by Jayne Blue
This time, I didn’t have to run away.
This time, Steel was there.
The force of his protectiveness was almost a physical thing.
This time, Sawyer was listening, and I felt his goodness in a way that was the polar opposite of the men who’d kidnapped me.
Ten
Steel
* * *
“I’m sure you have already figured out that the two men at your house aren’t cops,” Sawyer told Darby, and she nodded but looked unsure, still. That was fucking predictable due to the horror of her last few days. I still kicked myself for leaving but also thanked God that I fucking came back in time.
“But Uncle Reid called the police. He set it up so I wouldn’t have to have the trauma of going to the station.”
“And one of ‘em had a police issue weapon, that’s what was whizzing past our heads, Sawyer,” I pointed out. They may not have been good cops, but one of them at least was on the force.
“So dirty cops?” Sawyer said, and that sounded right to me.
“Your uncle called the police, and one way or another, you wound up in nearly as bad a spot as the other day when you were kidnapped.” Sawyer was trying to puzzle this shit together just like I was.
“Where’s your uncle now?” I asked her.
“He had business. He has a lot of business. He doesn’t have to babysit me anymore. I’m a grown woman,” Darby said it, but she’d never looked more like a little kid. I had no idea what her story was before the moment I saw her in the mall. I wanted all of it. But for now, it was about getting her out of here.
“He fucking left you?” I said and felt my temper rise. I possessed zero control over what pissed me off, and zero history of managing shit when I was, and it was happening now. The thought of anyone leaving her to be hurt made me furious, and I hated her uncle no matter what reason he had to leave.
“Steel, fucking simmer down. We’re here to figure this shit out, not scare Darby.” Sawyer gave me a look that said more than his words. He was pissed off too, that all of this was getting worse, unraveling, that whatever we’d stepped in meant we were making messes that were hard to clean.
But that wasn’t my worry. For the first time in a long time, I realized my main concern was not the M.C. It was Darby Bishop. I didn’t care what cop I pissed off or how Sawyer felt. Darby was my focus. It was a shift in my world. I didn’t even question it. It just was.
“Is your uncle coming back?” Sawyer turned his attention back to Darby.
“I, uh, I don’t know.” She looked embarrassed.
“It’s okay, it’s better that way.” I tried to let her know she was okay with me. I believed her uncle had no way to keep her safe and I was volunteering for the job. I’d do it right.
“Hang on.” Sawyer’s phone buzzed, and he stood up and took the call.
“Yeah, babe. Looks fine, scared, but fine.”
I could see Darby blinking; she was trying not to cry. I reached out my hand, and she took it. I squeezed, lightly.
“I got you,” I said quietly, for only her to hear. She wiped the corner of her eye. I wanted to kiss her, hold her, stop her from shaking. But I had to go slow. She was a deer, and I was a wolf. She had every right to be skittish.
Sawyer finished the call.
“That’s my old lady, Bess. She’s the one who tipped us off to the fact that there were sex traffickers in the mall. She’s why Steel was there, watching when you got nabbed.” Sawyer softened and then paused a beat before asking, “Can you tell us the names of the other girls?”
Darby struggled. I saw her look back into her recent memory to that basement. I knew it had to be terrifying, but she told Sawyer what she could remember. I knew it had to be foggy. She’d likely been loaded up with drugs, but she did her best to give Sawyer something to go on.
“Paulie, she talked to me, Deb, and, uh…oh! Mary,” Darby said. She was calmer now. She’d steadied herself. She was a shit ton stronger than she gave herself credit for.
“Here’s the part that’s got me worried,” Sawyer said to Darby. He was treating her carefully but not talking down to her. I respected the hell out of Sawyer. He was born to be a leader, to be looked up to. He just did it in a cut and tats instead of behind a badge or gavel.
