Evil’s Price: Devil’s Outlaws MC: Book One

by Dark, Raven

  Rat stands up and goes to one of the computers off to the side and types a few keys. The back of his black tee has an image of a motorcycle with Wonder Woman astride it in a sexy pinup pose. Across the shirt under the bike reads, Wonder Woman Is My Ol’ Lady.

  Only Rat would wear something like that.

  “Check this out.” He waves me over. “I looked all over the web for her, and I couldn’t find her anywhere. She has no social media accounts under the name Emma or any other name. There is no paper trail on her at all, but here’s where things get weird.”

  I join him at the monitor.

  “Completely ignoring that a girl her age has never been on the internet and has no phone, she hasn’t left any trace of herself anywhere in any government database.” His fingers move furiously over the keys, excitement all over his face as he brings up a dozen social media pages. “She has no social security number, no birth certificate, nothing.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I know a guy who knows a guy who knows a hacker. Spider, everyone leaves a trail of some sort. Hospital records of their birth. A doctor’s visit. A parking ticket. Dee said she was on the streets, but she didn’t look like she’d been there long. Which means she had a job before The Devil’s Den.”

  He raises one finger.

  “Now, she did have one job under the name Stephanie Johnson, registered with Las Vegas Nanny Agency. But there wasn’t much info on that, and after that, she vanished from all records.”

  The nanny agency. That’s the one she called on Sam’s phone. But why hadn’t she stayed there? Why would she have ended up on the streets? And why would she choose to work at a strip joint when she could have had a job with one of those agencies?

  All the alarms are going off in my head again. “Well, already know she’s on the run from someone. She doesn’t want to be found.”

  “No.” He types a few more keys. “It’s more than that. There’s only the one job under her alias, but there’s no work history or anything under her real name. Even for someone under the radar, I should have found something. These days, the government is so up in our business all the time that you can’t piss without someone knowing about it. The only people who stay that far off the grid are spooks, government agents—or computer a whiz like yours truly. She’s none of those things. She didn’t even know what an MC is, right? Living totally off the grid takes connections, it takes money, and it takes some serious technical know-how. She doesn’t have the real world knowledge to pull off this sort of underground existence. And yet, she’s a ghost.”

  I swallow, looking over at the monitor where I can see Emma chained up and hanging in the middle of the cell Axe put her in. She looks so innocent, so unassuming. How does a girl like that end up mixed up with a guy like Adamson?

  “How is that possible?” I ask him.

  “It’s not.”

  I blow out a breath and look at her on the TV screen again. She’s connected to a man who’s posing a danger to the club and everyone I consider family. I won’t find out how without getting it out of her.

  Who are you, Emma Wineman?

  “Except she did it,” I say. “So what does that mean?”

  “It means she’s either really dangerous, or…” He trails off and shakes his head.

  “Or?”

  He shrugs. “I don’t know. I don’t see her as being dangerous, but she’s hiding something huge. Like, blow your mind, serious underworld shit, huge. I don’t like it.”

  I’d sat in a chair in front of Rat’s monitors for a long time with my head spinning. Thinking about how to approach this. She’s managed to hide who she is all this time, never letting anything slip.

  Something tells me she isn’t going to make it easy to get the truth out of her.

  Which is why, as soon as I finished with Rat, I approached interrogating her with such extreme measures. Drawing blood and scaring her the way I did is something I reserve for the worst of the worst. Hardened criminals who won’t talk without some serious pain to loosen their tongues.

  The club’s safety is what matters. I can’t let whatever was between us get in the way of that. I have to be hard. Cold. Cruel.

  As I stand in front of her now staring at her naked, luscious body, it helps to remind myself that I may have let myself get in bed with someone who’s involvement with my club could send our whole operation crumbling to dust.

  Adamson is a dirty guy, and I have a feeling I’ve only scratched the surface on how dirty he is. Anyone connected to him is trouble. She cracked my armor and got under my skin. Betrayal rips through me, burning like the sun. She deceived me.

