Ian sent me away with an emergency bundle and keys to a car that he’d found and kept ready for me. It was an older car, plain and perfect. I owed him everything, which was why I had to get far away from him and Sarah. I felt so guilty for delivering so much terribleness to their doorstep.
They’d called the cops while I was leaving and Ian was going to say he’d shot and killed Coke because he’d broken in and attacked them. I felt horrible and all I wanted to do was get to Thea and get Micah. I’d take him and get as far away as I could.
Driving to Jones on the back roads left me anxious and jumpy. I was scared that at any minute, a gang of motorcycles was going to surround me and push the small car off the road. Visions of what Coke had said still flitted in and out of my brain and it was hard to not be scared. It’d been a long time since I was forced to survive on my own. I couldn’t help but worry that I wasn’t cut out for it anymore.
Nothing happened, though. No motorcycles showed up and no one attacked me. I made it to Jones late that night and checked into a dingy, pay-by-the-hour motel that allowed me to pay in cash and just write my name down in a notebook. Tara Gray wasn’t going to be leaving any great Yelp reviews, that was for sure.
The walls had just as many stains as the carpet and I felt physically ill at the idea of laying across the bed. It wasn’t great, but it would do until the lumber yard opened in the morning.
I spread a couple of the towels across the bed and curled up on top of them, hoping they were cleaner than the sheets. Moonlight lit strips of the room through the vertical blinds and I found myself counting them to keep from thinking about what I’d done earlier in the day.
My whole body felt heavy as I fought to stay positive. Things would be okay. Raptor couldn’t keep looking for me. He had an evil business to run. It’d take him a little time to find out about Coke and he’d be angry, but I was already long gone. He’d have to give up.
I forced myself to imagine life with Micah in the small house we would start out in. He’d go to school and I’d work for a restaurant in town or a family who needed a chef. We’d both come home after work and school and talk about our normal, boring days.
I craved that normalcy more than anything in the world. Never in my life had things just been okay. They’d never left me bored enough to take up a hobby or try my hand at binge watching a TV show. It was time.
I barely slept at all and when I did, I dreamt of Coke’s body slumping over and then coming back to life to haunt me. Just as I fell into a deeper sleep, a car door slamming somewhere outside startled me awake.
I jumped up and raced to the window, expecting to find the entire gang outside my door. There was no one there. Just a clearly drunk man stumbling towards his room at the other end of the motel.
I gave up going back to sleep and took a shower that made me feel dirtier. The lumber yard didn’t open until eight, so I sat around after that, flipping through the eight channels on the old TV in the corner of my room. Six of them were blurry. The two that I could see shook violently every few minutes, but that didn’t stop me from trying to watch the early morning news station for signs of news about Coke or Ian and Sarah.
There was nothing. I hoped that was good.
I packed up the few things I’d brought in with me and headed out at seven. The lumber yard was outside of town, a huge building with an even bigger saw mill behind it. Stacks of lumber surrounded the parking lot and made me feel like I was parking in a fort.
The lot was still empty that early, so I hunkered down in my seat and waited. The radio in the car didn’t work, but it was just as well. I was too keyed up to listen to anything besides the sound of the morning around me. I was eager to get to Micah and eager to get the hell away from civilization for a while.
Thea Geode was the first person to arrive at work that morning. She pulled up in her large red truck and climbed out, holding a cup of coffee and a morning paper between her teeth as her other hand fumbled for the right key.
I got out of the car and slammed the door, alerting her to my presence. I smiled nervously when I got near her. “Hi, Thea.”
Her eyes went wide and she dropped the paper from her teeth. “Cammie! Holy shit! You’re here!”
I was enveloped in a tight, one-armed hug. “Of course I am.”
She gestured to the building behind her. “Want to come in? I have your stuff inside. It’s tucked away in the safe behind my desk. You don’t care about that, though, sorry, I’m just so excited to see you. I didn’t know if I ever would. It’s been years.”
My heart started hammering in my chest. “You still have the bag?”
She looked back at me as she pushed into a small office. “I told you I’d keep it safe as long as you needed me to. I’d never let anything happen to it.”
“What about the boy who came by? Why didn’t you give it to him?”
She sat behind her desk and dropped her coffee and keys on top of stacks and stacks of paper before leaning down and fiddling with something that I couldn’t see. “What boy, Cammie? What are you talking about?”
I clutched at my chest and tugged at the lace top I was wearing. “Micah. I sent him ahead of me. He’s twelve, small. He should’ve been here. He was supposed to be here, Thea. Oh, God.”
She dropped the heavy duffel bag on top of her desk, spilling her coffee, and came over to me. “No one has come here before you for this, Cammie. I don’t know what happened to him, but he didn’t come here.”
I grabbed my hair and tugged. “Maybe he didn’t get the place right. Maybe… Maybe he’s out there, lost. I should’ve made sure he knew the right place. I should’ve been more careful with him.”
She wrapped her strong arms around my shoulders and forced my head onto her shoulder. Thea had the mothering presence of a woman who’d raised twenty children, including fosters and grandchildren. She held me still and whispered calming words next to my ear.
It worked to soothe me, at least a little. I pulled back, calmer, and shook my head. “Micah would’ve gotten the address right. He’s smart. There’s no way he wouldn’t have gotten it right. Which means…”
Her eyes narrowed. “King has him.”
