Judgment Road

by Christine Feehan

  Lana won immediately, the first three hands. She dropped out several times, lost a couple more hands, but losing only a few hundred, and then she won consistently, hand after hand. It was rare for her to drop out, but when she didn't, she was either bluffing or she had the winning cards. It wasn't long before others were watching.

  Alena took her time, playing a few hands of blackjack. Going to one of the slot machines and then making her way to the craps table. Like Lana, she won a few and lost a few. She'd nearly lost all of her chips when she suddenly went on a winning streak. She was vocal about her wins, and soon quite a few people abandoned what they were doing and gathered around her at the craps table, placing their bets based on what she did. Very soon, she wasn't the only big winner.

  Mechanic chose the slot machines, the ones with the biggest payouts. Any machine responded to his touch. Tumblers dropped, skipped, the big wins popping up so that chaos reigned. The noise blared loudly, declaring him a grand prize winner. It was five hundred thousand. He played it off when the manager hurried to his side, checking to make certain he'd really won. Others gathered around him, excited for him. He was given the money right there. It was an underground casino, no taxes reported because one couldn't report the income.

  He went to the bar, ordered a drink and watched the bartender carefully as the man made it. Bottles were thrown in the air in a show, but Mechanic watched his hands, that quick flick, fingers sliding into his pocket. The alcohol was poured and in one move, as the bottles did a triple flip and everyone's eye went there, the bartender poured a clear liquid into his drink. He tipped the man big, picked up the drink and wandered back toward the slot machines.

  Manager just nodded to a waitress. Watch yourself and watch your pockets, Transporter cautioned. Lana, Alena and Keys, watch your drinks, he added.

  Lana won another big hand, and several people clapped. Alena was practically dancing and the crowd around her grew in direct proportion to the pile of chips in front of her. Keys sat down at the high-stakes blackjack table. He won so many times they changed dealers. And decks. Mechanic scored another large win, this one fifty thousand. He'd been watched carefully by the waitress flirting outrageously with him. Half the time he appeared as if he wasn't paying attention as he shoved in fives and tens and pulled the lever several times before it suddenly hit. Within ten minutes he had his own crowd. The four of them were taking the casino for a ride.

  Soon they had three managers and several security guards watching them intently. The crowds grew around them, and as the four continued to win, others won at the craps table and the slot machines.

  Now or never. Two men are running up the tunnel to assist in the casino. I've counted five left down there. Probably in the little rooms to the left of where they are holding their prisoner, Transporter said. Just be aware, I don't have exact numbers. I've counted five individual voices coming from that side of the room. They're closest to the transmitters. It's possible I'm not picking up everything.

  Thanks, mother hen. Czar clapped him on the back as the van's doors opened and first Reaper, then Czar emerged, with Savage behind him and Steele and Player bringing up the rear. The five men walked quickly along the sidewalk, hands in their pockets, the shadows blurring their images, hoodies pulled over their faces. The cameras had been disabled as well as the ones along the street, in the surrounding buildings and the Ghost Club itself. That didn't mean some random camera wouldn't catch a glimpse of them, or someone with a cell phone wouldn't take it in their head to capture the five of them walking down the basement steps.

  That was their entry point. It was easy enough for Steele to put his hands on the bars covering the entrance, warm them and remove them. He then found the lock and worked his magic there. He was good with any kind of alloy, manmade especially. He stepped back and once again, Reaper took lead.

  The plans Anya had drawn for them showed the long hallway skirting around the walls of the casino that shared the basement. The hall sloped downhill and was lined with small rooms. Some of those rooms were very tiny and in another age, when smuggling and speakeasies were the norm, he knew they'd been used for the storage of liquor.

  Reaper blocked out the men behind him. Savage would have their back trail, knowing Reaper would be alert to anything in front of them. His senses were finally honed and he used every one of them. It was rare for both Czar and Steele to go on the same mission together. That way, if one was killed, the other was still there to lead.

