Devil's Pass

by Caroline Peckham

  "What did you do?" he growled again, getting up in my face this time.

  "I went after her of course," I snarled, shoving him back a step.

  "You idiot!" Chase barked. "He'll kill her, he'll-"

  "He's not going to kill her," I snapped. "But he wants me to take the fall for Axel's death. Says I'm gonna go to fucking juvie."

  "What?" JJ breathed, his eyes widening in horror.

  Fox's throat bobbed and he took a step away from me, shaking his head. "Why would you do this? How could you be so fucking stupid?"

  "I had to try!" I shouted, refusing to accept I'd done the wrong thing.

  "No, you didn't," Fox hissed. "You selfish asshole, you risked her fucking life."

  "I didn't, that's not how it was," I said, searching all of their eyes for an ounce of understanding, but I didn't find any.

  "Look, I just need you guys to give me an alibi, buy us some more time-" I started but Fox's upper lip peeled back as he cut me off.

  "No," he spat in an icy voice. "This needs to stop."

  "We just need more time," I insisted, panic starting to grip me as I found none of the loyalty in their eyes I'd been expecting to see. We were brothers. They'd never let me down. But now, when it really counted, why were they all looking at me like that?

  "How could you risk her life?" JJ whispered.

  "You don't deserve our help," Chase said in disgust. "You deserve whatever you get!"

  Anger flooded me at his words. "I just wanted-" I began, but Fox cut me off again and a growl left my throat.

  "You wanted to do whatever you fucking fancied," he snarled, pointing a finger at me accusingly. "If we give you an alibi you’ll just go after her again and then he really will kill Rogue. You’re not thinking of her."

  "I am only thinking of her!" I roared, but they all just started shaking their heads and turning away from me. "Wait," I gasped, but then a hand landed on my shoulder and I turned, finding Luther there, his eyes an endless void.

  "Come on, the police are here," he muttered and I looked to my friends, but they weren't looking back.

  My breaths came frantically and I tried to fight Luther off, but he hauled me down the corridor to the front door. They were here already? How could that be? I needed more time. I'd thought I had more time.

  "No!" I begged him. "Don't do this. I'll take any other punishment."

  "You won't learn," he said coldly. "You will never stop trying to find her until you learn."

  "I won't!" I told him, but I knew he was right. I wouldn't stop. I would never fucking stop.

  He pulled the door open and two cops stood there with curious expressions on their faces as Luther shoved me towards them.

  "Here's your killer," he said. "He told me everything."

  "Maverick Harlequin, you're under arrest for the murder of Axel Phillips," the big guy said.

  "Fuck you!" I spat at Luther, venom seeping through my veins. "I'm not a Harlequin. I'm not your crew. I'm not your son. I'm not your anything!"

  "Turn around and put your hands behind your back, kid," the cop demanded and Luther grabbed my shoulders, twisting me around and forcing me to comply.

  I saw Fox and my friends standing in the hall behind him, watching as the freezing metal of the cuffs slapped around my wrists.

  "I'll provide all the evidence you need," Luther murmured to the cops and I swear I'd kill him for those words alone. I'd destroy him for this and the whole lot of his fucking crew too.

  The cops dragged me outside and I bucked and kicked and fought them, yelling my innocence, but my voice was lost to the wind. No one would come to save the orphan kid who'd been taken in by Luther Harlequin. I'd always been nothing to him, ready to be used and then cast aside for whatever the fuck he wanted. I was trash to him, and it looked like I was trash to my friends too.

  I couldn’t even save myself with the truth. I couldn’t tell them what Rogue had done even if it had been self defence. Not after we’d covered it up and incriminated ourselves. I wouldn’t sell her out like the rest of them were selling me out.

  I was forced into the back of the cop car and the door was slammed shut, securing my fate. I dragged in heavy breaths, trying to make my lungs work, but they wouldn't. I couldn't breathe, my head was spinning as my world caved in and I lost everything in one fell swoop.

