by Ryan Michele
Well, looks like we found where he keeps his junk. Even organized in clear plastic holders, it lines all four of the walls from bottom to almost top. There’s a computer in the center of the room with a desk made of glass. Clear see-through. Transparent.
Makes me wonder how transparent this shit in the room is.
“I’m on the computer,” Green calls out, sitting at the clear plastic chair and grimacing. “This fuckin’ shit sucks. Least we know he’s not sittin’ here for hours wackin’ off.”
“One never knows,” Jacks says, and all of us get to work. Deke, Jacks, and I start attacking the walls, pulling out the plastic compartments and tossing shit. Big Jim had organized chaos—we just have we don’t give a fuck.
Sounds echo through the room, clicks of keys, things hitting the floor, papers rustling—each of us well-oiled machines who work together with ease.
“Check this out.” Deke holds up a white business card. “Numbers. My guess to a safe the way they’re laid out.”
Looking around the room, there’s no safe. “Where do you think it is?”
Deke shrugs. “It’s a seven-code safe, so it’s a heavy duty one. It either needs to be in a wall or a floor somewhere where it can’t be easily removed from the house.”
“I found nothing in the bedroom, not even in the closet. Anyone?” I ask, looking around.
Everyone responds no.
“Only one place to look then,” Deke calls out, slipping the card in his pocket. “Bet it’s in the basement.”
“Fuck!” Green groans. “Let me dig in his computer; you go down and see what you can find.”
I scoff, “Sure. We’ll just go down with the dead bodies or cats.”
Green gives a smirk. “Can’t help I’m good at what I do.”
“Fucker,” Deke murmurs as Jacks files out of the room and we follow behind, heading downstairs.
The plastic tubs stare back at us. For as heavy as the one was when Deke lifted it, it doesn’t sit right. Especially with almost a hundred of the fuckers.
“Let’s just move the tubs to the center and see if we can find the safe behind them,” I say, pulling down a tub noting the weight myself, and also a slight slosh of some kind of liquid. Fuck me. This is going to be nasty.
Pulling the tubs away from the first wall shows nothing but wall. The second is the same. The third is the one with the sliding glass door attached, and it holds nothing.
“Fuck, this shit just sounds disgusting,” Jacks tells us as he pulls out a stack, pushing them to the middle of room. He’s not wrong.
“Brothers,” Deke calls from the far corner of the wall. “Got somethin’.”
Stopping and moving down to Deke is a maze to get through, climbing over tubs and being careful not to spill the fuckers. It’s a damn obstacle course. Deke points to the wall that has a large door with a dead bolt. Shit.
“Locked,” Deke tells us something I already figured. “Bet the shit’s behind here.”
“Be back,” Jacks says, running up the stairs and moments later back down, holding Green’s lock picking kit. It takes him a few goes, but he’s able to pop the lock. “Not sure we want to go in there.”
“I know we don’t, but we gotta.”
“Fuck,” Deke clips, turning the handle of the door and opening it.
All we see is black. A flashlight clicks on, Deke as he steps inside and finds a switch, because the room illuminates. Two of the walls have peg boards with tools hanging from them. All of them clean and shiny. Hammers, screwdrivers, saws, knives, clamps and everything in between. The other wall has power tools, drills, and sawzalls. There’s an industrial sized freezer along the other wall, and cabinets on the wall with the door. A very large butcher table sits in the center of the room with straps for legs and arms. It’s not cat size—it’s human size. No safe on display. Fuck me.
Honestly, it reminds me of the pit at home, but ours isn’t this twisted because what the fuck does he need with a fridge?
We step into the room, taking it all in. The crash of a couple of tools hit the cement floor below, which I note has a drain in the center. Easy clean up I guess.
“Nothin’,” Jacks calls out, moving to the next one and shaking his head.
Opening the cabinet doors wide, pictures assault me taking me a back. Thousands of pictures are taped to the inside and doors. Men. Women. Beaten, brutalized, covered in wounds from head to toe. It’s when my eyes land on a redhead that my heart constricts.