  I let that knowledge sear itself into my brain, scouring away any of the protective impulses that seem to flare up around her. I can’t take anything she says at face value. I can’t trust her, and I can’t let her get to me, no matter how sweet and innocent and vulnerable she looks now.

  I’ll tell you everything. That’s what she’d said. So I stand there with my arms crossed and waiting for the truth.

  Emma closes her eyes for a long moment, as if choosing her words. When she opens them, her soft, dark eyes are locked on my chest.

  “Look at me,” I order. I want to see every emotion, every bit of suffering I’m causing in her.

  Her eyes don’t lift past my beard.

  “Look. At. Me.”

  Her eyes dart to mine. Her pink tongue flicks out to wet her lips. My cock jerks in response, and I imagine that little tongue licking me instead.

  Fuck, I’m a sick bastard.

  I wait for her to speak. She draws a shaky breath.

  “You were right,” she says in a small voice. “I was running from something.”

  “You already told me that, thief. You’ll have to do better than that.”

  She gives a panicked sigh. “They’re a religious order.”

  “What do you mean, a religious order? Who are they?” I demand.

  “They’re a patriarchal order, okay? It’s a colony. One that follows extremely archaic rules.”

  “What kind of rules?” Fuck, getting this out of her is like pulling teeth.

  Her chest heaves a few times, her eyes wet. “No modern technology. No outsiders. No government involvement except when we have no choice.”

  “You mean like an Amish community or something?”

  “No.” She gives a pained smile. “Not even close. Amish parishioners have a choice to follow their beliefs. They’re allowed to leave. We aren’t.”

  “You were a prisoner?”

  “Yes. I escaped. The night I stole those tips from The Devil’s Den, one of the deacons was there. He’d found me. I stole the money so I could hightail it out of town before he could drag me back to the Colony.”

  As she talks, she’s shaking so badly the curls that hang in front of her face tremble. Fuck me, whoever these people are, she’s terrified of them.

  The urge to brush those silky soft locks away, to offer her some measure of comfort, is almost painful. What she’s saying sounds so insane it has to be a lie. It also raises too many questions to count.

  I rock slowly on my heels. “And just who are these people?”

  “They call themselves His Holy Peace.”

  Having heard the name, I can just picture Rat up there in his Control Room, his fingers flying so fast over his keys that smoke is coming off the keyboard. This sort of thing would push all his geek buttons.

  My hands clasp tighter behind my back. I keep my voice dry and cool, leaving no hint as to whether I believe her or not. “Why have I never heard of this order? Where is it? Who runs it?”

  She draws a deep breath and those dark locks of hair shake even more.

  “They’re in New Mexico. It’s run by the ministry founder…” She swallows, shifting feet that barely touch the floor. “It’s run by Elder David Gild.”

  Gild. The name doesn’t ring a bell.

  “If you don’t allow outsiders, how do you keep the place running? How do y
ou bring in money?”

  She tenses, and I can see that my skepticism is making her nervous.

  “Every few years, chosen members look for suitable candidates to bring into the flock. Vulnerable people who they know they can brainwash to follow their rules.” Anger seeps into her voice. For the people who’ve been sucked in by the order, I assume.

  I raise my eyes to the ceiling in frustration. “But if these people are prisoners, how come no one is looking for them?”

  “Because. They choose individuals who are desperate for a place to belong, people they know don’t have a strong support system.” Sadness pools in her eyes. “The ministry is exceptionally good at isolating people from anyone who would make trouble. They slowly cut them off from the rest of the world, and then gradually make them believe the Colony is the only way to save them from a world that’s too corrupt for them.”

  I consider her words. It sounds far-fetched, the sort of story someone would concoct to get themselves out of trouble.

  I drop my arms and repeat my last question. “How do you earn money?”

  “Some of the higher members run businesses that service the outside world. They’re farmers, mostly. They have connections, people who know how to keep them off the grid so that the government doesn’t look too closely into their operations.”