He’d pulled our M.C. from the brink of prison or worse, disbanding, and made all of us stronger together. I saw how he could do it, why people listened to him when I watched the way he dealt with a traumatized stranger, Darby Bishop. I was so fucking humbled to be around him. I had forgotten all that while I focused on Darby.
“Bess checked it out, three times now, and there hasn’t been one call to police about your case.”
“What? I don’t understand.” Darby shook her head. “Uncle Reid called; he did.” It felt like she was hanging onto a reality that was turning to sand in her fingers. I wanted to be her solid ground.
“That may well be, but whoever he called didn’t put in anything formal. So, you’re not on any books as a victim of anything the last few days,” Sawyer told her.
“I need to get her out of here.” I started feeling that stronger than anything else. The need to get Darby away from town. “She’s a witness to a crime no one’s reporting, and they know exactly who she is. A cop or fake cop already shot at her.”
“I agree with Steel, Darby. Maybe someone is watching your house? Maybe someone intercepted your uncle’s call? But whatever the situation, they were watching you. I think you need to lay low until we sort some of it out,” Sawyer said to Darby.
“Okay, uh, okay. I’ll head to a hotel. I have money,” she said, and I watched her think, calculate, try to make sense of this new reality.
“I’m going to send one of my guys with you. It can be Steel, or it can be Ridge or really anyone you say, but we aren’t letting you out of our sight. We’re good at this. You’re safe with us until we sort it out.”
“I want Steel.” Darby blurted it out, and I was relieved. I was going to be watching to be sure no one came after her, but it was a hell of a lot easier if I didn’t have to do it against the club or Darby’s wishes.
Sawyer looked at me. “Leave us for a minute. I need to talk to Darby alone.”
If it were anyone but Sawyer, I’d have told him to shove it up his ass. I wasn’t leaving her. For any reason. But it was Sawyer, and I trusted him with my life. I stood up slowly.
“I’ll be right out there,” I said to Darby and pointed to the hallway.
“I’m fine, truly.” She did seem fine, or at least more fine as time passed. I didn’t realize how tight I was wound until Sawyer raised his eyebrows at me.
“No need to growl.” Shit, my instincts were turning me into a fucking feral animal. My hackles were going to be up until I could get Darby hidden away.
I stepped into the hall. Ridge was there. I was glad. He’d help keep me from coming apart. I knew it was important that Sawyer talk to Darby, that we do this right, but staying in one place wasn’t safe for Darby, I felt it in my bones.
“Hey, brother, you okay?” Ridge and I clasped hands.
“Yeah, but I don’t like what’s going down.”
“Some shit that’s deeper than we thought when Sawyer sent us to the mall, man.”
“What do you hear?”
“Sawyer has us digging, trying to find the money, the network. And it’s fucked up. We have our usual assholes, the ones we ran into, the ones who grabbed Darby. They were easy to find. But after them, the food chain gets really hard to uncover.”
“Is that because we ruined the sting operation at that motel? Were they close to an arrest or something?”
“Not from what Bess is telling us. They don’t have a clue where these girls are going after they leave Grand City.”
“So that means an operation we’ve never seen.”
“Yeah, there’s cash out there and, obviously, they’re not as stupid as your average dirtbag trafficker,” Ridge said and, the door opened. Sawyer came out of the o
ffice.
“What the fuck was that? I don’t want her alone.”
“That grizzly bear attitude’s in full bloom. Don’t let it fuck with your judgment. You’re normally smart,” Sawyer said, and I checked myself.
“I promised to keep her safe. I fucked that up before I even met her. I’m not going to fuck it up again.”
“I see you have some guilt. The two of you did let her get grabbed under your damn noses,” Sawyer told Ridge and me.
“What do we do now?” Ridge said. He was as much like me as a person could be, and we both saw Darby nearly disappear into whatever shit show was underway in Grand City. It didn’t sit well and never would.
“I wanted to give Darby a chance, to be honest. She’s been through two days of dick sauce assholes trying to hurt her. She deserves the respect of having a say in what happens next. If she didn’t want you to be the one watching her, I wanted her to be able to tell me. Without you hovering. And we called her uncle.”
