The first thing I did was make a detour to the closest hospital fifteen minutes away. I threw the tracker into the bushes right by their emergency entrance.
Ebony and Ivory would be clocking my moves. Considering the condition they left me in, it would be feasible I would seek medical attention. I wanted them to feel secure I wasn’t following them, and I needed to keep the old lady off their radar. Once Ebony and Ivory were paid, they wouldn’t give two shits about my whereabouts. I would be somebody else’s problem then.
The old lady didn’t utter a word the whole way. The only time she communicated with me was to point which direction I was to turn to get to the hospital and then back to her place. She must have been cold, but she didn’t complain.
She was a tough one.
I knew she was sitting back there, her mind trying to grasp why Whisper had been taken and what my involvement in it was.
We made it to her small home, which afforded me the privacy I needed. I was shot and bleeding, my foot was screaming at me, and I had the mother of all headaches. I was realistic. I knew I wouldn’t make it very far unless I got my wounds tended to. Blood loss is a bitch not worth tangoing with.
Now, after pulling up at the bottom of her front porch steps, we dismount and I follow her up. “Switch your outside light on for me,” I grumble, sounding like a bear that’s been poked one too many times.
She does what I ask without a peep as I drop heavily onto her wooden, two-seater swing. I take the sharp blade I’d already removed from my saddlebag and hack the shit out of my leather pants, making a slit up the side. Next, I hack the shit out of my black leather riding boot. I growl and swear like the biker I am while getting the fucking thing off. There ain’t no laces or zipper on it, making this a fucking nightmare. Finally free, I peel my blood-soaked sock off.
When we’d first arrived, the old lady’s eyes had grown when she came back outside, but she didn’t utter a word at the mess my swollen foot was in. She just led the way inside, and I followed on behind as best I could and deposited myself on her cheerful floral high-backed couch.
She’d walked off and returned with two towels, which I was about to royally deface with my blood. With one towel rolled up and placed behind my fucked-up head to keep the damage minimal to her couch, the other was folded and my foot placed on top of it. The red already stained the yellow of the flowers.
And it was all done without a peep from her.
I knew she wasn’t doing it to be nice. I was an unknown until she knew otherwise. She needed to give me a little of her trust and accommodate me because I was her link to Whisper, and she wanted to find out what the hell happened between the two of us.
I’m glad to be seated. Between my fucked-up head and being shot and knocked out, I’m not in a good way. Despite feeling the aftermath of the night, I can’t afford to pass out though. I have to get back on the road. I just haven’t decided which direction I’m heading: Away from my father’s shit, or toward it?
The old lady walks off upstairs, and my eyes wander to the framed photos on the sideboard, standing proud, containing pictures of her Whisper smiling at the camera, the girl I had shot, the person who had introduced herself as Sara several hours ago. There are no other photos of people. This female means a lot to this old woman to have her on display.
Something is so royally screwed up here.
When we’d arrived, she hadn’t even locked her front door, having left in that much of a hurry to find the female she treasured so much. She’d obviously taken off into the night without hesitation.
There’s no man about the house. She didn’t need to tell me she lives alone because her husband or family member would have gone with her, helped her, maybe even searched for her since she is no spring chicken. She had no one to turn to, no transportation, so she took it all upon herself to walk the dark, lonely road in the delusional hope it would lead her to her young friend.
What tipped her off? What made her leave her comfortable chair by the fire, where her craft shit had been discarded on the side table? Whisper sure as hell hadn’t stopped to make a call for help during the time she was fighting for her life. She had stopped to drop a key off and have a nostalgic look at the dead garden, and then she was going to return to the bar once she had relieved herself of the burden of the inheritance.
The old lady proved to me she had no idea what had happened to Whisper, yet she went charging off into the night, ready to face anything head on in only a nightgown and robe, desperate to find her and make sure she was safe. That says a lot to me about their relationship. They are each other’s family. This old lady respects this female, and she is of great worth to her.
Just as my previous thoughts of Whisper begin to rewrite themselves in my head, the woman comes back carrying a laptop and a tumbler of water, handing both to me. I am more grateful for the tumbler of water than she will ever know. I place it on the arm of the couch after nearly draining the contents in one gulp.
“Dallas.”
“Excuse me?”
“My name is Dallas. Just thought you might be more at ease if you knew my name.”
