"You're lost," he insisted once again, voice somehow even gruffer than before, something she wouldn't have thought possible before she heard it.
Holden
Holden, not used to strangers, suspicious of them, fearful for them, moved forward, pressing a hand down on the girl's shoulder, turning and pushing her back toward the way she'd come. "That way is the road," he added, brushing past her, mind set on going back to the house, making something to eat, trying to catch some sleep before it got dark again.
"Holden Ryker," the girl's voice rang out, making his feet pause. A deep sigh pushed out of his chest, making his shoulders slump a bit before turning.
"Who is asking?"
"My name is Ferryn."
"Means nothing to me."
"Well, no. But my dad might. Or my aunt."
"Ain't getting any younger here, kid," he growled, finding himself more intrigued than he should have been that this girl didn't cower away from him like most would. Like most did.
She was a girl, too. There was no doubt about that. Still had a couple years left before she could even resemble an adult. Tall, skinny, with striking gray eyes and a buzzed head. What girl her age buzzed their head? And sought out men like him?
"My dad is Reign. He is the president of The Henchmen. In Navesink Bank. My aunt is named Lo..." she babbled out the names, but nothing was clicking. "She runs Hailstorm," she added.
Hailstorm.
That did ring a bell.
A paramilitary survivalist sort of organization that was full of men and women much like him, people that had been rehabilitated, people whose skills could be used for hire.
The leader, Lo, had set her sights on him at some point. Judging by her weird fetish for collecting people with skills, he wasn't exactly surprised to find he'd landed on her radar.
He'd quickly put an end to her pestering when her team showed up uninvited one day. He hadn't heard a word from them since.
But he was pretty sure they weren't farming out their dirty work to some slip of a teenage girl.
He could kill her with one blow.
He wouldn't.
Or hoped he wouldn't.
But he could.
Surely, Hailstorm knew that.
Why, then, would she possibly be there?
"And?" he asked, brow arching up.
"And. Ah. Well, I need you."
"For what?"
"So this doesn't happen again," she said, gesturing to her face, drawing his attention to the dark marks he'd missed on his first inspection, her face shaded by the trees.
Then, though, with the sky open above her, there was no mistaking the faded greens and yellows of bruises on her delicate face. His gaze moved downward, looking for any other injuries.
Her wrists were worn raw.
He knew those marks.
Bindings.
Someone had bound her too tight, or she had fought like hell to get out of them. Judging by the stubborn set to her jaw, he figured he would put his money on the latter.
Further down, there looked to be white gauze bandages peeking out of her shoes. Like her feet were wrapped. Wrapped feet meant busted soles. Barefoot running, he figured, not torture like he'd seen, he'd endured, he'd inflicted.
She was the right age for it. Pretty too. Which wasn't necessary. But it jacked the price up.
Judging by the current criminal climate, he figured she'd somehow escaped an abduction or an imprisonment, got herself free from traffickers of some sort.
"Was it bad?" he asked, spit tasting acidic. It was like swallowing back battery acid. It burned all the way down.
He'd lived an ugly fucking life.
He'd seen vile things.
He'd done many unforgivable things.
But he'd never put his hands on a woman who didn't want it.
It was one of the few crimes he didn't feel like a hypocrite for condemning with every fiber of his being.
"It wasn't great," she said, rolling her eyes with all the snark of a teenager. "It was, it was a weird situation. Have you heard of V? That was what she went by."
"Trafficker." Back in the day, he recalled. Before she fell off the face of the Earth.
"Yeah, well, apparently, she was my grandma. And she wasn't dead like I thought. She was alive and hidden away. Until she wasn't anymore. And she took me and threw me in a basement with these other girls."
Her eyes went dark at that.
Bad memories.
He knew those all too well.
Just as quickly as the pain was there, though, it was gone. It was gone and in its place was rage. The kind that boiled your insides, burned holes in your stomach lining.
That was another thing he knew far too well.
It was also much more useful.
"Tough break, kid," he told her because the situation warranted it. He didn't have a lot of sympathy to spare, but he could offer her a small drop of it, he figured. "Go home to your biker daddy and your aunt. You got no business here."
"I need your help."
"I've never been accused of being altruistic, kid."
"I don't need, you know, money or anything."
"What do you think you need then?"
"I need you to train me to be like you."
"You can't," he declared, tone hollow.
"Well, I know I can't be as strong as you. But you can teach me to be as good. Even without your strength, with your training, I could still best most men."
"Your aunt can train you," he insisted.
"My aunt has trained me. And her men. And my father's men. And my other aunts. They've all trained me since I was little. And I barely held my own. Barely."
"You're out now," he said, shrugging. The chances of escaping traffickers then getting taken again were slim.
"That's not why I need you to train me. I need... I need to be able to hold my own against men like the ones that kept me in a basement."
"Why?"
