Gunner kicked open the door. It was a satisfying feeling even though the door was barely hanging onto the frame by a set of rusty hinges. They wouldn’t give him a gun but they let him kick in the doors, so he was going to have fun with it. An old man with white hair and a saggy ass jumped out of the bed, taking the dirty comforter with him. “What the fuck is this?” he yelled in a girly voice.

Tommy and a guy named Brick stood there with guns that looked like cannons in their hands, pointing them at the old geezer. The young girl that he’d been on top of sat on the bed up against the headboard with her feet drawn up underneath her and her arms wrapped across her tiny chest. “This is your day of reckoning, old man,” Tommy said. “This is the last time you dip that tiny dick in a girl young enough to be your granddaughter, because this is your one and only pass. The next time, we blow it off. It’s so fucking small it’ll take you days to bleed out the hole it leaves.”

“What are you talking about? She’s nineteen.”

“Are you fucking stupid? You want to argue with him?” Brick asked. “You’ve got two seconds to get out of here or I’m blowing that shit off today.” The old guy turned his back to them. They assumed he was going for his clothes. When he reached for the two hundred-dollar bills on the nightstand he sealed his fate. Tommy used one hand to grab him by the back of the neck and fling him across the room. He landed on his back with a thud and his hands went down to cover the shriveled-up organ between his legs. Brick walked over and stepped on the old man’s leg with one of his boots, and he cried out and moved his hands. Brick proceeded to push the big barrel of his gun into the man’s crotch and that was when the old guy started to cry.

“I’m sorry. Please, please don’t kill me. I’m sorry.”

“He’s sorry,” Brick said, sarcastically. “You’re sorry you got caught, old man.”

“No, I have a problem. I’m really sorry. I won’t do it again.”

“You won’t have anything to do it with.”

Brick’s gun was an old .44 magnum. He pulled the hammer back on it and the old man howled like a wounded animal. “Please, oh God, please…”

“Maybe he should apologize to the girl,” Tommy said. “What’s your name, sweetheart?”

“Mandy,” she whispered.

“How old are you?” Gunner asked her. It was the first time he’d spoken, but in each room they’d been to so far, the kid had looked younger. He wondered how old his mother had been, her first time.

“Nineteen.”

“Bullshit, baby,” Tommy said. “I got boots older than you. Get dressed. We’re getting you out of here.”

“I can’t go…Eddie…”

“You’re going somewhere that Eddie won’t ever find you,” Gunner told her. Brick still had his gun pressed to the old man’s balls and the old man was still crying and pleading.

“Tell Mandy you’re sorry,” Brick told him.

The old man looked at the skinny, pathetic girl in the bed and said, “I’m sorry. I thought you were older…” His words were cut off by the backhand Brick gave him with the .44 Mag. The girl still hadn’t moved. Tommy picked her up and Gunner threw a sheet over her. They left the old guy bleeding on the floor. Mandy was the third underage prostitute they’d taken in as many hours. Dax and Randall and a few of the other guys were working other buildings, but they were all run by Eddie and his men. Gunner watched Tommy carry the girl down the stairs and put her into the back of the “grocery wagon.” It was an old white van, and that’s what the guys referred to it as. The other two kids, a boy about fourteen and a girl who was probably about fifteen and looked like she’d been on the streets for a while, both tried to run as soon as the doors were opened. Gunner felt bad for them. Working for Eddie was all they knew, and they’d either been filled with drugs or fear or both the entire time. The prospect of being taken somewhere by these bikers was more frightening than what they did for Eddie.

Tommy pushed the two kids back as easily as brushing a fly off his arm and slammed the van door. It was locked from the outside and there was a cage that separated the driver and passenger seats from the back end. He looked down at his arm where one of them had left a deep scratch. It was bleeding. “Ungrateful little brats.”

Brick tucked the .44 into his waistband and said, “Where are we taking these kids?”

“Massachusetts,” Tommy said.

“Dax going to start his own kiddie porn business?” Brick snorted out a laugh. Without even thinking about what he was doing, Gunner grabbed the burly biker by the front of his vest and shoved him against the van. “What the fuck are you doing? Get your fucking hands off me!”