The old lady is wary but seems to think I’m not a threat to her. She turns her back on me, fussing about with the dying fire, breathing new life into it.
I start the laptop up and the screen reveals a headshot of three smiling faces: the two females I have met, the third, a man I haven’t. It was a good day for them, from the looks on their faces.
I focus and get down to business wiping the data clean on my phone, that way, if fuckers one and two get a hold of it, they won’t have my contacts. Then I set the GPS up for my cell.
It takes no time at all, and I’m linked up and have a beat on Whisper’s location. The fucktards look like they’re headed for the Mississippi border. Not too far away for me to catch up.
Feeling overheated, I unzip my leather jacket, taking out Whisper’s and the old lady’s phones, and tuck them between my thigh and the armrest. I throw the jacket down on the couch next to me and strip off my button-up, leaving me in my T-shirt. I swipe my button-up over my face, wiping away beads of sweat and grime, before tossing it next to me.
I’m ready to chase down Ebony and Ivory, but I need answers. Due to my fucked-up state, I’m not being practical about the condition I’m in. I know I’m not thinking as clearly as I should be. I’m working off adrenaline until the crash comes, and it surely would soon. My body temperature is telling me that much.
I look over at the old lady, who has seated herself in her cozy chair as she observes me. She’s wringing the fabric of her robe and is trying to hide how anxious she really is for her friend’s safety. “Miss Catherine…” I needed answers now because this old lady’s reactions to Whisper being abducted tells me I just made a big motherfucker of a mistake, and it won’t stop scratching away at my soul. And then I lay it down hard. “William Dupré is my father.” This is the only way to get an honest reaction out of her to see if she knew anything about him.
She physically blanches at this information I freely handed to her on a silver platter, letting out a little gasp of shock mingled with a look of pure hatred appearing on her old, lined face until she regains her composure.
What the fuck has my father done since I last saw him?
“You have nothing to fear from me. I haven’t been associated with my father in twenty years. I was fortunate enough to be released from his care. I need to hear it all from you now, Miss Catherine. How Whisper and my father knew each other. And I will tell you what I know.” Well, not everything. “Whisper’s life is on the line, and I needed answers yesterday.”
I hear enough of the sordid tale of Whisper and my father to make me feel sick to my stomach. So many fucking memories of my very own are being dredged to the surface. A rage is boiling inside of me, needing an outlet, and I’ve got nothing I can take it out on.
“How old is she?” I need to know how many years she’s been subjected to his abuse.
“Nearly twenty-two. Came to me on her twenty-first birthday, but she be actin’ much older. Her soul’s been to hell and back.”
Around twenty years of his mind-fuckery. And she’s just taken another fucking road trip to hell.
He must have changed states and stolen Whisper by enlisting the help of that dead bitch, not long after I was reluctantly released from his care. He needed somebody to fill my place.
Effectively, my freedom was the ultimate demise of hers.
My tainted blood has held her a prisoner, no doubt torturing her into submission. Christ! She’d only been free for a little over eight months. Now this has happened to her.
I happened to her.
She has already spent too long in those fuckers’ hands. “I’m going after her.”
The old lady is watching me, wondering if she can trust me.
“Is there anybody else coming to her immediate rescue? The longer we sit here, the farther away she gets.”
She comes over and sits beside me. “If you be givin’ me my phone back, I can be callin’ Boxer and Lincoln. I trust dem with her life.”
I hand it over. She makes a call and then another, and nobody answers either call. “Text them both the same message. Tell them it’s an emergency and to call ASAP.” She does as I request, and then I take the phone back out of her hands before she can utter a protest. I need to be in control. If either man calls back, I will answer. “Where are they now?”
She hesitates. I remind her time is wasting. “Most likely on a job.”
“Legal kind?” Who the hell has Whisper gotten herself tangled up with?
She nods.
This is like playing 20 Questions. “Are they the type of friends who are capable of handling themselves?”
She nods.
“Ex-military?”
She waits and then nods hesitantly. “Somethin’ like that.” She probably only knows the bare skeletons of those closets.
“Your friends are the type to respond straight away to a call from you or Whisper, especially when they are away and it’s past midnight?”
“Yes.”
“They are never lost to you, correct?”
She nods.
“This is unusual for either of them to not answer your call or reply by text?”
“Yes.”
