by Keta Kendric
“Megan, this is not your fault, and I understand why my cousin couldn’t let you go. I understand why he’s fighting. And if you want someone to blame, blame me. He was taken because of me.”
She raised her gaze to mine, clearly not understanding my words.
“If I hadn’t been trying to take everyone out instead of retreating when the right time came, he wouldn’t have been taken. So, I’m going to do what I have to do to get him back.”
She didn’t look convinced and based on the defiant look on her face, I didn’t think she was going to listen to me.
Am I going to have to tie this woman up to keep her here? I had serious work to do and people to torture. When I stood and walked towards the door to exit, Megan followed me.
“Where are you going?” I asked her.
“With you.”
“I’m about to go and torture a motherfucker to try to find out where they’re keeping my cousin.”
She glanced up at me, looking innocent with those big-ass sad eyes and said, “I know.”
After she spoke those two words, those big, brown, innocent eyes held mine, and a touch of madness peeked through. Aaron was right about one thing. Megan presented a picture of innocence to the world that could fool anyone. She had fooled me until I’d looked deeper and saw what was staring back at me. At this moment, I realized she could be as dark as any member of the August Knights. I also realized her darkness was how she’d won over the members of our MC. The sight of that gun shoved down the front of her pants was further proof that Megan was not your typical female.
She kept her cold gaze locked on mine, almost daring me to stop her from following. I shrugged, turned, and headed to the basement with Megan hot on my trail.
Chapter Eighteen
Aaron
The light wave and sway of my body and the vibration of the engine let me know that we were moving. My eyes jittered under my closed lids, and I struggled to open them. The pain in my chest—hell, the pain in the back of my head registered and made me stifle a groan.
There was too much pain for me to be dead, so it was safe to assume they hadn’t shot me in the back of the head. My senses were all creeping back into my body one by one. They’d stuffed me into the back of their SUV after striking me in the back of the head. The seat in front of my area was raised with someone sitting there. The other seat was flattened so they had a view of the top half of my body.
I didn’t want them to know that I was awake, so I kept my body still. Since a portion of me was under the edge of the folded seat, it kept some of my movement hidden. They’d taken my gun and large combat knife, but had they found the small hunting knife I kept hidden in the secret pocket I had on the inseam of the waistband at the back of my pants?
Struggling to angle my body without moving the top half while attempting not to accidentally kick the seat of the person in front of me was a fucking task. With my hands zip-tied behind my back, I was forced to lift my shoulders without them noticing. It took some doing, but I reached the area I’d been aiming for, and just as I’d hoped, the knife was still there. Apparently, these men weren’t as well-trained as I’d thought they were.
I worked my fingers between my belted waist and wiggled the knife free. Once I had it free, it took more nimble finger movements to work the knife open and cut the thick zip ties they had around my hands. Now, I had to figure out how I wanted to go about this. Number one and two sat in the front seat, number three was in the second seat on the passenger’s side, and number four was in the third row in front of me. Number four sat turned in the seat so that he could watch me. He had his hand on his weapon, but sadly for him, the weapon was holstered, and he was dozing off.
If I could take out number four, who was sleeping on duty, and get his gun, I could possibly take the others. The odds were stacked against me, but what other options did I have? They were driving me someplace so they could kill me either way. The way I saw it, if I was going to die, I was going to die the way I wanted to—fighting.
I sprung up from my position and plunged the knife into the chest of the man in the seat in front of me. As his body jerked and blood started to wet his shirt, his hand slipped from his pistol to clutch at his chest. He attempted to yell out, but his voice was lost as he choked and gagged on the blood that was filling his throat and drizzling down his chin.
At the sight of what was going on, the driver swerved, jerking the stirring wheel so hard that the tires squealed. The move tossed me sideways and pulled me away from the pistol that had been inches from my grasp. I struck the passenger’s side paneling. I didn’t know if it was dumb luck or if the driver saw me grabbing for that gun, but his swift maneuvering had likely saved their lives.
The driver recovered the vehicle quickly. Still in my position against the paneling, my eyes fell on the gun that I needed, but I couldn’t make a move to take it, because number two and number three’s guns were aimed at my face.
When I heard the click of number three’s weapon in the second seat and saw the deadly gleam in his eyes, I closed my eyes, and Megan filled my mind.
“Don’t kill him!” the driver shouted.
“Why the fuck not?” number three snapped. “He just killed Randy.”
“Because Sorio wants him alive. His little girlfriend killed Sorio’s father, so we have to find the bitch or Sorio is going to start killing us,” the driver answered.
Number three glared at me, his finger flexing on the trigger. He wanted to put a bullet in me badly. “Sorio thought that bitch was already dead. Then three years ago, he got a tip that the little bitch was still alive. What if the tip was wrong and we’re chasing a fucking ghost? It’s one fucking woman. It shouldn’t be this hard to kill a fucking woman. We’ve damn near lost our whole fucking team.”
The driver glanced back at me before putting his eyes back on the highway. “She is very much alive. Sorio got a hold of the bitch’s medical records. She uses a different name, but it’s the same fucking DNA that was left on his dead father all those years ago. As much as I want to kill that motherfucker back there, we can’t kill him, yet. This is the closest we’ve gotten to getting Daniels, and he can tell us where the hell she’s at.”