  According to Anya's floor plans, they would need Steele when they got to Hammer's woman. Reaper's sinking heart and that faint smell of blood told him they might need Steele's healing skills even more.

  Her name was Maria, and Reaper had seen it on Hammer's face--that overwhelming emotion he was practically choking on, even when he was determined to hide it. Hammer thought the world revolved around that woman, just as Reaper did with Anya. He had a bad feeling, and he didn't want to bring a dead body home to the president of the Demons. She had to be a good woman if the man looked as he had when talking about her disappearance.

  He halted, one hand raised in the air, fingers closed in a fist. There were narrow rope lights strung overhead along the sides of the ceiling. Those lights were fairly dim and his men were silent when they walked. They had a lot of practice in that as well. He'd learned to walk over broken glass barefoot without uttering a sound--or allowing his weight to crack a piece of glass. He'd been beaten repeatedly for allowing twigs and branches to snap under his feet, or disturbing a rock when he hadn't felt the object with unfamiliar shoes on.

  He signaled for Player to check the other rooms while he moved forward. Straight ahead, at the end of the hall, he could make out the large cage with metal bars from ceiling to the floor. The scent of blood grew stronger and he could hear her now, those soft moans and pitiful crying. He'd rip out throats if Anya was lying on that cold stone in her own blood. Whatever they had done to the woman, he knew it was bad.

  He was in full-blown assassin mode as he moved toward the room just off the dungeon. He'd spent his entire childhood in a dungeon. The bathroom for all of them was the corner. Every now and then they had been given buckets to clean up. They had no clothes, little food and there were endless beatings that brought blood. Blood attracted insects and rats. There were chains to lock them to the wall while men and women brutalized the younger ones and whipped them front and back. Yeah. He knew about dungeons and the kinds of vile monsters who shoved women and children, those weaker than them, into prisons so they could do their worst.

  He'd been weak when he was four. He'd started striking back at five. By the time he was ten, he was lethal. Scary. But he'd had to hide it. They'd all had to hide what they'd been becoming in order to survive.

  Reaper tried to pull his mind away from those memories. When they'd taken him to torture him, raping and beating him repeatedly, burning him, slicing him open with knives, all to make him tell who the ringleader was. Then they'd brought Savage and done the same to him in front of Reaper. He'd remained silent. So had Savage. They hadn't looked at each other for a very long time after that, too humiliated and guilty to look each other in the eye.

  Now the odor of blood was a stench in his nostrils. He paused at the door of the room where the guards were playing cards. He heard them, their laughter, the murmur of their voices. All five of them.

  Pool table. Four doors down, right side. Two men. Player took them out, Transporter informed them.

  Reaper ignored that. He locked eyes with the woman. Her face was bloody and swollen. She wore the remnants of a top and nothing else. There was blood on her arms, long ugly streaks. More on her thighs and dripping from under the shirt. There was even more blood between her legs.

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Those guards were going to die hard. Seeing it coming, hurting every second. Reaper raised his finger to his lips and mouthed, Hammer sent us.

  She nodded and continued that soft moaning. Occasionally she added a hiccupping sob. She was smart and quick.
Most people tortured like she'd been would have reacted before they thought. She didn't, and she tried to keep up the illusion that she was alone.

  He deliberately stepped into the doorway. The five men looked up. One actually had enough time to throw his cards before Reaper was on them. The card thrower would have done better to pull his gun. Reaper's blade sliced through an artery in the closest man's thigh; the knife continued in an upward motion and sliced through the artery under the arm of the second man. The third took it in the right-side carotid artery. The fourth across his throat, a pretty slash from left to right. The fifth man got it in the gut, his intestines spilling out.

  Get her out of there, Czar, and don't let her see this mess.

  Reaper was already on the table to avoid the worst of the spraying blood. It was going to be a bloodbath in there. He kicked a gun away from the one with the blood pumping out of his thigh.

