“Come on, Old Jack. Is that the best you can do?”

It was probably a stupid thing for me to taunt him like that. I wasn’t exactly in a position where arrogance would benefit me. In fact, I was very much in the kind of position where running my mouth might get me killed. But I couldn’t help it. There are worse things than dying, and considering the hell Jackal had put me through already, I was pretty sure that making it easier to beat my ass would be one of those worse things.

If I was gonna go out here, like this, cuffed to this chair and covered in my own blood, then I was gonna put up whatever fight I could. Even if that meant grinning up at Jackal through every punch and hoping he didn’t knock my teeth out in the process. Last thing I needed, on top of every other indignity I’d suffered, was to leave a bad-looking corpse.

Won’t be open-casket, anyway, I thought as a white arc flash split the air where Jackal’s fist had swung down on me a moment before. The pain in my cheekbone was searing, blinding. At least he’s not hitting me in the ribs.

Despite his age, Jackal wasn’t showing any signs of slowing down. Maybe he was enjoying it too damn much to feel the strain. Or maybe all that coke he’d snorted before he came here had done wonders for his stamina. Dude was always a fiend for it, enough that I knew how to spot the signs of his use.

There was the tell-tale sniffling, of course. A grinding of his teeth and a little twitch in his right eye. But the big one was the snapping. It was incessant, a nervous tic. Both hands would go at it in quick succession, following no particular rhythm—just a frantic flurry to accompany all that pacing he did around the room.

Yeah, Jackal was totally strung out. Which wasn’t good news for me. It meant he’d be feeling no pain, not even after he’d split his knuckles on my skull. It also meant there’d be no reasoning with him, no bargaining, no negotiation possible. He’d come here for sweet revenge, and he wasn’t gonna stop short of achieving that goal. And the cops here sure as hell weren’t going to stop him, which meant nothing stood between him and me. And nobody else knew where I was.

Well, no one except Delfino. And he was the one who’d put me here. Fat chance of him riding in to save the day.

Wasn’t that what I’d come here for—to save Lucy? And look where I was… I’d become the one who needed saving. I couldn’t have felt more pathetic, or more sorry for myself, if I’d tried. But who had time to try when getting your face pounded in occupied so much of your time? Seemed to me I had a full schedule.

“You always did have a mouth on you,” Jackal said, wheezing a laugh as he stalked around me again. I couldn’t keep the bastard in my line of sight. Not that it mattered. It was unnerving as shit, sure, but I wasn’t about to let him see that. “Wonder if you’ll still be as talkative once you’re missin’ all your teeth.”

That wasn’t an idle threat, and unlike the other indignities he’d inflicted upon me, that one made me shudder just to think about. There’s something about the idea of losing your teeth that makes you react all visceral. Dunno why that is—maybe it’s because a full set is such an integral part of daily life. Or maybe it’s a predator thing. What good is a wolf without its jaws?

I must’ve gone quiet for longer than I’d thought, because when Jackal came back around, he had this triumphant smirk plastered across the creased leather of his face. “What’ve I told you, boy? Never let ‘em know your weak spot. Silence can be just as telling as loose lips.”

Made me wonder if he was all the more intent on doing it now. Behind my lips, I cleared blood from my teeth with my tongue.

“Do your worst,” I spat, flashing my pearly whites, grinning at him through the pain. If I was going to bite it here, I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing that he broke me. “You hit like a bitch, anyway.”

Jackal let out a wheezing laugh that sent a shudder through me. The kind of laugh you hear when something really shouldn’t be as funny as it is—that almost mad laugh that leaves you in tears. I felt my skin crawl as he paced around me, circling like a dog about to lunge for my throat at any moment. I could feel my heart hammering away, and I thanked whatever god there might be out there that I couldn’t feel most of the pain I was in right now.

“You’ve really got some fucking balls, don’t you, Leo?” he said, kneeling down in front of me, just far enough away from my face so that I couldn’t slam my head into his teeth. “I’m honestly kind of glad that you’ve lasted this long—I wouldn’t have wanted to this have been too easy. I wanted to enjoy every second of this… and when you do break, it’ll be that much more satisfying.”

Another flash of white spread across my vision as Jackal drove another punch right into my jaw, and for a moment, I could have sworn that he’d actually knocked one of my back teeth loose, another copper gush splashing over my tongue. I think maybe I blacked out for a second. My head turned so quickly the muscles in my neck burned and seized. It seemed like at least a few moments had passed before I could think straight again.

“That feel like a bitch to you?” he asked as I blinked through the white haze that had overtaken my vision. He leaned down once more to look right into my eyes. “Or do I need to beat your ass a little harder?”

