Twenty-four hours pass. There’s been no more contact since the video message that tore out my heart and left me with a million other questions. Ruck might still be alive, but fuck, seeing him there like that, trussed up, at their mercy, it fucking hurt almost as much as if it were me in that chair.
And where the fuck is Sadie? I need to know what they’ve done with her. What they’re doing to her. But they didn’t allude to her at all. They know how to push up my anxiety and desperation even further, and they’re maximizing every trick in the book.
There has been no sign of The Wolves out on the roads. No movement or life at their den. We’re basically under their command in every which fucking way, and it sucks like a hooker on crack.
JJ has paced HQ back and forth, and I’m surprised he hasn’t left tracks on the hardwood floor. I’ve checked my cell more times than I can count. Checked that it’s on. Checked that it’s charged. Checked that I can hear the damn, fucking thing even though I’ve been staring at it in my palm practically the whole time. But still, it stays silent. They’re holding out. Making us sweat, and waiting until the cracks of desperation appear. After nearly forty-eight hours without sleep: Dev with his face half ripped off, and my brother and girl kidnapped by a rival gang, I’d say I’m bordering on the brink of crazed, dangerous insanity.
I lay back on the bed, still able to smell Sadie’s perfume on the pillow. I shouldn’t have gone. I should have stayed at HQ with her, but I didn’t think she’d need babysitting. Fucking woman. Why couldn’t she have just listened when I told her it wasn’t safe? She’s learned the hard way. We all fucking have.
Every second that ticks by, I wait for Ruck to tap on the door. Usually, he would stop in to grab a drink when he was passing, or to offer me one of the whores he takes back to his room almost every night. He uses sex to forget. It’s ironic really. Sex was the soundtrack to our childhood, and the meaningless, cheap whores and hang-arounds in our everyday lives now, are about as close to our teenage years as it could get. I did everything I could to stay away from those memories—to stop them invading my adult life. But the women are part of this life. The club whores and willing pussies are exactly that. Nothing more, nothing less. I’m no saint. But taking different women back to my room every night, sometimes in multiples of three or four, was of no interest to me. That’s how I got mixed up with Kimmie. She showed me that I could allow myself to be cared for—to be desired—in a weird, warped kind of way, and although it wasn’t conventional, and it certainly wasn’t life altering, it was comfortable. I never loved her, and to be honest, I never thought I would know how to love until Sadie came along.
Tex knocks and pushes the door open, standing in the doorway with his hands on his hips.
“No word?” he asks, and if it were anyone else, I would have slammed the door in their face after breaking their fucking nose.
“No, Tex.” I open my hands and shrug. “Do you think I’d be taking a fucking nap if we had word?”
He ignores my sarcasm. “Prez is going crazy up there. It ain’t gonna be long before he blows.”
“That would make two of us,” I grumble, swinging my legs off the bed and sitting on the edge with my head bowed. I rub at my temples. “No sightings?”
He mirrors my earlier image, holding his hands open wide, and shrugging. “Nothing, would’a told ya if so.”
“No luck with Len?”
“Dude, you knocked all the info out of his fucking head. They’re keeping him in an induced coma until the swelling goes down.”
“Fuck.” I jump up off the bed, frustrated as hell, and feeling my sanity slipping away with every helpless minute that ticks by. I pour a generous measure of Jack, knocking it back, hoping to gain some kind of clarity—some insight into what the answer to this living nightmare is. “Fuck this shit,” I snap, banging the glass down onto the cabinet. “What the fuck are we doing here, Tex, huh?” I throw my arms out, mumbling curses under my breath to fill the quiet room. The silence kills me. I want loud. I want gun shots and cheers. I want Rev and Hobo’s heads on a fucking plate in the middle of a banquet table.
I fling open the doors of my wardrobe and load up with the guns I had taken out yesterday. Guns earmarked especially for Wolves, which were put back away at JJ’s insistence.
“Ram…” Tex says calmly. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“I’m doing what I should have done twenty-four hours ago.” I strip off my t-shirt and cut, and strap on a holster, checking the ammo and clipping both guns securely in. I pull on a clean, loose fitting black t-shirt, covering them over, and shrug on my cut—locked, loaded, and ready to go. “My brother and my girl are missing, Tex.” I spin around to face him. “They’re not just missing. They’re not on a fucking vacation, drinking cocktails on a fancy beach somewhere. They’ve been taken, kidnapped, dragged away kicking and fucking screaming, by a rival gang.”
Tex drops his head, then looks up at me with a tilted gaze. “I know, bro, I—”
“A rival gang that just a few days ago, we tortured two of their members and sent them back to their VP, back to their flea-infested den, along with the body of a pedophile who we fed his own eyeballs to!”
