Chapter 10

Sage

Glock stopped the bike outside a warehouse, which looked abandoned from the outside. When we got off, he was still refusing to speak to me.

“Glock!” I called after him, while I followed him to the secure metal pull-up door of the warehouse. I knew he was mad at me, and of course, he had every reason to be. I had somehow managed to force myself into his life, against his wishes. Not only that, but I had complained about his life choices ever since we had known each other; I had pointed to the dangers and the violence…and now I was getting myself involved in exactly that.

“Sage, I’ve brought you here like Axel wanted. I’m following orders. What more do you want from me?” he snapped, as he pulled out a set of keys from his jacket pocket and unlocked the door and the levers.

I stood aside and watched him with heaving shoulders.

“We’re on the same side, Glock, don’t fight me on this!” I snapped back, and I watched as his muscles moved while he lifted the heavy door up.

Inside the building were bright lights and a space which had been divided up into sections. These sections looked like little rooms, and there were women everywhere, in the rooms, in the common area. There was pop music playing on the stereo somewhere, and there was a smell of coffee and doughnuts in the air.

Everyone turned to look at us as we stepped in. Glock was securing the door back in position, and I looked at all these women who were staring at me. They had a look of concern on their faces, and I realized what they were thinking…they thought I was one of them—one of the women who the Bad Disciples had rescued.

A woman with long brown hair and tanned skin was approaching me with a smile.

“Hi, I’m Brooklyn, you’re very welcome here,” she said in a soft, friendly voice, and Glock appeared behind me.

“She’s not one of the girls, Brooklyn, this is Sage, an old friend of mine,” Glock said, and I smiled at the woman and shook her hand.

Two other women had appeared behind Brooklyn, who also seemed to be authoritative figures here.

“I’m Kylie,” one of them said.

“I’m Noelle,” the other said, and I shook their hands too.

“So, Sage, how can we help you?” Noelle asked, and I looked at Glock, who was staring straight ahead, rather than looking at me. He was making his disapproval of the situation very clear to everyone.

“Well, Axel sent me here, to make my introductions and to have a look around. I’ve offered my services to the MC as a lawyer for the women you all have rescued,” I said, with a full smile on my face, as warm as I could muster.

The three women were gaping wide mouthed at me, and then they exchanged silent worried looks. I could see the confusion and the hesitance on their faces.

“I’ve spoken to Axel, and I’m aware of the concerns that you all have regarding someone like me working with the MC. I’ve assured him that I will make sure that the Bad Disciples and anyone associated with you, never get into any trouble with the law,” I insisted, and the women continued staring at me. It was like they couldn’t believe that Axel would approve of this.

“She’s all right, girls, she just wants to have a look around. Nothing is finalized yet,” Glock spoke up, and I pursed my lips together. Why couldn’t he just get it in his head that I was going to find a way of making this work? That I had no intention of giving up now that I’d started!

Brooklyn smiled at me and nodded her head.

“Of course. We’ll be happy to show you around and introduce you to the girls,” she said, and I was happy to hear it.

“What kind of work do the three of you do?” I asked, and they exchanged looks again and shrugged their shoulders.

“Well, I’m working full time with the girls. Any girl who is rescued from the Dark Knights is brought here, and it’s a full-time job to rehabilitate them and get them back on their feet and keep them away from drugs and prostitution. I’ve been working hard to create a safe haven for them,” Brooklyn said, and I nodded my head.

“I’m a physical therapist at the VA, and I try and help Brooklyn out whenever I can,” Kylie said.

“I’m a nurse, and I do the same, in between shifts or on my days off. We’re all with guys from the Bad Disciples,” Noelle said, and I smiled at them. It hadn’t occurred to me that they were in relationships with MC guys. These women seemed so normal and different from the kinds of women I would have expected Glock and his friends to be in relationships with.

“I really want to help. Last evening, I had an encounter with one of the abductors, and I tried to rescue the woman he was beating up, but I couldn’t. I want to find a different way to take them down,” I told the women, who were all looking concerned now.

“Oh, we’re so sorry to hear that, Sage, and you’re doing a good thing offering your services. We’re glad to have you here,” Noelle wrapped an arm around my shoulder and squeezed. Brooklyn was smiling at Glock, who was still refusing to be a part of this conversation.

“You have a good woman here, Glock, it was about time!” she said, and Glock gritted his teeth before he spoke.

“She’s not my woman!” he growled, and I could feel my cheeks flushing. He was right, I wasn’t his woman, but it still stung me to hear him say it.