Makes me wonder if something has happened to them. Ebony and Ivory had been busy tracking me, knowing my whereabouts—not that far-fetched to be thinking about after what happened already. “Would they be the ones who helped Whisper after my father died?”
She reluctantly nods again.
She knows she has to give me enough because I’m her fucked-up, knight in less-than-shining armor. I’m all she’s got at the moment and she knows it.
“I need my foot cleaned and bandaged, and then I’m out of here. The bad guys have a head start, but I can catch up on my bike.”
She’s up then back with a generous first-aid kit and a basin and gets to work, while multitasking with her own questions. I grit my teeth while she cleans my wound.
“How did you meet the chile?” Jesus. I have to edit this for Whisper’s sake. The old lady still thinks of her as a child.
That was no child fucking me. She was a liberated woman.
It’s making sense now, her pain on my bike when she cried out and tried to cover it up. Whisper thought she’d had her virginity taken by my father, but for whatever reason, he hadn’t yet taken that. He took everything else from her.
I took her virginity.
“She told me her name was Sara when I met her at the bar in town last night. After she closed up, we had a few drinks and talked.” I’m not about to say we fucked, and it was one of the sexiest fucks I’ve had in a long time, if ever.
“I was in town because I was seeking out a woman named Whisper, who I assumed was some old whore my father had taken into his home.”
Miss Catherine winces. “Why be assumin’ this?”
“There was a will.” I wait for her to acknowledge she knew about a will, but she doesn’t. I explain there appeared to be two wills, and there was an inconsistency with my name, Dallas Masson, and Dallas Dupré on them. I hit her with the nutshell version of how I came to no longer be in my father’s care, hence the surname change. I explain Whisper had been presented with her own document leaving my father’s inheritance to her. Still, nothing registers on her face. She has no clue about any of this. Whisper didn’t want to involve the old lady, or she didn’t have time to tell her.
“In death, my father managed to get me tracked down because he wanted to play with me. About three days ago, I sped out of Albuquerque. I hadn’t even cared how he wound up dead. Him no longer breathing was good enough for me.” The old lady had earlier revealed how he’d died. It sounded too good a death for him. He needed to have met No Mercy.
The old lady’s hands tremble as she attends to my foot, bandaging it up. “You said Whisper has been shot.”
And we finally get to the money question.
“Who shot her?”
How the fuck do I handle this and convince her I am trustworthy?
And then her phone starts ringing.
She’s immediately standing, hovering like an annoying bee you want to swat away, while I try to listen to the terrified girl who is trussed up inside a car trunk. All Whisper wants is for Miss Catherine to be safe.
This was the sweet and wild girl I got to know.
I allow the old lady a few words with the female she obviously cares so much for. She calls me by my birth name, which confuses Whisper. We both gave different names when we met at the bar. Would she put two and two together and work out I was the same Dallas she left the letter for, before her night turned to pain and abduction? There’s too much to explain, and no time for explanations now.
I slide the laptop onto the floor, being sure to pick up Whisper’s phone, and I’m up off the couch taking back control of the old lady’s phone, moving away from her for some privacy. I start to sway about, reaching for the sideboard and grabbing a hold of it to steady myself.
Fucking blood loss is catching up to me.
I let her know she’s being tracked as the old lady comes toward me with the glass tumbler. I take it, draining the last bit of water while I move away from her again as I respond to Whisper’s comment, sounding guilty as charged. Then, I’m cursing at her next question, and all I can grunt out is, “There appears to be a misunderstanding.” And if that wasn’t the fucking lamest response to being asked if I had shot her. She assumes correctly that I did, and nothing comes out of my mouth because I can’t deny it.
She asks me if I wanted to kill her. Anger consumes me for hurting her, and I’m cursing and hurling the glass tumbler onto the wooden floor, shattering it, because I did want to kill her after I extracted the information I needed out of her.
I just didn’t know it was my sweet and wild girl.
I can’t reply because the car has stopped, she sounds terrified, and then she’s gone.
The old lady keeps one eye on me as she cleans up my mess, and all I can do is stand here feeling pissed at myself. I could possibly have prevented her abduction if I had taken the time to hunt rather than gone off half-cocked.
I replay Whisper’s words in my head while I try to calm down. My foot burns like fire and brimstone is hailing down on it. A reminder of how fucked up the night has turned out, penance for hurting the girl.
