Bound by Wreckage_Ravage MC

by Ryan Michele

Fear rides me hard, but I push it down. There will be plenty of time to let it come out, if I make it out of here. It’s not worth my energy right now. I must get out.

  My wrists are taped together in front of my body and I’m lying on my completely filled backpack which is not comfortable, but it’s there. That is a good thing.

  Use your legs, knees, and feet. They are very powerful things on a woman. Gunny’s voice flickers through my mind. I practiced with him a lot and he’s a big man, getting him with my knee a couple of times. He told me he was taking one for the team, but he wouldn’t let me do it if he could stop it. It was great practice. Gunny isn’t quite as big as Big Jim, but not by much and I can do this. No, I have to do this.

  You want to find your happy in this world, Carsyn, then show them you won’t go down without a fight.

  Using my clasped arms, I hit Big Jim hard in the head as he grunts and begins cussing. Wasting no time as he shakes his head, I knee him in the balls hard using everything I have and kick him in the shins with my tennis shoe. He falls back with a thump, rage pouring off of him in waves.

  “You fuckin’ cunt!” he yells as I angle toward the gun and shift myself to the side. It’s right there, only a couple of inches away, and I reach with everything I have. Something or, I should say, someone grabs me by the ankle roughly and pulls me back away from it as I clutch onto the dirty floor looking for something to grasp. There are no seats in the back leaving a large space for whatever in the hell this is. It also gives me more room to push Big Jim away.

  Using my legs, I kick his knee cap hard hearing a crack, then kick his face. The blow isn’t as hard as intended, and he reaches up and grabs my hair callously and pulls it along with me back. I scream loudly as the van veers off to the left side, taking Big Jim and I with it as we roll. Luckily, Big Jim’s grip loosens just enough for me to twist and put my thumbs inside of his eyeballs, pressing in hard and fast and catching him off guard.

  Using everything I can, I push in and kick at the same time hitting him in the nuts once again, trying to stop his hands and arms from reaching out to me. He screams, his arms coming out to grasp me harshly. I push into his eye sockets one more time making sure my thumbnails feel liquid on them, hoping there’s major damage to his vision and smack him on the head twice with my fists clasped as hard as I possibly can.

  Big Jim falls to the back door screaming and covering his eyes as he tries to move. Blood rushes down his face.

  “You bitch!” Cary D says from the front, and I waste no time grabbing the gun, holding it out steady at Cary D.

  “Stop the car!” I yell, but Cary D holds a gun up of his own and twists it to me. There are no thoughts that come in my head. That’s a lie. Only one word—survival.

  In the movies, they make shooting someone look glamorous and badass. Like you can just pull the trigger and the bad guys collapse gracefully to the floor. Me. I’m just trying to get out of this alive. Everything is in slow motion, but happening extremely fast. It’s a mix of determination and survival.

  Finger on the trigger and hand steady, I pull it twice hitting Cary D once in the forehead and once in the jaw. Blood splatters all over the car as his limp body falls forward against the steering wheel, and we start to swerve. My back slams against the back of the passenger side seat, but I hold steady.

  Fuck, I didn’t think about stopping the van. The vehicle jerks off to the side and tosses me into the passenger seat, and I narrowly miss hitting my head on the windshield. Panic surges when I see we’re moving across the road. Rushing to the driver’s side, I slam on the brakes, the van screeching as I shove it in park.

  “You bitch!” Big Jim growls, coming toward me, his arms aimlessly waving in front of him to find me, but he’s quick. There’s nowhere for me to go. I’m locked between the driver and passenger seats. It’s him or me, and it sure as fuck isn’t going to be me.

  Big Jim reaches out to grab me and I pull the trigger three times, his body falling hard on mine. My legs are at an awkward angle, and pain is shooting up my spine from landing on my backpack. Big Jim gurgles and his body trembles on top of me. I use every bit of strength I can muster, but can’t get his heavy body off of mine.

  It brings the term dead weight to reality as his breathing stops along with his body.

  The gun bites between Big Jim and I, his blood running down onto my body.

