“He’s going to be devastated,” Keys stated after we’d all taken a minute to process the implications of what she’d found.
“Okay, what’s the plan now?” Quickshot asked as he was typing on his phone.
I glanced up from my own message to Dane and Paul. Aaron was back out on assignment working for the band, The Infinite Everything, on their latest tour. It was one of the few high profile security details our guys handled, and it was done by request after Aaron filled in for a friend who got hurt on their tour a few years back. I hated like hell that he was out with this shit going down around us, and three of our other reliable men along with him, but we would be able to manage since we had the Aces High MC at our backs this time. It would make up for the men we had out on assignments at least.
Chapter 14
We’re sure there are actually people inside this time?” I turned to see Quickshot grinning at me, obviously trying to lighten the mood since everyone was coiled so tightly waiting for this shit show to commence.
Our guys had verified that the Winter’s Renegades were indeed in place in this little three-bedroom cabin. It had a full basement too, which was our biggest concern since we couldn’t see down there to get an official head count on what we’d be walking in on. The exits were covered, and we had some heavy artillery on our side thanks to the Aces connections.
“One car left this morning as we were setting up. Didn’t see any extras in the vehicle. One lone male, and we have him on video along with the plates in case he was stupid enough to come in a car registered to him,” Paul explained to me as we went over the last minute plan of attack. I nodded my head.
“How many have been accounted for?”
Paul grinned then. “Looks to be all of them.”
“The Snake too?”
“The Snake too,” he agreed with an evil grin spreading across his face. “He’s mine, and we will be bringing his sorry ass back to one of the rooms so MiMi can have her day when she’s feeling better.”
“You bet your ass we will!” I turned to face the rest of our group then. “Everyone clear on that?” Heads nodded, grins widened, and I added what they all were waiting for. “Everyone else in there is fair game. Just remember there may be civilian victims inside. We do our best to get them out unharmed - at least by our hands. Be aware, if there are female victims in there, they’ve been held by piece of shit bikers, but bikers nonetheless. They will be afraid of you. Some may try to fight back. It’s best to let the women approach them if you find anyone.” My words dimmed the grins on everyone’s faces. The women of my club knew what that looked like already since we’d rescued women from the WRs before. It was not a sight I ever wanted to see again, but I would rather that than not find and be able to rescue anyone.
With that we were off and storming the cabin. We broke through doors, windows, and kept the only exit to the basement covered from the outside just in case they had something that could break through the locks we snapped in place. It wasn’t difficult to overtake the idiots. Many of them were drunk or drugged out of their minds. It was like shooting fish in a barrel because they didn’t have a reaction time to speak of. Save one individual. Curtis “The Snake” Mayfield took aim at Legs, but Paul was there dropping the man’s arm, and plowing him into the wall raining punches down on him so fast I was mesmerized momentarily by the swift and beautiful violence of it all. Dane moved to them and pulled Paul back. “Save some for your sister,” he proclaimed and that seemed to snap Paul out of the red haze that had befallen him.
I moved to the back to one of the bedrooms and saw a woman laid face down on the dirty mattress on the floor that was acting as one of two beds for the room. Her bottle blond hair had darker roots showing which was unusual for the woman, but since she’d been missing for quite a while it was understandable. She wasn’t moving though so I didn’t have a whole lot of hope for her. I moved in closer noting that her back did not rise and fall with breaths. Her body appeared stiff and unmoving. There was a man next to her with a bullet lodged in his head and it was the first time I noticed that Sweet was standing in the room with me and it had been him who had shot the guy. From the looks of things he’d been using her body just before the noise startled him. The truly sad thing was that I didn't think she’d been alive for that little romp he was having. Even in death she was still being violated.
“Nasty fucker,” Sweet added, having come to the same conclusion I just had. I shook my head in disgust as I confirmed what I already knew. I moved to the woman and brushed her hair out of her face. The profile I was afforded showed blank eyes looking back at me; ones that I’d once been familiar with, joked around with, and trusted with my business. A knot formed in my belly as I thought about yet another woman who had betrayed me.
“We found one, at any rate.”
“Come on, let’s go check in with everyone,” Sweet replied. I turned and followed him from the room.
I turned in the center of the living room area to see that most of the WRs were subdued, and the ones that put up any type of fight had been taken out immediately. “What are we going to do with them?” I wasn’t even certain who had asked the question as I took in the sight around me.
“Burn ‘em,” I offered up, emotionless, remembering how they liked to brand girls they kept to use for themselves.
“Angel?” Quickshot asked as he stood stock still watching me.
“You heard me. They can burn. It should get them ready for where they’re headed in the afterlife.”
“Jesus,” Quickshot hissed out, but he turned and started rounding the assholes up and taking them to the basement. We loaded them in and secured the space after dousing them and the entire house in fuel for the fire. Then we lit it up and watched it burn. We made Curtis stand there and listen as his brothers howled in pain before everything went silent and the only noise left was the snapping and popping of the flames eating away at the remainders of the cabin.