There was so much confusion and emotion when she asked me if I’d shot her.
Fuuuck!
Sara was who I’d gotten to know for a few hours; she was a gentle, sexy female. We talked about movies. She wasn’t like any of the bitches I’d fucked in the past. At the time, I had no clue Whisper was the one naked on my bike. I had no clue she was the girl I hunted. But they are one and the same.
Her softly spoken words may as well have been shouted at me with how deep they cut into my conscience.
And. I. Don’t. Fucking. Have. A. Conscience.
Her words had sliced through the soul I thought was too rock-hard to let anything penetrate it, but they slid like a hot knife sinking into butter.
I’m not a guy who feels any remorse. I get the job done and I walk away.
Fucking hell.
I did shoot her, and shit wasn’t black and white anymore. It never was. I was just too cocksure to slow down and take my time with the hunt. There was this whole big messed up area that had her blood and my blood tainting it, and that just pissed me right off.
I shot a totally innocent woman.
Now those two fuckers have stopped and are about to open the trunk, and I can’t stop it from happening.
“Dallas!” The old lady snaps me out of my thoughts. “Who. Shot. Whisper?” Her words are icy cold.
“Motherfucker!” I roar, making her jump, and she takes several wary steps back.
“I shot her. Are you happy now I’ve confirmed it? I was aiming to maim the woman who was my father’s whore, and then I was going to kill her once she told me what I needed to hear.”
“And what would be happenin’ if she be refusin’ to tell you who she be because she be protectin’ her identity, her humiliation, her secrets?” Miss Catherine shouts at me.
“Lady… she would have told me her deepest, darkest secrets by the time I was finished with her. Make no mistakes about that.” My words are dark and threatening.
She doesn’t cower. A fortress has been erected around her emotions. She’s now going into survival mode until Whisper is found.
She won’t bow to me, and I need her to stay inside her fortress, stay rock-solid for me. I can’t deal with her if she caves.
“Well, then you better be hearin’ me straight, as sure as I am about dem bones of mine and when they be warnin’ me. You’ll be askin’ for her forgiveness. I know your young life been a bad one. I make no bones about that, but as an adult, you be a grown-ass man. Whisper is nothin’ but kindness. She be livin’ nearly twenty years under that bastard, and she never be nothin’ but kind toward me and others. You been makin’ decisions for what you deem right, but you been made into a coldhearted killer who hides his feelin’s.” I allow her to vent at me; it’s what she needs to do. “Whisper will never be made into a killer. She be good through and through. She be an angel sent to me. She be my granddaughter without bein’ my blood. There be a difference to how you and Whisper be conductin’ yourselves… no matter havin’ William Dupré in common.
“You be findin’ her and rescuin’ her, and she be comin’ back to me. I need you to be promisin’ me this right here and right now. That chile is comin’ back alive and into my lovin’ arms.”
How can I promise she will be alive? But she needs to hear it from me. She would expect lies from a person like me after what I did to Whisper.
“I promise, Miss Catherine, whatever it takes.” I fucked up and can’t change what I did.
The bad seed didn’t fall far from the rotten apple.
Did he know me for the killer I am?
Did my father know I was an enforcer for the Soulless Bastards MC? If he did, he would have known the kind of man I had become.
I played right into the dead fucker’s hands. He could not foretell I was gonna aim to kill her, but I think the sick bastard hoped I would.
Did he want me to go down for murder of an innocent? I may never know my father’s reasons for this game, but I aim to find out as much as I can. There is a puppet master now pulling all our strings, and that cocksucker is gonna get found out.
I lean all my weight onto my good foot, the pain my just desserts, and proceed to explain what went down. I owe her that much, omitting the sex, up until I nearly did a hit-and-run on the old lady, when she was out wandering the road in the dark.
I tell her the truth. I’m honest enough.
“William was left owin’ this unknown bastard, and now he be wantin’ payment in the form of Whisper?” She repeats it over to herself quietly, disbelief in her voice.
Anger simmering.
“What be givin’ him the damn right to use another person as payment?” Her small, bony hands are fisted at her sides. “Hasn’t she already paid enough in life a thousand times over? Slavery was abolished, yet man still be thinkin’ it’s his damn right to rewrite dem rules for demselves. Nobody should be touchin’ that girl’s life ever again. She shoulda gotten out of Connard. I be too selfish, wantin’ her to be near me. She be such a special girl. Shoulda set her up someplace nice on the other side of the world, where bad men couldn’t find her. Coulda visited her. She be safe now, if my selfish wants had been ignored.