***

The girl called Janice was sitting with her legs tucked underneath herself. She was smoking her third cigarette in a row and had a wild empty look in her eyes.

“And then there was the training,” she said, and there was a deathly silence around us. I was sitting at the edge of the bed in her makeshift room. Her nails looked chewed up, and there were signs of healing bruises all over her skin. She was one of the girls who had recently been rescued from the last raid conducted by The Bad Disciples.

Brooklyn, Kylie, and Noelle were standing around her, while Glock was behind me. None of us had spoken while Janice narrated what had happened to her.

“What kind of training?” I asked, and I immediately regretted asking it. Janice’s cheeks flushed, and she looked away from me nervously.

“They were training us to do what we were told, to follow orders and make ourselves available in every way possible to the men who were buying us,” Janice said with a trembling lip. My instinct was to reach out and lightly squeeze her knee, but she flinched at my touch.

“We don’t have to talk about it anymore,” I said and met Brooklyn’s gaze who nodded her head in agreement. Janice was the third girl I was introduced to, and it was the same story with each of them.

They were tortured, beaten up, sexually assaulted and forced into prostitution. They were all being prepared to be sold off on the flesh market.

“They used lit cigarettes sometimes, its where I got all these marks from,” Janice said, ignoring my previous statement and she craned her neck to the side so I could see the marks.

“Janice, we don’t need to talk about it. Sage has heard everything she needed to hear,” Kylie said and crouched down beside Janice.

Janice stared at me, with a wild look in her eyes.

“How are you going to help us?” she asked, her voice had turned a little shaky.

“I want to build a case, using all your testimonies,” I replied, and Janice smirked like she didn’t think I could do it.

“We don’t have any proof or nothing, that it was them,” she remarked, and I nodded my head.

“That’s okay, we can use your official statements and your testimony. We can build a case strong enough so that they can’t disprove their involvement. It’s worth a shot. I would like to see them behind bars,” I said, and Janice slunk back on her bed and continued smoking her cigarette.

“They are untouchable, they are dangerous. No law case is going to scare them,” she said, and I gulped. I could understand why she felt that way.

“They’ll have no choice,” I said, and she rolled her eyes.

“Why don’t we go out and talk?” Brooklyn interrupted us, and she came over to me and started leading me away from the room. The others followed us to a corner where we could talk out of earshot of the other women.

“We really do appreciate your concern, Sage,” Brooklyn said.

“But you don’t want my help?” I asked. Brooklyn squeezed my shoulder and smiled sadly.

“We don’t want you to get everyone’s hope up, is all. These girls have been through enough. We have been through enough,” Kylie said, and I felt Glock’s hand on my elbow.

“Exactly, you’ve seen and met the girls, now it’s time for us to leave,” he said in a commanding voice. I didn’t let him pull me away just yet, and I slipped out a card with my name and phone number on it and handed it to Brooklyn.

“I want to help, I want you to trust that I can help. We need to fight them!” I said to them, while Glock tugged me away, towards the door of the warehouse.

I saw Brooklyn nod and the others smiled as he led me out. He unlocked the door and the levers and lifted the gate up, and then grabbing my elbow again, he yanked me out.

I stood behind him with my arms crossed over my breasts while I watched him lock the door up again.

“You shouldn’t have just dragged me out like that! I was in the middle of a conversation, Glock!” I scowled at him, while he led the way towards the bike. He stopped abruptly and turned to me.

“Have you had enough, Sage? You’ve heard enough, and you’ve seen enough. Can you just leave us alone, can you leave me alone and go back to San Francisco? I’ll talk to Tracy if you want. I’ll convince her to go with you. Just go!” Glock was barking at me, and I gulped as I looked into his angry eyes.

He was trying so hard to push me away when I was trying so hard to help. I felt like I owed it to my neighborhood, to Long Beach, to him. Why couldn’t he just see that?

“Yes, Glock, I have seen and heard enough. Enough to convince me that I need to help these women. Brooklyn and the others are doing a good job of rehabilitating them, but they deserve justice. The Dragon Knights deserve to be punished for what they’ve done and what they’re still doing. You can’t expect me to just stand by and do nothing about it when it’s happening in my own home town!” I was screaming at him.

Glock stared at me for a few moments and said nothing. Then he swung his leg over his bike and waited for me to sit down behind him so he could take me home.

His muscles were stiff and taut where I held him as he rode. I could sense that Glock thought this was a bad idea, to come and see me again. But I couldn’t stop now, not after I heard the horror stories that Janice and the others had told me.