Carsyn.
Beaten. Bruised. Unconscious. Men taking advantage of her. I can’t see the man’s face thrusting into her, but a fury like no other threatens to explode from my chest. It’s one thing to hear it and how it affects her; it’s another thing to see it.
This sonuvabitch better be happy he’s fuckin’ dead.
“Damn. You think that’s what’s in the tubs?”
I point to Carsyn. “She’s alive and in my fuckin’ bed. So fuck if I know.”
“Shit,” Jacks murmurs.
Yeah, shit is far from it and I want to explode, but that won’t do anything in helping any of us right now. Carsyn is safe at the clubhouse, not with these fuckers. The focus of that fact allows me to keep going.
There’s nothing in the cabinet besides the pictures; it’s like he didn’t want them dirtying the space and wanted them hidden from his view.
“Christ,” Deke spits out, standing at the opened fridge. Moving to it, my stomach roils. Human body parts cut off from the body lay neatly on shelves. But that’s not what gets me queasy—it’s the fucking bite marks and half eaten hand that makes me want to hurl.
“Fucker was a cannibal?” Deke’s statement comes out more like a question as I see a few more parts—a leg and food with bite marks in them as well. Fuck, that guy almost had Carsyn.
“Shut it,” Jacks orders, and I agree wholeheartedly. Deke complies. “Check behind it. But don’t fuckin’ unplug it. It’ll smell like shit.”
The three of us maneuver around the large box and pull it out from the wall. Jacks looks around. “It’s back here. We need to move the fridge. Is there another plug?”
Searching the room, there’s one over on the far wall opposite of where we are now and I nod to it. Damn thing is heavy as hell as we begin to maneuver it.
One of the doors flies open, and a fucking leg falls out. “I’m not pickin’ that shit up.” Jacks isn’t the only one not looking forward to that task.
“It’s not going to go bad right away. Let’s get this safe unlocked and see what we’ve got. If it’s a lot and going to take a shit load of time, then we put the damn part back in. If not, we get the fuck out of here,” Deke commands, and I’m happy as fuck he came home and became a brother.
He pulls out the card from his back pocket and gets to work on the lock. It’s an electronic one that beeps loud as fuck while he’s plugging in the numbers. Guess that’s a safety feature or something… who knows.
Deke turns the handle, and the door pops open. It has a light that Deke flips on shining out of the safe.
“Guys!” Green calls from outside the room.
“Here,” I call out as he comes.
“What the fuck is this?”
“Where Hannibal likes to eat,” Deke says on a grin.
“What do ya got?”
“Safe behind there, just opened it,” Jacks responds.
“Let’s do it so we can get out of here,” Green says, coming beside us and peering in.
There are rows of little pockets and on the floor are stacks of composition books that are worn and rough. Deke begins to rifle through the shit because we can’t all fit. Deke hands shit to me, and I hand off to Green and Jacks as they take it off to the side and make stacks.
Deke pulls out flash drives and SD cards. I hand them off to go back with us to Ravage.
“Did you find anything on the computer?” I ask Green as he takes the flashes.
“Nope.”
“It’s probably all here then.”
“That’d be my guess.”
The task is big, and I find myself flipping through the pages and not actually reading. I’m all for vengeance and justice, but in reading these books, that wasn’t Big Jim’s MO. He took whomever he wanted, whenever he wanted. One reads of a woman coming out of a bar drunk. Another is a man who comes out of a bathroom stall. Each book is the tale of how he found each of his victims and how he killed each one, the manner in which he did and how they tasted. Yes—fucking tasted.
There’s at least a hundred books, and I’m guessing one goes with each one of the tubs. Fucking hell.
“We’ve gotta get these back where they were. Don’t like the fuckin’ cops, but they gotta deal with this shit. I bet their families are fit to be tied they can’t find their people.” It sucks to say, but it’s true. If someone I love was killed this way, I’d want to know. Even if it’s disgusting and an image they won’t be able to get out of their heads.
At least they’ll be able to lay their loved ones to rest.