Number three relaxed his arm but kept his weapon aimed at me. “Everyone that gets close to this fucking Daniels woman ends up losing their lives. I mean, what is she, a fucking sorcerer?”
No one answered number three’s question, but it was becoming clear that they had been hunting Megan for a long time.
“Tell me we’re not transporting this animal to Texas?” Number two, the one riding shotgun in the front seat asked.
Texas?
The driver must have been this group’s leader because he seemed to have more knowledge than the others. I should have killed him first because he’d just sentenced me to any number of days of torture. There was no way in hell I was telling them where Megan was, so they were wasting their time. If Ansel didn’t find me before they killed me, he knew to get Megan out of Florida.
“Yes, we’re taking him to Texas. The boss has a plane waiting for us about fifteen miles down the highway, and he specifically told me to transport a live lead if we got one.”
“And you think Sorio is going to be able to break him? He’s a fucking August Knight. They come out of the womb getting tortured.”
Hearing how they were talking about our MC caused my eyebrows to shoot up. They thought we were a bunch of savages. I guess they could have been right. We were vicious when we had to be. I relaxed against the back hatch of the vehicle and smiled.
“Sorio also told us not to engage these hicks and to take the bitch when she was alone,” number two stated.
“Rednecks, not hicks,” number one corrected.
“Same fucking difference,” number two whined.
“Sorio didn’t want us stirring up more trouble than we had to because these fucking rednecks are more connected than anyone would think they are. But, George had to show his balls and led
his team to a fucking shootout in a public place, and you saw what happened to them in those woods,” number one warned.
“Well, I’m not afraid of these August hicks,” number three stated as he cut his eyes at me and shook his gun in my direction.
With the zip-ties gone, I reached behind me and lifted the handle that would make the door rise, but the driver had been smart enough to lock it. Fuck.
Minutes later, we arrived at a private airfield where a small private jet running on the tarmac awaited us. The plane hummed to life before a loud burst of air shot from someplace behind it and made the plane roar with an ear-splitting noise.
With a gun to my head and one to my back and my hands re-tied, I had no choice but to march towards the plane. A glance back showed a crew already cleaning out the SUV, pulling the man I’d killed out. The pushing and shoving I received had me clumping up the steps and stumbling across the doorway to enter the plane.
The crew didn’t take any chances with me this time. Once they had me seated in the back seat in front of the restroom, they roped my ass to the seat of the plane like I was cattle. Then, I watched one stroll up to me with a needle in his hand. With a mind full of rage and trussed up like a damned animal, I was unable to defend myself from whatever they were about to inject me with.
My eyes followed the needle as it inched closer to my twitching arm. The tiny prick registered, and seconds later, my eyelids became too heavy for me to hold open. I faded slowly, fighting and urging my mind to stay awake. The last thing I saw before my lids closed for good was the face of the man who’d been driving the vehicle. He stood before me with the needle, preparing to pump me with more drugs if he needed to.
Chapter Nineteen
Ansel
When piss came spilling from the seat of the rickety wooden chair I had the mercenary strapped to, I took a step back. I’d been torturing the man for an hour, failing to find out where his people had taken my cousin.
We’d divided the basement in half. On one side of the ratty beige blanket I’d hung, I was torturing the mercenary I’d hidden in the closet. On the other side of the blanket, Shark was torturing the one Aaron had handed over to Scott.
Megan stood at the edge of the divide, watching us beat, kick, stab, fry, poke and prod these men to within an inch of their sanity. She observed and seemed to be studying what we were doing to the men. Not once did she look away. It didn’t matter what we did or how barbaric our cruelty became, she stayed.
After nearly two hours, Shark and I both took breaks. When we made it into the kitchen, Megan waited there for us with two ice-cold glasses of water. “I know that you guys know what you’re doing, and I’m sure you’ll get more information out of these guys, but may I suggest something?”
Shark spit his words at Megan. “What? You know how to torture men? Watching and actually doing it are two different things.” Shark looked over at me. “I’m going back down. You can take suggestions if you want to. If it weren’t for her, my son wouldn’t have been captured by mercenaries.”
“Unc, Aaron was captured because of me,” I corrected, my words bouncing off his back as he walked away.
Shark didn’t say so, but his shoulder was bothering him. He kept adjusting the sling and rubbing the arm of his injured shoulder. He turned before crossing into the basement. An authoritative finger pointed in my direction. “I wasn’t born yesterday. An unknown group that Aaron, of all people, didn’t know about. Who else could they be after if not her?”
Shark shoved his thumb towards Megan who’d dropped her head. He glared at her for a long moment before he took the steps down into the basement. His angry steps traveled out of the open basement door into the kitchen with us.
It was safe to say my uncle knew that we were fighting adversaries that were chasing Megan. But, as far as Shark was concerned, with them having Aaron, the fight had officially become ours. I took a few steps closer to Megan, and she stepped back. “What was the suggestion you had?” I asked her.
She glanced up, surprised. “You want to hear what I have to say after all the trouble I’ve caused?”
