The Nomad Series-Collectors Edition

by Janine Infante Bosco

  “Cobra, stop it,” I shriek.

  “Your sister is a cold case, your daughter isn’t and the next forty-eight hours are crucial if you want her back in your arms alive,” the detective states. “You might not like it, but right now Mr. West is the only suspect we have.”

  Cobra’s fist rears back and collides with the detective’s jaw. The room erupts into chaos and the next thing I know Cobra has a pair of handcuffs on him.

  “You’re fucking wrong,” he shouts as they drag him out of the boardroom. “He didn’t take her, and so help me fucking God if you don’t look for the guy who did, if something happens to her, I won’t be my father!”

  My body trembles as I watch the blue and whites read him his rights.

  “No! You can’t arrest him. He’s just worried about his daughter!”

  No one hears me and if they do, they don’t care. They wrangle him out of my sight, leaving me alone in a room full of detectives chasing a dead end. After they ask me some more questions, they have a patrolman escort me out of the hospital.

  I’m told to stay home by my phone and wait in case Deuce calls or decides to return her.

  Deuce doesn’t call.

  He doesn’t show up at my door with my little girl.

  Because Deuce didn’t take Skylar.

  My parents show up and they stay with me. Hours later Stryker brings Gina over and tells me Cobra’s been charged with assaulting an officer and will be arraigned tomorrow morning. He promises me everything is going to be okay, the club will get him out and they’ll find Skylar and Deuce. Two cops stand outside my door all night and the lights flash outside my building just like they did in front of the Richardson house all those years ago.

  Maybe history will repeat itself.

  Gone.

  Gone.

  Gone.

  My baby is gone.

  -Thirty-nine-

  Cobra

  Wrapping my fingers around the iron bars that imprison me, I pull at them as if they’ll suddenly break and I’ll be free. Knowing I’m in here when I should be out there looking for her is torture. But it’s not enough. I need to feel pain, I need to submerge myself in agony. I slam my forehead against the iron bars repeatedly as I torment myself, wondering who has my daughter, what they’re doing to her, if they’re hurting her. It’s too much. For every bit of fear and pain she feels I need to feel it tenfold.

  I’ve spent the night going over every possible scenario in my head. I fucked up by letting my past control my present. I should’ve answered the cops’ questions, let them chase whatever fucking lead they want. If I had, then I wouldn’t be here. There wouldn’t be any heat on me. The cops would be going after a theory and I’d be going after a fact. I’d be going after the motherfucker that has her. It’s got to be him, it’s got to be Yankovich.

  That’s why there wasn’t another shipment scheduled to coincide with the one we hit. He delivered us those men and planned to take her. Rick kept saying something was off. He surmised that Yankovich was switching things up. Not only did he pull the wool over our eyes with the scheduled shipment, but Skylar didn’t fit the profile of his other kidnappings. She wasn’t a teenager he could mold, use and sell. She was a baby.

  He had no use for her.

  Which was a fucking terrifying thought.

  At least if she had a place in his demented plan then maybe that would bide me time to find her and bring her back to the safety of her mother’s arms.

  “Let’s go Richardson,” the sergeant hisses as he turns the key on my cell.

  Wiping the blood from my eyes, I look up at him and watch as he slides open my cell. Staring at me in horror, he shakes his head.

  “What the hell did you do to yourself?”

  “I’m free to go?”

  “Yeah, bails been posted.”

  He escorts me upstairs where I sign my release papers and some bullshit waiver stating my injuries were self-inflicted. Got to love the NYPD always protecting their asses, the rest of the citizens, well, they’re a different story.

  Wolf is the man who scrounged up the money to bail me out, and when I’m released he’s waiting for me outside the precinct. Descending the steps, I watch as he reaches into his denim jacket and pulls out a handkerchief.

  “For fuck’s sake, boy, did the pigs do this to you?”

  “No,” I growl, grabbing the handkerchief. Wiping the blood from my face, I lift my chin to Wolf. “Let’s get the fuck out of here. I need to get in touch with Rick, need to find out where Yankovich is,” I rattle off as I pull open the passenger door to the van. “Has Jack been in contact with Jones? Can he see how far along these mutts are with the case?”

