Peyton stepped out of the van as Ironside and the rest of the Knights backed their bikes into parking spot. As the rest of the members stepped out of the clubhouse, the rescue crew began to pull the women out of the van. Most were dressed, a few were naked, but all had a haunted look.

 

“Jesus,” Jammer muttered, pulling one of the women aside. “Look at their arms.”

 

Peyton waited and watched as the Knights continued to pull women out of the van. Melissa would be one of the last out of the van, and when she finally appeared, Peyton shoved her way forward and pulled her into a hug. “I’m so sorry!” she sobbed.

 

Melissa pulled out of her grasp and looked at her, her face devoid of emotion. Ironside took Melissa by the arm and pulled her out of the way then turned her arms over to look inside. “Fuck…” he breathed. The inside of her arms were badly bruised and covered in tracks. “Did she use drugs before?” he asked.

 

“No! Neither of us did!” Peyton cried then began to sob into her hands. “This is all my fault!”

 

Ironside turned Melissa’s face one way then the other. He could tell she was probably lovely, once, but the drugs had started taking their toll already. “What did they give you?”

 

Melissa looked at him a moment. “Heroin,” she said softly. “I tried to fight them, but there were too many of them and I couldn’t stop them.” She began to sob. “They raped me, and forced me to take drugs, over and over again, until I stopped fighting. Then they sold me to men.”

 

Ironside looked to Peyton. She stood there, tears running down her cheeks, her face twisted in anguish. “Get them inside, find them some clothes, and get them something to eat and drink if they want it,” he ordered. “Go with them. Find out what we can do to help them.”

 

Peyton sniffed, trying to gather herself. “What are you going to do with them?”

 

He grimaced and shook his head. “Fuck if I know.”

 

***

 

“Are you fucking crazy?” Whiteshirt raged. “Twenty-two whores strung out on drugs! How the fuck are we supposed to deal with that?”

 

“What would you have me to, leave them?” Ironside roared in return.

 

“You were going to rescued one girl, and you come back with twenty-two!”

 

“I wasn’t leaving them!”

 

“Are you a fucking boy-scout now? Anyone of these bitches will sell their mother for another hit! I worried about a mole before? Now there are twenty-two of them here! Can’t you see that?”

 

“They’re only staying long enough until we can find someplace to put them.”

 

“And how long is that going to take? Ironside, Bjorn, these are women who need rehab. There probably isn’t a clinic in town that can take that many at once! How long before they can accept them all?” Whiteshirt sighed. “Look, I understand what you’re doing. I don’t like what the Saracens did to those poor women any more than you do. And yes, we’re fucking them pretty good by taking that much ass off the street. That’s probably going to cost forty to fifty grand a day. But at what cost? What if a few of them go back the Saracens?”

 

“They’re in a couple of bedrooms with guards. They’re not going to learn much that way.”

 

“So we’re going to keep them locked in two rooms, with guards? For how long?”

 

“As long as it takes.”

 

Whiteshirt gritted his teeth in annoyance and looked away. “Fine. I’ll start working the phones and see if we can find someplace that can take these bitches.”

 

“I’ll have Dolch post extra security at our bars, houses and clubs because the Saracens are aren’t going to take this lying down.”

 

***

 

“I want to see Melissa Booker,” Peyton said to the hulking, bearded, Knight on the door.

 

“Whiteshirt said nobody is supposed to go in our out.”

 

“Is she in there or the other room?”

 

“I don’t know. What’s she look like?”

 

“Like all the other women in there. Let me look.”

 

“No.”

 

Peyton gritted her teeth. “I’ll be back,” she snapped and turned away, intending to find Ironside and ask him to allow her access to Melissa. As she entered the main room of the clubhouse, she saw Dolch and adjusted her course. He had warmed up to her considerably in the last few weeks and maybe he would help.

 

“Dolch, I need a favor.”

 

“What?”

 

“I want to see Melissa but Whiteshirt told the guard at the door that nobody could see them. Can you help me, please? I have to see her.”

 

Dolch stared at her over his beer a moment. “Sure. Come on.” He led her back to the rooms. “Let her see Melissa.”

