Vengeance Before Virtue
Page 11
The place was trashed. There had very clearly been a struggle of some sort⸺kitchen table broken, glass shattered on the floor, pictures torn off the wall and thrown across the room, holes in the drywall. There were muddy footprints all over the little bit of carpet the trailer did have. Then, next to the sofa, he saw the one thing he’d hoped he wouldn’t find.
Blood. Five or six little dribbles on the floor, one bigger than the rest, as if whoever it drained out of had laid dormant long enough for a tiny pool to form, and then was dragged to their feet, leaving tiny droplets as they were pulled. He searched all the rooms, but found no one. Just more trash, clothes, shoes, and other objects broken and strewn on the floor.
Matt wobbled out of the trailer feeling sick again, a sensation he was growing used to. What now? It was over. His dad had her, and he had no way of knowing where he had taken her, or if she was even still alive. He was standing at the foot of the stairs that led up to the porch, thinking hard, trying desperately to come up with some idea of where he would have gone. That’s when he saw them: tire marks in the driveway. Four sets of them, but not from a car. From four motorcycles. As he looked closer, he saw something else that gave him hope, or at the very least gave him a lead. Next to one of the tire marks were three, ever so tiny, drops of what appeared to be blood as well.
Chapter 14: In Plain Sight
Matt sat parked outside and a block down from The Wet Bar and waited for it to get dark. Angry as he was and focused as he was, he was still only one man. If he was going to go charging into a bar full of drunk bikers, most of whom were probably armed, he wanted any advantage he could get, one being darkness. If he ended up needing to make a run for it, it would be easier to disappear into the night than to be fully illuminated by the sun.
As the street lights began to flicker on, more and more patrons began showing up to the local watering hole⸺some on motorcycles, some in cars, and some just wandering through town on foot. This was the next barrier working against him. His first encounter with the gang had been earlier in the day, and although there were some other people drinking at that time⸺who had run once the fun started⸺there weren’t very many.
The more locals from Alta Vista, the worse a situation it would be for him. He decided he’d waited long enough. Every moment he spent thinking about the best way to approach this was one more minute Mariah was alone with them, and God only knew what could be happening to her. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the small, silver-plated, snub-nosed revolver⸺Demsey’s back-up weapon. He’d noticed it strapped to his ankle when he’d dragged him out of the road and had borrowed it just in case. Now he was happy he had.
He moved it back and forth in the subtle light from the streetlamp closest to him. It glinted and shined entrancingly. He clicked the small button on the left side of the firearm and with is other hand, popped the cylinder out of place. All six bullets stood ready to fire at a moment’s notice. He secured the cylinder back into place and got out of his vehicle, tucking the gun into the back of his waistband where he could get to it much quicker than taking it from his pocket.
Matt walked into The Wet Bar to find it much busier than he’d expected. All types of people from all demographics lined the walls, dining tables, and bar stools. Some appeared to be in their mid-twenties, and some surely were into their sixties and seventies. There was so much noise, laughter, and movement that no one seemed to notice him walk in. He located the group of bikers surrounding the pool table furthest away from him, and started their way.
As he got closer, he realized that at least one man had noticed him walk in. This man now sat with a matter-of-fact expression on his face, as if he had been expecting Matt to show up. It was Cody, the club President⸺clean shaven just as he was the first time they’d met, hair well-groomed, and nothing covering his torso aside from the patch-riddled leather vest. He sat leaning back in a chair, only two of the chair legs touching the floor, with his arms crossed over his chest. He made no attempt to avert his gaze. He stared a calm, cool, and collected hole through Matt as he approached their pool table.
“Mr. O’Bannon... What brings you back to our pleasant little town of Alta Vista?”
“My sister.”
“Your sister again, huh?” He chuckled to himself. “That one is dragging you all over the place. To Council Grove from Chicago, Alta Vista from Council Grove, back of a police cruiser for breaking and entering, and now, here you stand, back again.”
“I just came from her place. there were motorcycle marks outside her trailer.”
“That a fact?” Still no surprise sprang to Cody’s face.
“It is. It looked like there was some kind of struggle and like she might have been taken. I found blood.”
“Hmm. Interesting, very interesting.” Matt had a feeling that Cody was just toying with him. He didn’t seem surprised or perplexed at all by the idea that Mariah might have been taken by one of his dogs.
“Where’s your VP?”
“Who? Bran? He got demoted after your first visit. He hasn’t been a huge fan of me since all of that went down.”
“I don’t give a fuck about his rank.” Matt had done well controlling his anger so far, but he was done wasting time and done playing games. “I asked where he is.”
“Easy now O’Bannon. Don’t move that mouth of yours too fast. It could get you into very deep water very quickly.” His eyes, blue and clear, stabbed into Matt’s. Some of the other bikers had noticed his arrival and were now watching him too.