  Jones is the club’s contact within the police department. I was hoping he would have been radioed to the hospital; at least then maybe I would have had a leg to stand on. He never showed. I was starting to wonder if Jack had even placed a call in to him.

  “Slow down, Cobra,” Wolf says calmly.

  Pinching the bridge of my nose, I stare back at the old fuck as if he’s lost his mind.

  “Slow down? My daughter is missing, motherfucker, and I just spent twenty-four hours in lock up. Tell me, Wolf, if it was your kid would you slow down? If you knew the first forty-eight hours a child is missing is the most critical time, would you slow down? If you just spent half of that time behind bars when you should’ve been hunting the bastards who took her, would you slow down?”

  “While your ass was in jail your club was doing everything it could in your absence. Now you listen here, don’t doubt for one second we don’t have your back; that we didn’t already call your boy Rick, or that Jones hasn’t been to your woman’s house five times in the last ten hours, or that he’s not sitting down with Jack as we fucking speak. We even reached out to Spinelli to see if his contacts could place Yankovich anywhere near the hospital. Now get your ass in the fucking car so we can find your girl and our brother.”

  Somewhere in the back of my mind Pipe’s voice plays over and over, reminding me how he lost faith in the brotherhood.

  “Today you cheated death, and tomorrow you’ll piss on that gift by throwing on that cut, thinking that piece of fucking leather defines you. You want to worship something, give your life some kind of fucking meaning then you find yourself a good woman. Parrish will think you found your heart and maybe you will. I guarantee you, if you ever think for one second you can have both, you’ll lose your heart because Satan doesn’t let any of his soldiers keep theirs. If you got any smarts left in you, then do yourself a favor and run the fuck away from this hell.”

  Maybe he wasn’t talking out of grief, maybe the years of sacrificing his conscience for the sake of the patch finally caught up to him. Losing someone you love will do that to you. It will open your eyes to all the things you tried not to see. The shitty thing about that is by the time your eyes open it’s already too late. Pipe lost Oksana and I lost my daughter.

  It doesn’t take long for us to arrive at Pipe’s garage and when I climb out of the van I’m bombarded by the men I call brothers. They are all there, offering me their promise to make it right. I want to believe them, I want to think they’ve got Skylar’s best interest in mind and aren’t doing it for the sake of the reaper.

  Jack steps to me, puts a hand on my shoulder and leans close.

  “You holding it together?”

  “What do you think?”

  “By the looks of it, no, but I need your head in the game. I need you focused. Jones just left before you got here, says a witness saw four men get out of a black van. Two of them were wearing leather vests. She couldn’t make out patches but she said they knocked him out and grabbed your girl, put them both in the back of the van. The van had New York plates. You get where I’m going with this?”

  “You’re telling me another club took my daughter? That it wasn’t Yankovich?”

  “I’m saying it’s more than likely Rush found out we sent Deuce in there to collect information and decided to ret
aliate by taking Deuce. I don’t think they meant to take your kid. What the fuck is Rush going to do with a baby?”

  “If Rush has a partnership with Yankovich, which we know he does, then we can’t assume he didn’t mean to take Skylar. I told you Yankovich preys on little girls. He may never have taken a baby before, but we’ve been wondering what the switch in his game was. This is it. Instead of shoving balloons of drugs inside girls, maybe he plans to use my daughter. I can’t fucking let that happen. I won’t let that motherfucker touch her.”

  “Brother, listen to me, if that’s what his plan is we will shut him down before he gets a chance to and then we’ll fucking make him pay for every girl he’s ever harmed. Your sister, your daughter, every faceless girl. Now the first thing we’re going to do is ride to Albany. We’ll go guns blazing, take Rush’s obsession as collateral and force him to give up the location where they’re holding Skylar and Deuce. If we’re lucky, the motherfucker has them there,” he says with a firm pat on my back.