“Fuck you,” I snarled, rearing my head back and hurling a glob of spit and blood right into that smug prick’s face. If this was going to be the end, I was going to go down like a goddamn legend—not that anyone would ever know about it.

Jackal stared at me wordlessly, my blood dripping down into the stubble that lined his jaw. He blinked through the crimson trickle that had gotten into his eye almost like it wasn’t even there. His smile was gone, his expression eerily impassive, devoid of emotion as he stood straight once again and started to wipe the insult from his face.

“You’re going to wish you never did that,” he said, his voice just barely louder than a whisper. Slowly, deliberately, reached behind his back and grabbed something that made my stomach turn. In his hand was a knife I’d only ever seen him use once before, during the few times I’d witnessed him “work” on someone that had fucked over the club.

His eyes flashed, brighter and more menacing than that blade. “I was hoping to make this last a lot longer.”

I don’t think I’d really let the reality of my imminent death sink in until that moment. The true and undeniable fact that I wasn’t going to make it out of this room alive hit me like a ton of bricks as I saw my reflection in the blade of Jackal’s knife. Despite my best efforts to the contrary, I looked fucking terrified. I’d seen that look in other men’s eyes before, right before the end came for them. That grim acceptance. I knew my time was up.

End of the line, Leo.

But then… it wasn’t.

As Jackal turned toward me, he stopped mid-stride, his head cocked like an animal that had just heard the telltale sound of a predator nearby. I narrowed my eyes, panting, confusion compounding my dread of what was about to happen. I strained to hear whatever had made him halt so suddenly, his attention turned away from me for the first time since this little torture session of ours had started.

At first there was nothing, not a sound that I could hear that would have made Jackal go so still, his muscles taut as though he would need to spring into action in an instant. But then, as I strained to listen, I heard something from outside of the holding cell. It was so far away, so distant, but the longer I waited, the closer it became.

Shouting.

There was something going on outside of the holding cell in another part of the sheriff’s station, something that was getting those deputies riled up. I wasn’t sure why something like that would have gotten Jackal so tense, and for a moment, I was thinking that maybe the coke was fucking with his brain, making him paranoid. He was starting to look jumpier and jumpier as the seconds ticked by and the sounds of what was definitely some kind of struggle began to grow closer.

An odd thought crossed my mind as I listened to the sounds of shouting, crashing, cries of pain, all becoming clearer and clearer, even from within my closed-off little corner of the station: Was someone coming to save me? I wanted to kick myself for even thinking something so stupid. No one who gave a damn even knew I was here, and the only person who did was probably either dead, or well on her way to being dead right now. But whether I believed it or not, someone was sure as hell starting a commotion outside.

“Shit,” Jackal hissed, backing away from me in the direction of the door. His lips were dry and cracked, and when he wet them, the lower one split open in a thin half-moon of blood.

I didn’t speak. Whatever Jackal thought was happening outside was enough to get him ready to make a break for it… but the question was whether or not he’d take the time to finish me off before then.

As I watched the expressions change on his face in rapid succession, that cold look toward me made me realize that Jackal himself was pondering that very same question. He flipped the knife over once, twice, three times, snapping the fingers of his opposite hand nervously as he stared at me, weighing his chances of doing me in before whoever was outside found him.

Another crash echoed down the hallway—this one much closer than any of the others—and seemed to make Jackal’s decision for him as he turned his gaze from me. “Later. We’ll finish this later,” he said, and bolted out of the holding cell.

And just like that, I was alone, feeling like I had just watched a scene from a foreign film with only half of the subtitles in English—and even those didn’t even explain what the hell had just happened. Why had Jackal been so freaked out? Who was out there making such a damn scene in the rest of the sheriff’s station? And why the hell was this shit happening now?

The sounds of conflict outside of the holding cell had stopped and all that was left was an eerie quiet that left me with a cold feeling of dread. If whoever was out there was bad enough to have Jackal run off with his tail between his legs, I wasn’t sure I wanted to meet them, even if I did have them to thank for saving my life. For all I knew they were just as likely to slit my throat as Jackal or Sheriff Rigby was. And it was that sense of uncertainty that made me almost wish that Jackal would come back. At least then I would know how this would play out.

A few moments passed in silence, broken only by the occasional—extremely muffled—sounds of someone speaking close by. The voices themselves were too distant to make out or even recognize if that were even possible, but something in my gut had me wanting to follow after Jackal, sure that whoever came through that door next wouldn’t be any friend of mine.

If only I’d known.

“In here,” a voice called from the hallway, the first discernible one I’d heard since Jackal had made a break for it. But as I began to hear more and more voices joining the first, I felt my stomach sink down into my feet. I could recognize most of the people in the hall—after all I’d spent the last few years practically living with them, drinking and wearing their colors on my vest.