  "You're going to die," the one with his underarm spewing blood stated and then coughed, blood bubbling through his mouth.

  Reaper shrugged, not saying a word. What was there to say?

  "Ghosts everywhere," the one with the thigh slash added.

  The two with throat and neck wounds were already slumping unconscious. Two minutes down, two more to go and they'd be gone. The leg might take a little longer, but it was pumping like mad. The armpit was a kill almost immediately. The man just staggered as he tried to stand and then crashed to the floor, unconscious. Thigh wound went next. The man holding his intestines took the longest. He just stared at Reaper, too dumb to know he was already dead.

  We got to get her out of here now. Czar made it a command. Put a bullet in their fucking heads if you have to, but don't leave any of them alive. She's in bad shape, Reaper. Bad.

  Steele had come prepared. He had his medical kit. He'd do his best as soon as they got her in the van. Reaper had the feeling that the urgency was because they were afraid they were going to lose her, not because someone else might come down and realize their prison was under attack. Reaper watched the fifth man fall forward, right out of his chair, face-first, into a pool of his own blood and intestines. He wasn't checking pulses, he knew dead men when he saw them.

  Reaper stepped out of the room and shut the door, falling into the front of the line to lead Czar and Steele out. Savage took up the rear, and Player stepped in front of Savage. Czar carried the woman. Her eyes were closed and she held herself rigid, as if afraid to move, that her rescue might not be real. Savage had covered her with his jacket. None of them exposed Czar or Steele to cameras if it could be helped. Mechanic had shut down everything for two blocks, but that didn't mean cell phones weren't around, so neither man could give up his hoodie.

  As they approached the end of the hall, Reaper stopped abruptly. The hall branched here. One way went up toward the casino, the other toward the outside to the basement steps that led to the alley. Two men rounded the corner. Reaper was on them instantly, breaking the closest man's neck and slamming his shoulder into the second as he shoved the first man's body off him. He drove the second man into the wall. Player was there instantly, gripping the man's head, locking it to him and turning so the body hung over his shoulder. He jerked hard and the crack was audible.

  They were out fast, up the stairs and through the alley. Transporter was there with the van, both doors wide open. The woman was handed in gently and laid down on the mat they'd brought, Steele on one side, his medical bag there. Czar on the other to assist him. Player took up a guard position in the front with Transporter. Reaper and Savage stayed in the back where they could better protect the president and vice president of their club.

  Let's go home, Transporter said. Mechanic, Keys, pick up Preacher and get out of there. Lana, Alena, make your exit. Watch each other in case they try to put a tracker on you. We'll sweep the cars at the rendezvous point.

  They've already given us a VIP card that allows us back here as well as into any of their other clubs. They want to recoup their money, Lana said smugly. So many people won tonight, not just us, that they can't conceive that we might have cheated, although I'm certain they'll review the tapes. They just won't find anything to make them believe we weren't just lucky.

  Anya wandered around the outside of the clubhouse. She had a couple of hours before work and she was bored. She was looking at the flower beds, all in bad shape, when she stumbled right into what felt like an oak tree.

  Hands caught her arms, steadying her. "Be careful, woman."

  She looked up to see Ink. He was covered in tattoos from his neck down. They drifted under his shirt and down where it was impossible to see, but she wanted to look because the tattoos were so intriguing.

  "What are you doing?"

  She gestured toward the flower beds. "They're dismal and need work. I was going over a mental list trying to figure out what I'll need to bring them back." Farther out, someone had planted a lot of wildflowers in the meadow, but the beds were a mess.

  "Don't wander off. Stay in the compound," he cautioned and started to walk away.

  "Um. Ink." Her heart went crazy. She was out of her mind to ask, but asking didn't hurt. When he turned back, she held up her wrists. "Is it possible to tattoo Reaper's fingerprints on my wrists? You know, like a bracelet."

  Interest blossomed. He stepped close and took her hands, turning them over to inspect her inner wrists where the faint smudges of Reapers fingerprints remained. "I have his prints."