“What’d he say?” If her uncle had half a brain, he’d be worried sick.
“He agreed; she should lay low. He seemed very upset.”
“I bet he was.”
Then there was the other issue, did Darby want me to get out of the picture? Did she think going to the cops was the best play? Because if she did, we’d head there. Even though it had turned out terribly earlier when her Uncle had called the authorities in.
“And?”
“She trusts you. She’s shaken up, but she thinks if it weren’t for you, well, way worse might have happened,” Sawyer said, and I could see forgiveness in his eyes. The idea of what might have happened to her was one that made me want to puke. I was glad that Sawyer talked to her. I was glad he seemed to have calmed down. We were good. I may have gone off script protecting Darby, but nothing about this had been planned. Even Bess, our connection to the law, knew something was fucked up, and shady as hell.
I was relieved. I knew Darby, and I had something, some bond, or connection. And I was going to be damned if I watched someone else in charge of watching over her.
“You’re going to take her to your place. While you do that, we’re going to work some angles. Did you get him up to speed so far, on what we’ve found?” Sawyer looked at Ridge.
“Yeah, jack and shit,” Ridge said.
“Pretty much. Leave now. We’ll see if we can track down the other girls Darby was held with. We’ll see if we can find the pipeline, they’re in after they get snatched,” Sawyer said. I winced. That was the truth: they were probably being worked already. And Darby was a second away from that same shit. It had been that close.
“What about the cops?” That was the part that could put everyone at risk. A dirty cop had zero loyalty to anything, good or bad.
“That’s sensitive. And it’s not going to be figured out in a day.”
“Steel needs to get her hidden. It’s getting dark,” Ridge said.
“Yep, tail him till you’re sure no one else is. Keep your phone charged and your head down.” Sawyer grabbed my shoulder and hugged me. When I was young, just out of the pen, and rootless, he was there for me. He was there for all of us. Ridge, Ryder, Stone, me; we all came up at around the same time, and we trusted him. We’d taken bullets for him. I remembered why now and was relieved to know taking Darby out of here was sanctioned because I was going to do it one way or another.
“I’ll meet you out back,” Ridge said and left me with Sawyer.
“Listen, best case, this was random, and your girl in there was in the wrong place at the wrong time. She doesn’t fit any profile of any of the women who’ve been taken. But let’s get her under wraps until we have the lay of the land.”
“Yep.”
That’s when all hell broke loose, for the millionth time in as many hours. Glass shattered, and a scream erupted from the other side of the door. Fuck.
Sawyer and I ran into the room, and Darby was on the floor, covering her head. Someone had thrown a Molotov Cocktail through the window. Glass was everywhere, and flames were licking the curtains.
“Get her out of here. Now.” I grabbed Darby by the hand and pulled her into the hall.
“There, Steel.” And Darby slipped from my grasp. Before I knew it, she was pulling open a cabinet. She’d seen what I had never noticed. A fucking fire extinguisher!
As the flames spread, my instinct was to yank her out of there over my shoulder if I had to. But she flipped the safety on the fire extinguisher. She shot foam at the source, and then aimed it at the spreading fire on the curtain, at the desk in the corner. And the danger that had erupted passed in a cloud of fluffy white foam.
Shit, she had a good head on her shoulders.
“Nice one,” Sawyer said, and she handed the heavy fire extinguisher off to him.
We heard swearing and yelling from other parts of the building.
Sawyer led the way and it looked like the back window wasn’t the only one broken. One of the huge front display windows for Great Wolves was shattered.
“What the fuck, man?”
“Lucky that didn’t hit Junie.” Junie was the current club receptionist.
“Did anyone see anything?” I heard snatches of conversation as we looked around.
“Okay, get her out of here. Ridge, make sure you’re not walking into a trap in the ally.” I nodded at Sawyer and left him to figure out what they were dealing with at the club.
