KICK

I stare at the woman. She hasn’t moved since we left the en suite. She stares back, still covering her bruised body with her skinny arms.

“What’s your name?” I ask again, and then pause, giving her a sideways glare. “Your real name?”

“Kayla.”

“You got a last name?”

“Kennedy.”

Fuck. This bitch has been missing for three weeks straight.

“Not anymore. From now on, you’re Indie.”

“My name is Kayla,” she says through gritted teeth.

“Your name is whatever I say it is, you got that?” I snap. “Kayla is dead; I knew there was a reason you looked familiar.” Besides being the spitting image of Lauren, that is. “Your face has been splashed across every paper in the country. You’ve been missing for three weeks. Your family is looking for you.”

She sucks in a sharp, sobbing breath and crouches down on the shitty carpet, collapsing into a ball of shaking limbs and more fucking tears than either of us know what to do with. Christ, even Ivy doesn’t cry this fucking much. 

“I just wanna go home, please? I won’t say anything to anyone. I’ll … I’ll pretend I didn’t know where I was. I won’t say a thing about the others. I’ll keep my mouth shut—”

“What. Others?” I demand, stalking over to her side and yanking her up from the floor. I shake her, hard. “What others?”

She sobs, twisting and fighting against my grip. Her hands grapple for purchase on my arms, her nails dig into my flesh, but she’s weak, and the pain is as insignificant as her life is to my club brothers.

“Start fucking talking, bitch,” I demand.

“There were more.”

I shake her again. “More what?”

“More than just the dentist. There were two more men.”

“Fuck,” I shout and release her. “Who?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know.”

“Who?” I demand.

“A cop …” she sobs, as I shake her again. “A cop, and a priest.”

A cop, a dentist, and a priest all walk into a bar …

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

A loud banging forces both our heads to snap towards the door. Goddamn it. Not now. I let the girl go, but I’m surprised when she grabs hold of my shirt sleeve as I turn away from her.

“Who is that?”

“That’s the Butcher.” I glance down at her tiny fist, clutching the fabric of my shirt. She looks at her hand too, only it’s as though she has no idea what the hell it’s doing yanking on my sleeve. Quickly, she retracts it.

“The Butcher?” she whispers.

“He’s a doctor. He’s coming to look you over.”

“I don’t need a doctor,” she whimpers. “I just need to go home.” She repeats that last phrase over and over as she backs away from me and presses herself tight against the wall.

“You were just raped and tortured for a three-week period. You’re seein’ a fucking doctor.”

I scoop my keys up off the table and head for the door. Ramming the keys into the lock, I pull it back to find the Butcher, Tank, and Prez standing in the hall. The butcher is a tiny little man. He wears neatly pressed pants and a blue button-up shirt beneath a fucking white doctor’s coat. In all the time I’ve known him, he’s worn that thing, which I totally don’t fucking get. Dude’s not even a real doctor anymore. You’d think he’d be sick to death of wearing that shit for the last forty-something years of his life, but no, he’s still wearing it around like a fucking trophy. And that’s the other thing; with all the backyard surgeries he performs, wouldn’t it just be easier to wear a fucking rubber apron?

 The Butcher made a few friends during his short stint in prison, and now he works freelance. Any and every MC has him on fucking speed dial. He’s the man you call in to fix your shit. He doesn’t give a damn about MC politics; he has no loyalty. He speaks only to money, and I’m about to pay a pretty price for the service he’s about to provide this bitch.

In one hand he holds an old-fashioned medical bag, the rich brown leather tended to and cared for, probably more than any of his patients ever would be. He runs his free hand through thick silver hair that’s cropped longer on top with a short back and sides. His hair gel probably costs more than my fucking plasma screen.

“Patient?” he barks, looking me over as though he’s assessing me for the first time. This contempt he eyes everyone with is getting fuckin’ old. Especially when the bastard has fixed me up more times than I could count—fishing out bullets, resewing stitches … in actual fact, he and Tank are the only reason I’m alive to be able to call on him again. If Tank hadn’t called in the Butcher and laid out the equivalent of a down payment on a bike when I ran from Sugartown with my guts fallin’ out all over the road, I’d be dead. Doesn’t stop the fucker from being an arrogant prick, though.

I’m just about to answer his douchey question with a douche-baggie response when I’m barrelled into from behind. Indie tries to wipe me clean out on her way through the door. She didn’t count on barrelling into Tank, or me grabbing her from behind and lifting her in my arms the way I did just an hour ago when I dragged her smelly arse to the shower. She screams, flailing and kicking, lashing out at me with her arms and kicking anyone who is crazy enough to get close to her.

“Let me go!” she wails over and over.

“Calm. The. Fuck. Down,” I whisper harshly in her ear, biting off each word with the effort of keeping her restrained. I move her toward the bed, shielding her naked body from the others.

Indie sobs, but her struggling eases off a little as she whispers, “Please don’t let him touch me. Please?”

I slide my hand from her waist to her throat, allowing her feet to touch the ground. Her body leans heavily against me as I coo in her ear the way I’ve done with Ivy countless times; the way I’d done with her. “I got you, little spitfire.”

I almost have Indie completely subdued when the Butcher appears at my side, syringe in hand, and jabs her in the side of the neck with it. She jerks in my arms and turns to glare accusingly at me, and then she’s falling into me like I’m her lifeline, as though she knows I’ll catch her. And she’s right. I’ve known her all of a few minutes and already I know I’ll catch her, just like Ivy knew, and Lauren before her, I’m a fucking sucker for the messed up ones, and I ain’t met anyone as screwed up as this girl is right now.