  “But if no one is allowed to leave, how do they keep in contact with the people who buy their shit?”

  She licks her lips again. “Only certain members are allowed to leave, and only for a short period of time. Members who own businesses get snail mail that’s tightly controlled, and only select members have access.”

  “What kind of members?”

  “The highest members. Pastors. Deacons. Ones who have been there long enough that they’re trusted not to spill Colony secrets.”

  I spread my hands. “There must be hundreds of members. How does this David Gild keep everyone in line?”

  At the question, she visibly flinches. “The laws that govern the order’s society are extremely strict. Those who violate the laws….” She looks away. “They’re punished.”

  Punished? With the way her voice shook on that word and the way she can’t bring herself to look at me, I can just imagine what kind of sick punishments this order inflicts on congregants who go against the rules.

  In the last few decades, there have been a handful of secretive religious orders that sound like what she’s referring to. Jonestown leaps to mind. I shudder.

  I’m not much for the good book as it is, but fanatics like these people piss me off. Brainwashing? Punishments designed to keep people virtual prisoners, terrified to go against their holier than thou attitudes? People like that make me want to bury them in a deep hole. This Gild sounds like a real psycho, right up there with Jim Jones.

  Still. It would be easy for her to concoct a story like this in order to play on my sympathy. It would be difficult for anyone, even me, to fault her for going against my club if she had people like that after her. She could have studied up on cults like His Holy Peace. She could be making this all up and, using them as a cover story.

  But for what?

  And I still don’t see how Adamson fits into this.

  Keeping my tone neutral, I move onto the bigger questions. “Anyone this order has gotten their meat hooks into would have showed up on government radar before they went inside. I had Rat look into you. You’re a ghost. How did they wipe you off the face of the earth once they had you under their thumbs?”

  “They didn’t have to. I was born in the Colony. Like a lot of the members.”

  I narrow my eyes. “And you were never allowed to leave.”

  “Never. Only men are permitted to leave. Rules aren’t the same for men as they are for women.”

  Which, I’m guessing means the men have a lot more freedom.

  That explains the whole submissive thing she’s got going on. I’m starting to get a clear picture now. I’m picturing all sorts of twisted laws in place there. Forced marriages. Underage marriages. Beatings. Forcible confinement. Starvation. Worse.

  My fists tighten, empathy for her burrowing under my skin.

  I blow out a slow breath. “Okay. If everyone there is kept a prisoner, and the punishments are so horrible, how come no one has ever tried to leave? How come no one has ever reported them?”

  Emma glances up at the chains imprisoning her wrists. She tugs on them and winces, her muscles straining. The slightest movement causes her breasts to jiggle slightly. I watch them for a moment, resisting the urge to thumb her nipples until they harden the way they do every time I touch them.

  “If you’re going to spend hours interrogating me about this, at least untie me. My arms are killing me.”

  “No. How come no one has tried to escape?”

  She rolls her eyes, desperation pounding off of her. “Because. You have to understand. From the moment members are born into the fold, they’re told that the world is a dangerous place. Lawless. Overrun with criminals and cutthroats. That women are being kidnapped and raped in the streets. That men are killed for the clothes on their backs. They’re also forced to sell their property and hand any assets they have over to the church.”

  Thus making it harder for members to run. It’s genius. Sick, but genius. Fuck me, this is one hell of a story she’s concocted. If it’s true, this could be Jonestown all over again. But there’s still so much that doesn’t add up.

  “If you take in new members, wouldn’t they tell the others about the outside world? How do the leaders keep newbies from exposing the truth?”

  She clicks her teeth, squirming as if her anxiety has become physically painful. “New members are forbidden to speak of life before they entered the ministry. With the exception of leaders who give sermons carefully worded to keep the illusion alive.”

  I cock my head, waiting for more.

  She blows those curls out of her face. “Information that goes in and out of the Colony is very tightly controlled. None of us are allowed access to the internet. We read only what they tell us. Eat only what they give us. Wear only what they provide.”

