Hard Sacrifice (Savage Saviors MC Book 4)

by J. C. Allen

  I froze, hearing what sounded like muffled noises from downstairs in the basement.

  But when I listened closer, I realized what they were—the sounds of a dog whining, perhaps at the loss of its master, a Black Falcon that had forgotten it in the outbreak of gunfire. I shook my head, decided I couldn’t bring myself to kill an enemy dog, and continued through the house.

  There were only two places I had not yet explored by the time I finished my sweep of the main floor—upstairs and the basement. I had a terrible, paranoid feeling that I was being watched, mocked by the Black Falcons in the house, and that at best, this was grounds for my execution. At worst, this was the place where I became a puppet for the Falcons, held by strings, unable to act on my own accord as I was forced to watch Tyler and Eve do things that I got sick just thinking about.

  Trying to decide which was the better option, I went for the upstairs. I would have the high ground that way, and it was a lot easier to escape from a trap upstairs than it was in the basement if it came to that. Plus, if they actually were in the basement, I’d be more likely to see them trying to escape from up high than the reverse.

  I moved up the stairs so slowly and so cautiously that I might as well have been slower than a wheelchair-bound senior citizen. There was no amount of caution too great for these moments, as the Black Falcons were like ISIS in a lot of ways. They laid booby traps, embraced having no morals, and would go for the “unethical” kill rather than fight with honor. It was part of the reason I hated them, although far less so than because they had killed everyone I loved.

  I suspected everything from a trip wire to a false step to a land mine. Every step started with the toe, went gradually down the arch of the foot, and finally ended with the heel. I must have placed no more than a single pound of my weight whenever I moved up those stairs, so certain that one misstep would end it all.

  But after about fifteen steps, I came to the last step without so much as a scratch on my body.

  I pinned my back against the wall and looked forward. There were three rooms on the side I was facing. I held my gun aloft and looked around the corner and saw two rooms behind me. It felt like something out of a horror movie—each room would have nothing, and then, BAM, the last room would have the enemy that would kill me in the most bloody and gruesome manner.

  Except this was no horror movie. This was real life. And real life was giving me far too many options to pick and choose from.

  I decided that the far side with just two rooms was best, as it gave less angles of attack to come from. I headed for the first room, the one that would have faced away from where the Savage Saviors had just attacked, thinking that it might reveal some enemies.

  Well, it did.

  But they were dead.

  I made sure to crouch, fearful that someone seeing movement from the street would mistake me for a Black Falcon and fire. In the room, a seemingly endless supply of magazines, rifles, and other weapons lay here. About four Black Falcons lay dead, bullets through their skulls and in other places that left the scene rather gory. I looked around for any surprises and butted the groin of each men to make sure they weren’t faking being dead.

  Nope. They were all confirmed kills. Well done, men, I thought of my fellow Saviors as I locked the door behind me, my way of ensuring I hadn’t missed anything.

  I opened the door across the hall from it, finding a room full of maps, notebooks, and other paperwork. It was devoid of people, though, and without closets. In another lifetime, when this house actually functioned as a house and not a military outpost, this might have been the room where someone wrote their story, applied to their dream law school, or meditated to find the meaning of life.

  But today, it was the stage for bloodshed, criminal activity, and the most barbaric treatment of women and enemies ever seen in this city.

  I closed the door again, locking it.

  That left the three at the end of the hall, and the basement.

  Provided, of course, that they were still here.

  And if they were, by now, they would have known that I was moving out and about in the house. If they were planning on escaping, they would have positioned themselves perfectly. If Tyler was planning on killing me, he would have also set himself up with ease.

  I had to move faster.

  I swung into the first room, only to discover it was a bathroom. There were no surprises behind any shower curtains, either, as the full expanse of the place was on display. There was nothing of significance here—a couple of pistols, but nothing that posed a threat or answered the question, “Where’s Eve?”

  I headed to the next room and shuddered when I got inside.

  No, there was no one there, per usual.

  But it was obvious what the room was—a shrine of sorts to The Falcon.

  Guns hung on the wall. Pictures of Falcon littered the place. And, most infuriatingly to me, a wall mount hung which showed pictures of top targets, with red Xs through whomever he had managed to successfully kill.

  Among those killed were my father and mother, my brother, my wife, and a couple of associates of my father’s.

  Among those not killed were Roost, me, and a simple note that said “Eve?”

  It took so much self-control not to let out a roar, shoot my weapon without concerns for structural integrity or ammunition, and desecrate this fucking shrine. It was as if someone had made a “fuck with Derek” room, placed it in honor of the Falcon, and then dared me to approach right when I most needed to separate myself and detach.

  “God fucking damnit,” I mumbled in increasing volume, my grip on the rifle turning my hands red.

  I had to turn and storm out—a risky move in case someone was waiting to spring a trap on me, but the alternative was announcing to the whole neighborhood that I had arrived.

  Instead, I kicked down the door to the last room in frustration, held my rifle aloft, and fired when I saw someone.

  But the someone was just another dead Black Falcon.

  The upstairs was entirely clear.

  And that’s when I heard the dog downstairs barking again.