 

“Whiteshirt said—”

 

“This is on me,” Dolch interrupted.

 

The man stood his ground a moment, then stepped aside. “Thank you,” Peyton murmured and opened the door. Eleven sets of eyes looked toward her, but none of them were Melissa. She closed the door and stepped across the hall and opened the second door.

 

“May I speak to her alone?” she asked Dolch. “We’ll go in one of the other rooms, where he can watch us. I’ll even leave the door open. Please!”

 

Dolch could see the pain in her eyes and hear it in her voice. “Sure. Leave the door open.”

 

“Dolch, I don’t think—”

 

“I’ll watch them myself,” Dolch said, giving Peyton a nod.

 

Peyton entered the room and closed the door. “What are they going to do with us?” one of the women asked.

 

“I don’t know. Get you help.”

 

“Why?” another asked.

 

“Because they’re not the Saracens.”

 

“What do they expect from us?”

 

“I don’t know. Probably nothing. They may ask you some questions. The Saracens and the Knights are at war. They promised to rescue her,” she said as she nodded at her friend, “but they took all of you, as well. They didn’t have to do that. If they ask you any questions, you should answer them.”

 

“And if I don’t?” another woman asked. “I’m not going to turn on my club.”

 

“The club that made you a whore? The club that initiated you? The one that has made you a drug addict? That club?” Peyton asked.

 

“I’ll tell them anything they want to know,” the first woman said. “Fuck the Saracens! I don’t owe them shit!”

 

Peyton nodded. “Come with me. We need to talk,” she said, taking Melissa by the hand. “Get someone in there to talk to them,” she said when she stepped into the hall. “They’re ready to spill their guts. I don’t know if they actually know anything, but you might pick up a tidbit or two.”

 

Dolch looked at her a moment. “Can I trust you to leave you alone?”

 

Peyton nodded. “Yes.”

 

“Leave the door open,” he reminded her before he opened the door and stepped into the room.

 

Peyton steered Melissa into another bedroom and they sat on the bed, leaving the door open as agreed. “I’m sorry,” she said as she stared at her feet. “I never intended for this to happen. I should have listened to you.”

 

Melissa rubbed her hands over her arms. “I know.” She looked to Peyton. “Can I get a hit?”

 

“Melissa, no,” Peyton moaned. “I want to get you cleaned up. I’m going to find you help, I promise. We’ll get you clean again, I swear!”

 

“I’ll never be clean again.”

 

“You will! I’ll do anything to help you. You just have to want to!”

 

Melissa shook her head slowly. “No. Can you get the hit?”

 

“No. I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

 

“Can’t? Or won’t?”

 

“Both! The Knights, they’re not like the Saracens. They don’t do drugs, not the hard stuff anyway. They’re cleaning up.”

 

“So you left me with the Saracens while you got out?”

 

“No! I’ve been searching for you since you disappeared. I’ve been trading information to the Knights in exchange for getting you out! I wouldn’t leave you behind. You’re my best friend, my only friend, in the world.”

 

“Peyton, I need the hit! I have to have it! You don’t know what it’s like!”

 

Peyton held her friend. “I know, but I’m here for you. We’ll get through this together.”

 

“I’m not as strong as you, Peyton. I can’t do this. I need it! Just one more, okay? Then I can start going clean.”

 

“I can’t. I have no way to get it for you.”

 

“A half hit, then. The Knights, they—”

 

“I told you, they don’t run drugs.”

 

“But—”

 

“Melissa! Listen to me! Ironside, the President, he’s going to get us out of town. We’ll go somewhere and we’ll get you cleaned up. Then it’ll be just the two of us again. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? But we have to start now, today, getting you clean. I know it’s going to be hard, but you can do it! I know you can!”

 

Melissa stared at Peyton for many long moments. “I don’t blame you for what happened. You were always there to take care of me.”

 

“Yes! Just like in high school, I’ll protect you now, but you have to help me. You have to want to be free of this!”

