. As soon as he saw the gun falling away, Cain lifted up one leg, throwing it around the man's body and using all of his weight to spin both men off of their footing and down onto the ground.
The captured gunman hit the ground first, chest down - and any air remaining in his body was immediately expelled when Cain came down on top of him, pivoting slightly in the air to land elbow point first. Beneath him, he heard a snap as he dropped, and Cain guessed that he'd cracked at least one of the man's ribs.
Cain immediately pulled his hands free as he sat up, getting ready to launch additional strikes at the opponent now pinned beneath him, but a glance quickly showed that this wasn't necessary. The man lay face-down still, groaning slightly to show that he was still conscious but not making any effort to get away or escape.
A minute later, Bucky hurried over to stand beside Cain. Glancing over at the younger officer, Cain noted with grim approval that Bucky had recovered the dropped assault rifle and now kept it trained on their captive.
"What now?" the Iron Skull officer asked.
Cain stood up, secure now that he knew the man was covered by Bucky. Reaching down, he looped one big hand around the man's collar, hauling him up to his feet, pretending to ignore the cry of pain from his rough treatment.
"Now," he said, as his thoughts roiled and burned inside his head, "we go back and figure out if anyone's hurt - or worse. And then," and his gaze as he surveyed the captive held absolutely zero pity, "we figure out who these fuckers are, and where they took Jenna."
"And then we go get her back," Bucky finished.
Cain nodded. "Fucking right."
Chapter nineteen
Inside the van, Bulldog cursed as he wrenched off the hot mask that covered his face. They'd at least managed to pull a hood over the girl's head - not that she'd ever have a chance to identify them to anyone, anyway.
As far as she was concerned, this trip in the back of a van was her last, a one-way ride.
Still, even though they had the girl recovered, he couldn't help feeling as if this whole operation had gone sideways. Kevin had knocked at the house's front door, just like in the routine they'd agreed on, but apparently there was some sort of party going on at this house tonight. Bulldog didn't like the sight of all those big motorcycles parked in the grass around the house.
Still, even if that big angry mother of a biker who'd answered the door had seemed aggressive, Kevin still managed to keep him distracted long enough for the rest of the team to sneak around to the back. And there, to their surprise, they'd spotted the girl in the kitchen, just on the other side of the door!
Spot of luck, that had been, Bulldog reflected to himself. A couple blasts of the guns to blow open the back door, a flashbang to stun everyone, and then a quick snatch and grab. Before she'd even known what was happening, probably, the girl had been in their grip, safely bagged and with her hands bound.
The problem, then, became how to clean up after themselves.
Given all those bikes, neither Bulldog nor his men liked the idea of a full-on fight. Bikers tended to carry guns with them, and despite the body armor the men wore, they didn't want to have to square off against targets that could shoot back.
Miguel, the crazy ass in the van next to him, decided to solve that problem, of course. He didn't bother to let Bulldog know, either. One moment, they were hauling the girl's struggling body back towards the van, just thinking about getting her squared away before she could get away. Next thing Bulldog knew, Miguel was rolling back the side door of the van, a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher in his hands, pointed up at the house.
"Yeehaw!" the crazy pendejo had yelled as he pulled the trigger, sending that rocket in through the kitchen window.
Bulldog, of course, had leapt back up to his feet with the intention of cursing out the man. What the hell was he thinking, shooting that thing off with the rest of the team so close? But instead, he'd grabbed an assault rifle from one of the other men beside him, shoved it into Miguel's arms, and then pointed him towards the house.
"Nice job!" he yelled into the man's ear. "Now, go make sure there aren't any survivors, and then get back to the van!"
Sure enough, his eyes still alight with the thrill of firepower, Miguel advanced towards the house, spraying rounds from the rifle with happy abandon. Bulldog took advantage of the moment to shove the girl into the van, waving the rest of his team in after her.
But a minute ago, Miguel's firing had stopped abruptly, and hadn't resumed since. Was the man running back to the van?
Bulldog felt a prickling of danger at the back of his spine. That prickling suggested that something had gone wrong. he didn't know why he'd reached this decision, but the man had learned to trust his gut. His gut had started making noises as soon as he saw all the bikes around, and now it had reached a fever pitch.
Making a sudden decision, he slammed a fist against the metal panel that partially separated the back of the van from the driver's and passenger seats. "Let's go!" he ordered. "Get us out of here!"
"What about Miguel-" the driver started, but Bulldog reached a hand through the open panel and smacked him in the side of the head.
"Fuck him," the boss ordered. "We've got the girl, and he can clean up anyone around back there. Let's get out of here before something else goes wrong."