Gunner felt Tommy’s hands on his shoulders. “Let go of him, kid. He didn’t mean any disrespect.”

“It sounded like he did. Don’t fucking ever talk about Dax like that again.”

“Or what?” Gunner still had Brick pinned but the other man knew he wasn’t going to do anything with Tommy standing right there behind him.

“Or I’ll fucking teach you some respect.”

“Hey! What the hell’s going on?” The sound of Randall’s voice made Gunner loosen his grip on Brick. He stood up straight and keeping one eye on Brick, he looked in Randall’s direction. Dax was standing behind him and Cody had a squirming, squealing girl tucked underneath one of his arms.

“He was being disrespectful.”

Dax raised an eyebrow and Randall folded his arms and said, “Since when do you teach respect to a patched member of my club?”

Gunner looked back at Brick and then at Randall and said, “I overstepped, I guess.” There was no way he could explain himself without snitching out Brick in front of Dax for what he said.

“Fucking ‘A’ you did,” Brick said.

“Shut the fuck up, Brick,” Tommy said in a low tone of voice.

“Does anyone mind if I put this polecat in the van?” Cody asked. They made a path for him, and the tension was broken by the fight that ensued trying to get the little girl into the van and fighting the others to stay inside. They’d finally gotten the back end closed and locked again when Tommy’s phone dinged. He fished it out of his vest, and the look of terror that crossed his face when he read it was almost palpable.

“What?” Randall said as he read the horror on his son’s face too.

“Malcolm is dead. Pete found him hanging in Tammy’s garage. Tammy’s gone.”

* * *

Tamara’s head was fuzzy when she started to come to. At first, she couldn’t remember anything, but when she felt her body being lifted out of the car it started to come back. She’d been kidnapped and drugged. The side of her face felt swollen and her head was throbbing. She tried to open her eyes to see where she was but it hurt too badly, and the motion of being carried was making her nauseous. She felt her body slam into something…a wall, maybe…and then a few minutes later she was being dropped. She braced herself as much as she could, but the impact was with something soft, maybe a bed. Panic began to snake its way back into her chest. Being kidnapped and held for her father to ransom her was one thing, but she was on a bed. Were they going to rape her? She forced her eyes open and saw that she was in a bedroom and lying on a huge bed. A large man dressed in a green polo shirt and black slacks was standing over her with a length of rope in his hands. His hair was cut short in a military-type buzz cut and he had a deep scar along one side of his face. There was blood on the front of his shirt and his nose was swollen and blood crusted his large nostrils. This must be the guy she kicked in the car. His dark eyes were trained on hers and with a sneer he said, “Nice bruise on your face, bitch. I guess you’ll think twice about who you spit on next time.

She didn’t speak. She was still fighting through the fog in her head and trying to figure out who these people were and what she might be able to do to keep them from raping and killing her. The man was big. Almost as big as Tommy. It wouldn’t do any good to fight him. She’d just end up with the right side of her face as swollen as the left, and maybe lose a few teeth in the process. She closed her eyes, deciding that playing possum was best until she figured out her next move. She heard the big man snort as he grabbed hold of one of her arms and knotted the rope around her wrist. She lay still as he tied it to the bedpost and went around and started on the other one. The idea of being tied up, completely helpless, made her chest hurt even more, but again, she reminded herself that fighting him was not going to do her any good. She felt him at her feet next, wrapping the rope around one of her ankles. He got that one secured and moved to the other. That was when the adrenaline kicked in again. He was about to tie down her last limb and then she’d have no way of fighting them. They could do whatever they wanted to her. He grabbed her ankle, not expecting any resistance since she’d been limp so far. She wrenched it free and he said, “Fuck, what are you doing? You want me to kill you?”

She cracked open her eyes and saw him lean over to get his hold back on her leg. As soon as he did, she let the adrenaline flow through her last unrestrained limb and with all the strength she had left in her, she kicked out. He turned his head but not fast enough to stop her foot from catching him on his already swollen, bloody nose. She was smiling when his big fist knocked her out for a second time.