Ferryn
"Because... because I have a mission," Ferryn insisted, finding the words clumsy on her tongue, silly to her ears. What person spoke like that? Military guys had missions, not girls like her.
"Mission?" Holden repeated, and much to her relief, he didn't seem amused or even dismissive. If anything, she was pretty sure he seemed almost a little... interested. For the first time since she opened her mouth.
"Yeah, a mission. To help girls. Girls who found themselves in basements like me. But couldn't get themselves away. I want to help them. And I want to make the men who did it to them pay."
"Pay," he repeated, seeming to chew on the word, like he found it thick, meaty, something that needed some gnashing before he could choke it down. "With their lives?" he asked.
"Yes," Ferryn agreed, feeling her chin lift a bit, daring him to tell her she couldn't.
"Takes something from you to take a life."
"I've taken a life," she volunteered, meeting his eyes, finding the courage to hold his gaze unflinchingly.
In doing so, she thought he maybe saw something there, something he saw in himself as well, something that started to sway him in her favor.
"You feel bad about it?"
"No."
"See it when you close your eyes?"
"Yeah. But it was the only way. It had to happen. The world is better off this way."
"Why not have your family train you?"
"Because they wouldn't let me do this. And they can't train me hard enough."
"You ran away?"
"Yes."
"So you're serious."
"I am very serious."
"This mission is important?"
"This mission is everything."
Holden sucked his cheek in between his teeth, biting down, trying to find some mental clarity through the pinch of pain.
There was passion in this girl.
Passion was something utterly devoid in his life. It was something meant for other people. He knew better than to desire it for himself.
&
nbsp; Yet there was no denying that he was finding himself swayed by hers, intrigued by the possibility of being involved with passion in an indirect kind of way.
He was also all for those who made a life of striking down those who otherwise would get away with their crimes.
He had his doubts that someone like this tiny girl with the determined chin could pull it off.
There was no way to know for sure unless he tried her out.
That came with its own risks, though. Ones he would have to make her aware of.
"I would hurt you. A lot."
"I can take it."
"I'm dangerous," he told her, though he knew that it was much deeper than that.
"So am I."
"I will break you down."
"I will put myself back together."
She knew she had him right then.
The tiniest twitch pulled at the corner of his lips. Not a smile. Surely, he was not a man inclined to smiling. But a hint of amusement. It was the first he'd shown her even the slightest emotion.
So she knew she had him.
For better or worse.
"That all you own?" he asked a few moments later, leading Ferryn through the woods, away from the small main house, something that made her brows knit, but she was too far gone now to go back, to question him.
"Yes. I didn't... I couldn't go home after."
"Won't need much," he told her, shrugging it off.
It was hard to imagine she wouldn't need more than what she was carrying, she a girl who had a bursting closet and a giant book collection. That wasn't even mentioning her makeup and skincare products.
"No one to impress here."
Ferryn figured that was fair enough as a small, well, garage came into view. There wasn't much to mention save for the large metal door and the moss flecked white shake siding.
Holden pushed in front of her, plugging a quick code into the keypad, making the door grumble open, piercingly loud in such a silent space.
"Come on," he demanded, moving inside, leaving her to fall behind.
Where she found, well, a gym.
There was an unyielding cement floor with a nearly paper-thin mat covering part of it, a weight bench, bike, kettlebells, a pull-up bar, leg press, and various punching and speed bags. Everything was familiar, yet she found them oddly intimidating in this space. Maybe because she knew she would have to prove herself, would need to impress him.
"Gym. Self-explanatory. We'll be spending a lot of time here."
His words almost sounded like a threat.
Maybe they were.
"There's a room back here," he told her, leading her through a door toward the back.
It was a small space, all of eight by ten with bare walls and one small, grime-covered window.
"Light," he said, reaching up, pulling a string hanging in the middle of the room, making a bare Edison bulb flash to life, highlighting the dust bunnies along the walls, the webs in the ceiling corners. "Bed," he added, moving forward, grabbing a thin mattress that had been propped against the wall, dropping it down on the floor, kicking up all the dust and dirt in the room. "Can," he went on, waving an arm toward her side, making her gaze shift, finding a toilet and sink combination reminiscent of a prison situated there. "Nothing fancy here, kid. You can't rough it, get lost now."
While a part of her absolutely did cringe at the idea of using her bedroom as a bathroom as well, she understood that luxuries would no longer be a part of the life ahead of her if she continued on this path.
She would have to learn to be okay with a lot of things her pampered former self took for granted.
"Better than digging a hole in the woods," she told him, seeing that little twitch at his lips again. "Shower, though?" she asked.
"Got a tap," he told her, motioning to the toilet/sink combo. "Hose out back. Stream down a ways through the woods. You'll manage."
She would, she vowed to herself.
Because somewhere in the world—many places in the world—there were women living in hellish conditions with no hope of escape, waiting for someone to save them. Given some time, given some experience, she could be that person.
