by Wild, Nikki
It was then that I remembered the traitorous little phone had gotten me into this entire mess to begin with… and it was probably still in Talon’s office.
Well, fuck me sideways.
I was in an impenetrable storage container, rigged to explode, hurtling probably towards the middle of nowhere, with nobody aware that I was in any trouble. Meanwhile, Hunter’s sister had successfully passed herself off as a friend, when she was here specifically to swoop in and bring the goddamned box to her goddamned boss.
No wonder the bitch had been so adamant that I keep digging into this case. Be independent, my ass!
It was too late to worry about spilled milk. I was part of the package deal, having successfully painted a massive target on myself the moment that I dropped my phone.
For bonus points, it had happened in front of both the traitor and the guy who could halt my cavalry’s progress at every turn.
In that second, feeling the weight of total defeat threaten to crush me, I vowed to absolutely give Hunter the benefit of the doubt and work through all of our worries if I ever saw him again.
If…
How long had I been in here? I was totally unable to gauge the passage of time. One hour or twelve, it all seemed a blur to me. The big knot throbbing on my skull wasn’t helping matters either.
All I knew was that I was moving somewhere, and Hannah wasn’t exactly going easy on the truck. I was being bounced around and thrown from side to side with every twist and turn.
Not only is my captor dragging me along towards my inevitable demise… she’s also a shitty fucking driver.
Worse than that, the bumpiness was really starting to fuck with my pregnancy symptoms.
I was getting more and more nauseous by the second, and the thought of vomiting in this enclosed area without ventilation wasn’t exactly making me happy.
As if I’d ever be happy again…
Hell, the thought of that almost made me chuck up my guts in the moment.
Pull it together, Sarah, I tried to pep talk myself. Come on. You were a great goddamn cop. So, the detective thing didn’t exactly work out, and you got yourself kidnapped in your first private investigation case…
Doesn’t matter.
You’re gonna figure a way out of here. There’s gotta be something, ANYTHING you haven’t considered…
It was hard to do without the luxury of light, the acknowledgement of passing time, any concept of where we were going, nobody aware I was kidnapped or coming to save me, or even any understanding of where I was.
Minor details, I told myself.
Oh, who the fuck am I kidding?
I’m gonna fucking kick the bucket today.
In my frustration, I tried to stand. Maybe if I could get my bearings on where I was, or what exactly was even in the stupid container with me.
What are we talking here, something the size of a beach ball? Or is half this goddamn box a nuclear bomb?
I managed to get to my feet just as the vehicle hit a small bump, but I realized very quickly that I had very little space to move about. Whatever was in this container was taking up almost the entire square footage. Before I could investigate further, the truck hit a harder bump and forced me to topple to the ground. I hit the floor of the container hard and yelped in pain, but I luckily didn’t break anything.
Great…
Just fucking great.
As I lay there for a few moments, my face started to get warm, and I became gradually aware that my head was getting fuzzier. Something was up in here, and I couldn’t exactly put my finger on it…
Was it radiation?
Ten minutes later, it finally hit me: the air was thinning out. I hadn’t been conserving it or trying to breath lighter, and within minutes of trying to restrain my mounting panic, I found myself frenziedly gasping for air.
This thing is waterproof, I realized.
Stands to reason that it’s airtight as well…
Black fuzziness began to overcome my already blind eyes. I tried to breathe as shallowly as possible, but I knew that it was a futile effort.
I am going to suffocate and die here.
My thoughts desperately went to Hunter, my beloved. I had been so completely fucking stupid in resisting his good-natured attempts to save and shelter me…
All he’d wanted to do was keep me safe.
That’s the only thing that he’d asked for – to put me in a goddamn safehouse and keep me protected while he faced our enemy alone.
And I fucking blew it by spiraling straight into danger. I’d gotten lucky the first time, but by testing my luck and throwing caution to the wind, I’d signed my own execution papers.
Well… maybe Daddy and Hunter will live, I hoped.
Things started growing fuzzy.
The world was slipping away…
This was the moment. I was going to choke to death in desperate need of delicious, life-giving oxygen.
This is it…
Goodbye, my beloved…
I’m so sorry.
I was so far gone that I was starting to hear noises now, distant clicking and clanking sounds that were ushering me towards my death.
That’s… not what angels are supposed to sound like, I babbled in my head. Maybe those are demons… great, big, mechanical demons…
Oh god, I’m going to Hell instead…?
What the fuck, man?!
A white light flooded me, and I knew that my time had finally come. A great lifting of pressure bathed me in relief, and I gasped in happiness and satisfaction that I was finally home…
Well, if home looked like a roadside pullout, with cars roaring past in the distance.
Wait.
I’m alive?!?
Hannah Hargreaves looked at me with something that was almost disappointment after opening the back of the storage container.
“What the hell was that noise back here?”
She glanced down at my gasping form.
Gasping hungrily and desperately for air, I gazed up at her from the floor. Hunter’s older sister looked at me with pity as she held the door propped open, turning and lighting up a cigarette.