  Rogue was gone. My life was over. And I swore I'd get revenge for this. I would make it my life's mission when I got free. I would come back. I would fucking kill Luther and make him pay for everything he'd done. One day, somehow, I would find my girl. And no one would ever take her from me again.

  Four Months Later…

  T hey aren't coming. I knew it that first day when I woke up locked in a room in a strange house and realised I must have been carried from the trunk of the car into this place. The last thing I remembered about being in that trunk was giving up on trying to fight my way out after kicking and screaming until my throat was rubbed raw and I was just left quietly sobbing with so many tears on my cheeks that they were red and sore from them, my eyes puffy and painful.

  But I hadn't cried since I'd woken up that day. I hadn't spoken for a week either and then I'd had to because the witch running this place stopped feeding me until I would. Sandra made Mary Beth look like a saint. The kids who lived here weren't allowed in the main part of the house, only the designated rooms built onto the side of the building like some freaking shanty town which practically cooked us alive in the summer heat.

  And now she wanted me to start selling drugs to the kids at the sorry excuse for a school I was forced to attend. She wanted to put me in the firing line for dealing and no doubt let me take the fall for it if I was caught. No fucking way.

  That was it. I was done. Four months without a word from the boys I'd once called mine. Not a note, a phone call, or even an email sent to my account which I'd managed to access again in the school library. They knew where I was. I'd given them the benefit of the doubt, waited to see if there was some long game being played here.

  But the only one who'd been played was me.

  They made me believe I meant something to them. They made me think I mattered. They made me think they loved me.

  And I sure as hell had loved them. But that love had been betrayed, rejected, cast aside. Just like I had. I guessed some lessons had to be learned the hard way because I would never give my heart to anyone ever again after them. I'd never cry over anyone and I'd never care for anyone like that either. I was done, broken beyond repair and sick of waiting on this half hope based on nothing that made me think they might be coming for me. They weren't coming. They'd forgotten me. And as much as I wished that didn't kill me, I died a little bit more every day when they didn't show up.

  Tonight I was taking the few clothes I owned and leaving this shitty place. I would get on the first bus to arrive at the station and figure it out from there. If they didn't know where I was then I didn't have to face the agony of kidding myself into believing they were going to show up one day.

  I was turning my back on all of it. All of them.

  It didn't matter anymore anyway.

  But one thing was for certain. My love for them had rotted in these past four months, decaying inside me until it felt like my heart was withering and all the love it held had festered into hate. And I hated the Harlequin boys unlike I'd ever hated anything in my entire life. They were a poison that had infected my veins and destroyed any good parts there were of me. If I never saw them again it would be too soon.

  But if I did, if fate ever put me in their paths, then I was going to make them suffer for what they'd done to me.

  Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned and all that. And I'd been burned four times over.

  I breathed my hate for them.

  I drowned in my hate for them.

  And I'd bleed my hate for them too.

  Fuck the Harlequin boys, fuck Sunset Cove and Sinners' Playground and all of it. I was done with them.

  And I'd onl
y go back there over my dead body.

  _______________________

  Need to talk about that itty bitty cliff we just threw you off? Then join the Devil’s Pass Discussion Group on Facebook to vent your woes and prepare for the release of Sinners’ Playground.

  Preorder Book 1 in The Harlequin Crew Series now!

  Sinners’ Playground will be out November 13th 2020 – read on to preview chapter 1 based ten years after this novella when Rogue returns to Sunset Cove…

  I’m not dead.

  I gasped as those three words resounded through my skull and the memory of Shawn’s hands locked tight around my throat threatened to drown me in terror.

  I’d seen my death in his eyes, watched as the bright blue colour of them seemed to flare with energy and excitement as he pinned me to the wall and choked the fucking life out of me. “Sorry about this, sweetcheeks. I’m really gonna miss that ass of yours, but I can’t have witnesses. You understand.” Those were his last words to me as I fought for my motherfucking life, thrashing and scratching and gouging at his arms as his grip never faltered. The last words I ever should have heard as he squeezed and squeezed until my ears were ringing and darkness closed over my vision and I fell into the deepest depths of oblivion. I’d thought I was dead. Hell, maybe I was.