 

She nodded. “I want to be free. I want to forget. I don’t want to feel the drugs eating at me anymore.” She stood and looked at herself in the mirror. “Look at me,” she said softly as tears began to leak from her eyes.

 

“I know,” Peyton said softly, standing beside her. “But once you’re clean you’ll look like yourself again.”

 

“On the outside maybe,” she said softly, pulling at her hair.

 

“On the inside, too.”

 

“No. Never on the inside.” She looked at Peyton and gave her a ghost of a smile. “You were always a good friend. The best. I’m sorry for all this.”

 

Peyton sobbed, then gathered herself. “Can you forgive me? I never should have dragged you into this.”

 

She smiled. “Yes, I forgive you.”

 

Peyton sobbed and held her. “I’m so, so sorry. I’ll make it up to you, somehow.”

 

The two women held each other a moment, sobbing. “I’ll go find out what the club plans to do, when we can leave,” Peyton said after a moment, pulling out of Melissa’s embrace and wiping her eyes.

 

“Where are we going?”

 

“Anywhere you want.”

 

Melissa thought a moment. “Florida. I want to go where it’s warm all the time, and the sun shines. Can we go to Florida?”

 

“Florida sounds perfect.”

 

Melissa smiled. “It’ll feel good to leave all this behind.”

 

“Yes! Yes! You and me, the two musketeers! Florida won’t know what hit them!”

 

Melissa nodded. “I like the way that sounds,” she said quietly, walking towards the door.

 

They stepped out into the hall and turned back toward the room where she was being kept, but then rushed the guard.

 

Peyton saw it all happen in slow motion. Melissa rushing the guard, pushing him as she grabbed the gun tucked inside his belt at the small of his back. The man turned, grabbing for the gun as Melissa lunged back and brought the weapon around and up, jamming it under her chin. Peyton began to run, trying to get to Melissa as the gun moved toward her head, but she was too slow, far too slow.

 

The discharge of the weapon was deafening, louder than her own screams. As the top of Melissa’s head exploded she felt the spray of blood hit her in the face, Melissa’s body already beginning to fall as she grabbed the hand holding the gun, trying to pull it away before she could squeeze the trigger.

 

“No!” Peyton shrieked, falling to the floor beside Melissa, screams echoing around her as her world returned to normal speed. “No! Why?” she cried as she hunched over her dead friend.

 

***

 

“What the fuck was that?” Ironside shouted as he and Whiteshirt scrambled back from the table and bolted from kirche. He shoved his way through the gathering crowd as Dolch and Snap stood grim-faced over Melissa as Peyton wailed and rocked.

 

“What happened?” Ironside asked.

 

“She grabbed my gun,” Snap said grimly.

 

“What was she doing outside the room?” Whiteshirt growled. “I said nobody in or out!”

 

“That was me,” Dolch said softly when Snap didn’t answer. “Peyton wanted to talk to her.”

 

“Goddamnit! Someday people will listen to me!” Whiteshirt snarled as he shoved his way out of the crowd.

 

Ironside knelt.

 

“Why?” Peyton sobbed. “Why’d she do it? We rescued her! Why?”

 

“I don’t know.”

 

“This is all my fault. All of it!” She made a grab for the gun still in Melissa’s hand, intending to join her friend, but Ironside’s paw of a hand grabbed the gun and wrenched it from her grip, handing it up to Snap. “This isn’t your fault!”

 

“It is!”

 

“It’s not!” he said firmly, standing and dragging her to her feet.

 

“No! I’m not leaving her! No!” she screamed, fighting and clawing to get away.

 

“Stop!” he roared. His bellow cut through the fog of pain and she stopped fighting, standing there, staring at him with wide eyes. “She was dead before we ever got there,” he said firmly, taking her by the shoulders. “She just hadn’t killed herself yet. Do you hear me? She died weeks ago! If she hadn’t killed herself today, it would have been tomorrow, or the next day! You couldn’t have stopped it!”

 

“I would have kept her safe,” she said softly. “I would have protected her.”

 

“You can’t protect her from herself!”

 

She stared at him, her face twisting, before she threw herself into his arms and sobbed uncontrollably.