  “Get off me, fucker!” I yell at him, but he can’t hear me and it does no use.

  That’s when I hear the rumble of motorcycles and I freeze, knowing he’s here. Knowing that if I have to keep shooting.

  Buck. He’s here for me. My body starts to shake, and it takes everything inside of me to get it to calm down.

  Cary D said fifteen minutes until we got wherever we were going. Buck may have given up and come looking for us. Panic like no other courses through my veins and I squirm to get Big Jim off of me, only able to get my arms free still holding the gun.

  Whoever opens one of these doors is getting met with a bullet. I sit still listening to figure out where he is.

  It’s quiet. Too quiet. I try to lift up to look out the windows but have no luck.

  The side door flies open so fast, I aim my gun and begin to pull the trigger seeing him. Moving the gun quickly, I end up shooting the floor instead.

  “Nox,” I breathe out, feeling for once in all these months—safe.

  “Hey, babe. Got yourself in a mess I see,” he jokes.

  “Get him off of me,” I order as Nox nods with a smirk on his face. All the doors of the van begin to open, and I panic. Nox must see it.

  “They’re my brothers. You’re safe.” Nox climbs in and pulls Big Jim off of me as I slide out. My lungs open, and I gasp for breath. “Looks like you picked some things up from Gunny.”

  My, “yeah,” is breathy as Nox helps me sit up. He pulls out a knife and cuts the tape around my wrists.

  “Damn, woman!” a man with a manbun says. He looks a lot like Nox, but different as well. “Cleaned up house.” He hits Nox. “Watch out before she takes you out.”

  At that, a small smirk tips my lips. That’s never going to happen.

  “This is my brother, Cooper. He’s blood but also Ravage.”

  I give a small wave, feeling really weird meeting his brothers like this. Don’t get me wrong, I’m damn glad they’re here, but I’m covered in asshole blood. “Can we get out of here? I need to change.”

  Two other men look through the back door, their expressions fierce as they slam the door one of them getting on the phone.

  “That’s Jacks and Green. You’re safe, Carsyn. I got you.” I recognize Green from the first day at the Rangers, but the others are strangers.

  Those words never sounded better.

  Nox pulls me out of the van, and we happen to be on the side of the road. How the hell I pulled that off I have no clue.

  “Listen, we have to move fast. Change your clothes right here. They’ll turn their backs.” He must’ve caught my fear of getting dressed in front of his brothers, giving me an out. “We don’t have time to get you somewhere else.” Nox points to my backpack still on me. “You got clothes in there?”

  I nod and pull it off me, digging through it. “What do I do with the bloody clothes?”

  “Put it in the van. We have a clean-up crew coming. They’re ten minutes out, and as soon as they land we’re out of here.”

  Adrenaline pumps through my veins, and I don’t think. I pull the clothes off and change right there on the side of the road letting the fear get washed away for the moment. I grab a washrag I took from the last hotel and spill some of my bottled water on it, washing the blood off of me as best as possible. The fabric is rough over my skin and feels like it’s pulling a layer off with each wipe. With the amount though, it doesn’t all come off unfortunately.

  Tossing the rag into the van, Big Jim’s open, dead eyes stare back at me and make me falter. I killed two people. Took their lives from them. While logically I knew I did it to
protect myself, I can’t stop repeating that in my head.

  They were going to rape me, or worse. I had to fight for control of my body. It was hard won, but I did it. But in doing that I took a life, and that’s a different kind of agony.

  I killed someone. I killed someone.

  Everything in me freezes as warm hands come to my arms, making me jump around.

  “Hey, calm down there,” Nox says. “Don’t go into shock on me, Carsyn.”

  “I killed them,” I whisper the words.

  He smiles wide. “Fuck yes you did.”

  I shake my head. He doesn’t get it. “No, Nox. I took someone’s life.”

  Nox’s face goes soft for a moment as his hand comes up to cup my face. “Yeah, gorgeous. You did. It was either them or you, and I’m damn happy it’s you I’m starin’ at instead of those ugly fuckers.”

  Whatever is around my heart starts to spiral out. He’s right. I defended myself, but what will the cops say? “Cops?”