  But then why did my throat hurt so fucking much? My head was pounding and there was a heaviness to my body unlike anything I’d ever felt before.

  I groaned as I opened my eyes but all that escaped my lips was a hoarse croak which felt like fire burning up my throat. Even with my eyes open, the darkness didn’t let up. It was pitch black and the air I sucked into my lungs was stale and left the scent of damp earth coating my tongue.

  “Shawn?” I rasped, but it barely even sounded like his name and he was the last fucking person I wanted to see anyway. But my mind was a fog of confused, disjointed thoughts and memories and he was the only person my malfunctioning brain could latch onto right now.

  I tried to lift my arm to push my hair away from my face, but I found it trapped against my chest.

  As I sucked in another breath, some rough, scratchy fabric was drawn against my lips and my heart leapt in fear as I realised the heaviness I felt wasn’t in my body – it was on my body.

  There was a weight pressing down on me, pinning my arms to my sides and trapping me in the dark. That damp earth smell surrounded me, drowning me in it and a croak of fear escaped my lips as a terrifying thought occurred to me.

  I wasn’t dead. But I was buried.

  With a cry of alarm which sent more pain through my tender throat, I yanked hard on my arms and I almost sobbed with relief as I managed to drag them up my body until I was shoving hair away from my face and pressing shaking fingertips to the rough material I’d been wrapped in. It felt like some kind of heavy duty sack or sheeting.

  Panic dug its claws into me at the thought of being underground and a shiver of fear passed through my skin as I wondered how much air I even had left down here. Every breath I sucked in seemed thin, full of that damp earth scent which made me want to heave. But puking right now seriously wasn’t going to improve my situation and I really needed to improve my fucking situation, or I was pretty sure this dead girl was about to get a whole lot deader.

  I pressed my palms against the sack in front of my face and tried to exert pressure against the weight above it as I began to wriggle my legs.

  As the heaviness above me shifted, the weight on my chest suddenly increased and a hoarse shriek of terror escaped me as I started thrashing and kicking with more vigour. I cursed and kicked and clawed at the rough material which was wrapped around me until my fingernails managed to tear through it.

  Cold, damp soil poured through the hole the moment it was created and I screamed a broken, shattered sound of pure terror as the dirt spilled over my face.

  I kicked harder, clawing huge clods of dirt into my hands and somehow managed to shove myself into a vague sitting position as I tried to hold my breath, and dirt cascaded over me in a never ending torrent.

  I scrunched my eyes up tight and fought with everything I had as I dug and crawled and fought my way towards the surface.

  My lungs ached with a desperate, urgent kind of need and the fear pressed in on me almost as tightly as the dirt I’d been buried in. But just as my body felt ready to give out on me, my hand thrust through the surface and balmy air washed over my palm.

  With a snarl of determination, I kicked harder, clawing the dirt away from me until I managed to push my head free of it and I sucked down a shuddering breath of relief.

  I coughed and heaved as I pressed my cheek against the cool earth, still half buried beneath it and suddenly lacking in all energy as I just fought to calm my thrashing heart.

  The dim, pale blue light of dawn fell through the trees which surrounded me and I slowly cracked my eyes open as I tried to get my bearings. The sound of gulls calling out to one another and the tang of salt in the air told me I was near the sea and I groaned as I tried to figure out how I’d ended up here.

  But it was no good. The last thing I remembered was Shawn’s hands wrapped around my throat as he tried to kill me in his club. Then darkness. It had been night then…how many hours had it been? How long had I been underground? How close had I just come to actually dying?

  I rasped out another groan as the pain in my neck drew all of my attention for a moment and the pounding in my skull had me praying for oblivion again.