I’m so fucked, I thought, a cold sensation taking hold of my chest as I realize exactly who my saviors were.

The light that had once poured in from the hallways was suddenly obscured by a mountain of a man—the kind of man you expect would need to duck in order to get through a doorway just from looking at him. I’d known him for longer than I could even remember, and that fact only made me more terrified of what would be coming next as the Sergeant-at-Arms for the Hounds of Hell stood before me, arms crossed and eyes narrowed as I sat tied to a chair.

“Evenin’, sunshine,” Crush grunted, chuckling as he let his gaze wander over me. If I weren’t in such deep shit, I might have even shared in the chuckle with him, but the truth was that I wasn’t sure I was any safer now than when Jackal had pulled that knife on me. After everything that had happened between me and the club, I was sure that I wouldn’t be leaving this cell in one piece. “Looks like you had a rough night.”

“Looks like it’s about to get worse,” I said, briefly casting my eyes toward the door where I could see a few more silhouettes of at least three of the other members of the Hounds of Hell, all trying to get a look at what was about to happen. “Not sure which one would have done a worse number on me before I kicked it, you or Jackal.”

“Jackal did that to you?” Crush asked with an air of skepticism, his bushy eyebrows raised, tilting his head just slightly to get a little at me from another angle. “You don’t look cut up none. Jackal would have cut you good.”

“He was about to before—” I stopped mid-sentence, staring at Crush and then the other club members gathered outside of the door. “Before you all showed up.”

“Yeah, pieces of shit like him usually don’t stick around to get what’s coming to them,” the enormous biker said, shaking his head. “We’ve been tracking his sorry ass all over.”

“Tracking him? Why? I thought that—”

“What? That we worked for him still?” Crush let out a short barking laugh. “After what that bastard did, he’s lucky he isn’t dead already. Only reason he isn’t is because he turned tail like the coward he is the moment we found out about that little girl. We’ve been on his trail for days, and figured this would be one of the only places he knew well enough to try to lay low in… Didn’t expect to find you here though.”

I felt like everything that I’d based the last few weeks of my life on was suddenly crumbling around me. As I sat there, doing my best to process what was happening, Crush walked around to the back of the chair and slid the blade of his knife between my hands and the zip-tie that bound them to the chair. My wrists stung where I’d rubbed the skin raw pulling at the plastic but for the first time in the last few hours I was free… but was I safe?

“You’ve got a lot of explaining to do,” Crush growled, coming back around to face me, knife still in hand. “And a hell of a lot to answer for—running off on your brothers…”

“I get that,” I said, standing up tentatively from the wooden chair, rubbing at the red, chafed skin of my wrists. “But right now, I need a bike.”

“What the hell for?” the Sergeant-at-Arms asked. “You got some hot fucking date to get to? I need some fucking answers, Leo.”

“And you’re going to get them, I swear,” I promised, looking up into the mountainous man’s coal-colored eyes. “But right now I need you to trust me, Crush.”

I swallowed, feeling the seconds of silence that follow pass by like they were hours, a snarl crossing the almost bear-like man’s face, his tree-trunk arms flexing as he considered my request. He had no damn reason to trust me, not one and for a moment I even expected him to tie me back to the chair for even asking.

“Done,” he said finally, one simple syllable that I barely even registered at first.

“Seriously?” I asked, shocked that he’d even considered it after everything that I’d done, as far as the Club was concerned I would have been persona-non-grata, completely cut off after I’d ran like I had… and he was just going to give me a ride without hardly any consideration?

“You’re a brother, Leo,” he said, his expression stern, “you’ve always got our trust.” He dug into his pocket and pulled out a set of keys that he threw in my direction, barely catching them. “You can take my ride. Just don’t make me regret this.”

“I won’t,” I said, giving the massive man a nod before heading straight for the door. The other members of the club parting like the Red Sea as I approached.

Outside of the holding cell, I began to get a better picture of what had happened while Jackal was torturing me. The unconscious forms of the deputies were currently all being dragged into what looked like an office just off of the main lobby, their hands bound by their own handcuffs as a few other members of the Hounds of Hell stood watch over them. Tables and chairs had apparently been the only real casualties of this little dust-up, and I was honestly surprised there hadn’t been more damage—though even I could admit that killing a bunch of deputies and a sheriff would have been a bad move even for guys like the Hounds of Hell.

Crush’s bike wasn’t hard to spot, a Harley Davidson XL1200 that he’d won a few years back in a poker game—that damn thing was Crush’s fucking pride and joy, which made him giving it to me to use all the more unbelievable. The engine roared to life as I turned the key in the ignition and for the first time since my accident I was back in the saddle and damn did it feel good.

“Don’t worry Lulu,” I said as I pulled the bike out onto the street. “I’m coming.”