by Stasia Black
Because odds were, she was never getting out of here alive.
At least he’d have Jenny to get him over any grief or remorse he felt.
Ironic, since she’d done the same for him to help him get over Jenny. Talk about karmic payback.
“Her cunt’s probably a saggy, old tuna taco by now if she’s being pounded like that every night, huh, Jack?”
Jack didn’t say anything. He just kept glaring at Vanessa.
Lorenzo let out a sigh. He always did love being dramatic.
“I guess there’s no way to know unless we investigate for ourselves.” Lorenzo started unbuckling his belt.
“No,” Vanessa whispered. Not that it would matter to this monster. But no, this couldn’t be happening. The blows had all certainly felt real, but please, please, could this just turn out to be an especially realistic nightmare?
She didn’t care if fate or the universe had it out for her. She didn’t care if karma felt like evening out the scales.
She wanted to live. She and her clan had come too far. Maybe in the end she hadn’t been able to get through to Logan, but Camden, and Riordan and Ross, and Michael—
“I’d let you go first, Jack,” Lorenzo said, turning to the other man, “but I doubt they’ll be much left of her once you’re done. Speaking of, why don’t you give her a play by play of your plans? I do know you love that.”
Jack’s beady eye was still boring into hers. “I’m gonna fuck you till your insides bleed. Then I’m gonna cut off your leg and fuck you while it roasts on the spit. Then I’m gonna fuck you while I eat your calf off the bone like it’s a fucking turkey leg. The hamstring is a little chewy, but once you get past that, if you spice it right, the rest is nice and juicy—”
There!
The knot in the rope tying Vanessa’s wrists together behind the chair finally came free.
It was a trick Ross had taught her.
While he tied her up that day that Riordan found them on the porch, she’d asked him all about the knots he was tying. And boy did he have a lot to say. Not just about tying knots either.
He had all sorts of know-how about how to get stubborn knots untied.
For example, the simple knot these fuckheads had tied, like the kind you do when you’re tying your shoe before you make the loops, just tying and knotting the rope several times, then pulling tight?
Even the tightest of those knots could be worked loose, according to Ross. All you had to do was grab the bulbous parts of the knot and twist them back and forth, then gently tug. Twist and tug. Twist and tug. It could take time and you had to be patient, but even the most stubborn knots could be worked free.
And it had worked.
She unlooped the rope from around her wrists but didn’t let it drop to the floor. She didn’t want to alert Lorenzo or Jack that her hands were free.
Because as much as it felt like a victory, there was still the not-unimportant fact that her leg remained tied to the chair. And the little detail of how there were two of them and one of her.
“Boss, it’s fine if you fuck her first,” Jack whipped out a switchblade from a sheath on his belt. “But let me have a little fun. Don’t affect her cunt none if I cut off an ear or two.”
Lorenzo laughed.
If it was the last thing Vanessa did, she was gonna stab that bastard in his throat and cut out his voice box so he could never laugh again.
“By all means,” Lorenzo said, moving out of the way so Jack could advance. He came toward Vanessa with his knife upraised.
Steady.
Wild woman.
Closer.
Closer.
She only had one chance to use the element of surprise. She couldn’t waste it. Jack’s unwashed scent filled her nostrils as she took a deep breath, filling her lungs.
He grabbed her ear.
Lifted the knife.
And that was when she struck.
She whipped both arms around, lightning fast. With one hand she gripped his wrist and jerked it sideways, just hard enough to loosen Jack’s grip on the knife.
She twisted her other hand to grip as much of the knife’s handle as she could from underneath and then in one motion wrenched it up and stabbed it toward his good eye.
The gush of the blade sliding into his eye was familiar, but unlike last time, Vanessa didn’t let go of the knife. No, she screamed in feral rage as she shoved the knife in even further. Up through the eye socket and into the brain.
She wasn’t the only one shouting though. Lorenzo was yelling for his henchmen.
Vanessa yanked the knife out of Jack’s head, ignoring the spurting blood and bending over to saw at the rope around her left ankle.
The rope wasn’t thick and the knife was sharp. She cut through it without much difficulty but right when she was turning to cut the other, Lorenzo came at her.
He shoved her so hard the chair toppled backwards. Her head cracked on the floor but it was carpet, so she was scrambling to get away the next second. She only had one foot attached to the chair so she was able to crawl a little with it dragging at her like an anchor.
She didn’t get far, though, before Lorenzo was on top of her.
He shoved her on her back and then his hands were around her throat.
Couldn’t breathe. Oh God. Needed air. She grabbed his wrists and fought to get him off of her but he didn’t budge.
“You fucking bitch!”
His face was red and for once he wasn’t laughing.
“I’m Lorenzo fucking Bernal. Men all over the Republic piss their pants in fear of my name! You think I’m gonna let some stupid little cunt bitch make a fool out of me? Think again, birdie.”
He squeezed even tighter.
Spots danced across her vision.
Couldn’t—
She gasped but there was no air.
Needed—
If only she could—
The spots became a block of darkness as her vision blinked in and out.
