Raine Falling (Hells Saints Motorcycle Club)

by Marinaro, Paula

  “No one understands you but me, daddy. No one.” Glory was straining against the binds.

  Gino held my hair tight with one hand and bent down to nuzzle Glory’s boobs.

  “That’s it, daddy.” Glory met my eyes over his head. “You let Glory take care of her man.”

  It’s gonna be all right. I’m gonna get us out of this one. Just keep absolutely still. Glory’s eyes were on mine.

  I nodded once telling her that I understood.

  “I never meant to hurt you,” Gino was sobbing into Glory’s chest.

  “I know, daddy. I know. Untie me, honey. Let’s get outta here before it’s too late.”

  Gino nodded. His shoulders slumped, and I relaxed just a little bit. He started to untie Glory. Her eyes met mine over his head, and she tried to smile. I tried to smile back.

  Then he put the gun to my temple.

  I felt the bile rise in my throat, and the floor started spinning beneath me.

  “NO!” Glory yelled.

  “Why the fuck not?” Gino looked at her suspiciously. “What’s she to you? Thought you were jealous of the bitch. I’m gonna prove to you once and for all, you the only woman for me. I’m gonna put her in the fucking ground”

  “No, baby, let me do it. Untie me and let me do it. You owe me that. Let me kill the bitch. You can watch.” Glory smiled up at Gino.

  “Yeah. Yeah, sounds good, baby. Maybe I even fuck her one more time with you having eyes on that,” Full-On Crazy said.

  “I’m getting wet just thinking about it, daddy,” Glory said, wiggling her assets at Gino.

  He threw me to the couch and yelled, “Don’t fucking move, bitch. Don’t you fucking move, or I’ll fucking shoot you right between the eyes.”

  Then with one eye on me and the other on Glory, he pulled a knife out with his free hand. Gino finished cutting away the ties at the back of her hands and her ankles. Glory took a minute to rub the blood back into her limbs, and I noticed she had deep bruises where Gino had tied her with some kind of wire. When she managed to stand, he trained the gun on both of us. Then Gino handed Glory the knife.

  “I want you to start by cutting the bitch. Give her a taste of what I got from Gianni because of her lying fucking tongue.”

  “You know I will, daddy.” Glory started unsteadily towards me with the knife in her hand pointing right at me.

  As she passed by Gino, she elbowed him hard in the ribs. He grunted and almost went down. While he was doubled over, Glory kneed him in the chest and brought her elbows down hard on his kidneys.

  I started forward to help. Before I could make it across the room, Gino had drop-kicked the gun across the room. He had flipped Glory on her back and was holding the knife high over his head. He was ready to plunge it into her throat.

  I lunged forward, caught my knee on the side of the coffee table, and went down hard. When I heard the screaming, I wasn’t sure if it was coming from Glory or me. I watched helplessly as Gino arched his back and got a strong hold on that knife. I saw him take a deep breath and heard him let out a roar.

  Then it was over.

  CHAPTER 49

  Reno pushed open the door, careful not to make any noise. He heard them the minute he entered the house. A female voice that wasn’t Raine’s was “oh daddying” someone all over the place. Reno recognized the sound of desperation and whoever this chick was, was fucking desperate. Then he heard the whiny sick pitch of some seriously fucked-up dude.

  In the thirty seconds that it took him to round the corner, Reno was hearing grunts and screams. Taking careful aim, he shot three holes in the sick bastard who was straddling the screaming chick and getting ready to thrust a nine-inch in her neck. Raine was on the floor holding her knee and grimacing in pain. The blond chick hadn’t moved out from under the sick bastard who was slumped dead over her.

  A whoosh came from the side of Reno. He turned just in time to see Claire dart past him and run to her sister. Damn her! Bitch was told to stay in the car. Fucking women. Never fucking listen.

  Reno surveyed the scene before him and couldn’t fucking believe it.

  Couldn’t fucking believe it.

  He walked over to kick the dead, whiny guy off the blonde. He looked down at her to make sure she wasn’t dead too. She wasn’t moving. She had been beaten around her face badly, and the one eye that was not swollen shut was looking vacantly up at him. Shock. She was going into shock. Goddammit. Goddammit.

  He looked over at Raine. She had her head nuzzled into her sister’s neck and was cradling her knee in her hands. They were both sitting very still. Claire was whispering something soothingly into Raine’s hair and rocking her in her arms. The front of Raine was riddled with splashes of the psycho’s fucking brain.

  JESUS.

  The dead guy had bled all over the place. Pieces of the back of his head were blown apart. Reno had fired three shots from a powerful gun at close range. The house was pretty far away from anything he had seen driving up the hill. But shit, shots like that in a wooded area like this could resound for miles. He needed to get them all the fuck out of here. He also needed to get someone in here to clean up this mess. His prints were on the door handle, and God only knew where else.

  And Reno’s prints were on file. Definitely on file.

  FUCK.

  Reno looked at the three women. He had to give it to them. Not one of the women had gone hysterical on him. Of course, the bitch on the floor had definitely gone into full-blown shock by now. She had started shaking like a wet dog. But she had stopped screaming the minute he dropped the guy. Thank God for that.

