The car stopped, and Angel heard the passenger side door open. She hadn’t been positive before, but she thought he had someone with him. When the driver’s side door opened and she heard two men’s voices, that confirmed it. Shit. If she shot the one that opened the trunk, there was a good chance the other would be armed and shoot her. Then again, if she at least killed one of them, she’d have a better chance of survival. Besides, if they carried her into a house or something, they’d notice the gun and take it from her. She only had one chance. She had to shoot him as soon as he opened the trunk. She put her other hand on the one holding the gun and pointed it up. She was holding her breath when she heard the key in the lock. Cold air rushed toward her face as the trunk was lifted and the second that she saw the outline of the man’s body, she pulled the trigger on the gun. The man let out a loud howl as his body was thrown back a couple of feet. Angel sat up and put her good leg out first. As soon as that one touched the ground, she lowered the other one and gasped out in pain. The man she’d shot was writhing on the ground and she could see in the moonlight that it wasn’t the man who had taken her.

“Bitch!” the man on the ground spat out. He was reaching for his gun, which was lying about a foot away from his body. Angel took a painful step and used her good leg to kick it out of the way, and then with a significant and horribly painful limp, she began to try and run away. She only got a few steps before she felt the big man’s arm go around her waist and lift her off the ground. She tried to kick him in the shins and she was screaming like a wild animal. He reached around with his free arm and chopped at her wrist, twice, making her howl in pain again and drop the gun to the ground. “Kill her!” the man on the ground screamed. He had both of his hands pressed into the top of his stomach and blood was pouring out through them. The man holding her ignored him and began to carry her in the direction of what looked like a cabin. “Josiah! What the fuck? You’re going to leave me here? I’m fucking bleeding to death!” the other man tried to yell. It was more of a loud gasp, interspersed with pauses and gulps of breath. He kept yelling at them as “Josiah” stepped up onto a crooked porch, and carried her inside. The man’s voice was getting faint even as Josiah used his foot to close the door behind them. If this was how he felt about his friends, she could only imagine what he was going to do to her.

She yelled, punched, struggled, and tried to bite him as he carried her through a small living area and down a short hall. He kicked open a door and she saw a bed and really lost it. She was clawing at his face when he peeled her off of him and threw her onto the bed. The last thing she saw before her world went black were his beefy knuckles, headed toward her face.

* * *

Cody watched Dax pace the length of the meeting room and could almost hear him simmering inside. When he found the guy that shot Kyle and took Angel, the man was going to wish he’d put the gun to his own head. Dax had been pacing for ten minutes, waiting for David to call. He was on his way to the ranch from the hospital, and in the meantime, he was having someone in the police department run the partial plates that one of the gang members who chased the car had gotten. Cody didn’t know all the details of what happened, but apparently Dax had secured a truce with Street Chaos before this all went down.

Cody looked around the table at the other men in the room. Not a single one of them had uttered a sound. They all hurt for their president and Angel, but they all knew that words weren’t what their president needed at that moment. They were primed for action, however, and the second Dax gave the word, they were ready to fight. Even old Hawk, who rarely shut up, sat silently and the empathy was almost visible in his faded-blue eyes.

The sound of Dax’s phone made everyone at the table sit up straighter. “David,” Dax said, putting the phone to his ear. All eyes were on him as he listened to whatever David was telling him. When Dax slowly lowered the phone to his side, his eyes were on Cody and the younger man got a chill when he saw the look in his president’s eyes. “I need you all to step out,” Dax said. “Be ready to ride in five. Cody, I need to talk to you.”

Cody nodded and kept his eyes on Dax as the other men filed out. As soon as the last one closed the door behind him Dax said, “Do you remember Sam Winters?”

“Fuck,” Cody said. He remembered the asshole. He went by “Sambo” and he was a sick motherfucker. “Please tell me he didn’t take Angel.”

Dax was nodding slowly. “The license plate was just a partial, but the only classic Dodge Charger in Massachusetts that matches the first four numbers that we have is registered to that old piece of shit.”

