This was not supposed to happen. She was just supposed to be pissed at me, not get fucking kidnapped, while leaving my brother sporting two new bullet holes. I fall to my knees beside Ratchet, as my phone calls Raze. He rips me a new asshole, when he picks up. I try to give him as much information as I can with Ratchet also adding in what information he could. I rip my tie off my neck with my free hand, and tie a tourniquet above the bullet hole in his thigh, to slow the bleeding. I’d seen it in movies, and that was just about the extent of my medical training. His shoulder was seeping blood, but at a much lower rate than his leg. The greatest chance of one of the bullets puncturing something important was in his leg, and that’s where I put my focus. His care was now in my control with the Calvary back at the clubhouse preparing to strike back and get Presley. Ratchet pulls himself off the ground, and leans his upper body against the car.
I try to check his shoulder wound more closely, but a female bystander comes running up to us. The older woman’s eyes are wide with panic. Not what we need right now. A witness who wants to stick her nose in our business and inserting herself into a situation that doesn’t concern her.
“Oh my god. I heard gunshots, when I was taking groceries out of my car. Are you okay? I’ll call an ambulance,” she rattles, fumbling around with her phone. Her hands shake, and I reach over to her, steading her.
“I’m a doctor, ma’am,” I lie. “The ambulance is on its way.” I had to get her away from us so we could slip away. Raze had already called Doc by now, and he would be waiting to patch Ratchet up if he could. Hospitals were our last resort, especially with the particulars of this case. If he were to hobble up to the emergency room, questions would be asked that we couldn’t answer and the police would be called. I just had to hope that the Doc could handle this.
“Ma’am,” I calmly say, raising my hand to silence her. “Thank you for wanting to help, but I have this situation under control.”
“Did you see who shot him?” she asks not wanting to let this go.
“I did. Like I said, I have the situation under control.” Take the hint lady. Just leave.
She gives me a look, and I nicely dismiss her again. My patience was running thin, and I was about to snap at her to drive the point home. The woman tries to continue to insert herself into this situation, but she finally takes the hint. I have no doubt that as soon as she rounds that corner, her phone will be dialing the police. She disappears from sight, and I spring to action, knowing that we don’t have much time before the cops show up.
“Let’s get you up, big guy,” I mutter to him, slipping an arm under his un-injured shoulder, and helping him to his feet. His jaw clenches from the pain as he groans. I carry most of his weight, as we limp around to the other side of the car. I pop open the door, and help him slide in.
“Fuck,” Ratchet growls, as he uses his injured leg to slide into the low car seat. “Should have driven the truck.”
“You didn’t exactly know you were going to be shot.”
He throws me a serious side eye, as I close the door and run around the front of the car. I climb into the driver’s seat, and get the fuck out of dodge, before the cops show up. Ratchet’s head dips back against the seat rest, and my eyes snap to him.
“Stay awake, fucker,” I order him. “Do not go to sleep.”
“Ain’t tired, shithead,” he grumbles.
I throw a look over my shoulder at the oncoming traffic, before peeling out of the parking spot into traffic. A few cars honk their horns at me, but I don’t care. Ratchet’s bleeding all over the interior of the car is more important, than their road rage sensibilities. Some people just don’t know what a real emergency looks like.
I hit the gas, jerking the car forward, and begin to change lanes like a mad man. The exit for the freeway north comes up far more quickly than I anticipated two lanes over, and I perform the standard merge with cutting off people not caring if it pisses them off. Some blue pick-up brakes in front of me, and I jerk the wheel narrowly missing his tailgate.
Ratchet glares at me.
“Fucker, this is Ricca’s car.”
“Do you think she’ll care if it’s a little dinged up versus you bleeding out? Pretty sure she’d side with me,” I fire back at him, cutting off another line of cars and bolting onto the freeway.
“I’m not dying.”
“How do you know?” I declare, looking at blood covering his entire right leg.
“I just know. Besides, you’re the fucking doctor,” he teases back.
“Shut up, asshole. It’s all I could think of to get the bitch out of the picture.”
He manages a laugh, but it quickly turns into a grunt of pain, as I hit a pothole. He shoots another look my way about the car, and I just smile back.
I make good time, and pull into the parking lot of the clubhouse with a cloud of dust behind me. I drift to stop by the backdoor. I’m out of the car in a flash, ripping open Ratchet’s door, when the heavy hand of one of my brothers comes behind me.
“I got him,” Thor insists, shoving me out of the way and thrusting his hands inside of the car. In a nearly flawless move, Ratchet is out and on his way into the clubhouse with Thor’s help and me hot on their heels. Doc waits on the other side of the door.
“I’ll take it from here,” he urges, pointing Thor and Ratchet toward the living quarters of the clubhouse, where he has likely set-up up his gear. Ginny comes running from the direction of her room, and screams when she sees him.
“Jude!” her small voice wails. “Oh my god.”
“I’m alright, Ginny. Just a little banged up,” he says, trying to ease her fear.
“You’ve been shot. You aren’t alright at all.”
Ginny clings to his side, and I watch as they disappear. His ass better live through this. I already owed him enough as it is.
I exhale the first real breath I had taken since I walked into that restaurant, and turn to find a fuming Raze standing behind me.
“Prez, I−,” I stammer out, before he cuts me off.
“Save it, until after we get Presley back. Church. Now.”