“Yeah. Agree,” Green and Jacks respond.
“Who the fuck puts a safe in a safe?” Deke calls out from inside the first safe where he’s kneeling down. “It’s not electronic so we may be able to hack it.” Deke pulls out the small safe. It’s heavy from the strain in his arms, but it is portable. He sets it on the large table and begins fucking with it.
“Just blow it up,” Jacks says.
Green chuckles. “Yeah and burn up everything inside. No.”
I head back into the safe and continue the search through the little boxes. Surprisingly many of them are empty and by the time I’m done, Deke still doesn’t have the box open and Green is working on it.
“Brother, it’s been about an hour,” Jacks says, referring to the fucking foot that fell out of the fridge.
“Fuck,” I groan and move over to the appendage. As fast as I can, I pick it up, open the ice box and toss it in, slamming the door shut.
“This asshole is fuckin’ nuts,” Deke growls, tinkering with the box while I go back to the safe double checking. There’s a side door and opening it shows guns, but nothing else. Fuck, we’re running out of shit to look through. And fuck no, I’m not opening those tubs.
“Got it!” Deke calls out as the top flies open. We all move around it and it’s full of papers and pictures. Green takes one for the team, reaches in and pulls out a stack full and putting them on the table, hoping like hell he doesn’t pull out another body part.
We begin sifting through them.
“Fuck me,” I breathe, stunned and shocked. Holding up the picture to the guys, they look over. “Big Jim and Torrance.”
The picture has the two next to each other laughing at something behind the camera, but there it is plain as day, and it’s recent judging by how Big Jim’s looks today.
More pictures. Big Jim with Torrance and Buck. Ones of them at Buck’s place, and others from somewhere I don’t recognize.
That sonvuabitch was working with Torrance and feeding me a line of shit that he didn’t know what was going on. They’ve been working together right under our noses.
Papers rustle. “Wire transfers from Torrance to an off-shore account with Jim Shalding on it. Seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
“So Torrance put a hit on one of us. Fuck.”
I keep digging, as do my brothers. There are other transfers linking Buck, Big Jim, and Torrance, but there still isn’t a direct connection to any of them wanting to take out the Ravage MC.
“Fuck me,” Deke says, his fist clenching the paper. “Papers for a Pontiac Bonneville. The exact fuckin’ car that hit Dagger and Mearna.”
“Shit,” is growled through the room.
“The dates,” Green says. “Look at the fuckin’ dates. The purchase of this car and this wire transfer. Two days apart and three weeks before we.” Green looks to me. “We went to visit Buck. This shit was planned out.”
The attack on Ravage was planned before I even went to the Rangers for information. Therefore, before I’d ever seen Carsyn, making this play not mine or Carsyn’s fault. We weren’t the cause because, the hit was already in place. We were just in the wrong place at the right time. Fuck. I want to feel relief, but all I feel is anger.
Those assholes will pay. That entire club will pay.
Hell have no fury like a Ravage scorned.
28
Carsyn
I lay in Nox’s bed unmoving, watching the sun go down and night appear. He hasn’t come back, or at least, hasn’t come back to his room. Part of me wonders if he’s out there with his brothers and just doesn’t want to look me in the eyes. While the other part, hopes that he’s off doing whatever it is he does.
Sleep came and went, now only worry fills me. Is he okay? Did I cause him to get hurt too? What about his brothers? Even in sleep these questions tumbled around me, and I’m unable to answer them.
Princess is wise even if I don’t want to listen to what she says. Giving up after all of this is hard not to do. It’s right there pulling me to just throw my hands up and get out of here once again.
Swinging my legs over to the side of the bed, I sit up just as a knock comes to the door. Nerves prickle, but I ask, “Yes?”
“It’s Austyn. Let me in.”
Sucking in a breath, I get up on shaky legs, walk to the door, unlock it and step back. Austyn greets me with a smile. “Hi,” she says and comes in the room while I shut the door behind her. She isn’t attacking me, even though I deserve it.
“Hey.”