“Fuck,” Cody said, again. “I haven’t seen or heard of him since I’ve been out. Why the fuck would he take Angel?”

Dax was slowly shaking his head. “Some kind of twisted revenge for your old man, maybe. I don’t know. I do know he doesn’t live out at the trailer park any longer. He was kicked out of there not long before you were locked up, so over ten years ago. I haven’t seen him since then either. Last thing I heard about him was that one of his sons was dealing drugs for a street crew out of Boston. As far as I know, he’s never ventured into our territory.”

“Son of a bitch!” Cody stood up. “He has a son named George. He was a couple years older than me. Fucking Sam used to call him Georgie…” Dax got a text while Cody was talking. He looked at it and interrupted him to say:

“David sent Sam’s last known. Let’s go.” Cody nearly had to run to catch up with Dax. He saw Tammy and Harley sitting with a few of the other girls around the couch and chairs in the great room. Harley blew him a kiss. He put his hand over his heart. He couldn’t even begin to fathom what was going through Dax’s head right now. If it were Harley, Cody would be out of his mind.

Outside, Dax and Cody got on their bikes. The rest of the men, about twenty of them, were on their bikes and ready to go. Dax took the lead with their vice president Handsome beside him. Cody and Jimmie fell in behind them, and Gunner and Levi right behind them. Everyone else was paired off behind them as they rode out the front gates and headed away from the ranch. As they rode, Cody’s thoughts returned to a place he’d been trying to forget for years…back to when he was a kid and his dad was alive. God, he hated that son of a bitch, and even now thinking about him made him sick to his stomach. His father was a monster and for a long time, until Dax convinced him otherwise, Cody was afraid he would turn out to be a monster himself, thanks to having the old man’s genes.

Cody’s father killed his mother. He never admitted to it and he was never charged with anything, but Cody and his older brother Keller knew in their hearts without a doubt that he’d done it. For years, Cody worried that the old man was going to do the same thing to him and Keller. Around Doc or any of the other guys in the club, he acted like a regular father and he didn’t call them names and he didn’t kick the shit out of them. But when they were alone, he took every opportunity he found to use both boys as punching bags. Keller always got the worst of it, because he begged for it by egging the old man on when he got warmed up. When Cody was really little, he thought Keller was an idiot for doing that. As he got older, he began to realize that his brother had an end goal in mind…to take the beating his father would have given Cody otherwise.

Sam was the only member of the Skulls who had ever seen the old man raise a hand to the boys. Sam was Miller’s best friend and just as much of a piece- of shit as the old man. He had three kids of his own and he didn’t hesitate to punch or kick any one of them when he’d had too much to drink…or just because it was Tuesday. He’d drink with the old man and the two of them would sometimes make a game out of putting their cigarettes out on Cody’s back, or taking Keller’s clothes and then tossing him outside naked in the snow. They were both mean and sick, and Cody used to dream about putting a bullet in each one of their heads. Sam had three kids, two sons and a daughter. The daughter had run off when she was only fifteen and as far as Cody knew, no one had ever heard from her again. Georgie was the kind of kid who was destined to deal drugs, even back when Cody knew him, before either of them were old enough to even know what a dealer was. Sam’s oldest left the area after he got out of high school. Cody thought he’d seen him once since he’d been out of prison, but it had been fifteen years so Cody wasn’t sure. The guy he’d seen was coming out of The Bent Wrench bar as Cody was going in. He was wearing a suit, which Cody noticed first. The Bent Wrench was a biker bar and suits stood out like a sore thumb. When he looked at the guy’s face, the guy looked quickly away, but Cody had seen enough of it to get the impression he knew him from somewhere. He was about halfway through his first beer when it came to him. He looked like Charles Winters. Cody hadn’t thought another thing about it…until right now. Charles…fucking Chuck! Son of a bitch! What does this trailer-trash family want…and why now? He suddenly felt responsible somehow for what happened to Angel, and it was making him feel sick. If Dax didn’t kill this son of a bitch and his twisted litter first, Cody would be more than happy to do it.