Then I thought about Rebel and how quickly we’d felt connected from the beginning. I knew it was possible, that Rebel and I weren’t exclusive in that regard, but I wasn’t sure that I liked it. Skipper seemed like a nice enough man, but Della was going to need time to heal. There wouldn’t be time for another man in her life until much later. Maybe I was reading too much into the way that he was looking down at her, but then, looking at Della, I realized that she was staring up at him in the same way.
“The nurse attacked her with a needle and I had to rescue her,” Skipper joked.
The glance Stevie suddenly gave me revealed that she’d noticed that there was something going on between the two of them also. She gave a little shrug, and then the silence was interrupted by a loud grumble. Embarrassed when all eyes shot my way, I covered my belly, as if to drown out any more sounds.
“Someone is hungry,” Stevie laughed.
I held my hand up. “Guilty.”
“Go eat something.” I wasn’t expecting Della to dismiss me so quickly.
“You just woke up!” I laughed.
“I promise you this won’t be the only time I’m awake,” she joked, and it was like a balm to my heart to hear how normal she sounded all of a sudden.
“Well, okay, then. I know when I’m not wanted.”
“Ready to go to lunch? My treat,” Stevie offered, walking back to the sofa to retrieve her purse.
I definitely was.
Chapter 28
Rebel
Son of a bitch!
Daryl wasn’t at his uncle’s garage, and there was no uncle there, either. The only worker in the tiny, rundown garage was a bony old coot who was missing half of his teeth, wearing faded, greasy overalls and a t-shirt that might have been white at one time. Ace and I found him bent over the engine of an old station wagon, a long, thin braid running down his back, and a cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth. He must have been half-deaf, because he didn’t acknowledge the sound of our bikes or realize that we were approaching until we were upon him. Ace flanked one side, while I flanked the other. I put my hand on the old man’s shoulder to get his attention.
“Hey, old man.”
He jumped back with a grunt, losing the cigarette. “What the fuck?! You trying to give an old man a heart attack?” he snarled, bending to pick up his still burning smoke. “What do you want?”
The first thing I noticed was the shiner he was sporting. His tone wasn’t too friendly either, and I had a feeling that we weren’t going to get much out of him.
“Some information,” Ace answered.
The old man jumped, swinging around. “Christ. How many of you are there?”
“Just the two of us. We’re friends, looking for Daryl.” An immediate frown creased his brow. “You seen him?”
I didn’t expect to get an honest answer out of him, but he surprised me by admitting, “Yeah, earlier. He ain’t here now.”
“You the only one working?”
He looked back at Ace. “Yeah. So? I been working at this garage since it opened forty years ago. I know what I’m doing.”
I grinned. “Calm down, old man, we don’t mean any disrespect.” I gauged his age to be around seventy. “Do you know where Daryl went? We were supposed to meet him.”
He narrowed his grey eyes and stared at me long and hard. He was making up his mind as to whether or not we could be trusted. If he’d worked that long for Daryl’s uncle, he owed loyalty to the family at the very least.
“Nope. Left here ‘bout an hour ago, right before the other two bikers showed up.”
That interested me. I doubted that it was anyone from the Sentinels since Ace was with me. I took a chance. “The Kings?”
“Yeah, that was them,” he confirmed. “Two ugly motherfuckers.” He paused. “Out for trouble, just like you two.” He puffed on his cigarette until it was down to the filter. I had to give the old man credit, he wasn’t afraid to say what he felt. “I gave them the same thing I’m giving you—nothin’.”
Well, that explained his black eye. The Kings obviously hadn’t taken his age into consideration when they’d questioned him. I wondered how Daryl had known that they were coming, unless his absence was pure coincidence.
“You two gonna blacken my other eye?” There was a challenge in his cigarette-roughened voice.
Ace snorted and turned toward our bikes, clearly making the call that we weren’t going to get anything useful from the old man. I decided to give it one last shot. “Have any idea when Daryl will be back?”