Austyn moves to the bed and sits down on the corner, and it’s then that I realize Nox doesn’t have any chairs in his room. Therefore, I sit on the bed as well.
“Talked to Mom.”
A sharp breath is sucked in through my teeth. “Yeah.”
“I get it, Carsyn, more than I want to. I’d thought about it myself.” This shocks me, but I stay quiet listening to her. “I was raped, beaten, and became pregnant.”
“Oh shit.” The words escape before I can hush them.
“Yeah. Nox told us a little when you came here.” She smiles. “We Ravage are a little hard to take in sometimes.”
I nod, because yes, they very much are. Their world is so much different than what mine had been.
“We all have our own stories that have led us to this point in our lives. Some are rockier than others, while others have it smooth sailing. I never asked to be attacked. Neither did you. I never asked to suffer for days afterward. Neither have you.”
Her words touch me. “I… I’m the reason Dagger’s dead. How can you sit there and not be mad at me?”
“I want to be angry, but all I am is sad. Sad that Dagger’s gone, and sad that we don’t know for sure who took him from us. We don’t know anything for fact yet. I’ve learned over the years to get all the information in order.” She shrugs. “I remember you.”
“I remember you too.”
She giggles. “You remember my brother more.”
My cheeks stain red. “Yeah. I do.”
“You know I used to tease him about you,” Austyn says, and my eyes shoot to hers while a smile graces her face. “Yeah. I’d catch him looking at you and give him shit. He always said that you deserved so much in this life. I told him lots of times to ask you out freshman year, but he’s a guy.”
“I would’ve loved that.”
“Yeah. I looked you up.”
My body jolts. “You did?”
“Yeah, and I didn’t put two and two together with Carsyn being you. I don’t know why, but I didn’t. Now I understand better.”
“Understand what?” This conversation is taking twists and turns to a whole new level.
“Why he got you out. Why he risked getting in trouble with the brothers. Why he took his punishment and didn’t complain once about it.”
“Punishment?” I breathe.
She laughs. “Yeah, he had to dig a hole that was huge by hand. Then when he was almost done the guys rented
a backhoe to really dig it.”
“He had to do that because of me?”
“Yeah, babe. Ravage is a tight family. The fact that he didn’t tell anyone about you and took the heat for it says a lot about my brother. He’s never been one to go against the family. The fact that he did, to get you safe, shows how much he cares about you.”
I turn away from her and ring my hands together. “I’m in love with your brother.” The words tumble out.
“Yeah, I caught that. Funny how that shit happens so fast. Huh?”
“He hates me.”
Her smile dies. “No, Carsyn. He doesn’t.”
“Because of me one of his brothers is dead.”
“You don’t know that for fact yet.”
I shake my head. She’s not understanding me or where I’m coming from. I start to speak, but she lifts her hand, and my words die in my throat.
“Look, Carsyn. My brother yesterday, with you on his arm, was the happiest he’s been in a long time. He’s been down these last few months and it hasn’t been because of Dagger. It was before that. He refused to talk about it, and we all just left him to his devices. He’s a good man and deals with things his way. He cares about you, Carsyn. Don’t hurt him.”
“That’s the last thing I want to do.” Never not ever do I want to hurt Nox. “It’s why I made him leave me because I didn’t want Buck going after him.”
“I get that, and I get that you didn’t have a family for a lot of years. But in our family, we don’t back down. If Buck would’ve come after you or us, he would’ve met his match.”
“So you’re saying I made another mistake.”
She shakes her head. “Nope. It’s admirable that you wanted to protect him, and you didn’t know any different. Buck didn’t protect you, and you had no way of knowing that would be what Ravage would do and had zero expectations.”
“Everyone is going to hate me.”
She reaches out and touches my leg. “Everyone here has their heart on their sleeve after putting Dagger in the ground. We were fractured by his death. But we are not broken. The guys will get the answers.”
I nod, really unable to say more because she gets it, she just doesn’t get it. If that makes any sense. Buck’s club all hated me, and there’s no way I can live with Nox’s feeling the same way.