It could be anything from a bullshit prank by some neighborhood kid to a beef between fighters, to some message from the Devil’s Hawks. Or maybe someone was trying to smoke out Darby? Whatever or whoever was behind the little flame throwing it didn’t matter at that moment. It was time to get on the move.
Ridge edged out into the ally and motioned for us to follow. I kept Darby’s hand tight in mine and pulled her along behind me. We got situated and on the bikes and took off into downtown Grand City.
Normally, I’d be chasing down whoever was fucking with the gym, my club. I’d be making sure they knew that we may be legit, mostly, but we were still violent when needed. We weren’t weak just because we’d given up running guns and other shit the club was famous for back in the day. It didn’t mean we would take this shit from anyone. These were the things I lived for, died for—except, right now, the only thing I could feel was the woman holding on to me.
The club could deal with whatever the fuck was happening. I needed to get Darby out of sight.
I was headed to my place. It was a trailer on the edge of club property. It was remote, in that woods were all around, but it was also close enough if the M.C. needed me. I wasn’t listed in the phone book and didn’t hold dinner parties. No one was going to know she was here.
Cutting and hiding out had never been what I signed up for. I wanted to fight, pound heads, let whoever was fucking with the club know that that was a bad idea. That was my job.
It was strange to be riding away from whatever mess was currently unfolding at Great Wolves M.C. MMA Gym. But it was how it had to be.
There was a chill in the air, and Darby held tight. I was glad she had the sweatshirt, but I also realized we’d have to stop and get supplies. I had no idea what chicks needed or wanted. Darby didn’t complain or even question that right now: getting out of Grand City was the focus.
I also realized that, despite the shit she’d been through in the last few days. When the crap hit the fan just now, she’d kept it together.
More than that, she’d grabbed the extinguisher and put out the damn fire.
There was a lot more to this woman than I had guessed. And there was a lot more courage inside her that even she understood.
We’d get to my place, and then we’d figure out what came next.
Eleven
Darby
* * *
We were off again, at high speed on Steel’s bike. I held on again. I felt free and grounded at the same time. In a short space of time I’d become addicted to riding with this man.
Sawyer had ask
ed me if it was okay, if I was okay. I had a chance then to run away from whatever this was, but I didn’t. Something in me knew that the only honesty I had in my life right now was with Steel and by extension, Sawyer.
The lights of the city were fading into the distance, and so was traffic.
It had to be an hour of driving, doubling back, changing directions, before Steel slowed the bike, and pulled off the highway.
I didn’t want to admit that I was ashamed I didn’t know where we were going. My knowledge of the open road, even my own town, stopped at sixteen years old. When my parents died, I’d hidden away from the world and now, as we drove, just outside of the place I’d lived my whole life, I felt disoriented.
I looked over Steel’s shoulder and read the dials on his bike. We were traveling northwest. The further we got out of the city, the better I felt. We were out of town, not far out of town, but no longer in downtown Grand City. The trees got taller and the clusters of development further and further between.
Steel pulled up to a trailer that was in a bunch of buildings. All of it seemed haphazard, but neat in its way.
We were so far away from the manicured lawn and gated driveway of Uncle Reid’s place that it felt like another planet instead of a different suburb outside of the same town I’d lived my whole life.
Steel got off, and as had become our habit, he put out a hand, and I took it.
“I wasn’t expecting company,” Steel said and lead me to the trailer. He opened the door and went in first. I followed. My eyes adjusted and took in the surroundings. He had a table, a couch, and a small TV. There was a narrow hall off of the small kitchen.
“Bathroom’s down there, bedroom too, that’s yours. I just uh, need to shove some old t-shirts and jeans off it.”
Steel, the self-assured wolf, who protected me, saved me, and whose shoulders seemed to order the space around him to make way, was self-conscious now. Almost embarrassed by the place.