“Why you not be tellin’ her your name was Dallas when you met at the bar? Could’ve stopped a whole lot of this mess goin’ down. She was never goin’ to tell you her name was Whisper because you were a stranger to her.”
“Because Dallas Dupré no longer exists. I am not proud of that surname. I never wanted to see the man ever again. Dallas Masson hasn’t been around for a long time either. The boy who grew into a man became Edge, and that was all anybody needed to know.”
“I don’t want to be relyin’ on you, Dallas, but I have to at this stage.” Her voice is determined as she glares at me. She has so much strength left in her soul. “Once my friend gets in contact with me, he be takin’ over.”
I let her believe that. “Maybe your friends are simply sound asleep?”
“No.” She is very sure of that answer. “They both be answerin’ their phones for Whisper or myself, any time of day or night. They be wakin’ up if their phone be ringin’. Whisper be Boxer’s priority, and he always be answerin’ our calls or messages immediately. If he be busy, he be textin’. Simple. Nothin’ be keepin’ him from lookin’ after Whisper. That be a fact.”
Has something happened to the people she thinks are capable of handling a situation like this? The timing is too coincidental. Stealing Whisper was a bigger operation than I first thought. Maybe her friends were a threat to Operation: Abduct Whisper, which means they are a threat to me too, by association of me being my father’s son.
“Have you exhausted all your contacts that could help?”
“I be only ever needin’ Boxer or Lincoln. Don’t know anybody else’s information. Never had to have further backup in past eight months, never had to be worryin’, all been quiet and harmonious.”
I hand her phone to her. “Try calling again, and if they don’t answer, let it go to voicemail. Then you have to be careful the information you hand out. Keep it simple and don’t let on about me. If your boys have gotten themselves detained because of Whisper, better to play it safe until you know more, in case somebody who isn’t a friendly to your boys has access to their phone. If they could contact you, they would have by now. Something is stopping them, and until they clock in with you, assume it’s not a good thing they haven’t returned your calls or messages.”
She makes the calls and does what I ask of her. I hold my hand out for the phone. She hands it back begrudgingly with a look of pure annoyance, which I don’t care for. I type texts to both the men, putting in a couple military codes they should understand, and I keep the cell.
I take Whisper’s phone and send a code to Hazard then text him. I let him know I’ll be a few more days, and I’ll be in touch.
“We be needin’ a plan.”
“We got no more time for Q & A, lady, and no time to discuss plans. I need to get on the road now.” Whisper needs me. “That is the plan in a fucking nutshell.” I make my way back over to the couch, snatch up my button-up, put it on, and then the leather jacket is next. I throw Whisper’s phone down on the couch, keeping the old lady’s with me because I need to intercept any calls or messages from this Boxer and Lincoln. I take another look at the computer screen and note where Ebony and Ivory are.
She grips my arm tight. “Trust and honesty are gonna be very important to me from here on out. Do you be understandin’ me?”
Really, she is going to make me answer her?
I snag my fingers through my blood-caked hair out of pure frustration. “Yes,” I grit out.
“I be knowin’ if you be lyin’ to me. I knew Whisper be in danger, and I will do anythin’ to help her. Somethin’ be goin’ wrong all round, and I would rather be trustin’ in those I know have Whisper’s and my backs, but you are gonna have to be doin’ for now.”
“I fucking hear ya, lady, loud and clear, but for now, I am your golden boy, or you would be calling the police in and getting them intercepted right now. So let me handle things my way and I will get her back for you.” I give her my don’t-fuck-with-me face and stab a finger at the computer. “Stay on that laptop and be ready to text me if they stop or if there are any deviations. Stay alert, because you and I are her rescue team. This ends tonight.”
I head for the front door, swing it open, nearly losing my footing, and make it down to my bike, weaving about like a goddamn drunk as I stumble the last couple steps and balance myself out. I take another step, and that’s all it takes for me to start going down on my good knee, dizzy as fuck.
“Christ almighty! Not now!” I try to growl out my frustration, but it comes out as a virtually inaudible mumble.
And it’s motherfucking lights out again.