  Jesus. If this it true, I want to cut off this Gild guy’s head for what he’s done to her and countless others. If it’s not, I’ll teach her what a real punishment is for lying to me.

  Rat must be going apeshit up there, hearing this.

  I clench my jaw. How in the fuck would Gild keep hundreds of members from learning the truth? Someone would let something slip eventually. Complete control over information in this day and age is impossible. And yet…

  I can’t help thinking about what I was taught in history class about the Holocaust. The Nazis managed to hide their atrocities from much of world. When the horrors were finally made public, it had left so many people scratching their heads, trying to figure out why no one intervened sooner. There are still people who think it never happened. If the Nazis could hide evidence that they were enslaving and murdering millions, then this sick fuck could keep a few hundred or even a thousand desperate, brainwashed prisoners from realizing that they’ve been lied to in order to keep them from leaving.

  “There must be others who tried to escape,” I point out now.

  “Yes, there are, but they’re rare, and they’re always dealt with before they can give anyone ideas. Only one person has been known to escape and never get caught.”

  I assume she’s referring to herself.

  Disbelief and horror for her burn in my gut. It takes everything I have to shut it down and remain indifferent. I’m not ready to buy into this just yet. There’s still one gaping hole in her story.

  “So. If everything the members do is so carefully controlled, then tell me, how did you escape?”

  “It wasn’t easy. Every month, a guy visits the Colony grounds. I think he’s a bookkeeper or something. Anyway, he comes on the last day of the month, visits with the elders for a few hours, and leaves. The day I escaped, while he was inside with them, I climbed into the trunk of his ca
r. He left the place having no idea I was in there. When he stopped for gas, I climbed out and ran off.”

  “Wow. That’s impressive.” I let a hint of skepticism enter my voice. “They could have killed you if you were caught.”

  “They would have. If they catch me…” She trails off again and looks away. “Unless Seth can convince them to keep me alive, they’ll kill me as soon as I’m back there.”

  “Seth? Who’s Seth?”

  She swallows. Her face loses all its color. “He’s… He’s a pastor. He’s also the man I was supposed to marry.”

  She was supposed to marry him?

  This whole thing has to be a load of horse shit. It has to be, and yet hearing that she was supposed to be married to another man, to one of the wackos in that place, causes the beast inside me to claw at my chest. Possession roars through me, and I have to press my feet into the cement floor to keep from burying myself inside her tight pussy and claiming her as mine right there.

  She’s eighteen. She’d have ended up married to a man who probably wanted a fifties housewife, a woman who’d bow and scrape, and bend over on command.

  My father’s face flashes before my eyes and I swallow a growl.

  “Is he the reason you left?” I ask. “You took off before you had to end up in this asswipe’s bed?”

  “…Yes.”

  I didn’t miss the hesitation there. There’s more to her having left than an unwillingness to end up in a forced marriage.

  Every answer she gives only raises more questions.

  “When you escaped, how did you know where to go? How did you get a job? Pay bills? Find a place to live?”

  Her shoulders drop. “Please untie me.” I can tell her arms are sore, but I also have a feeling she’s stalling.

  “No. Answer the questions.”

  Her lips mash together. Her gaze drops to the floor. A muscle works in her jaw. Obviously, the questions hit a nerve.

  I stride toward her. “Are you forgetting I still have a knife? I’ll still cut you.”

  She shakes her head, her eyes wide and fearful.

  I step back, waiting.

  Relaxing a little, she focuses her gazes on my chest again. “I had a friend in the Colony. She’s the only one who ever got out without being caught besides me. Her sister worked in the mail room. A few months after she escaped, she sent me a letter. It went through her sister, to make sure the guards didn’t get a hold of it. She told me she had a job with a nanny agency here in Vegas. Told me she’d set me up with a job there when I got out. She sent me the money for the bus fare in the letter.” She licks her lips yet again. “When I called the nanny agency on Sam’s phone, I was looking for her. That was the last place I know of that she worked before she disappeared.”