This was really the end.
No!
She struggled even harder.
But her limbs were weak. It was like she was fighting through water. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t fight.
Couldn’t—
Michael.
Riordan.
Cam and Logan.
Ross.
They needed her.
They—
The darkness crept closer.
And then the light blinked out.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
VANESSA
Heaven was like a dream.
And in her dream, everyone she loved was there, surrounding her on all sides.
Cam hovered over her. Logan was beside him, his fingers in her hair, caressing her scalp. And Michael stood behind all of them, eyes wide as he looked down.
She couldn’t tell for sure, though. Their shapes warped like they were standing in front of funhouse mirrors and their voices were muffled like they were shouting at her through water.
Then Cam leaned over and he was kissing her.
Except—
It wasn’t a kiss.
He blew air into her mouth and she felt her chest rise.
That was a neat trick.
After a few seconds, he did it again.
But then she coughed and when she blinked, suddenly the warm blanketing haze she’d been floating in was yanked sharply away.
She sputtered and then Cam and the others moved her so that she was sitting up.
“That’s right, baby,” Logan said, rubbing circles on her back. “Thank God. Baby, thank God.”
He sounded like he was crying.
What was—?
OW. Everything hurt. She swallowed and it hurt so much she let out a pained croak. She tried to lift a hand to her throat but her arm weighed a thousand pounds so she let it fall limply to her side.
“Water!” Cam snapped. “Get her some water.”
What was going on? Where was she?
She turned her h
ead the slightest bit and through the small sliver of space between Logan and Cam she saw Lorenzo. Lying in a pool of his own blood. Half his head was blown off. A shotgun was propped against the wall near the door.
The thought distantly registered that she should be more disturbed by the gore. Instead she turned her attention back to Cam and Riordan and the rest of her clan.
Were they… really here?
Was this not a dream? Not heaven?
Because as Cam asked her question after question, and Riordan held a canteen of water to her lips, and Ross held her head to help her tip it back, it all felt very, very real. In a surreal way. So surreal it had to be real.
Because frankly, she wasn’t this imaginative. Not even in her wildest dreams could she have conceived of such an outpouring of love, devotion, and concern as she was receiving right now.
“How?” she croaked, swinging her head to look around at them all.
Every moment, they came more and more into focus. Cam’s bright blue eyes. Logan’s cleft chin. The thick, vibrant auburn of the twin’s hair. The furrow in Michael’s brow as he hovered right behind the others.
“I’m so sorry I ever left,” Logan said, reaching down and clasping her hand in his, bringing it to his lips and grazing a kiss over her knuckles. “I turned back after a couple of hours but when I got to camp—”
“And found us going crazy,” Riordan took over. “We knew you’d been taken but the tires on the four-wheeler were slashed. We found tire tracks but we couldn’t follow until we fixed them.”
Again, Vanessa could only manage a single word, “How?”
Ross grinned. “See, I told you my merit badge training would be useful.” He shook his head at Riordan.
“Hey,” Riordan said, holding his hands up, “I’ve never been so happy to be proven wrong.”
“There’s an automotive maintenance badge,” Ross said, as if that explained anything.
“And,” Cam said, reaching over to smack him on the back of the head.
Ross shot him a quick glare but then explained. “Patching tires was part of what I learned. If you slash a regular car tire in the sidewall you can’t repair it, but ATV tires are different. It took a while, but eventually we got all four of them patched and then came after you as soon as we could. This cabin was only about twenty miles away, so three of us rode the first time, then Riordan took the ATV back for Michael and Ross.”
“I’m so sorry we didn’t come for you right away, baby,” Logan said, looking haunted as he glanced past her to where Lorenzo’s and Jack’s body’s lay on the floor. “There were six guards, and I didn’t want to risk failing just because I was too impatient for the rest of the clan to get here.”
Vanessa lifted a shaky hand to his face. “You did right,” she whispered. Even getting the three words out hurt her raw throat, and she couldn’t help dropping a hand to her neck. She winced as soon as she made contact.
Logan’s jaw locked with anger. “This should never have happened to you.”
She reached over and took his hand. “I’m fine,” she rasped.
He gave a nod but she could tell he was still castigating himself. Just one more thing to add to his supposed list of sins. She sighed, giving his hand a squeeze. When would he learn that the entire weight of the world didn’t rest on his shoulders?
Then his eyes came back to hers, and it was like he’d made some decision. There was a purpose and intensity to his gaze.
“It’s time to get you home. Time for all of us to go home. Our new home.” He glanced over at Ross. “How long do you think it will take us to make it to those caves?”
Wait. Did he just say us?
“But… Jenny?” she asked.
Logan’s intense brown eyes came back to hers. “Baby, you are my only priority.”
She blinked.
He’d picked her.
For once in her life, she’d been picked first.
She couldn’t help the tears that started rolling down her cheeks.
“Sweetheart,” Cam said, wiping her tears away with his thumbs. “Don’t cry.”