  Reno saw that Raine had left her sister’s arms and, favoring her fucked-up knee, had crawled off the couch to grab an old knitted afghan. She had elevated the blonde’s feet with pillows. Then she had pressed two fingers against her throat. Now she was covering her with a blanket. Claire had run to get the bitch some water.

  “What are the chances that someone’s gonna call about those shots?” Reno looked down at Raine.

  Raine looked up at him. Jesus, her eyes were so dilated, they were fucking black. Then he looked at Claire. Her hands were shaking so hard that water was spilling out of the top of the damn glass. The three of them were way past being scared. They were terrified and still holding their shit together. Respect. Reno had to give it to them.

  “No chance.” Raine forced herself to focus on Reno.

  “No chance?” Reno repeated.

  “None. There’s always been shots coming from the woods as long as I’ve been here. Kids target shooting. Hunting at times when it’s in season and not in season. God only knows what else is going on, but no one pays attention. Plus we’re miles away from the center of town. The police department has two units. One is always parked at Beth Zaminskies’s house. So, yeah. No chance.”

  Reno nodded. Small-town justice. Either the locals were a big pain in the ass, pissing vigilantism in the guise of carrying out the law, or they were off banging the local widow and not giving a shit. Sounds like Willows Point had the “not giving a shit” kind. First thing that had gone right for him all day.

  “Do what you have to do to get her on her feet. We gotta split. I’m gonna make a call. When I’m back we’re gone. Feel me?”

  Raine nodded.

  “Addy?”

  Raine stared at him blankly.

  Claire spoke up. “Junction Route Three. There’s an old lamppost at the end of the driveway.”

  Reno nodded to her. Then stared hard at her. Claire looked away quickly.

  “Told you to stay in the car, woman,” Reno snarled.

  Claire looked at him then. Her eyes violet in her dead-white face.

  Jesus.

  “Gonna leave it for another time, Sugar. But we’re having that conversation,” Reno said to her more gently than he wanted to.

  Damn it all
to hell. Claire wasn’t at all what he had expected. The little piece was getting to him. He needed to get some air and figure this shit out.

  Reno left the women to it and stepped outside to make the call. Sonofabitch! Prosper was going to be pissed. More than that, Reno was pissed at himself. He should not have listened to Raine. Bitch wasn’t anything but trouble for him. Nothing but. Jesus, though. He had to hand it to them both. Those two had moved into action with barely a whimper between them. It wasn’t lost on Reno that he had left them in there with a dead body. A dead body with two body shots and half his head blown out. A dead body with a nine-inch blade clutched in his hand.

  Close range and messy.

  Most chicks would have lost their shit. Even the blonde was going into quiet hysteria. Maybe it was what they called a delayed reaction. Post-traumatic shit. Gonna be a fun fucking drive home, if that was the case.

  Reno had killed before. His hands were steady when he lit his Winston. He took a long pull and felt the sweet nicotine reach his system. He walked to the car and reached into the glove box for the cheap throwaway cell he always kept on hand. He flipped over the phone. The call was answered on the second ring.

  “Hey, man. Junction Route Three. Lamppost at the end of the dirt drive. Need clean sweep.”

  After answering exactly two more questions, Reno was satisfied that things would be taken care of.

  Now he had to go back inside and deal with the Powerpuff Girls.

  CHAPTER 50

  If there’s anything you want, take it now. Only one or two things. We need to be able to fit that shit in the trunk.”

  Reno braced himself, waiting for the questions and then the tears. The house had to fucking go. No matter how hard you try, there’s no way to get rid of blood and bodily fluid shit. Dead men told tales, no doubt about it. And there was no way Reno was doing time over killing that piece of shit Gino. Executive fucking decision. Prosper would understand and if not, the hell with it. He would rather deal with Prosper than with Lady Fucking Injustice any day of the week. So Reno laid down the law and waited.

  The three of them were huddled together. They had moved the blonde to the couch and changed her into some pink sweatsuit shit. There was still blood matted in her hair, but they had done their best to clean her up. She was cocooned in the afghan, and Claire was having her take little sips from the glass of water. Some of the color was back in her, but her eyes were scary blank. There was a clear plastic bag filled with bloody clothes sitting on the coffee table. Gino was lying stone-cold dead beside it.

  “There’s nothing we want here,” Claire answered quietly when Raine didn’t. Raine nodded in agreement.

  “Wasn’t this your grandmother’s house? Sure there ain’t any shit you want to take to remember her by?” Reno thought about Pinky. How even though she had a lot of nasty memories of that house in Nevada, she had still wanted to take a piece of it with her. God only knew why. Reno wasn’t good at figuring women shit out, but there it was.

  The two of them just stared at him.

  “Look, we’re gonna have to torch it,” Reno said harshly, making sure they got it.

  “We understand that, Reno,” Raine said quietly and wrapped her arms around herself tight.

  Claire ignored him. She looked at the blonde and gently said, “Honey, we’re going to have to leave now. Can you walk if we help you?”