“You’ll have to forgive me,” she mentioned offhandedly, turning back to watch me suck down the precious, beautiful air. “Kind of slipped my mind that this thing was airtight. Whoops.”
“You…” I gasped. “Why are you…?”
“Nuh-uh,” Hannah warned. “Sorry, kiddo, but you don’t get to hear the story. All you’ve gotta know is that I’ll figure out what to do with you in a little while… I’m still thinking things over, yeah?”
My breathing was slightly easier now, and I fought down my nauseous stomach. It wanted to rebel against me and vomit up the last meal I’d had – maybe the last meal I’d ever have.
“H-h-how long…?”
“How long have you been in here?” Hannah finished for me. She turned her head again, thinking for a moment. “Long enough. A few hours… I’m glad I thought to check on you when I did, you were almost a goner there…”
Hours?
“Surprising, huh? Time flies when you’re having fun,” Hannah smirked, planting the cigarette between her lips again. “Anyway, how are you feeling? Is the kid kicking yet?”
I glanced up at her from the floor of the storage unit in confusion. “S-seriously?”
“Yeah, of course,” Hannah took another drag from the cigarette between her fingers. “The pregnancy, doll. I was hoping you’d be asleep. That’d help with the nausea.”
She glanced into the crate over me.
“Kind of surprised you haven’t been puking your guts up back here, especially with the bumps here and there in the road… I mean, that’d really suck for the two of us, but especially you.”
“Anything I can do to help,” I groaned bitterly.
“Hey, this is more your fault than mine,” Hannah tried to lecture me. “Remember, you gave me the information I really needed. Once I knew Talon dumped the container in the oc
ean, I was all ready to swoop in and move this thing where it belonged. And after I had my little chat with him, I was ready to let you right off the hook… if you’d just given me the fucking time to text you after the meeting, you’d have known that.
Hannah shrugged, taking another drag. “Sorry about the whole Daddy thing, though. I was just fucking with you, Sarah. I didn’t think you’d go sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong. Still, I kinda admire the up-and-at-‘em initiative there. Real brave, kid.”
“That was you?” I wheezed, groaning in mounting horror and rage. “You’re the one who texted me? You fucking hired me?”
“Trying to kill two rotten, pain-in-the-ass birds with one stone, Sarah. You know, Hunter just hasn’t been the same since you left. He keeps sending me these sad fucking letters. I thought maybe I’d help you out…”
“Forgive me for not being thankful,” I growled lightly. My chest still heaved with the touch of Death’s embrace, as narrowly as I’d escaped it.
Hannah haughtily tsk-tsked.
“You know, I could have killed you on the spot, Sarah. Wouldn’t have been any problem to put a bullet in the back of your head, or send you to the bottom of the port.”
“Then why didn’t you?” I asked.
She looked hurt. “Why? Because I like you.”
“…What?”
“Shouldn’t it be obvious, kid?” Hannah shrugged nonchalantly. “You make my little brother happy.”
I was absolutely speechless.
“And you’ve got convictions,” she continued on. “Sarah, you’ve got a strong spirit. When Hunter wasn’t willing to go a single step further, you decided to leave without him. You pushed the two of you forward. That was all you.”
“But you… you pushed me to be independent,” I reminded my captor in rising confusion. “And you fucking threatened my family…”
“It was a distraction,” Hannah noted, taking another solid drag. “Sending you off to Talon gave me time to work on my end of things, you know? You and my brother rolling into town gave me the breathing room to do my job.”
“So, me working on the case…”
“Helped me, yes,” Hannah observed as she cut me off. “And that’s another good reason to spare you a cruel death. I like to repay kindnesses.”
“Like the way that you repaid Hunter for saving you?” I recalled. “He signed his life away to a motorcycle club and roared down to Mexico to save your life. You’ve repaid him with lies and bullshit!”
Hannah snuffed out the cigarette beneath her boot before reaching down and grabbing me by the hair sharply, painfully twisting my head.
“Don’t you ever speak to me like that again,” she growled menacingly. “Or it’ll be the last that you ever speak. Are we clear?”
“Jesus, Hannah,” I groaned. “Okay!”
“Good,” she snarled, releasing her grip. “Don’t make me overlook the help you’ve been in getting my hands on this fucking container.”
“So you’re… you’re sparing me?”
“Of course I am,” she replied offhanded, glancing around the passing vehicles for any suspicious activity.
“But what happens when we get where we’re going?”
“If you’re talking about what happens to you,” Hannah shrugged. “It’s out of my hands at that point.”
“But I thought you were sparing me!”
“You’re right,” she smiled. “I’m sparing you. That’s the distinction that I’m trying to make here… but then, it’s up to her…”
“Her?” I asked in panic.
“That’s right,” she answered, closing one of the doors and locking it into place. “Right now, you’ve got me to contend with, and I like you. As a token of my appreciation, I’ll stop once or twice again before we get there to replenish your air…”
She readied the other door.
