“He didn’t actually get into your computer, did he?”
“Obviously did.”
“Holy shit.”
I can read the questions circling behind those eyes, and, had he asked, I would’ve told him what he wanted to know, for the most part. I’m done hiding. It’s time to end it all, and I have never felt freer. “Let’s go. I’ll pull the car out and you can park your truck in here.”
“Give me your laptop, I don’t want you taking off on me.”
A sinister smile plasters on my face and I toss the computer in the air. Spider almost drops it and cradles it like gold to his chest. Idiot. He gets into my car after he parks the truck and locks the storage shed. He drives us onto the freeway, heading toward California. Maybe it’s not so bad to have him around. I still feel a little dizzy and exhausted after everything.
I just pray that Tank went to get exactly what I asked him to. My baby. Eli.
Hours pass and Spider stays focused on the road in front of him. He whistles low, “You already knew everything, Kat. You came in stacked.”
“Made my life easy, I knew where to look already,” I shrug a shoulder.
Spider finally cracked during the long drive, and asked a few questions. Most he already knew the answers to. I have no doubt that Tank does as well, and I have never felt better. I just hope that he still wants me, the way I am, and with the things I have done. Will he understand? I do know that I will fight for him, and us.
Slowly, we crawl up the street that the Hoffmans live on with my son, and my blood pressure spikes. My hands touch the window and Spider slows down and parks the car behind another, a few houses down.
“No,” my voice cracks. “How did he find them?”
Through the tinted windows of my car, we watch Matias’ men scour the property and take out a few things to their car.
“Shit, Spider, I don’t think Tank got here in time. What if Matias took Tank too?” My breathing picks up and panic sets in at the sight of the black suits in the house that protected my son for his entire life.
Wetness hits my cheeks and rolls down, falling onto my heaving chest. Silently, I hurt. In this moment, I want to die more than I want to live. If they have taken them, it will be near impossible to find Eli. Matias would hide him far better than I ever could. The sting of the truth is brutal. I have failed him, my Eli.
My fingers roam over the waistband of my pants. All I need is to make them hurt, like me. I want them full of bullets for touching something that was so sacred to me.
“Kat!” Spider whisper shouts. I snap out of the trance I was overtaken by, a vision of blood and death. “We don’t know that they took either of them.”
“Get Tank on the phone then,” I snarl. “Have him tell me where my baby is.”
My head snaps away from Spider and I can hear him on the phone with Blade who confirms that they found Tank’s phone in our house. There is no way to contact him, and now Cuervo is missing, too. They haven’t told Emilia yet.
Red. I see red. Enough already. It’s time they all died. Matias’ empire will fall by my hand.
“They all are going to die. El día de los Muertos.”
“Kat, we need to go back to Reno. We can’t stay here alone, with no backup.”
“Fucking leave then, Spider. I am not owned by the club.”
“Yes, you are.”
My face tears up and I turn to him. “Really? Where is the brand on my body?” God, I wish I would have gotten it when I had the chance.
“Brand or fucking not, you belong to us and Tank.” Spider’s face grows dark. “Don’t make me tell you again.”
“I’m killing these assholes before I go back to Reno. You can help me or leave me here. I will find a way. No one touches what is mine.”
“After we confirm Tank and the kid are not with them.”
I could argue with Spider that they aren’t because they would be riding with Matias who doesn’t stick around for the clean-up. The time we wait for them has given us the chance to come up with a plan, then we sit and wait. The two SUV’s pull out of the driveway at dusk.
From under the back seat, I pull out a large case and open it to get out a sniper’s rifle. I check the chamber and clip to ensure they are loaded. Snapping everything into place, I open the maps on my phone, unsure of where they may go.
“We need to get them on the first turn, about two miles up the road. There is a drop-off. Stay about two hundred yards back so I can make the first shot.”
“You can hit a moving target at that distance?”
My glare could kill Spider for doubting me. “I will hit my target,” my jaw clenches.
Spider follows back as instructed. I crawl into the back seat and open the sunroof. As the turn approaches, I stand. One long breath goes in and the wind drags me back. I hold the rifle steady and my finger holds the trigger with steady pressure. When the first SUV hits the turn, I pull the trigger and send a bullet through the front right tire. The SUV swerves and rolls over the railing, down the steep embankment.
The second driver slams on his breaks, and I wait for it to stop. “Pull over!” I yell at Spider when I lower myself back down into the car. He parks at an angle and I jump out to take aim from the dirt on the side of the car. When two men get out, I send a bullet to the front tire and then through the heart of one of them. The guy standing next to him foolishly draws his handgun out.
Not wasting time, I shoot him in the heart as well. My next shot is the gas tank. I hit it and light the sky up. But, that’s not enough, and I send more shots. It’s still not enough. I need more of them to die. The agony is too much.
A soft hand lands on my shoulder and I snap out of it. My cheeks are drenched with the tears that I didn’t even realize I had. “Time to go.”
I hand him my rifle and stand up, wiping my face, then dusting my pants off.
What have I done? It doesn’t matter because I will not stop until I make everyone hurt. After all I have gone through, even changing Eli’s birth certificate to hide him, I still lost him. Matias found him.