  Because someone is there.

  I hurried down the stairs, taking the flights three at a time. At that moment, Roost charged in.

  “Thought ya was dead!” he growled.

  “Downstairs, basement!” I ordered. “Eve’s down there. Secure the rest of the area!”

  I ignored the rest of my crew piling in, like a SWAT team, set to take over the entire building. If anyone dared to try to come back to Falcon’s residence, they’d find it was under the command of the Savage Saviors now. They were welcome to try and take us out, but they were much more likely to find that we were ready to kill them in the most lopsided battle they had ever experienced. Unlike them, we had training, we had teamwork, and we had patience and a sense of self-preservation.

  When combined with the tactical advantages we possessed, we’d crush them.

  And I gave not a single shit about all of that, given that the barking had increased downstairs.

  I kicked the door open, only to find the place dimly lit. The barking got more distant, as if the dog had been a figment of my imagination, quieter the further out we got.

  “Eve?” I shouted.

  It wasn’t like we still needed the element of surprise at this point. There was only one room left, and the distant dog.

  “Der—”

  I heard her screaming just before the rest of her got cut off, as if someone had silenced her. I hurried down the stairs, bounding down them and holding my rifle aloft, looking for somene, anyone, Tyler, whomever—someone responsible for Eve’s situation.

  But I didn’t see anything. I just saw metal cuffs on the ground, windows up above, and a closet door at the far end. A cold chill permeated the air otherwise, giving a foreboding sense that I had arrived too late.

  There was no dog. There was no Eve. There was nothing.

  Had I imagined the whole thing? Had I—


  I heard a car engine revving behind the house. Then I heard gunfire from the Saviors above, trying to ground the vehicle before it took off.

  But then I heard the cries of “Fuck!” and “Got away” and I knew that we had failed to corral Eve.

  “Shit!” I shouted.

  I looked at the closet door again and realized that it was not shut all the way. Curious, I approached and yanked it open, knocking it off of its hinges.

  Inside lay a hidden passageway of sorts. I followed it down, moving slowly at first, but then picking up the pace once I realized there was no real reason to slow down. It brought me to a shed behind the house, which already had its cover open. I moved through the cover, emerged with my hands up to avoid drawing blue on blue fire, and looked at the tire tracks.

  The tire tracks that had Eve.

  “Fucking hell!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”

  Roost emerged from the house, bounding over to me.

  “Derek! Derek,” he said, trying to comfort me. Not that it did much good.

  “They got away, Roost,” I said, kicking the ground. “They fucking got away. Tyler has her. The Black Falcons have her.”

  “I know,” Roost said. “Ain’t no use in pretendin’ things any better than they are. But, also, ain’t no use in makin’ it more dramatic than it need to be. We ain’t doin’ nothin’ else here, Derek. We head back to the shop and find a way to reconvene.”

  “And do what?” I snarled.

  I knew what Roost was going to say. It were the three words I was hoping he wouldn’t say—God, anything else would have been better, anything! But as soon as the first word came out, I knew what followed.

  “I don’t know,” he mumbled. “But we ain’t doin’ any favors sittin’ out here. The boys will collect the loot left behind. We can get back n’ plan.”

  I felt so defeated. We had the perfect intelligence with Tara—that was probably gone, now that the Black Falcons could connect the dots. We had the location not just of Eve but of the Falcon and could have ended the battle right then and there—that was gone, now that they’d had time to escape. We had Tyler pinned—and now that, too, was gone.

  How were we ever going to get a second opportunity like this? How were we ever going to have a chance to get Eve back?

  They were going to do so many things to her that I just couldn’t bring myself to think about it.

  But I knew if I wanted any chance of rescuing Eve, I had better do something quickly before it slipped from my grasp forever.

  16

  Eve

  I was that close to being free.

  If Tyler had missed grabbing my ankle, I would have run free. I would have escaped the Black Falcons, and Derek and I would be out somewhere, making love and living our lives together once more.

  But instead, he’d managed to grab me just well enough. I fell flat on my face, screeching as I tried to rise to my feet. But Tyler twisted my ankle, throwing me on my back, and came over me, sitting on top of me.

  “You are a massive pain in the ass,” he growled. “Which is going to make it that much better when I give you a different kind of pain in your ass. It’s too bad you won’t be alive to experience any of it, though.”

  He cocked the gun again. There was truly no escape this time. I closed my eyes, preparing for the end. I thought of Derek and how my own stupidity had put us in this spot. If I had just not gone for Chuck… if I had just stayed by his side, showing him how much I loved him… if, if, if…

  “The fuck are you doing?!?”

  I opened my eyes to see a man with a German Shepherd dog at the top of the stairs, staring down at Tyler, who himself had whirled around.

  “You gonna kill one of the Falcon’s top whores? You want to face him after that, you fucking Savior scum?”

  Tyler, rarely at a loss for words, found himself in just a spot. I wanted so bad to say something, but there was no way that was happening, not when one wrong word could draw an instinctive pull of the trigger.