"Yo," Holden growled, shocking her out of her thoughts, turning to find him once again in the doorway as though he was going to leave her. "This door," he said when he got her attention, "this stays locked when you are in here."
"Ah, okay," she said, brows furrowing.
"Not just closed, locked," he went on, pointing to the lock.
"What? Do you have super smart bears in these woods who can plug in door codes and turn door knobs?" she asked, smiling.
"There are worse things in these woods than bears, kid," he said, turning, leaving, slamming the door in his wake.
Even knowing it was coming, she jolted at the slam, feeling something inside do the same thing.
He hadn't outwardly said it, but she knew what he meant. He meant that he was the thing in the woods that she should fear.
Her stomach flip-flopped at that realization, wondering in what way he might mean, in what way he could be a danger to her, something she hadn't even started to consider on her way to find him.
She knew he could teach her to defend herself from men.
But what about from him?
Rushing across the room, she turned the lock, then told herself that she would also find something to use to further secure herself. Especially when she was sleeping at night. Because she knew a man as big as Holden could make short work of a simple wooden door.
With nothing else to do, she yanked open the window, then dropped down on the bed, resolving herself to an empty stomach.
It was nothing new.
She'd been starved before.
She had survived.
As soon as she got some time to think, to rest, then she would find a way to get food.
Suddenly, she wished she'd taken her uncles up on offers to learn to fish. Even if she hated the smell and taste of seafood.
She would figure it all out.
That was what she had to do.
Rely on herself.
Become independent.
Make do.
"Grub," Holden's voice grumbled through the door, making her heart shoot up into her throat.
Before she could even draw in a breath to steel herself, she could hear his footsteps clomping away, the grind of the garage door closing once again.
She made her way across the floor, unlocking the door, finding a tray, an actual bright blue school cafeteria plastic tray.
With blessed food piled on it.
A simple white throwaway dish loaded down with grilled chicken, peas, and a plain sweet potato. Not a hint of seasoning. But it might as well have been a decadent gourmet meal.
She tore into it, drinking greedily from the tap with the red plastic cup he'd left with her tray.
She fell asleep some time later, cold, uncertain, sad for the life—and people—she left behind. But also confident in her decision, knowing this was the right path for her, believing she had what it took.
It took only half an hour of training the following day—after getting startled awake by pounding on her door—to genuinely wonder if she had what it was going to take.
She'd sparred countless times in her young life, had fought those her own size as well as men much larger. It was always hard. She often lost. But she had always felt she stood a chance.
Holden Ryker gave her no chances.
Heaving, drenched in sweat, every muscle screaming, head pounding from a punch she took to the temple, she couldn't help but wonder if all those people she'd trained with before had truly gone as hard on her as they had claimed. Or, if like a caring parent letting their kid win at checkers, they had simply wanted to encourage her by letting her think she was better than she was.
Distracted by those thoughts, she took another hit to her jaw, flooding her mouth with blood, letting her know that the tooth that had been wiggling from a hit she'd taken in the basement day
s before was finally knocked loose.
"Are you crying?" he asked, voice frustrated.
"No," she yelled back, though it was clear that she was.
"You wanna quit? You wanna give up on your first fucking day? I thought you cared about all those women."
"I do!" she insisted, raising an arm, swiping the offensive tears off her cheeks, quickly replaced by new ones.
"Right now, somewhere in the world, some woman is being dragged up off the floor, she is being forced down on a bed, she is having her clothes ripped off."
"Shut up," she demanded, feeling her lower lip quiver at the recognition of the truth in his words and also her clear inability to do anything about it.
"Some man is taking off his clothes. And he is getting on the bed."
She learned that first day that she had a trigger. And once even a breeze too strong blew against it, it was engaged.
The rage came from somewhere deep inside, a bottomless well that flooded up through her system, overtaking her entirely, bathing the world in stark contrast, making every sound in the room—the huff of her own breath, the steady cadence of Holden's, the irritating fly buzzing around—louder than they should have been, making her pulse slow, making her instincts kick in.
She still got her ass kicked. Decimated, even. But Holden stopped poking at her, finding himself too busy fighting off her endless advances, leaving him more than a little impressed by the determination he found in this kid with the so easily breakable body but unshakable spirit.
She never cried again.
Not when his fist broke her eye socket.
Not when she'd fallen and busted her ankle.
Not when she got right up off that floor and kept fighting through the pain.
And not when she was utterly alone in her room, nursing her wounds, feeling the girl she used to be slipping away moment by moment, night by night.
The nights were the longest.
The solitude crept in, whispered uncertainties, told her how much easier it would be to go home, forget all this.
There would be no pain.
There would be no uncertainty.
She wouldn't be sweating through the summer and freezing through the winter without heat or air.
She would have body wash and lotion and a warm shower.
The Rise of Ferryn Page 3