“Him, and two or three more of your boys here, jumped me in an alley in Council Grove yesterday,” he said addressing the new onlookers. “Then I find four sets of bike tracks outside of my sister’s trailer with blood next to them. Now, I don’t know about you, but that sounds like a little bit too big of a fucking coincidence to me.”
Several of the men in the group looked as though they were ready to charge at Matt, but a single, soft wave of the hand from Cody and each of them fell back.
“I can see you’re upset, and I can understand why. But this whole thing is going to get a whole lot worse if you can’t calm down. Bran is right back there in the back room,” he said as he gestured behind him to a door in the back corner of the bar near the bathrooms. “I’ll take you to him.”
Slowly, he stood up from his chair, stretched for a moment, nodded to the other members of the club, and then nodded to Matt to follow as he began walking toward the door. Matt followed behind Cody, but was acutely aware of the rest of the group following only a foot or two behind. Cody opened the door and disappeared to the right down a dark, narrow hallway that ran a length of twenty feet and dead ended into another door.
As they walked through it, he saw her. She was lying on the ground, grey duct tape across her mouth, and a thick steel chain restraining her to one corner of the room. The next person that he saw was Bran, sitting in the opposite corner in a folding chair with his feet up on the small card table that was set up near the center of the room. There were two other men in the room. He assumed they were two of the other three motorcycle tracks he found in the drive.
Matt turned his gaze back to his sister on the cement floor chained up like an animal. He moved to run around Cody and reach her, but two of the men who had been a few steps behind him when they entered must have moved closer, because they restrained him, one holding each of his arms.
“Get your fucking hands off me! Mariah! Mariah!” he screamed as he pushed and shoved trying to break loose from the two bigger men. “Mariah!!”
Finally, she began to stir. She kept blinking as she pulled herself to a sitting position as if she were having trouble adjusting to the light. Then she saw him. Tears poured from her eyes like projectiles. She reached for him with her chained hands out in front and sobbed against the tape. Her mumbles were inaudible, but he was positive she was saying his name, pleading for help.
“Cody! Call your fucking dogs off of me now! What the fuck is she doing in chains!?”
Matt ignored the request and continued to push against the two men, determined to reach his sister. Cody watched as he did and then subtly dropped his head as if he were disappointed in Matt. As if he’d expected more of him. He reached behind his back, and when his hand returned, it was holding the long, wide, blood-rusted hunting knife. The same knife that had been used to dismember Bran when Cody and Matt had first met.
Cody twisted the knife, admiring the steel, the wooden handle, and the way that the wear⸺a result of time and blood⸺showed on its surface. Matt stopped struggling when he saw the knife, but when Cody began walking toward Mariah, he began to fight again, harder than before. Cody, with the knife at his side, knelt down beside the weeping Mariah. He reached up with his free hand and gently wiped away the tears on her left cheek. Then, he looked back at Matt, and waited until he had his attention. As soon as he did, he moved the knife quickly upward and stopped just before cutting into her throat. He held it there, and Matt stopped fighting.
“You know, your big brother has an anger problem. He isn’t very good at taking directions either. Personally, I’m hoping that he gets a grip on that. This knife here...” he lifted it to touch her ever so slightly on the neck so she could feel the cold steel, “this is used on bad people. Like Bran back there.”
Bran, sitting in the corner, moved his feet from the table and onto the ground, watching the event unfold but visibly uncomfortable with his name being mentioned in connection with the large dagger. Cody continued on.
“My man Bran wanted to do some bad things to you. Very bad things. When I heard that, that to me sounded like he was a bad guy, so I took his balls.” Mariah winced at the thought. “I took them with this knife, because that is how I deal with things. I tell you all of this because if Matthew over there doesn’t relax so that we can figure all of this out, I am going to have to pretend that you are a bad person. A bad person who deserves my kind of punishment. Does that make sense?”
Mariah shook her head up and down frantically, looking back and forth between Cody and Matt. When she did make eye contact with Matt, her eyes were pleading. Silently begging for him to obey Cody’s law. Pleading that he not let his anger get the best of him, yet again. Matt recognized that look in her eyes, and wished he didn’t. It was the same look she’d had the night she confided in him about what Michael Vincent had done to her.
Her eyes were pleading with him to help her, to save her, to rescue her from the hell that she was stuck in because she couldn’t get it out of her mind. She could not forget what had happened; her memory was forcing her to relive it over and over again. It was like he hadn’t raped her just once, but had done it dozens of times, and with that, the pain was magnified by dozens of levels.
Mariah needed him to save her back then, and she needed him to save her now. The difference was that when she’d been raped, he couldn’t save her. He couldn’t rescue her from her own mind. Now, though, he could still save her before any harm came to her. He had to. Every fiber in his being was pushing him forward, screaming at him to fight, and kill if he must, but do whatever he had to to get to her.
He knew now, though, as he looked on at Cody holding the knife perfectly still under her throat, that there was only one way to help her, and it was not to fight. It was, for the first time in his life, to choose not to fight, something up to that point he had never been able to do. He looked at her, looked at Cody, looked at the knife, and then looked at the ground. Slowly, he dropped his head and nodded in agreement.