  “There’s an escape downstairs, we need—”

  And then the door started giving as someone—Derek, I just knew—started kicking the door. The Black Falcon at the top bounded down the stairs, grabbing Tyler by the neck. Tyler, in turn, grabbed me, and the three of us headed back to the basement. I yelped in pain, to which Tyler hit me in the ribs hard with his gun. But at least he had not shot me.

  We went back downstairs just as Derek entered. Tyler had, much to my disappointment, found the presence of mind to close the door to the basement. He kept his gun pressed into my lower back, prepared to hold me hostage if anything.

  But for several seconds, nothing happened as we listened to Derek moving through the house, seemingly searching everywhere except where we were. We heard him move about the house, even pausing at one point when the dog began growling and whimpering.

  The Black Falcon muzzled the dog quietly enough, though, and Derek moved elsewhere through the house. Derek then moved up the stairs, very slowly, but it was away from us. It was all the time the clubster and Tyler needed to move all the way down to the basement, where the Black Falcon went to a closet door I had not noticed when chained up before.

  “Help me with this,” he demanded of Tyler.

  “Fine,” he said. “You. Come. Don’t say a fucking word or your brains make a new painting on the wall. It’ll be a new kind of art form, Eve’s deceased brain cells.”

  “Jes—”

  I stopped when he landed a strong punch to my gut.

  “I wasn’t going to shoot you because I was becoming impatient,” he warned. “I was going to shoot you because I grow tired of your insolence and resistance. Don’t give me a reason to kill you here.”

  I didn’t say anything as I struggled to contain my breathing. Still, at least I didn’t have a gun pressed into the small of my back, a threat to paralyze me at best and kill me at worst.

  I looked down at the metal chains on the ground, and though they no longer tied my hands down, it made me wonder if every house or place the Falcons owned had similar security measures for their whores or prisoners. What did they think we were, animals?

  Actually, yes, that’s probably exactly what they think you are. So you should be careful.

  Finally, they busted open the lock or something, sliding open the doors carefully.

  And that’s when we all heard the sounds of dozens of men walking into the house, including footsteps so loud and so heavy that I knew they belonged to only one Matty Rose. They all came. All for me.

  That’s… that’s incredible.

  “Would you hurry the hell up?” Tyler demanded.

  “Would you shut the fuck up?” the Black Falcon snapped back. “I’m moving to the end here. We can escape—”

  And then the door to the basement got kicked in. I heard my name, and almost on instinct, I shouted for Derek back.

  Well, I tried to, at least.

  I got the first half of his name out before something hard hit my skull, knocking me unconscious.

  When I awoke, I found myself unexpectedly on a couch. I was unchained, unbound, and fully clothed. I didn’t feel sore anywhere. I didn’t have any unexplained lumps, bruises, or marks. It was as if I had spent the night on Matty’s or Derek’s couch, not having just been kidnapped by Tyler or the Black Falcons.

  I did have a big old bruise on the top of my skull from the whip, but that was expected. I had a minor headache, but all things considered, it could have been much, much worse.

  I groaned as I sat up and looked around. I was in what looked like an old apartment, not quite the same as the one Tara and I used to live in, but of a similar construction and build. There were three doors in total from where I could see—probably to an exit, to a bathroom, and to a bedroom.

  Am I… am I at Tyler’s?

  I stood up, looking around for a window or anything to identify where I was, but where the window would have been was boarded up by wood. As far as I knew, I could
either have been right underneath Derek’s pad or I could have been in a new state by now.

  “The hell?” I murmured as I tried to get my senses.

  I heard a book close. I looked in the bedroom and saw Tyler emerging without a t-shirt on, just gym shorts. He was not bothering to hide his erection.

  “I was wondering when you’d rise,” he said. “Since I’ve been risen for some time.”

  “Funny, asshole,” I said. “Tell me, where am I?”

  “Should be obvious, no?” he said, shaking his head in disbelief as if I was the world’s biggest idiot for not knowing. “You’re at my place. What do you think?”

  I shook my head, refusing to answer, but then couldn’t pass up the opportunity to get back at him.

  “I don’t know, it’s a little short of my expectations.”

  It took a few seconds for Tyler to get it, but when he did, he punched the wall in frustration, muttering about how if he knew how much of a cunt I was, he would have killed me at the house.

  “You’re lucky Falcon likes you so much. I don’t know what he’s thinking, but he values you quite a bit. So, I’m on orders to keep an eye on you and keep you near me until he decides what to do with you.”

  “Maybe you should take a hint from him. Maybe you should treat me as I deserve.”

  I should have chosen my words more carefully, because the leery smile that he got on his face told me that, in his mind, that was exactly what he intended to do. He moved closer, close enough that his dick pressed against my shorts, and put his hands on my face. God, he was so fucking creepy and fucked up.

  “Oh don’t you worry, my dear,” he said. “I have plans to do just that. I will give you exactly what you deserve. But first… care for a drink?”

  I was pretty parched, I could not lie. I was feeling quite thirsty, and the Falcons had not given me anything at the first house.

  But if there was one thing I had learned very early on in college, it was to not take drinks from strangers, most especially strangers who seemed intent on raping me in the process.