The driver shrugged, but he knew better than to disobey his boss's orders. He put the van into drive and pushed down the accelerator, sending them quickly back up the dirt road towards the paved escape route.
As they drove away, Bulldog kept one eye peeled, watching behind him for any signs of pursuit. He didn't catch any lights pursuing the van, and he tried to tell himself that this was good news. Even the craziest bikers wouldn't drive at night without any lights, right?
Still, although the prickling in his stomach had receded, it didn't fully fade away.
After a few more minutes, when he was pretty sure that they weren't being tailed, Bulldog finally turned his attention to the hooded, slender figure still slumped at the bottom of the van. He reached down
, grabbing a handful of the hood and hauling it up. At first, he stopped as it started to slip up off of the girl's head, but then changed his mind.
After all, what did it matter if she saw where they were? Once he'd brought her back, he and the men would interrogate her, and then shoot her. She'd never live long enough to tell anyone else what she'd seen.
The girl's eyes were wide when he pulled off the hood, immediately rolling back to stare up at her. Bulldog grinned at the fear he saw reflected there.
"Well, look's like we meet again," he growled, reaching up to scratch one of the jowls on his face absently. "Remember me? Remember how you kicked me when you ran off last time, you little bitch?"
Without giving the girl time to respond, Bulldog abruptly backhanded her, making her cry out as he hit her on the cheek. "And there's plenty more of that coming, don't you worry," he promised.
But when the girl turned to look back at him, despite the red welt already smarting on her cheek, her eyes still looked different from how Bulldog remembered. There was a new emotion glinting in them as she glared up at her captors.
Defiance, he recognized, and his stomach prickled once again.
This wasn't the same girl that he remembered from just a couple days ago. Sure, she looked the same, but there was something different in her eyes, something that set off all his internal alarms.
Trying to distract himself, Bulldog grabbed the bag and pulled it back over her head. It was to shield her gaze, he told himself, not because he didn't want those defiant eyes on him. He insisted on this, even as that prickling in his stomach grew stronger.
The sooner he interrogated her, he told himself, the sooner she'd be dead. He would make sure of that himself.
He tried to ignore his stomach as the van drove further into the night.
#
Once again under the hood, Jenna did her best to focus on breathing. Breathe normally, she told herself. Save her strength, get ready for whatever trials would be coming next.
She knew that there would be more pain, soon enough. It was all that made sense to her. The men surely wanted her dead; if they hadn't needed anything else from her, they would simply have shot her already.
They must need to know some sort of information, she thought to herself.
She could still feel panic and fear hiding just beneath the surface of her mind, ready to come rearing up to swallow conscious thought. But as long as she focused on breathing, she could keep it pushed back, could keep it contained.
And she could feel the one item that was helping her keep her resolve, nestled still inside her shirt.
She didn't know how the thing hadn't fallen out. It must have gotten wedged in between one of her bra straps and her skin when she fell, and it had miraculously not come loose as the men dragged her back to the van. But she could feel the black plastic rectangle pressed against her still, and she prayed that the men wouldn't find it until it was too late.
It had taken her a few seconds to work out what the object was - but realization had brought with it a surge of hope.
And so, even when she saw the ugly captor that the other men called Bulldog leering down at her, she'd managed to not give in to panic. Instead, she'd glared back up at him, telling herself to be strong. She wasn't going to die here, she told herself.
Cain would come. She believed this fact, stronger than anything else in her life. He would come, would find her, would rescue her.
She had to believe it.
Chapter twenty
It didn't take too long to get a sense of the damage that the rocket, and following gunfire, had inflicted on the house and its occupants. To Cain's surprise, the damage, at least to human life, turned out to be even lower than expected.
As he hauled the captive back to the house, he found himself met on the front porch by half a dozen of the other Iron Skulls, mainly some of the older officers who hadn't been hitting the sauce as hard as their fellows. Most of them were armed, as well, with an assortment of weapons ranging from pistols all the way up to automatic weapons.
At first, several guns were trained on Cain as he emerged out into the house's lights, but they quickly dropped as the other officers recognized him. "What the hell happened?" called out one of the men, as Cain dragged the semi-conscious prisoner up the steps of the front porch, not bothering to cushion him at all against the hard wooden steps.
"No clue," Bucky replied, as Cain muscled the man's arms back behind him, wrapping them around one of the porch's posts and knotting them together with a scrap of thick rope that had previously been keeping nis deck furniture from blowing off the porch. "But someone's clearly got it out for us, at least."