“Yeah. Let me hear it.”
***
Thirty minutes after Megan made her suggestion, she, my cousin, Mark, Shark, and I drove out to the clubhouse. We were taking our mission for information, out back. After having Mark help me dig, of all things, a fucking grave, we lowered the mercenary into the hole, kicking and screaming his head off. Wade had shown up with the pine box he’d gotten from his wife’s sister who worked at the funeral home.
Megan’s suggestion was that we bury the man alive and use the communication devices we use on our mission so that we could communicate our questions and hear his response from inside the coffin. Her knowledge of some of the things we did had me wondering if there wasn’t anything my cousin didn’t share with this woman.
She was certain that man’s own mind would scare him far worse than the physical abuse that we were inflicting on him.
I didn’t know if the stunt would work, but even I had to admit it was one hell of a plan. She may have been right in her assessment because this guy screamed more inside the box than when I was beating the piss and shit out of him. I didn’t know his name and didn’t care to know it. My only mission was to find out the location of where his friends had taken my fucking cousin.
“If you can hear me, say yes, and knock twice on the ceiling of your box.”
The man spoke a shaky “yes” and followed it up with two loud thumps that came from the pine box sitting four feet in the ground below. His terrified voice sounded loud and clear in my ear. I’d fitted Shark, Megan, Mark, and Wade with an earpiece each so they could hear the man speaking as well.
“Where are your people taking my fucking cousin? And don’t tell me you don’t know.” I spoke loud precise words, ensuring the man heard every syllable. “If you’re not ready to talk, the next thing you will hear is dirt covering this coffin.”
For the first few minutes, the man would not budge. Each time he didn’t answer my question I’d let him hear me throw more dirt on top of him. His labored breathing indicated that his air supply was thinning, which from what I could hear, terrified him even more than he already was.
“Are you ready to tell me where your people are taking my cousin?”
“Yes, fucking yes!” the man spat out through ragged breaths. His sharp intakes of air and his constant thrashing about inside the box let us know he’d started to panic.
“Where are they taking him?”
“Texas! They are taking him to Texas,” he huffed out through harsh breaths.
“Texas is a big fucking state. Where in Texas are they taking him?”
“Chantil, Texas. Small town. The ranch is about ten miles outside the town.”
“Do you know the address?” I asked, noticing the desperation in his voice.
“There is no address. No one is supposed to know who the place belongs to. There are only a few properties outside the town.”
“We are in Florida. Are they driving all the way to Texas?”
“No. Our boss will fly them there.”
“Who’s your boss?”
“Sorio. Sorio Dominquez.”
I didn’t know a fucking Sorio Dominquez. He couldn’t have been one of the original gang members. D and my contact with the FBI had provided us with all sorts of information on the Dominquez gang, but nothing about a Sorio.
“Is Sorio one of the original six?” I asked the man.
“No, he’s the son of Carlos and he wants the girl more than anyone.”
Fuck!
Mark and Wade gave me and Shark funny looks, but none of us said a thing. They were likely wondering who Carlos was and what girl the man was talking about. They never looked in Megan’s direction, so they likely hadn’t pieced the puzzle together yet.
Frankly, I couldn’t believe how well this stunt with the coffin was working. The man was spilling his guts, giving me way more information than I’d e
xpected to get out of him. I glanced back at Megan whose eyes were glued to that coffin. She wanted to know where Aaron was as badly as everyone else in the MC…probably even more.
My cold stare fell back on the wood of the coffin. Not an ounce of emotion stirred within me as I drew and emptied a clip of hot slugs into where the man’s head and chest were. Wade and Mark jumped back and looked at me as if I’d lost my fucking mind. Megan and Shark hadn’t even flinched. The way I saw it, I’d done the man a favor by putting him out of his misery. I picked up one of the shovels and started covering the coffin. Mark joined me as Megan, Shark, and Wade waited.
“We should keep the other hostage alive. If that motherfucker down there was lying, we’ll have the other one to get information out of,” I explained, not looking at anyone as I continued to shovel dirt into the hole.
“I don’t think he was lying. He sounded like he was shitting bricks inside that box,” Mark stated.
“How did you come up with some shit like this anyway?” Wade asked.
My eyes traveled in Megan’s direction before I pointed at her. Wade, Mark, and Shark’s glares all shifted in her direction. She stood staring out at the stars with no idea that all eyes were on her. I was starting to notice that she had a one-track mind when it came to my cousin, and like me, she didn’t seem to care what she had to do to get him back.
None of the men said a word, but I understood the elongated glares they had aimed at Megan. If they already hadn’t realized, they were beginning to understand why Aaron had chosen her. She was becoming one of us no matter what our rules were and no matter what was supposed to divide us.
“Megan,” I called, getting her attention. “Let’s go.”
***
“No, you are not going to Texas,” I said to Megan in the calmest voice I could muster. We had made it back to the safe house, and she was packing that damn backpack again, stuffing clothes in there despite my protests. She wasn’t listening to a goddamn word I was saying to her. She was preparing to go with my team to rescue Aaron from that damn ranch they were likely torturing him on.