“You all good, sugar?”
“Better now,” I told him as I leaned into Sweet.
“I have some things we need to sift through back at the compound,” Dane offered showing me that indeed he had a bag full of something in his hands. “Laptop and some videos I found in there while we were dousing the place.”
“Let’s go see what they were up to then,” I offered as I turned and headed for the trail that we hiked up here in order to keep the noise down and surprise on our side.
“Are we ready?” Dane asked as he put the CD in the player so we could see what it was they’d been recording. I nodded my head though I didn’t look around to confirm anyone else’s response. Keys and Quickshot stopped what they were doing, trying to crack into the laptop Dane had found, and they both glanced up at the television to see Trix getting fucked by three men. One was lying on his back with Trix’s body prone on top of him while another was taking her from behind and a third was using her mouth. Tears rolled down her face, and I honestly couldn’t tell if it was just because the one in her mouth was causing that reaction or if she was not enjoying herself. I didn’t want to keep watching, but something in the background caught my eye. It was a brunette, looking away from the action, but being taunted by one of the men. His voice was picked up in a hush, but enough that I was able to hear what he was saying.
“Why can’t we use this one too? I’m tired of waiting for those fuckers to be done, and besides her twat is all used up at this point.”
“She stays untouched,” a disembodied voice called out from somewhere outside the camera’s range. “Reardon is funding the whole operation and he requested her specifically for himself.”
“He won’t fuckin’ know.”
“He will know. That’s why there’s video everywhere asshole.”
“Shit,” the other man called out as he was reminded of that fact. I watched as he walked away and then my attention came back to the main action on the screen. The man in Trix’s mouth finished and when he pulled away she was smiling at him. My st
omach turned. How the hell any woman could knowingly participate in something like that, with men like that, I would never understand. She was just as culpable for what happened to the women they took as they were.
“I’ve seen enough. We need to find out who Reardon is, and why he was so hung up on our girl, Katherine.”
“That was her?” Sweet asked and I shook my head in confirmation.
“That was her. I hired her myself for Paramour.”
“Damn,” he hissed.
“She had to be in the car that took off,” Paul muttered.
“Probably so,” I agreed.
“I could have stopped the car,” he volleyed back.
“And it would have alerted them to your presence. We weren’t ready yet, Paul,” I reminded him. “We’ll get her back.”
“Yeah, but in what condition?”
“Let’s worry about following the trail the asshole left behind, finding her, and then we’ll worry about what comes after.” I turned to him then. “This is not on you. It’s on them!” I pointed to the screen where another man had taken the place of the one that was using Trix’s mouth. “You don’t take on their evil deeds. You had no way of knowing someone was stashed inside that car, and we had a bigger picture in front of us.”
Paul nodded and walked off toward the window that looked out over the valley on the side of our compound. I knew it would take some time for him to get over that loss, because he was picturing his own sister. It could have been her that was lost to us. It could have been MiMi twice over now, and we already knew they liked stuffing women into cars so I could see why he was torturing himself even as I knew it wouldn’t help the situation any. I needed Paul and all the others to be on their game so that we could find out who this Reardon guy was and take care of the problem once and for all. Winter’s Renegades had just been the man’s pawn. Whatever the larger game was that he was playing, we needed to curtail it before it came back on us again.
Flames burned the inside of my memories as I came awake, startled because I didn’t recognize where I was. Arms tightened around me and pulled me into a hard body I also didn’t recognize until the scent of him filled me and the last vestiges of the dream I’d been having died off to be replaced with my current reality.
“Shh, sugar, I’ve got you.” His sleep-roughened voice soothed and I melted into the embrace. We were in Sweet’s room at his clubhouse. We’d come back here after meeting up at the S.H.E. Compound because I just couldn’t deal with sticking around there and answering anymore questions about what we were going to do now that the threat had been eliminated. The threat was lessened, not eliminated, and the younger girls didn’t seem to realize the difference. Maybe it was a cop out, or maybe I’d just had enough, but I left Keys and JoJo to sort that shit so that I could get some much-needed rest.
“Sorry,” I huffed out against his chest as I turned in his arms.
“No need to apologize, Jamie. It’s been crazy. I’d be concerned if your sleep wasn’t disturbed after everything.”
“Yeah, I guess. You seem to be doing all right though,” I mentioned.
He peered down into my eyes then and smiled. “Of course I’m doing all right. I have you in my bed and in my arms right where you belong.” I scoffed at his response. “Seriously,” he added as he squeezed me tightly again. “You are the medicine I’ve been needing. I didn’t sleep all that well last night either, but it wasn’t dreams keeping me up. It was the thought that you could have been hurt, lost to me forever, at any time in the past seven years. At any time yesterday when we raided that house you could have been lost to me, and I am having a damn hard time reconciling that with the fact that you lead the same life I do. It’s been bred into me over the years that we protect the women of the club. I’ve been trying to wrap my brain around the fact that you don’t need that same kind of protection, and that I am going against everything I’ve been taught every time you step foot on a run like yesterday or when we went to Knoxville.”