“Nope.” He dropped his butt and ground it beneath his shoes. Buying time, I thought. “If you and Daryl are such good friends, why don’t you call him?”
I grinned, deciding that Ace was right. “I just might do that,” I replied, turning away.
Ace was sitting on his bike, smoking a cigarette. “What now? Back to Jack’s?”
I nodded. “Yeah. The fucker gave us the uncle. I’d let him piss on my boots again for another lead.” We both grinned. “And I doubt Daryl will be back here, now that he knows the Kings have found him.” I ran my hands through my hair, releasing a frustrated breath. “Fuck, man, I just want to find the asshole and end him.”
“I know where you’re coming from,” Ace said, but he didn’t elaborate. He tossed his cigarette, and we started our bikes and tore out of the gravel drive back onto A1A.
It took us twenty minutes to get back to where Jack lived. As we drove toward the back of the complex where his apartment was located, I noticed that his Camaro wasn’t where it had been when we’d come earlier. Shit! Ace pulled up next to me and we exchanged a look.
“You think he ran?”
I searched the area around us, until my eyes lit on what I’d been looking for. A faded Chevy s10, blue, with gray primer on the passenger side door, Ginger had said. “Son of a bitch!” I swore, looking back at Ace. “He’s with Daryl.” I nodded in the direction of the truck. “That’s his vehicle.”
“Fuck, now he knows we’re looking for him, too.”
“Apparently Jack didn’t take my threats seriously.” I curled my fists angrily. I’d already pegged Jack as a weak pussy. It probably hadn’t taken much for Daryl to convince him to do what he’d wanted.
“Maybe you’ve lost your touch, brother.” I shot Ace the bird. He snorted. “We staying here or we going to go looking for them?”
“We go looking.”
Suddenly he reached for his phone. Ace didn’t say much, but I watched his reaction. It looked hopeful. “There’s been an accident. Looks like we’re going to Tomoka Farms Rd.”
****
Ginger
“That was good.”
Stevie nodded in agreement. “Not bad for hospital food.”
We’d both had the cob salad and iced tea. I scooted my chair back and stood up. “I think I’ll get a sandwich for Skipper, but first I need to use the ladies’ room. I’ll be right back.”
It was just after one, and the cafeteria was full of hospital staff and visitors. I even saw a patient or two come in, but most of them got something and left right away. I guessed that they didn’t want to get caught sneaking out of their rooms for better food, or perhaps food that they weren’t supposed to have. There were several food stations, each offering something different. The line in front of the pasta station revealed that it was the most popular item, the sushi bar not so much. To save time, Stevie and I had grabbed pre-made salads. As I walked toward the restroom, my gaze caught on the pudding selections where the pre-packaged food was. I hadn’t had pudding in years, and I thought that maybe I would pick one up on my way back.
Seeing the sign for the ladies’ room, I headed in that direction. I was just about to push the door in when the men’s room door opened and a man walked out. Our gazes met, and I returned his friendly smile, noticing the tattoo peeking out from his collar. He was tall, thin, and bald, wearing blue scrubs that identified him as hospital staff. Our interaction was so fleeting that it barely
registered, but as I stepped inside the ladies’ room I realized that there had been something vaguely familiar about him. I racked my brain as I took care of business, trying to figure out what it was about him before I ultimately chalked it up to someone I’d run into at some time or another in the hallway, or even the elevator.
I washed my hands and opened the door, coming to an abrupt halt, surprised that the man was still there, pacing back and forth and looking slightly agitated. He stopped when he noticed me standing there.
“Are you Ginger?” he rushed out in a tone that revealed that something was very wrong.
“Yes,” I nodded, concern knitting my brow.
“Come with me!” Before I knew what was happening, he had grabbed me by the arm and was leading me away. “I didn’t just want to go into the restroom and assume you were alone,” he went on in a slightly panicked voice. “I was on my way back to my table when a woman rushed over to me to say that there’s been an accident.”