  “No cops.” The rumble of motorcycles has me turning my head to see who’s coming, and I reach for the gun in the van holding it. Nox places his hand over top of the gun, his warmth like air to breathe. “These are the good guys.” With a nod, I lower it but keep it close.

  Nox stays by my side as the others go and talk to the newcomers.

  “Now what?” I mumble, still keeping my eyes on all of them. Fear does strange things, but all I can do is roll with it. Protect myself. That’s what I have to do.

  Nox pulls me into his warm body, and I suck him in. It has been so long since I was here in this place that I feel a bit of the tension fall out of me. The effects of the drugs are long gone, I just hope there isn’t any residual effects later on.

  He pulls back and holds both sides of my face. I love it when he does that. Makes me feel special and warms my soul. “Now, I take you home.” He kisses my lips softly, then pulls me to his bike.

  As I hold on to Nox, I feel exactly that. Home.

  23

  Nox

  The darkness fills the sky, and we’re all feeling the fatigue. Carsyn is trying her damnedest to stay awake, but having difficulty, feeling her nod off every now and again. Every time I squeeze her leg she jumps, tightening her grip around me, rousing her. She’s had a rough day and one that I’m so damn proud of her for.

  When we saw the van, this hope filled me. Hope that she was alive. Hope that she wasn’t hurt. Just hope.

  I thought for sure I’d be killing the motherfuckers who took her, but once again Carsyn surprised me. She found that inner strength that I saw a glimpse of and took action. Yes, she got beat up in the process, but fuck—she did it. She held strong and fought her way out to freedom.

  The adrenaline rush she felt wore off a few hours back, and she’s been dragging ever since. Cooper leads us off the road to a well-lit hotel. We’ve put a very good distance between St. Louis and us, even going a bit more south than normal to make sure we weren’t followed.

  Carsyn’s grip loosens as Jacks heads into the lobby to secure the rooms.

  “Won’t they be able to track it?” Carsyn says in my ear, and I smile.

  “Fake card, gorgeous. You know this.” The tension in her body relaxes, but she’s exhausted. Within moments Jacks comes out handing key cards out and giving me ours.

  Fuck if she’s sleeping alone tonight.

  We park the bikes around the back in a cluster and head in, luckily with no one around because Carsyn’s eyes dart everywhere searching. This has been her life for the past few months, and makes me wonder if she’s had a good night’s sleep in a while or if this fear she’s carried around has been her nightmare.

  That wasn’t what I had planned for her. Fuck, none of this went according to plan, but such is life. One that can change in the blink of an eye and take no prisoners.

  We make our way inside the building, up to the fifth floor, and down a long white hallway with framed art on the walls.

  “We’re over here in the corner,” Jacks calls out, leading us that direction. The guys head to their rooms, all right together in a cluster, as we enter ours. Carsyn looks around, noting no one in the room, and her shoulders deflate as she pulls her backpack off her back and tosses it to the bed. She rolls her shoulders and neck, no doubt feeling the tension of the day.

  “I have to take a shower. His blood is still on me,” she says to the ceiling while rounding her head back to me.

  “One second. Need to know how they got you and what they said.”

  Her lip trembles just a bit before she wipes it away, and the strength she has shines through. “I was in the bathroom coming out of the stall. Big Jim was there with a gun pointed at me and Cary D had a woman with a gun to her head. Said if I didn’t go with them they were going to shoot the woman. I couldn’t have that on my conscious, and I thought…”

  “Thought what?” She sits on the corner of the bed huffing out a deep breath.

  “Thought I’d be able to scream and get away once I got out of the bathroom because of all the people. I should’ve known they’d drug me.”

  Fuckers. While I’m glad she got her shot at them, I would’ve loved to have mine. “Do you have any idea what they gave you.”

  She shakes her head, her beautiful brown-haired ponytail moving with her in waves. “No, but it only took a couple of seconds and my body went limp. But I don’t think I was out of it long when I woke up in the back of the van.”

  “Did they say anything about Buck?”

