Controlled Burn- To Publish

by Lani Lynn Vale

  “Always wanted to have you in my home,” Barrett said. “Just wish it was willingly.”

  I swallowed thickly and didn’t reply, then turned my eyes to Jensen.

  He gave me nothing as well, and I licked my lips, nearly vomiting again when I tasted the bile residue.

  Jensen smiled and walked out of the small room I was being kept in, a cell made out of concrete cinder blocks. The only thing different about the walls was the small metal door that led outside to something.

  Jensen returned moments later with a chained redhead woman who looked like she wanted to be anywhere but where she was.

  The moment Jensen let go of her, she turned and whacked him in the face with her metal cuffed hands.

  Knowing that it had to hurt her just as badly as it hurt Jensen, I winced in sympathy before my breath caught in my throat.

  “No!” I cried. “Don’t!”

  Jensen didn’t listen as he reared back his fist and slammed it into the face of the redhead.

  “Don’t do it again,” Jensen spat on the girl who was lying face down on the concrete. “When you’re done being a bitch, help this woman get cleaned up. Don’t do anything stupid, you know where that’ll get you.”

  The redhead’s eyes met mine, and I made an instant friend in her.

  One that would help me through the next three and a half months of hell.

  ***

  Dean

  “Your sister’s missing,” I told Wolf.

  Wolf’s face went blank.

  “What’d you do to her?” he snarled.

  I shook my head.

  “Nothing,” I whispered. “I’ve done nothing. She was seen getting shakily into a black van at Target about four hours ago, and she hasn’t been seen since.”

  “She’s been kidnapped,” he looked utterly blank. “You’re sure?”

  Some weird tension started to fill the air, and my belly fisted into a tighter knot.

  “Yes,” I confirmed. “I think so. That’s all I have. We left things on good terms when I was called in. She was happy. I know she didn’t leave with anyone else on purpose.”

  “Show me the video,” he ordered.

  I handed him my phone.

  I’d had the security people at Target email the video to me, and then promptly vomited after watching it for the first time on my phone, which made it all the more real.

  Overall, the video itself wasn’t very bad.

  If you didn’t know July better, you wouldn’t think anything of the way she got into that van.

  “Her legs are going out from under her as she gets into that front seat,” I point out.

  Wolf nodded but didn’t reply, his eyes intent on the video on my phone.

  His fingers tightened on the metal, and the plastic case I had covering it, started to creak in protest.

  “Something’s wrong with her,” he says almost immediately.

  My eyes closed as the confirmation of a trained professional confirmed my fears.

  “You report this?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “They wouldn’t take it?” he guessed.

  I shook my head. That was why I’d had to travel to Uncertain, TX to tell Wolf in person.

  “I don’t have the connections in Longview that I do in the smaller towns surrounding it, but I’ll start it on my end. In twenty-four hours, you report her missing in Kilgore. I’ll confirm your story,” he said.

  “You think she’s not okay?” I wanted to hear something other than what I knew, but Wolf didn’t appease my fears.

  He shook his head.

  “This is the case I’ve been working on,” he said. “Fuck, it’s my fault for bringing her into this. I should’ve fucking known better.”

  Irrational anger that would not help the situation surged through me, and I reached my hands up to thread my fingers through my hair.

  “Tell me what I need to know,” I barked, no longer able to hold onto my temper.

  He looked at me, then away.

  “Sex trafficking,” he said. “Buyers from all over the world purchase ‘Southern Ladies’ for personal pleasure. They are young, pretty and a lot of the time they are pregnant. They’re held somewhere in my jurisdiction, but in the four months I’ve been working this case, I haven’t found it.”

  “What do you have? Maybe I can help,” I offered.

  Anything. I’d offer anything to make this not be true.

  Maybe all this was, was a misunderstanding.

  In my heart, though, I knew it wasn’t.

  Chapter 19

  If you’re going to rattle my cage, you best be sure that I’m locked in it and can’t get out.

  -Dean’s secret thoughts

  Dean

  One month later

  I was a man possessed.

  There was no other reason for how I was acting.

  “You’re not going to be able to continue with the SWAT team,” Luke said.

  I could tell it pained him to say it to me.

  I could see the sympathy in his eyes. I could almost sympathize with him.

  Almost.

  I agreed with him, though.

  I was a loose cannon, and I’d devoted every day of the last month to finding July.

  And I’d had zero success.

  Wolf and I were like two peas in a pod now, and it’d gotten so bad that I’d taken an extended leave of absence from my job as a firefighter.

  Apparently, I was now no longer working for the SWAT team, either.

  “Okay,” I said without arguing.

  My voice was devoid of emotion, and I knew I was looking crazier and crazier as the days passed. But did I care? Hell no.

  Without another word, I got up and walked out of his office, not stopping when he asked me to wait.

  I knew I looked rough and sinister as I walked through the bull pen, drawing the attention of every man in the room.

  Most knew my story.

  Most had also caught me doing something illegal over the last month. Lucky for me, they hadn’t booked me.