My heart rate picked up. “An accident?” Oh my God, had Della fallen out of the bed or something? I began to pick up my pace in order to keep up with him.
He was nodding as we walked. “Yes! She said you were having lunch together and that you’d gone to the restroom. She begged me to get you and bring you along.”
We were suddenly rushing toward the exit door, leaving behind a wake of slightly surprised observers. “Wait a minute, why are we leaving the hospital?” Something wasn’t right. I was suddenly panicking myself. Was this not about Della?
“She said she’d bring the car up to the curb,” he explained, not slowing down.
Right before we got close enough to set off the automatic door opener I pulled back from the hand that was grasping my arm and stopped, forcing him to do the same. “Who had an accident?” I demanded to know, meeting the slight wildness in his eyes.
He shook his head. “I don’t know, I think she said someone named Rebel? He crashed his bike.” He was questioning his memory. “Come on, she’ll be here any second!”
Rebel! No! Suddenly I was rushing in front of the man to get to the curb. My heart was pounding, and a sick feeling began to curl the contents of my lunch. The image of Rebel, lying on the road next to his mangled bike, bleeding and broken, or worse, overwhelmed me. My eyes stung with tears, but I held them back. I reached the curb, but there was no car, and no sign of Stevie. The only vehicle at the curb was a rusty, old white van. I didn’t think anything of it, deciding that Stevie just hadn’t driven around yet.
Then I felt the man’s hand grasp my arm again, this time in a painful squeeze. At the same time he brought his body up against mine and grated into my ear, “Remember me? Rocky?” He was forcing me toward the van as he spoke. I was too shocked to do anything, my mind trying to work out what was happening. “No, you wouldn’t,” he continued to grate, giving my ear a painful nip. I cried out, and he gave an evil laugh. “I didn’t get to have a taste of you back then. No, only that fucking traitor Rebel got between your legs.”
Ohmygod! I knew that he was referring to the time that I’d been a captive with the Red Devils, but I’d thought they were all dead!
“Back then I was the Sergeant at Arms. Everyone thought I was dead, but we weren’t all there the day of the shootout.” Another evil laugh. “Three of us weren’t there that day, and we’ve been waiting four years for revenge.”
Oh, God!
The side door of the van slid open, revealing another man in biker clothes. I glanced back at the hospital, to the windows where I knew the cafeteria was located. Stevie and I had had a table by the window. I could see her still sitting there, waiting for me to return. I dug my heels in, trying to stop the man’s progress, but he only applied more pressure around my arm, using his body to force me where he wanted me to go.
And then Stevie glanced over, and I knew that no matter what happened after that, at least she was aware of what was happening to me. I watched the fear spread across her face as she realized what she was seeing. That’s all I had time to notice before I was suddenly thrown forward.
“No!” I cried out. The biker inside the van reached for me and yanked me inside roughly. I swung around to scramble out, but it was useless, the door slid closed, stopping me. Then the man who’d grabbed me outside of the restroom jumped into the passenger side and slammed the door closed.
He looked back at me with a sneer. “Gonna be fucking sweet watching Rebel’s face when we pull a train on you, right before we put a bullet in his head.”
I felt sick inside. The van squealed away from the curb with a jerk that sent me crashing against the side. Laughter echoed around me, and I remained where I’d fallen, pulling my knees up and wrapping my arms around them. It wouldn’t do me any good to try to fight them, and I refused to show them how terrified I was. It dawned on me that Rebel’s accident had been a ruse to get me outside, but I didn’t know if they already had him somewhere.
At least Stevie had seen me being taken away.
I was at least thankful for that.
Chapter 29
Rebel
“Holy shit!” We had just come upon the accident scene. It was a hard, cold fact that if you went head-on with a tractor trailer, the tractor trailer would win every time. I wasn’t sure why or how it had happened, but the mangled, twisted, smoking metal that had once been a Camaro was all I needed to see to know that anyone inside that vehicle had been killed on impact, and by the looks of it, the occupants in the car hadn’t been wearing seat belts. One of them had smashed through the windshield and been decapitated.