“Fantastic,” Cody said as he stood up and sheathed the blade. “Now this is going to be a lot more pleasant for everyone. You want to know what she’s doing here, and I will tell you the truth. I want to start by saying, though, because I think this will make you feel a little better, that she is not here by any fault of her own. She hasn’t done anything wrong, she is more of a... captive of happenstance.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” Matt’s anger flashed again, if only momentarily. Cody raised one eyebrow a fraction of a centimeter; then it dropped and he continued.
“It means, something has happened, and she is my ticket to making that thing right. Once I am able to right the wrong, she will be released, good as new.”
“Enough riddles, just tell me what is going on and how exactly she is your ‘ticket’ to fixing it.”
“You had a brief encounter with her boyfriend, Aaron, the day you went to their trailer to find her. If I remember correctly, a brief encounter that ended with him developing a few bruises and with you in the back of a squad car.”
“Yeah, I remember. What about him?”
“Well, the truth of the matter is that he used to work for me, in some capacity. He didn’t turn out to be the best employee.”
“He worked for you in what capacity?”
“Distribution. I don’t like drugs, I don’t use drugs, but I am a businessman; I’m sure you can respect that. I know that this small, charming little town of ours is busting at the seams with druggies, and if it wasn’t me taking advantage of that, it would have been someone else. I see a need, I fill that need⸺plain and simple. However, I don’t touch the drugs. I outsource production, warehousing, distribution, and collection.”
“What does that have to do with Mariah?”
“It doesn’t, directly. It seems that our friend Aaron had a side deal with my manufacturer for a pretty significant amount of product. He was to sell it, split the profits with the manufacturer, and I was never supposed to be the wiser. The problem developed when Aaron decided he didn’t want to split those profits and ran off.”
Cody paced as he walked, and with every word, although calm, his body seemed to tense. Matt had gotten the feeling the first time that they’d met that he was not a man who was easily angered or shaken, but this betrayal seemed to be the hot button. He continued explaining as he paced.
“Manufacturer comes clean about the whole thing, and of course, he was dealt with accordingly. But Aaron hasn’t been seen or heard from since the deal went down. He stole money from me, and I intend to get it back.”
“Okay, and he left her behind, so he obviously doesn’t give two shits what happens to her,” Matt said.
“I am in total agreement with you, and what a shame that is. She has given so much for him, and he just leaves her behind like a piece of garbage.”
“So how is she the key to getting your money? If he left her behind, he isn’t going to come running back to save her.”
“Exactly. He won’t go out of his way to save her, but you will. She is the key, because I knew that sooner or later, you would come looking for her again. And I know that you’re a smart young man. I knew that your search would eventually lead you here, and as it turns out, I was right.”
“And how can I help? What? You want me to track this Aaron down to get your money back? If you can’t find him, what makes you think I can?”
“No, no. That isn’t what I want from you, O’Bannon.” Cody stopped speaking as well as pacing. He held his silence as if he were waiting for Matt to come to the answer on his own. As if he were giving him a learning lesson.
“Then what!? What do you want!? I want my sister out of those fucking chains, so fucking tell me! I’m done listening to your riddle-me-this horse shit! Just tell me what you want!” The two men holding him tightened their grip on his arms.
“I want money, Matthew, and I know that you have lots and lots of money. I want the money that was stolen from me, and I want an additional little bit for the inconvenience of having to wait for you to come looking for our sweet little Miss Mariah.”
“Fine, name the price. I will give you however much; it doesn’t matter. Just tell me and get her out of those fucking chains.”
“Two million. Cash.�
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“Done. Now, take that tape off of her and unlock the chains.”
“Do you consider me an idiot? She stays put until the money is sitting at my feet, not a moment before.”
“Cody, that could be days! I can’t just waltz into the fucking National Bank of Alta Vista and get two million dollars! I’ll have to get back to Chicago to get that much.”
“It’s not a problem. We are more than equipped to handle guests, as you can see by your sister’s current living situation. There is plenty of food, water, and cold hard ground to be had. She will be most comfortable here while you are gone.” Bran chuckled sadistically in the corner as his leader spoke.
Matt’s mind was running a several hundred miles a minute. He did not want to leave without her, but he didn’t see much choice. The small revolver he’d taken from Demsey only held six bullets, and there were eight men in the room by his count. Even if he shot perfectly without a single miss, he would still have two more armed men to deal with, and that was assuming that none of them got a shot off before he was finished.
His own safety aside, it would be too risky. Mariah could get caught in the crossfire, and if he failed, he didn’t want to think about what they would do to her. He would have to get the money. There was no other option on the table, but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t able to lay down some rules of his own. They needed him, if they ever wanted to get their money, and he was going to use that for leverage.
“Fine, but I have a condition.”
“All ears,” Cody said.