“But when we arrive, you’re probably going to have to beg for your life.”
“Why is that?” I asked, dreading the answer that I knew was already coming.
Hannah tilted her head piteously.
“Because you get to meet Soroka Sarkonov.”
With that definitive note of terror, the other container door locked into place, the sounds of whirring locks filled the air, and the outside world was silent and lost to me again.
Hunter
The race took us a few hours away from Los Angeles, deep towards the foothills to the east. We shot past Temecula and Homeland, heading out of civilization and off the Interstate down dirt roads with mountain vistas in every direction.
It was actually quite pretty out here, even if it was a bit remote. I wasn’t opposed to settling down in these parts…
Talon had elected to stay behind, of course. The bastard didn’t want to dirty his hands. Whatever was about to happen, it was going to be on me… I was leading the cavalry out to throw down our final stand. I was the one who would take down Soroka Sarkonov.
They knew the dangers we faced.
They knew the enemy we dared to oppose.
And they knew what was at stake.
Whatever was going on with that container, it wasn’t our fight. But when my girlfriend – when the woman I had loved all of my life, carrying our child in her womb, had been taken away from me…
It had become very, very personal.
I was out for blood.
My warpath was set before me, and I was prepared to bring down anyone who dared stand in my way.
There will be absolute hell to pay.
My Dragons had seen a lot of action in the last couple of years. Armed protection being our legitimate forte, we weren’t strangers to gunfire. Things had seriously amped up when whispers of my old nemesis, the Viboras Verde cartel hit the wind.
Suiting up and hitting the trail to fight some dangerous enemy with untold resources in unfamiliar territory was becoming something kind of routine for us.
And that weighed heavy on me.
I didn’t want to subject my men to this much trouble at once. They stood behind me, they rode at my side, but I didn’t want to put their lives on the line as often I had been lately.
It was time that this came to an end.
But I was starting to think that this was all I really knew. Sure, I led them to a safer path, taking a motorcycle gang notorious for gun smuggling to a legal profession that even merited some lenience from the local fuzz, but that didn’t stop the rain of bullets.
Putting together the Outlaws meant that I could count on others to step foot where I didn’t want to send my men, choosing dangerous criminals to help sniff out the real threats to the Southwestern Desert…
But no matter what I did, danger followed.
Sarah was right, I realized as we rode up into the hills. No matter where I go, I risk putting others in danger. I rush headlong into battle…
Is this what I have become?
I told myself, time and time again, that this was for the greater good. Before, it was kidnapped teens. Now, it was for a kidnapped woman. My woman.
That was another rising pattern that I was growing to despise.
Hannah was kidnapped.
The girls were kidnapped.
Now SARAH has been kidnapped.
Merciful Christ Almighty, was everyone I ever came across going to be kidnapped at one fucking point or another?
What happens when it’s my child?
Things started to shift into place. Pieces of a puzzle that I never knew were there were moving around in my head, changing configurations and bringing half-thoughts to the surface, fleshing it all out into a coherent picture…
I have to give up the Devil’s Dragons.
The resolution came clear as daylight to me, and the force of it almost cost me my balance on my motorcycle.
It made perfect sense.
I’d thrown myself headlong into building up this gang, and forming my little alliance in the desert, but now there was more to worry about.
I had a fucking fa
mily on the way.
The Devil’s Dragons needed more than I could offer them. Even before I had this new set of circumstances thrust upon me, I had been leading them astray… sending them careening towards danger.
If things didn’t change soon, I was eventually going to get my entire little band of heroic mercenaries killed, one way or another.
I felt a weight lift off of my shoulders.
There needs to be a change in leadership.
My focus cleared. I could think straighter now, concentrate on what really needed to be done. I wasn’t clouded by judgment, restrained by appearances, or locked by necessity.
I was going to save Sarah Buchanan, ensure the livelihood of my heir, and then I was going to give up leadership of the Devil’s Dragons to whoever rose to take the mantle.
But it didn’t matter, because I already knew how the pieces would move. After all, the rest of the club respected and loved him, too. What better candidate than my trusted second-in-command, Grizz?
I glanced over at him while we hit a rolling ascent. His pale, otherworldly eyes remained focused forward, but he briefly turned to acknowledge me before concentrating on the road.
Grizz had been a damned blessing.
The biker had come into my club years ago, not long after we had been crippled by betrayal. He practically wandered into our club off of the street, a forlorn, quiet, and methodical biker with uncanny aim and a heavy biblical streak.
Grizz had taken to us almost immediately, and particularly displayed support for me. Without his presence, I might have never risen to take over the scattered, damaged club.
It was his authority and backing that allowed me to pull the motorcycle club back together, steer us away from the damaging trades that had fueled their coffers before, and rise to carve out our own niche in the dried, arid crags.
And from then, I was able to start building upon my wicked predecessor’s ambitions, taking his dream of uniting the criminal underworld of the desert towards power consolidation and guide it to something better…