I follow behind him, my head hung low from shame. This could have all been fucking avoided, if I hadn’t insisted on such a dramatic meeting place to tell Presley. She could have been here and safe, instead of with them. The thought of what she could be going through kills me inside. I know what men like that do to women who don’t cooperate. If she left with her life still intact, it would be a miracle. I just had to hope that the same fighting spirit to survive that ran in her brother’s veins was in hers too. Her death would mark the end of mine. I couldn’t live with that kind of guilt.
The meeting room is full to the brim of my brothers. Each pair of eyes is on me as I enter. They know. They all know why this happened. It’s my fault. The blame for this rests solely on my shoulders.
Raze stands in front of my brothers and addresses us all, but his eyes never leave mine.
“Most of you know what’s going on, but I want to go over what we know. Presley was taken from outside a restaurant downtown. Ratchet was shot in the process of the snatch and grab. While I don’t have confirmation it was The Zezza’s, we all know that the possibility of this being someone else is slim to fucking none.”
The crowd murmurs, throwing more glares at me. I stand strong. I have to be strong for her, even if it means that I’m fucking crumbling inside like an old broken building collapsing under the weight of its own bad decisions.
“Effective immediately, I want all the club girls out. Take them anywhere, but here. That includes Mikayla,” Raze adds shifting his stare over to Thor, as he enters the room.
“Already ahead of you, Prez,” he agrees.
“The calls have been made. Oakland, Long Beach, and Orange County are already on the road.”
The reinforcements coming are only a drop in the bucket to the numbers The Zezza’s have in their disposal. For the first time in our history, we were staring down the barrel of our enemies, out-gunned and out-manned. This fight would be an uphill battle, and every death would stain my soul with a dark smudge. The guilt of knowing that begins to eat away at me one big bite at a time.
“What do we do in the meantime, Prez?” Tyson asks.
“We try to find out where they are holding her, and then we wait. They made Ratchet as a threat, and his cut will lead them right here. They’ll make contact.”
I led them to us like a butcher to the lamb for slaughter.
And wait, we did. Two days pass without a word from them. While my brothers scoured the news, and our network of sources, I chained myself to my desk. Not eating. Not sleeping. Just working to find her. I had to find her. Nearly fifty hours straight of nothing but my computers, that were failing me for the first time. The glare from the lights on the screens begins to kill my eyes. I try to wipe away the pain and drown it with another Five Hour Energy shot, but it’s no use. My eyes blur, and I know that I’m pushing my body to the limit. I resolve to step away for just an hour, while my programs continue scanning for news through the dark web. It’s only a temporary break, and not me giving up, I convince myself. I wouldn’t do that, until my heart ceases to beat in my chest. My last breath would be lost still trying to find her, if it came down to it.
I find my feet leading me to the room, where Ratchet lay recovering. The door is cracked, and I peer inside to see Ginny by his bedside. Her hand is tightly wrapped in his, as she sleeps with her head on his bed. I start to walk way, but Ratchet’s eyes lock onto mine. Caught. He nods his head, calling me inside.
My steps are quiet as I enter the room, and I park my ass in the chair on the other side of his bed that Ginny’s not occupying.
“How are you feeling?” I ask. Ratchet looks to his bandaged up shoulder and leg, then back up to me.
“Like I was shot twice, genius,” he snidely comments. “I’m okay. Doc says I’ll be good in a few weeks. He was a shit shot. Missed every single artery.”
I exhale a sigh of relief. Ratchet and I both knew he was lucky. Men like that are trained like professional hitmen. He should have been dead, but the commotion and exposure must have affected the shot. Under normal circumstances, I would be burying Ratchet, instead of talking to him right.
“Any news about Presley?’ he asks with a low voice. He looks at Ginny, watching if she stirs at the mention of Presley, but she snores quietly at his side.
“None. No chatter,” I sigh.
My heart thuds like lead, as my mind thinks over what they could be doing to her right now. She could even be dead, and everything we are doing to get her back would be for nothing. My body trembles, as the picture of her lying beaten, abused, and dead flashes in my mind. Her dead eyes looking right through me while her cold, blue lips whisper to me.
This is your fault. You did this to me.
“We’ll get her back,” he reassures me.
“I wish I had your hope, Ratchet. Two days is a long time for them to not contact us,” I admit, under duress the thought that I had tried to shove out of mind after the first day.
He shifts in the bed, taking care to not disturb Ginny, and allowing a groan of discomfort slip through.
“Do you know how I know we’ll get her back?”
“I’d sure love to know where you get your crystal ball answers.”
“Because of her,” he nods his head back towards Ginny. I cock an eyebrow, confused.
“If it were Ginny, I would be doing the exact same thing you are doing right now. Even if you don’t want to admit it, we’re realists, you and I. We see things for what they are.”
He’s not wrong. I didn’t fill myself with false hopes like others might to get them through this. On paper, we were looking for a body not a person, but my heart told me otherwise. She was still out there. I know I would have felt her life being taken away, as crazy as it sounds. She was still out there waiting for us to find her. I know that now.
“Presley is a pawn in their game. The Zezza’s want Ginny. They’ll use her to get to Ginny, and when they do, we’ll be ready.”
Ready to fight. Ready to die. All for Presley and Ginny. It was like being on the final level of a game, waiting for the big boss to strike. It was coming, and I would be ready.