  They’d obviously been reporting it to their boss, though, which would explain why I’d just been put on administrative leave for the unforeseeable future.

  My phone rang the moment I walked into the cool night air, and I put it to my ear.

  “Hello?”

  “We had a sighting. She’s somewhere in Utah.”

  By the time we got to Utah, Wolf and I, the trail was cold.

  And it continued to stay cold for two more fucking months.

  ***

  July

  My breathing was choppy as I looked out of the blacked out windows of the big rig I was in at the man that I loved with all my heart.

  “Dean,” I tried to whisper.

  Dean’s eyes lifted to the big rig as he did a scan of the truck.

  The truck was carrying cows.

  How did I know, you ask?

  Because I was in there with them.

  The smell of the manure was so disgusting that I could hardly breathe.

  To make matters worse, I was bound and gagged, tied to a chair in the middle section of the trailer, cows behind and in front of me.

  There was also one tied to the post on either side of me.

  I’d made friends with the one to my left, mainly because she’d peed on my foot, unable to go anywhere else with how she’d been tied.

  When the truck moved far enough away that Dean couldn’t see me anymore, and I couldn’t see him, I let the tears slip from my eyes.

  The last month had been terrible.

  I hadn’t eaten more than one meal a day in well over thirty days, and I hadn’t slept more than the odd hour here or there since then, either.

  My eyes left the passing countryside to settle on Raven who was across the trailer from me, her back up against the disgustingly filthy divider between the stalls.

  I didn’t look behind me. />
  If I didn’t know what was there, it was better, I’d found.

  Our eyes connected, and sympathy showed in her eyes.

  Sympathy for me. For what I was going through.

  Raven, I’d learned, had been dating Jensen and had inadvertently been brought into this entire mess when she overheard Jensen and Barrett talking about kidnapping me.

  Now, for the tenth time since I’d been taken, we were being moved.

  Lucky for Jensen, and unlucky for us, he had a brother who was a truck driver.

  While Jensen and Barrett waited for the buyer of my contract to make travel and flight arrangements—something they didn’t bother to hide from me as they spoke in detail about what was about to happen to me—Jensen’s brother drove us around in his big rig trailer while he transported various cargo all over the country.

  I’d been to Mississippi, Utah, Alaska, New York, and everywhere in between.

  I’d learned that being on the move was key to staying hidden from the people that were looking for you. Something I wished I never, ever learned.

  Raven’s eyes went to my belly, and then to my face, asking silently if I was okay.

  I nodded, even though my stomach was roiling.

  Thankfully, being kidnapped and beaten on a daily basis gave me a good reason to be throwing up, otherwise I would’ve never been able to hide my pregnancy from the men who’d been my captors over the last thirty days.

  Compared to the day that Dean had offered up the news that he thought I might be pregnant, now I could no longer deny what I knew.

  I was pregnant. How pregnant, I didn’t know. Without a doctor to confirm, I could only go on my suspicions.

  I could also see the difference in my body, something that was becoming increasingly harder to hide from the men that watched my every move.

  Raven was a huge part of the reason that I’d been able to hide it as long as I had.

  She was taking care of me, shielding me from everything and anything that she could.

  And I would forever be grateful to her for that.

  I gave her a nod and returned my eyes to look out the oval holes of the trailer we were in.

  My eyes lit on a familiar red pickup as it passed, and everything inside of me cried out in protest.

  “Don’t leave me!” I tried to cry.

  He didn’t hear me.

  Chapter 20

  That moment you realize that you just pissed off the one man in the world that would kill everything in his path to get to the woman he loved.

  -Wolf’s secret thoughts

  Dean

  Two months later

  I was about to reply when his phone rang, Ozzy Osbourne’s Crazy Train filling the cab of the truck, interrupting my reply.

  “Hold on, Dean,” he said. “That’s Griffin’s ringtone.”

  Wolf sat back so he could reach his phone. We’d been discussing possible sightings, leaning over the center console with a map in between us, as he put tacks where there’d been sightings.

  “Hello?” he answered.

  His eyebrows lowered at whatever Griffin had to say and slowly, anger started to leech into his features.

  “When?” he asked.

  He nodded to something that was said, and then replied with, “We’ll be there in five minutes.”

  Without waiting, he got out of my truck and walked to his bike.

  All the while he had the phone to his ear while he listened.

  My heart started to beat fast as a sliver of fear slid through me. This could be it. This could be the break we’d been waiting for.

  Rolling the window down, I listened as he mounted his bike.

  “Yeah. No. We weren’t there all day. We were at my place and have been for nearly a week now. Haven’t heard of another sighting in well over a week,” he replied to something Griffin was saying.

  The sightings had been the only thing keeping me sane, and the last week, without a single sighting, my heart had started to constrict until fear was the only thing I tasted. The only thing I breathed.

  My heart jolted.

  “My place?” I asked him.

  Wolf’s eyes flicked to me as he started the bike up and backed out of the parking spot he’d just pulled into.