She nodded but continued blubbering, finally managing to get out, “Let’s go home.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
LOGAN
Logan felt at peace the next few days as they traveled south. It was a foreign sensation. But it was as if, for the first time in he didn’t know how long—almost a decade?—he didn’t feel like there was a constant war going on inside him between his guilt and the human desire to be happy.
It helped that the days were full of simple, hard work.
They’d wake up, scramble together some sort of meal, then set out to cover as many miles as possible. They stopped at Canyon Lake in the middle of the night to refill their canteens and bathe but they didn’t stay long. It was right on the Neutral Zone between Central Texas South Territory and San Antonio Territory.
Before they’d left, Nix had gotten intel that San Antonio Territory had been taken over by the Black Skulls, a brutal MC that was allied with Travis.
Nowhere was safe.
Logan had come too close to losing Vanessa once. He wouldn’t risk her again.
After another day of hiking, Vanessa riding the ATV the whole time, they had to finally abandon the vehicle. They were nearing San Antonio and it was too dangerous to bring any attention to themselves. The caves—Natural Bridge Caverns—were on the northernmost edge of the city.
They slept during the day and traveled all the next night.
It was coming up on dawn, the sky just beginning to lighten when they came across what looked like a rock bridge stretched across a natural sinkhole.
“Do you suppose this is it?” Michael asked.
They stood in a kind of ravine, scattered with rocks and spiked with a few crooked trees. Above their heads, a sixty-foot jagged slab of rock stretched from one edge of the bank to the other. It wasn’t a slab that had been lain there, but rather the remnants of what had once been an entire rock ceiling.
“Looks more like a ‘natural bridge’ to me than anything else we’ve seen,” Cam said. “We must be near the caverns.”
“But it doesn’t seem like there’s anyone here,” Vanessa said. She sounded worried.
“If they’re here, they’ll be deep inside the caves,” Riordan said.
“But shouldn’t they have sentinels watching the entrance?” Ross asked. “Even if we can’t see them, they should know we’re here.”
Cam pointed to an opening in a rock wall at one end of the sinkhole, and the group stepped closer to the apparent entrance.
They were only a dozen feet away when a chorus of high-pitched screeches tore through the air.
Vanessa threw her hands over her ears and Logan didn’t blame her. Fuck, it sounded like someone dragging a metal fork down a blackboard.
Logan looked up to see a whole flock of sizable roosting birds. Then, out of his periphery, came a flash of gray.
“What the fuck!” Riordan cried, jumping back.
Two large birds dropped from the bridge, landing on Riordan’s back. They pecked and shrieked, clucked and squawked like hell’s own chicken coop. It inspired those birds still in the trees to do more of the same, making an intense racket.
Cam only laughed and swatted at the birds on Riordan’s back until they alit back to the bridge. “Guinea hens,” he said. “Nature’s best security alarms. Meet Nix’s sentinels. Anyone who’s here will know we’ve arrived.”
And sure enough, they weren’t more than five feet from the wide entrance when they were confronted by Danny, Gabriel, and Rafe, each holding a torch.
“Dios Mio,” whispered Gabriel, as the three men stuttered to a stop. Their eyes were wide.
“Logan,” Danny said, somehow managing to sound both panicked and relieved. “Thank God you’re here. We didn’t expect you so soon…”
“What is it?” Vanessa asked. “Is something wrong?”
“Follow us,” Rafe said. “And hurry.”
<
br /> They followed them into the caverns. It was dark and cool inside, and the temperature dropped with every step they took. The limestone walls were wet, in some places dripping. Under each drip, small round calcium deposits looked like fried eggs on the damp floor.
“What is it?” Logan asked as he braced himself against the wall, then ducked through a low passageway. “Where are you taking us?”
He’d been expecting to be greeted with hugs and excitement. What the fuck had happened now? He just needed to get Vanessa somewhere safe.
The next room of caves looked like a gothic cathedral with tall broomstick stalagmites growing up from the floor, and drapery stalactites spiking down from the ceiling.
“Logan?” Nix looked up from a bucket and pulley contraption.
But then he was echoed by a much higher, feminine voice. “Logan!”
Logan’s head jerked to the left.
And he blinked in shock to see Jenny walking toward him after getting up from a camping chair near the wall a few feet from the cavern’s entrance.
She was skinnier than he remembered and her face pale and gaunt, but it was Jenny. His wife.
“Jenny,” he whispered, too shocked to even process what the fuck was happening.
She threw her arms around him.
And kissed him.
He didn’t kiss her back.
All he could think about was Vanessa watching this from behind him. Oh God, after all she’d been through—
Jenny pulled back from him, and then, before he could get his bearings, she slapped him so hard the sound of it echoed off the cave walls.
“You son of a bitch!”
And then her face went even paler and she fainted dead away in his arms.
Chapter Thirty
VANESSA
She was beautiful. Jenny. His wife.
Vanessa could only watch on with a sort of numb fascination as they entered the cavern and Jenny threw herself into Logan’s arms. And then as she kissed him on the mouth.