  He leads me to the lot where the rest of the club are already mounted and ready to ride. I turn to the spot where I parked my bike yesterday but Jack grabs my shoulders and spins me back around so I’m facing the van. Wolf stands alongside the van with his arms crossed against his chest and exchanges a look with Jack.

  “Want you riding in the cage so you can hold your girl when we get her,” Jack declares beside me.

  I’m not the guy you tell to stand down. I’m not the guy who takes a step back so he can allow his men to guide him. I’m the man that takes, that leads and that puts himself in the line of fire before anyone else. I’m not the man you put in a cage, yet I don’t have the will to argue. I’m about to have the biggest showdown of my life and I need to put all of me, everything I am into that, into rescuing Skylar.

  As I start for the van, Rocco’s Maserati pulls into the lot. I hear Jack curse behind me and stalk toward the sleek, black car. He comes to a dead stop when the back door opens and Celeste steps out with Gina.

  Her eyes lock with mine and my body goes numb. All the hurt I swore she was done feeling stares back at me as the tears spill from her chocolate eyes. My boots take to the pavement, swallowing the distance between us as she buries her beautiful face in her hands and releases a sob that rips through me. It’s a sob I’ll remember long after the nightmare is over, long after the final stance, long after the hole is dug and the dirt is turned.

  My arms wrap around her as I pull her against my chest. I don’t remember the last time I shed a tear, but I’ll never forget the ones that escape me now. They’ll always stick with me. They are the first tears I cry as a father.

  “I will bring her back,” I swear as I squeeze her.

  “What if you don’t?” she cries into my chest. “What if we never see her again? I’m so scared, Jagger. I’m terrified I’ll never hold my baby again, that I’ll never see her smile or hear her laugh.”

  “Not going to happen,” I answer quickly.

  Too quickly.

  She pulls out of my arms, wipes her face with the sleeves of her shirt and looks back at me. I used to think I’d always remember the younger version of Celeste, the wild girl with big brown eyes that loved me hard. Even after Alexandria’s disappearance, after the guilt robbed her innocence, I still saw her as the girl who gave me her firsts, the girl who supplied me with the smiles I lived off.

  Now I’ll remember her as the woman.

  The broken woman relying on me to bring back the missing piece of her soul.

  The mother terrified for her child.

  “How did we become this?” she whispers. “How did we become your parents?”

  I reach for her hands, raise them to my mouth and brush my lips across her knuckles.

  “Don’t say that,” I plead hoarsely. “We’re not them. We’re going to get her back,” I say, waving a hand behind me to the men straddling their bikes. The men ready to kick up their kickstands and ride the wind. “My dad didn’t have this.”

  “What if this is the reason she’s gone?”

  “Celeste, please, you have to trust me.”

  I’m asking her to trust me.

  To trust my club.

  But I’m not sure I trust them either.

  Like Pipe I’m losing my religion.

  Faithless and hopeless.

  I am the wanderer.

  The lone man who will do anything to save his daughter.

  Watch me motherfucker.

  -Forty-

  Cobra

  I don’t know who gave this fuck a license, but it needs to be revoked. I thought he was a maniac in a wheelchair until we put the motherfucker behind the wheel of a car and gave him free reign. Now I’m not so sure I’ll live to rescue my daughter.

  I’m about to shout at him to pull over so I can drive the rest of the way when he stops short. My body jerks forward and I brace my hands against the dash to prevent myself from slamming into the windshield.

  “Holy fuck,” he barks, staring straight ahead.

  I watch as the rest of club splits. Bikes ride up on each side of the van before pulling in front of the Satan’s Knights’ Albany clubhouse.

  If you could call it a clubhouse. Every window is busted and the walls are full of bullet holes. My stomach sinks as dread churns in my gut. Fearing I’m too late, I jump out of the van knowing Wolf won’t physically be able to restrain me. Stalking toward the ruins, a hand reaches out and grabs the back of my cut.

  “Hold it,” Stryker orders, pulling me behind him. “We don’t know what we’re walking into. You need to let me go in there first.”

  “Cobra, your head, keep your fucking head, boy,” Jack bellows.