“Ram…”
“Have you got any idea how fucking crazy that sounds?”
“I’m hearin’ ya, man. I really am, but—”
“And our Prez, Jed fucking James, wants us to sit and wait? Fuck. That. Shit.” I shoulder him out of the way, pushing through the open door. Once in the hall, I turn back to him. “I don’t care if I have to scour every tiny inch of this earth, I’m going to find them before something really fucking bad happens. I’ve been tormenting myself with the unthinkable all fucking night. The most horrendous thoughts and scenarios have been running through my head ever since I found out they’d been taken. Every painful, waking second I see them. Their faces. I can smell their fear, Tex, man. I can fucking smell it.”
“You can look all day and night, bro, but you ain’t gonna find anything. They’re locked down…”
“It has to be better than sitting here like a fucking chump, Tex.” I step toward him, fighting the urge to knock his head off his shoulders for making so much sense. Because nothing really makes sense here, but I know everything he tells me is right. “This is not who we are. This is not who I am.”
“I know. It’s all fucking wrong, Ram.” He closes one of his big fucking hands around my shoulder. “I’m with you, brother. Where do we start?”
“We start at her house. Maybe they’ve contacted her stepdad or something. He’s fucking loaded. They could’a decided she was worth a ransom attempt.”
“What are we waiting for?” He rubs his hands together. “Let’s go.”
We leave without telling JJ where we’re headed.
He’d stopped pacing the fucking floors, and Lia had finally managed to get him to sit still for long enough to eat. The more I sat in my room and thought about it, the more I was pissed at him. Every second that passed, there was the possibility that more bad shit was happening to Ruck and Sadie, and I didn’t know which hurt me more.
Ruck is more than capable of taking a little pain. Sure, he’ll be scared, but he won’t fucking show it. He’s clever, though. I know he can toe the line and not rile them up. It’s afterward I’m worried about with him. When we get him home. He was fighting some wicked fucking demons before he was whipped away, and I’ll bet they’re giving him some more to contend with. But he will hold fast, sit tight, and wait for us to show. He knows how this life works. But Sadie. My sweet, raven-haired killer. She has no idea of this life. She might be tougher than most women. Christ, she’s seen more, killed more in the last week than she has in her whole lifetime and she has an epic fight inside of her. But can she handle the evil retribution of a rival club? Vengeance in its worst form?
No matter how pissed I am at JJ, I can’t help feeling fucking awful for the guy. If he’s feeling half as helpless as me, he’ll be dying inside, while trying to hold it together for the whole damn club. I can’t imagine what it’s like to have a daughter, only to lose her as a child, gain her back, then lose her again. I need to know what the fuck went down all those years ago, but for now, we have more important shit to sort out. Going back over the old times and piecing together puzzles can wait.
Tex and I pull into the driveway of Sadie’s house, and I chuckle to myself when I see the Bentley sitting there with the flat tire. Shame. Daddy’s Bentley is disabled. I laugh.
“What’s so fucking funny?” Tex asks as he cuts the engine of his truck next to me.
“Nothing, man.” I jump off, squaring my shoulders and getting ready for a fucking standoff.
“We likely gonna rumble here, Ram?”
“Always a possibility, my man,” I mumble, banging my fist on the door.
Tex peers through the front windows to look for any sign of life. “Don’t think he’s here.”
“Then we had better find a way in, ‘cos I ain’t leaving here until I have some kind of way forward.”
The door flings open and the fucking idiot that I had a standoff with here last time is blocking the entryway, legs apart, arms braced, gun ready and pointed directly at me. Both me and Tex draw our guns immediately, and we all stand there in silence as each of us contemplates their next move. I know Tex will follow my lead. But I’m not sure of this guy, Nate. He’s built like a fucking rhino, covered in tats, and I’m guessing he’s ex-military.
“We gonna stand here all day or you gonna let us in?” I ask him, narrowing my eyes.
“If they’re the two choices, we’ll stay right where we are…” he answers, his gaze unwavering and void of humor.
“I’m not here to cause trouble…” It’s my way of saying ‘put down your gun, asshole, and we can get on with the task at hand.’
“Then you’ll lower your guns.” His voice is flat, and I know without question that he will shoot to kill if he feels it’s warranted. Hell, I don’t know the fella—maybe he will shoot to kill just for the hell of it. Standing here, feeling the minutes tick away, makes me anxious about wasting time. I might as well be back on my bed, staring at the ceiling and catching the smell of Sadie’s perfume every time I move.
I lower my gun. Fucking hating that it feels like I’m backing down, but I’m not here to play ‘who’s got the biggest ego?’. I glance over my shoulder, and Tex follows my lead. Although my gun is lowered, I don’t holster it. “Where’s Vaughn?” I ask, twitching like a motherfucker to shoot this cunt as he’s still aiming his gun front and center of my head.