  “Follow me,” he pushed the phone into his pants pocket and gestured for me to follow him.

  The ride to where we were going was unfamiliar at first, but then a sick jolt of fear slid through me as we arrived in a neighborhood that looked extremely familiar to me.

  I couldn’t place why it looked so familiar.

  Not until Wolf shut off his bike and pointed to something in the distance.

  I followed suit and pulled up to his side, shutting my truck off so I could hear him over my engine.

  “Someone reported screaming from a house about twenty minutes ago,” he said. “Cops were called, and they found something they want us to see.”

  “What is it?” I inquired, licking my lips in nervousness.

  He shook his head.

  “They wouldn’t say what it was,” he replied as he waited.

  It didn’t take long to see what he was waiting for, and my heart started to pound as the entire Uncertain Saints MC showed up, silent as wraiths.

  They led us to a house at the very end of the block, and the bodies that littered the sidewalk around the house made me irrationally happy.

  It was obvious what the men of the Uncertain Saints had been doing while Wolf and I had been in route.

  Stomach churning, I pushed past my new friends, the guys that I began to depend on with everything I had over the last three months, and made my way up to the front porch at a run.

  Three months of my worst nightmares.

  They couldn’t keep me from this, though.

  They couldn’t keep me from her.

  “It’s bad, Dean,” Tai said seriously, stopping me before I could make it all the way inside. When he’d shown up, I had no idea. I was just glad that my friends were here. Likely, their presence was to keep me from going nuts. “She’s likely going to die.”

  The confirmation that it was her in that room was more than enough to make hope and joy surge through my body, despite the fact that Tai had just said that whatever was going on with her was bad. That she’d likely die.

  I looked over at my friend, then nodded my head in all seriousness.

  “She needs me,” I gently took my arm from Tai’s grip, then walked into the room.

  The first thing I saw were the men surrounding her.

  Able and Booth were at the wall, both on one side, holding her steady with hands on her knee and arm. Bowe and Drew were on the other side doing exactly the same.

  My breath left me instantaneously as they moved slightly to the right and I caught sight of her.

  “Hey, baby,” I whispered, bile rushing up my throat.

  July couldn’t even pick up her head.

  She was exhausted, and her breathing was coming way too fast.

  She struggled again to lift her head so she could see me, and I dropped to my knees directly in front of her, coming only inches from the sword that impaled her middle.

  With the new angle, July was able to look down to see me, and she smiled a shaky smile at me, trying to comfort me even when she was the one who clearly needed comfort.

  “Hi,” I whispered.

  Her eyes filled with tears.

  “You were right,” she said, her eyes skimming down to her belly. “I was wrong.”

  “I was right about what?” I asked her gently, bringing my hand up to gently cup the curve of her cheek.

  Where was the ambulance?

  “Ambulance is supposed to be here in five. They had to send a truck from Daingerfield since nearly all units were on calls,” someone said from behind me.

  I didn’t notice who.

  I was too busy keeping my eyes on the woman in front of me.

  I
t was like a balm and a blow to my soul to have her within arm’s reach again.

  “I’m pregnant,” she said, her eyes going to the belly that I couldn’t help but notice the moment I’d walked into the room.

  I nodded at her.

  Then swallowed thickly.

  She had been pregnant, yes.

  Likely the child…our child…that she carried was no longer alive.

  Not with a sword through her belly.

  When the silence continued too long, July misread my concern, and responded accordingly.

  “Don’t you dare take this baby from me,” she whispered fiercely to him. “If you take her from me, I’ll never forgive you. Promise me you won’t take her.”

  Agonized, I looked down at the sword impaling her body.

  A fucking sword.

  Straight through her stomach.

  I was scared for her. For the baby.

  But there was no way our child was living inside of her at that moment.

  Placing my hand to her belly, careful not to move her or jostle her in any way, misery poured through me.

  I couldn’t feel a kick. I couldn’t feel any movement whatsoever.

  Not one damn twitch.

  The worst had already happened. The baby had already been taken.

  “Move over,” my best friend ordered.

  I looked over almost out of habit to see the room filling with firefighters and paramedics.

  Able was at my side, pushing me none too gently away, and I went back on my ass.

  I was in shock.

  Nobody could survive the injuries that July had sustained.

  They’d crucified her.

  Each place, where a major artery ran through her body, they’d driven a knife through her delicate skin, straight into the wall behind her hands.

  They’d even gone so far as to tie her hair in a knot, and then attached it to a nail above her, so her head couldn’t fall completely to her chest in exhaustion.

  My mouth was dry, and tears were coursing down my cheeks.

  Somebody’s arms threaded under my armpits, and I turned to find Luke at my back, picking me up and dragging me away.

  I got my feet under me and stood on shaky legs, then pulled out of Luke’s arms.

  “Don’t,” Luke ordered. “You can’t get in there and get in the way. They need freedom to work, and they don’t need to be worried about you freaking out with her in such a precarious position.”