“Sweet, this has been my life for the past four years,” I started to explain.
“No, I know that, Jamie. Like I said, I’m not trying to change anything aside from the way I operate where you’re concerned. You’re going to have to be patient with me though, because it’s always going to be in my nature to fight having you out there on the front lines with the guys.”
“I get that. We’ll just have to adjust to each of our new positions. I’m sure it won’t be easy with each of us running our own clubs. That’s going to be tough on our schedules.”
He blew out a frustrated breath then. “Yeah, I guess it will. We’ll just have to make time, because Sugar, I am not going without you in my arms every night. We spent too many apart and it seems we have a lifetime of nights together to make up for. I’m thinking that needs to be a rule of our relationship. Unless it’s an emergency I’m at your place or you’re at mine. If we need to get a place to be together somewhere in between our clubhouses I’m okay with that.”
“Sweet, are you asking me to move in with you after only a couple of days being together?” I giggled out my question.
“We’ve spent years belonging to each other, Jamie. We didn’t get the together part though. I’m not waiting around for some predetermined socially acceptable timeframe anymore. We’re done with the waiting. So, yeah, I’m asking you to move in with me.”
“Whatever will my father think of me shacking up with a big bad biker dude?”
Sweet laughed. “He’ll probably say it’s about goddamn time.”
“You’re not wrong about that.” I groaned as I rolled off of him and away from the warmth of his body. “Right now, I need to do the responsible thing and get back to my clubhouse so I can check in with the girls and see if Keys was able to find anything on this Reardon guy.”
Sweet stretched his arms up above his head with a yawn and then hopped off the bed. “I’ll get dressed and go with you. I’m pretty sure Quick stayed behind last night to help with that.”
“To help with something,” I snickered.
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure he’s smitten with your little redhead.”
I laughed at that. “I can’t decide if they’d be a good match or if they’re the worst possible couple to be put together.”
Sweet shrugged. “Probably means great sex either way until they figure it out.” I just rolled my eyes at Sweet as I got dressed. He wasn’t wrong, but it was just such a man thing to say.
It didn’t take long to get back to the S.H.E. compound since it was only about 15 miles up the road from where the guys had turned the old Wayfair Warehouse into their clubhouse. There were quite a few bikes and also an old blue pickup truck parked out front. I knew what that meant as soon as I saw it.
“Leanne here?” I asked as soon as I came through the doors. What greeted me instead of an answer were more than a few knowing looks and some giggles. Tash sauntered over to me and threw an arm around my shoulder.
“Leanne stayed the night last night,” she informed me.
“Okay, well, I’ll just go up and say hello before we get down to business then.”
“She didn’t stay here alone, sweetie,” Tash continued on, shocking the absolute shit out of me. I didn’t think Leanne had been with anyone since her husband died and that was about a year before I met her.
“Really?” I asked, giddy excitement in my voice.
“Calm down, because I’m not sure…” her words cut off as her eyes rounded out at something she was seeing over my shoulder. I couldn’t keep myself from looking over my shoulder to see what caused that reaction and there, standing on the landing sucking face with Leanne was none other than my father. My jaw dropped, and I stood there frozen like a statue as they groped and fondled one another for everyone to see as they attempted to move down another step, and failed, because they couldn’t keep their hands off one another.
“What in the absolute fuck?” I finally breathed out. I hadn’t said it loudly, but my voice carried in the ne
ar silence of the room. That was what caught Leanne and Ghost’s attention forcing them to part and look over at me with guilty expressions. Each of them feeling guilty, no doubt, for their own reasons. I just blinked.
“Shit,” Leanne yelped and took off faster than a bullet down the steps to get to me. Ghost stood rooted to the step he’d been on as he smoothed his hands down his face and his shoulders slumped forward.
“Jamie,” Leanne called out as she got closer, and then she moved in to throw her arms around me. I backed up a bit and just shook my head at her. Leanne looked devastated for a moment, but then I laughed at her.
“No offense, Leanne, but” I wiggled my fingers around to indicate her messy state and without thinking more on why she looked the way she did I finished. “You’ve been closer to my dad than I want to imagine, so you can keep your distance until you get a shower.” I shivered at the thought. “Jesus, not an image I ever wanted planted in my head. Thanks for that,” I teased.
“Jamie,” she whispered.
I shook my head again. “Not my business, Leanne,” I told her.
“But it is. I should have talked to you first.”
“I have to say, I’m really damn glad you didn’t ask my permission to jump my father’s bones,” I told her with a straight face.
Sweet came up behind me laughing then. “I think she just jumped his bone baby, singular.”
“Uck,” I gagged and everyone else laughed. My father had made his way to us by then.
“We weren’t trying to hide anything,” he started to say.
“Obviously,” I told him. “I just saw the show.”
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