“Jesus,” Ace commented low, shaking his head.
He’d been the one to get the call about the accident from one of his brothers. Several of them were here with us, along with a small crowd of lookie loos who’d either gotten out of their vehicles because the road was now blocked and they couldn’t get through, or they’d come from one of the nearby houses.
“These the guys you looking for?” one of the Sentinel’s asked.
“Hard to tell without a head.” I wasn’t trying to be funny, it was the truth. There was more than one black Camaro on the roads. I got off my bike and moved closer to the scene. Cops and firemen were everywhere. Someone had already covered up the head. I ran my hand over my lower jaw, trying to see the other body inside the car.
“I heard the trucker tell someone that right before the collision the driver of the Camaro swerved directly in front of him. Said he looked like he was slumped over the wheel.”
The speaker was an elderly man, and it looked as if he’d been walking his dog when the accident had occurred, an overweight Lab sitting quietly at his feet. He was talking to another guy.
“He say anything else?”
Thank fuck for nosey old men.
The man with the Lab shook his head. “Nope, said the road was quiet except for some bikers who passed him a few minutes before the accident.”
The second man snorted. “Good thing they weren’t involved, there wouldn’t have been anything left to bury.”
“It’s a shame they weren’t,” Lab man said, surprising me. “Those boys cause nothing but trouble when they come around.”
I was done listening, coming to my own conclusion as to what had happened. I just needed proof that I was on the right track. I glanced back at the Camaro and the driver inside. He was slumped forward, so fucking bloody that it was hard to get a good look at his features. If my hunch was right, he would have a bullet hole somewhere in his head. Shit, I couldn’t tell.
“Tell me it’s the assholes we’ve been looking for,” Ace said hopefully, joining me.
I glanced up at the sound of bikers pulling away from the scene, watching as his brothers rode off. “If what I just heard those two old coots saying is true, I’m ninety-nine percent sure it’s them.” The coroner opened the driver’s side door and appeared to check to make sure that the driver was dead before stepping back so the body could be removed from the car.
“You can’t tell
if that’s Daryl?”
I snorted. “Could you? Can you tell if the other one is Jack?”
He grinned.
“Wait a minute!” I heard the coroner order sharply.
We turned our attention back to them. By now the driver’s body had been loaded onto a gurney and they were just about to cover him up when they were stopped. The coroner leaned over the dead man, examining him closely, and then I had the proof that I’d tried to find myself.
“Smith!” he called out, looking at one of the cops. “You need to see this!” The cop rushed over and the coroner pointed at something directly at the right temple.
Right away I knew what he was pointing at. I looked at Ace, who’d been observing quietly. “The trucker was heard saying some bikers passed him right before the accident,” I told Ace. “He also noticed that the driver of the Camaro was slumped over his steering wheel before they collided.”
“You think one of the bikers shot Daryl on the way by?”
I nodded. “We know the Kings were looking for him.”
“They shot him, the truck did the rest.”
“Yep.”
“I have an idea,” Ace said, walking away from me.
I watched him walk up to the cop and coroner, interrupting their conversation. He did all the talking, and after about two minutes the cop called for another officer to come over, telling him to bring the evidence bag. He pulled out a wallet, opened it up, and said something to Ace. Ace dipped his head, as if he was saying thanks, and then he was walking back to me.
“It’s Daryl,” he confirmed when he reached me.
Fuck! I should have been glad that it was over, but I’d wanted to be the one to end him. I’d wanted to gut him and watch the life drain out of him. “What did you say?”
“That my cousin drove a black Camaro. I’d heard about the accident and just wanted to make sure that it wasn’t him.”
I was sure that the cop’s recognition that Ace was with the Sentinels had helped, too. I took a deep breath and released it. “They got what they deserved.”
Ruthless Page 23