  Her stomach dropped. "You do? Why would you have his prints?"

  He shrugged. "When we go out on a job, we don't use our own prints. I make them up for the brothers and their prints are always in the various projects I'm doing." He turned her hands over again. "What about across the top of your wrist, a fine gold chain, and under across the tender part of your wrists, the fingerprints. I can see the marks on your skin so we'd know the exact placement on both hands. You really want to do this?"

  Anya nodded. "I want him to know I'm not going anywhere. When he . . ." She broke off. Even to his brother, she wasn't going to disclose private information about Reaper. Maybe they already knew. Maybe he'd told them what issues he had and they knew even more than she did, but that didn't matter. Reaper was hers to protect now and she was determined to do it. She had no idea what being an old lady entailed, but she was going to find her way and be the best old lady any man could have. "It will be a reminder to me too, when I lose my temper."

  "Let's do it now."

  "Right now? I have to work in a couple of hours. Preacher isn't here so Maestro is filling in. He doesn't exactly like to bartend and he isn't fast at it."

  Ink shook his head. "That dog. He could be fast if he wanted to be, he's doggin' it so no one asks him to fill in." He turned and started walking to the front of the compound and then on past it, continuing down the road.

  Heart doing triple time, Anya followed him. Who got fingerprints tattooed on their wrist? She had to be out of her mind. The tattoo parlor wasn't that far and it felt good to stretch her legs and be out of the confines of the compound. It looked like a fortress with its high chain-link fence, a place bikers might make their last stand.

  She rubbed her wrist. "What if he gets into trouble and they want his fingerprints and he isn't around and they find his real prints on me?"

  "Anya, Torpedo Ink doesn't take a job and then use their own prints. We have an entire library of prints. They peel them off after and get rid of them. They're very small and thin. Once off the warmth of the finger and put in water, they'll dissolve. They wear thin gloves over those and, of course, they don't ride with their colors. Few, if any, on a job see their faces."

  She found herself in a good-sized room with two cubicles. There was a long, padded table and several low chairs with backs that were at an angle.

  Ink gestured toward the heavily padded, more conventional chair. "Have a seat."

  Was she really going to do this? What if she broke up with Reaper? What if it just didn't work? He had so many issues, and she didn't k
now enough about him. He was violent. He pounded his fists into the wall, but what if he ever turned that fury on her? With great trepidation, she watched Ink washing his hands, sterilizing them and then laying his equipment out. There were needles.

  "You ever get a tattoo before?"

  She shook her head. "No, but I always wanted to get one. I had this life plan. Tattoo was step four, after I made it and had a healthy bank account. I was well on my way."

  "Money's still there."

  She shook her head. "It isn't. Somehow, they were able to drain my accounts. Even my savings are gone."

  He shrugged. "No worries, Code will get it back for you with interest." He took her wrist and laid her arm straight on the surface, wiping it down with alcohol. "So, you like to sketch. Did you sketch your own tattoo for when you made it?"

  She shook her head and watched as he quickly sketched her a thin chain. It appeared fragile. Delicate. As if it could be broken easily. She shook her head again. "Not like that. I want something strong. Unbreakable. A reminder to both of us."

  Ink's gaze moved over her face with something like respect. He nodded his head, just a jerk of his chin, but she could tell he was pleased with her. He tossed the piece of paper and sketched another chain. This one had thick links. Not gold. Titanium was silver, and when he drew the bracelet part, he based the links on that alloy in its raw form. There were little jagged bumps along the line of the chain. She loved it.

  "We'll do this in a charcoal silver effect." He turned her hand over and took the carefully prepared paper with copies of each fingerprint. He placed them over the smudges on her wrist and left the distinct imprints. He tatted those first in black, carefully following each whirl until she had the imprint of four fingers spread across each wrist. He did a print of Reaper's thumb on top of her wrist, right where his thumb had pressed into her. Around the top of her wrist was the chain.