  Shrugging out of Stryker’s hold, I back off and let him lead. Holding his gun steady, his boots crunch over the glass as he kicks open the door. We barely get our feet in the door before there are weapons pointed at our heads.

  “Bas,” Stryker shouts, holding both hands over his head. “Not looking to shoot you, man, I just need to speak to Rush,” he says, dropping his gun onto the filthy floor for extra emphasis.

  He might be dumb enough to drop his weapon but that doesn’t mean the rest of us are. No, we keep those fucking Glocks aimed directly at these assholes.

  “Rush ain’t fucking here,” the guy named Bas reveals as his eyes dart around, assessing each of us. Jack steps to my left, Blackie right on his heels.

  “You know who I am?” Parrish says as he tucks his gun inside the front waistband of his jeans, showing a gesture of good faith.

  “Of course I know who you are,” Bas answers, eyeing the rest of his men before he lowers his own gun. “I’ve been expecting you.”

  Ready to pounce at those words I charge forward but again someone pulls me back.

  “Let me guess,” Bas starts, pointing a finger toward me. “She’s yours.”

  “Damn fucking straight she is. Where is she?” I growl, pointing my gun at him.

  “Whoa, whoa, you got it all wrong, man. She ain’t here,” he yells. “And everyone standing in this room is just as fucking livid as the rest of you. We had no idea Rush was doing this. The motherfucker completely blindsided us. You don’t believe me, look around,” he instructs.

  “That don’t mean shit,” I shout. “I’ve been around long enough to know when a war is staged to cover your tracks.”

  “Bas doesn’t work like that,” Stryker defends. Stepping forward he turns his gaze back to Bas. “Before he puts a bullet between your eyes I suggest you start talking, man. Not going to be able to keep him down for too long so make it quick.”

  “About five hours ago all hell broke loose,” Bas starts, pointing a thumb to the man next to him. “This is Needles, the treasurer of our club.”

  Blackie and Jack both extend their hands to the treasurer as Bas continues to introduce the few other patched members before he resumes telling us his side of the story. I listen closely, never dropping my weapon and no one asks me to either.

  “Needles not
iced some shit was off a few weeks ago,” Bas begins.

  “There was money missing from the club’s accounts, transfers that didn’t make any fucking sense. I tried cornering Rush, but he wasn’t having any of it. He told me he’d have my patch for doubting his authority. Then I found he was taking advantage of our leasing contract with Triton Containers. He was taking out contracts on containers and outsourcing them for a profit, a profit our club didn’t see a nickel of,” Needles informs.

  “It goes deeper than that. Rush is off the rails, he’s all junked up too,” Bas offers.

  “Anyway, Bas and I sat him down earlier without the rest of the club. We thought we’d give him an opportunity to explain what the fuck was going on before we took the matter to church. We barely got to say a word before he went fucking ape shit. He started freaking out in the office, throwing shit all over the place,” Needles tells us.

  “He must’ve ripped six lines of coke in a matter of minutes,” Bas adds. “Then he started shouting about your guy Deuce.” He points to Jack and continues, “Says you sent him in here.”

  “How did he find out?” Jack questions.

  Bas turns his gaze to Stryker.

  “You remember Ally, don’t you?” he asks, leaning against the bar. He crosses his arms and stares at Stryker, waiting for him to answer.

  “Who’s Ally?” I demand, lowering my gun.

  Stryker swipes a hand over his bald head before he blows out, what looks to me, like a sigh of relief.

  “Who the fuck is Ally?” I repeat.

  “She’s Rush’s whore,” Bas supplies. “But your boy Stryker here had a soft spot for her.”

  “I’d hardly call it that.”

  “Call it what you want, you’re the only one who gave a fuck whether that cunt lived or not. Now it looks to me like you’re relieved the bitch is still breathing. If I were you I’d cut that attachment because your girl Ally is the reason all this shit is blowing up. She caught your boy Deuce in Rush’s office. My guess is she ratted him out for a fix of whatever junk Rush was shining in her face.”