I wear the tattoo of black wings of an angel on my back and arms. These tattoos represent my flight into hell.
I’m taking the devil with me.
Chapter 6
Kat
Spider and I made it back to Reno a few days ago. No one knows where Tank is, or Cuervo for that matter who doesn’t care to carry a cell phone with him. Everyone has been going nuts trying to locate the two of them. I’ve been scouring the internet, and not being able to call favors in has crippled me. I’m not sure that Matias knows who the Black Widow is. But, if he does, he would know I was alive as soon as I contacted anyone.
I sit in this dump of an apartment that I found to hide in for now. Still not able to get a location on Matias to find Eli. Nothing. All leads have dried up. I have to start over. No one will talk to me without knowing who I am.
I look out the window and watch cars and people pass by. Wishing I had the easy life. But all I can focus on is the pain. The only thing I know to be real and tangible.
A loud, mouthy woman comes barreling down the building’s hallway. What the hell is going on?
“Open the motherfucking door, Kat!” Vegas booms from the other side, her fist slamming against the door.
“Vegas, shut the hell up and go home,” Spider snarls at her.
I can’t feel much, the numbness and pain having shattered me, but I do sluggishly get up to open the door. What do I have to lose at this point? My hand goes to the mediocre locks and the door swings open, almost hitting me in the process. Vegas flings her body at me and wraps her arms around my neck.
Her grip is so fierce that she’s choking me and causing me to wince. Over her shoulder, I see Jenn and Dana standing back with hurt expressions. I step out of Vegas’ death grip to walk back over to my seat at the window.
“I don’t know what the hell has been going on with you, but start at the beginning. And then I will kick your ass for killing us
with your fake death.” Vegas demands answers and settles in. She takes a seat in front of me while Dana and Jenn pull the table chairs up. Spider huffs and shuts the door, stepping out, but he has the phone to his ear telling Blade what his wife has done. That she followed him to my location.
Not bothering to care about the secrets anymore, I start from the beginning and tell them all the details. Who my father is and about the death of my mother. The intense training he made me do and the people he made me kill at a very young age. I retell the stories of Matias and his abuse. I don’t leave out any detail. When I get to Eli, I smile through the tears when I tell them about his birth. How I held him in my arms and memorized his perfect face before leaving him with the Hoffmans.
I confess all my sins to my sisters in hopes that they find forgiveness in their hearts for me. Everyone leaves me eventually. But a part of me is resigned to my fate of being alone and dead inside. They can have it all and see me bare.
At some point, Spider comes back into the room. His face is stoic, but he has gentle eyes. I don’t want his pity, so I look away.
The room is cloaked in silence when I get to the end. The part where I failed, and I lost the two most important people to me. I want to feel again, but I can only feel the gut-wrenching agony.
“What have I done?” I plead. “I lost them.” Forgiveness or not, this will not return them to me.
Jenn, the strongest of them all, doesn’t look at me with sadness but with understanding. She sees that, until I right my world, I won’t survive. If they died, I die.
“Kat, I am here to help you kill the demons that haunt you,” she simply states, “However that is, I will do that for you.”
Vegas nods and agrees, “I am in. No one fucks with my bitches and gets away with it.”
Dana starts and stops before she says what is eating at her. “Kat, what you must have felt when you held each of our babies—” She swallows past the lump in her throat. “God, I just, I— am…” She clears her throat. “I will help you however I can for you to get back at that asshole.”
I know she wanted to say she was sorry for it all. But it is not their fault.
“I just need to find him and end it already. Until then, I will keep searching. I will never give up until he is dead.”
After that, the girls and I sit and drink vodka, the silence a comfortable friend. Not much can be said, but their support means everything to me. They didn’t know the answers and yet, they trusted me. A rare gift of respect and faith.
“How is Tami?” I absently ask. “Cash?”
Jenn looks a little ashen. “I think we need to tell her about you being alive. She’s taken it pretty hard, Kat. She was the closest to you.”
I really do feel horrible about what she had to have gone through. I wanted to keep her safe and protected but I couldn’t do that fully, and I hate that I couldn’t.
“We can’t tell her until it’s over. If I do die, I don’t want her to go through this again. I may not make it out of this alive.”
Vegas nods like a boss. “I agree, she may also slip and say something on accident, not realizing she tipped something off.” I’ve missed these girls. It feels better somehow to have them sit here to share my problems with.
Dana, always the fixer and more than not the sober one of us all, comes up with an idea. “Matias is lying under the radar, right?”
All heads turn to look at her in interest. “He hasn’t been home yet. What would be the biggest distraction of all to get him out of hiding again?” She hesitates because not one of us can answer so she continues. “If he does have the baby, and that is a big if, Kat, because we haven’t confirmed that, would your being alive be able to be used to bargain with money and contacts, to get your son back?” she grins an evil gleam.
Vegas and Jenn join in her enthusiasm, and it hits me. “Do you think that Tank could be hiding Eli? Why he and Cuervo have gone off the grid completely? Why hasn’t Matias gone home yet?” My thoughts run wild, almost afraid to hope. God, I feel hope that I haven’t had in days.