  “Said that he was there with them, but turns out he wasn’t. In the van Cary D said we were fifteen minutes from wherever we were going. That’s when I knew I had to fight.”

  I pull her into me and kiss the top of her head then kneel down to the floor. “You did good. Go ahead and take your shower.” She nods and stands, taking her backpack into the bathroom with her. Once I hear the shower come on, I grab the key card and step outside the door knocking on Coop’s. He opens quickly.

  “Yeah.” I step in but leave the door open so I can hear the shower. She’s strong, but if she’s going to crash because of what happened, I want to be there.

  “So that’s Carsyn, huh?” Coop says with a sly smile attached to his face, catching how fucking beautiful she is.

  “Obviously.”

  He chuckles, clucking his tongue. “She did a kickass job with those fuckers.”

  I exhale deep allowing everything to sink in. Riding helped, but my mind was too preoccupied with keeping Carsyn awake and making sure we weren’t followed. “Yeah, she did. The woman I left though, she didn’t have that in her at the time. She was fragile and timid. She didn’t feel comfortable around people and shied away from everyone. Makes me wonder what all she’s gone through since I left.”

  “Women are resilient. They have a strength that is unprecedented once they tap into it.”

  “Listen to you. Gettin’ all sappy and shit.”

  He punches me in the shoulder. Not hard. “Fuck you. What’d she have to say?”

  I relay what Carsyn said in the room as Cooper grabs his phone and connects to Buzz. Austyn has been helping me out, but we need Buzz in on this one too. He’ll relay it to her after we get off and hopefully get this ball rolling.

  We need to figure out if Big Jim and Cary D were on their own or if Buck really was there waiting for my girl.

  “From where we picked up Carsyn, go out about fifteen minutes and tell me what’s there.”

  I only hear one side of the conversation. “Yeah, we’ll need to get eyes to scope out those areas and see if it’s Buck or not. I think now we’re all clear, but I want to make sure nothing is tailing us.”

  He looks to me. “Yeah, we got her.”

  “Out.”

  He hangs up the phone. “Buzz’s gonna look through everything and see if we can confirm that Buck was there. Since it’s his guys we assume, but need to make sure Buck isn’t coming after us.”

  “Great.”

  I hear the shower turn off next do
or and need to get back. “Ten minutes and we head over to the diner across the road from where we came in. I’m fuckin’ starvin’.”

  “On it. I’ll round everyone up.”

  “Thanks.”

  Making my way back into the room, I shut the door and walk in just as Carsyn steps out with a towel drying her hair. She has on shorts showing off her long legs and also some of the bruises from earlier. Her tank top hugs her nicely, but she’s covered. My dick hardens, and I have to will him down. Now is not the time for this shit. While I’ve missed her and haven’t had any pussy since her, there is no way to know if she wants this.

  Hell, she hasn’t even said anything about the fact that we only have one bed in the room yet. Before we had two beds, but only used one. If nothing else, I’ll hold her in my arms while she sleeps.

  “We’re gonna head out and get some food, then we’ll sleep.”

  Her stomach rumbles, and she blushes. “That’d be good. I haven’t been able to eat much the last couple of days.”

  I hold my arms open to her, letting her take me in if she chooses. She does, walking straight into me and wrapping herself around me like I’m her lifeline. She’s so warm and soft, molding to my body and making her feel right like it’s exactly where she needs to be. My chin rests on top of her head as I breathe her in.

  “You did good today.”

  Her body huffs out air. “I was scared shitless,” she admits with a small chuckle. Damn, I’ve missed that sound. It’s music to my ears. I have no doubt that she was terrified, but she did it.

  “Yeah, may’ve been, but you fought like hell.”

  She shivers, remembering. “I can still feel his weight on top of me.” There’s a pause. “I can’t believe I killed two people.”

  And there it is. Taking a human life is a mark on a soul no matter if they deserved it or not. While some are justified, there’s always this little part inside that has to process this action. For a woman who has been beaten daily, I can only imagine what’s running through her head.

  I pull away, forcing her to look in my eyes. “Would you rather be dead or with Buck right now?”