He narrows his eyes. “Why do you want to know?”
“Because, asshole.” I steel myself, struggling to say the words out loud, let alone to someone I have an instant, raging hatred for. “Sadie is in trouble, and no matter that I think you’re a cunt, and that Vaughn is an even bigger cunt, I don’t think I’m wrong in saying that Sadie is a priority for all of us.”
I watch his expression closely. His eyes don’t change. His forehead doesn’t crease at the mention of Sadie being in trouble. In fact, he doesn’t seem surprised at all. Then a cocky grin touches the corners of his lips, and he blinks slowly. “If she was in trouble, it was your doing, Dalton.” He raises his chin, his aim unwavering, and I’m getting really fucking tired of this game.
“What do you mean, was in trouble?”
“You fucked up,” he laughs. “She left you, man. She saw right through your bullshit, and decided to get out before she got dragged under with you and all your useless fucking biker brothers.” He looks smug now, and I’ve never wanted to fill someone with lead as much as I want to do him right now.
“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.” I lock my arms, my hands shaking with rage. She left me?
“Put your guns away, get back on your bikes, and ride right back to where you came from. Sadie doesn’t want you, asshole. She doesn’t want the crap that comes with the shitty life you offered her, or the responsibility of being your bitch, so do us all a favor and move the fuck on already.”
“You talkin’ shit, man?” Tex pipes up behind me, giving me a moment’s reprieve to figure out what exactly the fuck is going on here. “‘Cos my boy, Ramsey here, is on the fucking edge, and if you’re lying…”
“I ain’t lying. She’s gone. Somewhere safe. Far away from you fuckers.”
“Where’s Vaughn?” I demand. I want to believe the part about her being safe. But the car she used to get to the fight, The Wolves mark… could it be that they don’t really have her? Could it be that she really is fucking smart, and ran as fast and as far away as she could? Hearing this out loud from someone like Nate is an ax to my ego. It hits every little nerve that made me question my worth for Sadie. Could I blame her for not wanting such a volatile life, if she has run? I was selfish to think she’d sacrifice so much. I was stupid to think I deserved her.
“He’s doing his fucking job, and looking after his daughter.”
Tex shuffles his feet, and as Nate glances over at him, I rush forward, shoving my shoulder into Nate’s stomach and taking him to the floor with a thud. It’s a risky move, and totally impulsive, but Tex is fast behind me, and we have him flipped over, face down, and his hands wrenched up his back in seconds. With Tex straddling him, he ain’t goin’ anywhere fast.
“Tell me everything,” I growl, pushing his head sideways into the cold, stone flooring in their entryway.
“Fuck you, Dalton,” he grates out.
I glance over at Tex and roll my eyes. “Tex?”
He grins back at me, wrenching Nate’s arms further up his back and making him cry out.
“Sadie is with Vaughn?” I ask, and his nostrils flare as he realizes he’s going to lose this one. “Is she with VAUGHN?” I roar in his face.
“YES!” he yells back. He closes his eyes immediately, knowing that he lost his composure for that split second, and I sag with relief. I know all I needed to know. She’s safe. The Wolves don’t have her, which is why she wasn’t in the video. I don’t understand how, or why. But, by fuck, am I thankful for this mercy.
“Where are they?” I ask him.
“You can beat the fuck outta me, Dalton, but I ain’t telling you that.”
“You hear that, Tex? An open invitation to beat the fuck outta him.” Tex laughs, and I swing my fist back and plant it square on his jaw. “You wanna tell me now, big man?” I say, grabbing his jaw and yanking his head up to look at me.
He gives a small shake of his head. “Ain’t gonna work,” he mumbles.
“Want me to take over?” Tex asks, and I can hear the excitement in his voice.
“Don’t want him unconscious for days, man.” I laugh under my breath.
“He’s all yours, Ram.”
“Just how I like it.”
Tex laughs to himself as I reign fists on Nate. He refuses to give me an answer, and as I start to feel my knuckles swell, I’m not even sure I’m working him over for an answer anymore. I’m taking out my frustration on him. I’m settling into the relief that Sadie is okay. But I’m not letting this man get away with thinking he’s got one up on me just because he knows where she is, and I don’t. I will find out eventually. But for now, with all the shit that’s happening, maybe it’s better that she’s out of it all. Maybe, as much as it stabs me in the fucking heart, it’s better she’s far removed from this whole war with The Wolves until it’s over. When it’s all done and dusted, and those bastards are buried in the fucking ground, I’ll find her and bring her back. If it’s the last thing I ever do.