Dana beams with pride, “Could be that, too. No one could kidnap Tank. He’s like a big ass kid no one wants to take, even to kill, you know what I am saying?”
“Hell yeah, I do. I couldn’t get him away from me fast enough.”
Vegas laughs, “If anyone could get to your baby in time, it would be that man. He lives to be the glorified hero. He’s waiting for a big entrance and to make it dramatic, I bet.”
My head starts to spin, finally awake with whispering of promises. Could I still save it all and myself?
Spider walks into the bathroom and I pull the girls in quick to help me create a distraction to get out of here alone and without him on my tail. Jenn turns up the music and the rest of the girls spread throughout the apartment. Vegas tosses me her keys and I’m out the door in seconds.
Chapter 7
Tank
Jane Hoffman is one little mean momma bear.
“I don’t know you, and Katherine never told me anything about you.” She stands guard, with her hands on her hips, and stares me down through the screen door that is between us.
“Jane,” I take a brief moment to count to three in my head before I start screaming at this tiny woman. “Kat is not in a position to tell you herself. Can I please come in and explain myself better?”
“No, you cannot, Mr…?” she raises a brow at me.
“Lucas Taylor, Mrs. Hoffman.”
Cuervo snickers from behind me and she scowls at him, glancing around me.
“This is Cuervo, he is Katherine’s uncle.” And I hope that gives me some reassurance with this woman.
“Jane,” a man calls from the back of the house. Eventually, he finds the three of us at the front door. He is carrying the little boy with him who, when he notices Jane, he wiggles out of his hold and calls for her by her name. She takes him from her husband’s arms and kisses his cheek.
“These are Lucas and Cuervo, here to talk about Katherine.” She bounces the small boy on her hip, and he chuckles along with her down the hallway.
“Mr. Hoffman,” I begin again, “I need to talk to you about Katherine. It’s very important and urgent, if you could give us a few moments?”
He steps through the screen door and shakes mine and then Cuervo’s hand. “Danny Hoffman.”
On his forearm, I notice a tattoo that’s customary for a street kid. He knows the criminal world and knows it well having been involved, at some point in his life, with one of the biggest gangs in the L.A. area.
“Why are you two here?” he asks and points to the chairs on the front porch. The three of us take a seat. I want to start but I can’t make myself to say the words out loud.
Cuervo jumps in, “Katherine’s husband found her. She has passed.” Danny’s shocked face turns away from him to meet my eyes. I look away, unable to show him the pain and truth that lay in Cuervo’s words.
Finding some courage, I take over the conversation. “We have reason to believe her husband could be on his way here. We tracked down the man who had forged the papers for her son,” I point to the house. “The man turned up dead just before Matias attacked Katherine in Reno. We think that he was going to get Katherine first, then the kid. He needed her to get to him. You are not safe here. Eventually, he will find you.”
Danny takes a moment and sits back in his chair, looking at the both of us before making his decision.
“Where are we headed to?”
Jane is less than happy with the abrupt departure from their home when her husband explains the situation to her. However, she is willing to do it for Eli.
That is Kat’s son’s name, and I can’t seem to tear my eyes away from the little boy who looks so much like his mother.
“Only pack what you can’t live without for twenty-four hours. We can buy the rest. Leave everything as normal as possible,” I advise her because she looks as if she wants to pack the entire house. “They will come here looking. They will walk t
hrough the house, and we want them to think that you are only out for the day.”
She really glares at us when her husband takes their cell phones and hands them over to me to turn off. I feel bad for her because she’s probably never seen real danger from this kind of people. We are taking her out of her home. Maybe, at some point, she will see that having her life and future is better than having a house.
You can always make a new home with those you love when you have them around.
Eli is a great kid. He slept and played the whole way back to Reno. We took the congested freeways through California and gave him as many breaks as he needed. Cuervo and I took turns driving the Hoffmans’ van back. We stored our bikes with a family friend that Cuervo had at a sister chapter.
My life was wrapped up in that bike. I had never left it in the care of another person before. I bought her down in Vegas and rode her for good luck down the strip with Stryker, Mad Max, Blade and all of us. It was a blow to my nuts to throw a sheet over her as I thought of all the miles and memories made with my club while riding it.
But, for Eli, I would sell it. For Kat, I would blow it to hell and back.
There is something missing and I can’t quite figure out what it is yet. Time on the road is where I do most of my thinking. I would normally lean on my brothers for guidance. I feel stripped down to the core. If I do rebuild the man that is left of me, I am not sure what I will find or be. But a whole new life awaits me.
I think about these things and it pisses me off that I don’t feel like I could call Axl or Blade to talk to them about this shit. So, I take Eli to the safest place I could think of, mine and Kat’s cabin.
Cuervo called Emilia from one of our random stops. He used payphones. I had no idea they had those around still, but he found them. He gave her a grocery list and the location where to meet us. Emilia did everything without question, a true Ol’ Lady, and all that did was tear my damn bleeding heart out.
Fighting for Forever: Tank & Kat's story, Part 2 (Battle Born MC Book 6) Page 3