As Cain straightened up, he looked with dismay at the back of his house. Talon stepped forward, patting him on the back. "Looks worse than it is, mate," he commented. "We dragged just about everyone out of the back area, and kept them all inside when the gunfire started."
"Anyone killed?"
"Doesn't look like it," Talon said with some relief. "A couple people with broken limbs, but that's about it."
He chuckled. "In fact, on the other side of the house, people were still partying! They thought that the sound was a backfire, or maybe someone cranking up a speaker too much. Didn't even realize that part of the house collapsed!"
After a moment, when it was clear that no one else was laughing along with him, Talon closed his mouth.
For a minute, silence fell over the assembled Iron Skulls, even the officers glancing back and forth. But then, one man stepped forward, and the rest of them felt the silence shift from uncomfortable insecurity to respectful waiting for orders.
Stepping forward to the front of the porch, Wolf turned around to glare at the other men.
The President of the Iron Skulls had held the position for many years, now, and his hair, buzzed short on the sides but sweeping back over his head in the middle, was now mostly gray. Even still, the man's hard features showed no trace of compassion, and would have instantly commanded respect anywhere.
Even Cain felt a little quiver of unease when Wolf's dark gray eyes ran across him. The man had a way of seeing right through anybody in front of him, as if he could read their minds, their innermost thoughts.
Wolf took a moment, sizing up the situation, and Cain knew that the gears inside the President's head were spinning furiously. Finally, Wolf turned to Cain. "You know something about this."
It wasn't a question. It was a statement, hanging open and waiting for Cain to complete it.
Cain nodded. "I think so, sir."
"Tell us."
Cain took a deep breath, trying to organize his thoughts as best he could to tell the other bikers everything. "Last night, in the middle of the night, a girl stumbled into my home," he began, figuring that it was best to begin at the beginning. "She told us that she escaped from some sort of captivity, linked to James Archon."
A little growl came from some of the men at that name. James Archon presented the spotless image of a successful and honest businessman, but some of their contacts had reported mutterings of the man involving himself in the drug trade, as well as other illegal and unsavory ventures.
"She told us that she escaped from a van, transporting her somewhere. I didn't learn anything more about who the men that took her might be, but I am guessing that they came back to recapture her. Even if Jenna, the young woman, didn't remember much, they couldn't be sure of that," he finished.
Wolf nodded, a quick little jerk of his head. "So they stole her, and tried to destroy the evidence, any witnesses."
"Didn't do such a good job of that, did they?" Bucky grinned a little as he spoke, but he gripped the rifle in his hands a little tighter. "In fact, all they did was leave me itching for a chance to pay them back."
As if triggered by some invisible signal, the eyes of every biker standing on the porch tracked over to the man tied to the support pole.
The man had looked up and was watching them. He shivered as all of the eyes fe
ll down on him. Cain hadn't bothered to gag him, but he had his mouth clamped resolutely shut.
Bucky glanced over at Wolf, but the Iron Skulls President had chosen to abstain from leading for the moment. When Wolf saw Bucky's eyes on him, he just gave the slightest, barely perceptible nod.
Nodding back, Bucky stepped over to the tied-up prisoner, squatting down. "Hello, there!" His voice sounded jaunty and optimistic. "What's your name?"
The prisoner didn't respond, just stared back at the biker with wide eyes.
"Well, that's okay," Bucky continued after a moment. "See, I don't give a fuck about it. What am I gonna do, make a gravestone?" He tossed back his head and chuckled, as if he'd just made a joke.
As the prisoner realized the meaning of those last words, Bucky reached back for his pocket. "See, you just kidnapped this girl, didn't you?" He paused for a second. "Shit."
"What?" Talon was glancing over at him.
"Lost my phone somewhere. Last thing I remember, I had passed it over to Jenna, so she could take a picture of us-" Bucky's mouth clicked shut. Then, a second later, he straightened up and turned to Cain. "Do you have your phone?" he asked quietly.
Cain felt confused, but he dug out his own phone. "Why?"
Bucky flicked the screen open. "Because I remember setting up tracking with your phone, mainly so I could see if you were home or not. And my phone's probably just buried in the rubble of your kitchen, but there's a chance that it's-"
When Bucky stopped mid-sentence, Cain edged closer, peering over his shoulder at the phone screen open in front of them.
There, overlaid on a map, a single blue dot blinked reassuringly, moving along a road.
"Is that-"
"That's her," Bucky nodded. "Or at least, that's my phone." He grinned with admiration. "Clever little minx! She must have held onto it when they kidnapped her, hoping that we'd think to track her."
CHAINED: A Motorcycle Club Romance Page 9