  With a curse that didn’t even sound like it was me speaking, thanks to the damage that asshole had done to my vocal cords, I dug my fingers into the ground in front of me and dragged the rest of my body up out of the dirt. It took way longer than I would have liked and I couldn’t help but think that I must look like some kind of undead asshole right about now. Or I would have if anyone was here to see me. But as I appeared to be slap bang in the middle of fucking nowhere, I guessed there wasn’t much chance of that.

  When I finally managed to drag my feet free of the shallow grave my boyfriend had gifted me, I fell down onto my knees before collapsing to the ground and rolling over so that I could look up at the canopy of trees above me and lay there panting as tears pricked the backs of my eyes. But I wouldn’t let them fall. I’d cried my last tears a long damn time ago and I’d sworn never to let anyone get close enough to me to hurt me like that again ever since.

  The Harlequin boys had broken my heart once and I had no intention of ever giving it out to anyone again.

  The dirty, brown material I’d been buried in was still tangled around my legs and I tugged it off of me as I stood, clutching it in my fist as I looked down at it, wondering if I’d ever meant anything at all to the man who had killed me so casually.

  I turned the torn piece of sack in my fist, frowning as I spotted a logo stamped across it, hidden within the mud that stained it.

  Pappa Brown’s Russet Potatoes.

  He’d buried me in a shallow grave wrapped in a fucking potato sack. Anger flooded through my flesh unlike anything I’d ever known at the fucking callous disregard that asshole had held me in. The feeling was quickly followed by disgust for the fact that I’d ever let that vile excuse for a man lay his hands on my body. But you didn’t say no to Shawn Mackenzie, everyone knew that. And I’d foolishly believed that being his girl would offer me some level of protection in these fucked up games I ran in, where men played at being kings and everyone died with a knife in their back in the end.

  My mouth was so dry that my tongue felt swollen and the headache was making me feel dizzy as well as nauseous. I was coated in damn mud, my blue crop top and ripped jeans clearly ruined and my once white sneakers now very much brown. A quick swipe of my hand over my long, brunette hair told me that it was no better.

  I swallowed against the lump in my throat and looked around for some sign of where I needed to go to get out of here, but there were just trees everywhere I looked. The ground sloped down to my right though so that seemed like the easiest path to tak
e.

  I stumbled downhill, my feet catching on roots as my tired limbs ached and the pain in my body threatened to overwhelm me. But I needed to keep moving. Had to get away from here and find somewhere safe so that I could figure out what the fuck I was supposed to do now.

  The sound of the waves reached me and the light ahead brightened before I stepped out onto a white sandy beach, a sigh of relief escaping me at the sight of the ocean. Fuck, I missed it sometimes more than my own mother. I mean, my mother was a total bitch who I barely even remembered, so I missed my period more than her whenever I wasn’t on it, but still, the ocean held a special place in my heart unlike any other. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d been swimming in it though, let alone surfing.

  I drew in a deep breath of the crisp, ocean breeze and looked out at the horizon for a long moment as I tried to process what had happened last night. But all that came back to me was that one, all important thing. I was a dead girl walking. And Shawn could never find out about that unless I wanted to live to see that fate brought to reality. Of course, if I managed to get to him before he got to me…

  I shook my head before I got carried away and started thinking about anything crazy like revenge. I certainly wasn’t in any shape to be carrying out hits on gangster assholes right now anyway. And the leader of The Dead Dogs would be a damn difficult target to get close to. First things first, I needed water, food, clothes…money.

  I dipped my fingers into my back pocket where I knew I’d had a twenty stashed and closed my eyes for a brief moment with a smile tugging at my lips as I found it right where I’d left it. That was something. Admittedly, not a whole lot. But it was a start.

  Any normal girl would have been afraid right now, but every moment since the Harlequin boys had betrayed me, I’d been growing tougher like a rose growing thorns. I knew how to take things in my stride, even my own death. I was either one lucky bitch or the Grim Reaper had been preoccupied tonight and he’d come looking to claim what he was owed soon enough. I was banking on the former.