I shifted from foot to foot. “King is dead. A new guy, worse, killed him and took over. Raptor has him.”
“Raptor? Like the dinosaur from that Rugrats show?”
Laughter was the last thing I felt like doing, but I couldn’t help the chuckle that escaped me. “I don’t think so, but I love that, still.”
She bit her lip and went back to the duffel. “There are things in here that you could probably use. I don’t suggest going after him on your own, but I know what it’s like when you love a kid. Just be careful, Cammie.”
I took the bag and hefted it over my shoulder. I had to be careful because Micah needed me, but I didn’t have to do it alone. I gritted my teeth because what I was going to do wasn’t something I actually wanted to do. “I think I can get help.”
She pulled me into another crushing hug and smiled. “Good. Come back and see me when this is all over. Bring that boy with you. I’d love to meet him.”
I left the lumber yard feeling heavier. I drove back to the motel and sat in the parking lot as I went through the bag. Things had been added since I’d seen it last. I should’ve known. Ian and Thea had been dead set on me leaving King’s side. They wanted freedom for me, possibly more than even I did. While I’d just left more clothes and money in the bag, I found a gun, a deadly-looking knife, and a small phone added. The money had doubled in size and there were also other things tucked away that I didn’t take the time to look at. It would make me want to cry over the generosity my friends had shown.
I left everything in the bag but the phone, and added the stuff from the first bag to it. I stashed it in the trunk, where the spare tire should’ve gone under the mat of carpet, and then got back in.
I’d heard about the Devil MC from King over the years and I thought I knew where their compound was, but I wasn’t completely sure. It was south of Jones, a couple hours away. I knew there was a bar a few miles from their property that the brothers had their old ladies run. Devil’s Playground wasn’t a name I could’ve forgotten, so I turned on the phone and looked up the address for it.
I headed there, feeling my stomach turn the whole time. I didn’t know if Jackson would help me, but I had to try. I didn’t trust his cop friend as much as I trusted him. He was mean and nasty tempered, but I knew that. It was the polished, right side of the law friend that I didn’t know anything about.
My eyes grew heavy as I drove and I had to work hard to keep awake. I was exhausted. There was a small, weak part of me that wanted to just go into hiding. I couldn’t do that to Micah, though. He deserved my fighting for him.
Devil’s Playground was a large bar with a neon sign of a woman’s silhouette on a pole acting as its moniker. It was afternoon, but the neon still glowed brightly in a gray sky. The lot was full of trucks and motorcycles, and I had to raise my eyebrows at that. It was the middle of a weekday.
The building was black with red trim. The windows were painted black as well and I found my nerves rocketing up as I parked the car at the edge of the lot, facing the road, and got out. I wasn’t ready to go back into a bar. Probably ever.
I definitely wasn’t dressed for it. In a pair of jeans that covered every inch of my skin and a flowy lace shirt that was way more cute than sexy, I looked like I was heading to a modest musical festival instead of a biker bar. My hair was down and flowing and I’d pinned it back with a flower clip. I’d be lucky if they didn’t laugh me away at the door.
I straightened my clothes and headed towards it, anyway. I hated to admit it, but I needed help if I was going to try to extract Micah from the Wolves. I was a chef, not a spy. I could make the club Oysters Rockefeller, but I couldn’t sneak in and grab Micah.
A huge man sat at a stool by the door, his massive arms crossed over his chest. He took one look at me and raised his eyebrows. “You’re kidding me.”
I shook my head.
“Are you even twenty-one?”
I was twenty-nine, not that a biker bar should’ve cared about carding a woman. “Yes.”
He rolled his eyes. “If you think you know what you’re getting yourself into, go ahead.”
I hesitated and frowned at his knowing chuckle. “Do you know if a guy named Jackson is in there?”
His already high eyebrows climbed even higher. “Navy? Yeah, he’s in there. You sure you want to find him?”
I blew out a big breath and nodded. “Not much of a choice.”
He shrugged and shoved open the massive door. “Good luck.”
I walked into the dark and oppressive bar and was hit with a wave of smoke and the smell of fried food. A buffet at the back of the bar explained the crowd. As did the stage that had two girls slowly dancing and stripping on it. To my left, a long bar hummed with the sounds of bottles and glasses hitting the solid wood bar top.
I stood there, standing out like a sore thumb, looking around for Jackson for what was too long, apparently. Another mountain of a man came over to me and ran his eyes down my body.
“You lost, honey?”
I shoved my hands into my pockets to keep them from shaking visibly. “No. I’m looking for Jackson. The guy outside said he was in here.”
The man tossed his head towards the back of the room and grinned. “Didn’t know Navy was into some hippy-looking pussy.”
I bit back a retort and just trained my eyes on the spot he’d nodded to. “Can I go over?”
“Submissive, too. Fuck. He’s always been a lucky son of a bitch. Go on, baby, and if you get tired of that moody bastard, I’ll be here.”
I hurried away from him, creeped out just enough to start rethinking my plan. I found Jackson sitting in a corner booth, his dark eyes even more arresting in the darkness of the booth. There were other men sitting with him, but I didn’t look away from him.
His face tightened and I watched the hand that was resting on his thigh ball up. He hated me. That didn’t matter, though. I needed him.