  Glory turned her head slowly to look at Claire. It took a while before the words made their way to Glory’s dazed mind. Claire gave her that time. Holding Glory’s eyes gently with her own, Claire nodded encouragement.

  Glory nodded back.

  Then Reno said, “Let’s get the fuck outta here.”

  And they did.

  CHAPTER 51

  The ride back to the compound had been a long one, I guess. Honestly, most of it didn’t register. Not for any of us.

  Reno chain-smoked the first half hour. And he kept looking at us in the rearview, his eyes sharp, alternately taking in the three of us. The smoke had begun stinging my eyes, despite the fact that Reno had his window open. The cigarette was dangling from the hand he kept outside. When Claire went into a small coughing fit, he immediately dropped the smoke and didn’t light up again. He asked us several times if we wanted to stop to “piss or anything.”

  We didn’t.

  The blonde. Glory sat rigid and still between Claire and me. Her eyes were blank pools of blue. I knew that look. That look meant one of two things. Either she had gone to a place where she could put aside the horror of what had happened to her until she could deal, or her mind lay imprisoned and shattered. I feared it was the latter. That place where I had once made a brief visit, a place that lay like a barren wasteland on the edge of sanity. A place that once summoned, a mind had little chance of escaping from. I was afraid for Glory.

  And I stayed afraid. Afraid until that coughing jag of Claire’s split the tense silence with just enough force to jar Glory’s mind free. She reached out her hands to both Claire and me. Then she brought them close together to hold them on her lap. Her hands were ice cold and were eventually warmed by the heat of our own. I felt her relax just a fraction, and when I gently squeezed her hand, she squeezed back.

  And then there was Claire. Poor Claire. Jesus, not even one day out of rehab and this. THIS. If today’s events didn’t send my sister headlong into a need for getting baked with some white gutter glitter, nothing would. Nothing.

  And it wasn’t only the dead guy who posed that threat to Claire’s rehabilitative process. It was also the very much alive guy in the front seat. Talk about triggers. With his heavily inked huge biceps, the mirrored shades, the man bun, and the attitude, Reno screamed beautiful bad boy.

  Screamed it.

  Defined it.

  Spelled it in capital letters and boldfaced it.

  He was all the things Dolores had warned Claire to stay away from. He was all those things, and he was one more. He was the guy who could not seem to manage to keep his eyes off my sister. I met his eyes in the rearview more than once after I saw them skip over us, land, and then settle on Claire. After the last time, I caught his gaze and held it. And damn it all to hell, he did not back down. He not only returned my look, but he held it for so long I was afraid he was going to get us run off the road or worse. When my eyes left him to look down the highway, his did the same. But that stare-off, that silent battle of wills and warnings between us, that he had won.

  Of course he had.

  Then there was me. I was okay. That’s what I told myself. My inner dialogue was a montage of self-affirming thoughts. I was okay, all right, just fine, good. I was good. Rainbows and flowers. Freaking raindrops on roses and whispers on kittens. Whispers? Jesus. I was at a point where I couldn’t even quote the lyrics from my happy place old movie. The Sound of Music had never failed me before.

  I felt a fleeting, but very real moment of complete and utter self-pity. And then I felt the shame of self-indulgence and had the grace to be disappointed in myself. Shit. I had caught the least of it. Glory had been shanghaied and held by Gino the madman for God-only-knew how long, while he plotted and executed his attack on me. And Claire. She did not need this after waging a war against her inner demons and winning that war. So yeah, I was golden compared to these two. I should have been in an all bright-copper-kettles-and-warm-woolen-mittens frame of mind.

  Only I wasn’t.

  I glanced at Claire. She nodded slightly and tried a smile. Then as her eyes traveled the length of me, they widened just a little. Before Claire could hide the look of horror, I saw it. After my sister’s eyes grew reassuringly soft on mine, she closed them. Claire rested her head back against the seat and took a deep breath.

  I needed a minute. I took a deep breath and said a silent prayer.

  I looked down fearfully. And yep, there it was. Multiple sprays of tiny red dots splattered across my shirt
and on the skin at the top of my chest laid bare by my tee shirt. And bits of something else. There were bits of something else stuck to the specks of blood.

  Holy Christ, did I have Gino’s brain matter splattered on me?

  Holy fuck. I fought down the urge to vomit and fought even harder the urge to scream.

  Because I was not going to be the one to lose it.

  That was not going to be me. Nah-uh.

  I would not be the one to succumb to the gut-wrenching fear and nausea. Gino was the one who had spread that shit. He had spread that fear and that pain to these brave women. These women who had put on gloves and knocked the fuck out of the fear that Gino had rained on them.

  So dead or not, Gino could still go fuck himself.

  I felt Glory’s head fall lightly to my shoulder and her hand give mine the lightest of squeezes. I laid my dark head on her blond one. Claire’s head moved to Glory’s shoulder. There we sat on that long ride home, drawing quiet strength from each other.

  CHAPTER 52

  I’m gonna fuckin’ kill you!” Prosper had Reno up against the wall, his forearm a stranglehold on his neck.

  Reno was starting to turn blue but made not one move to defend himself.

  Then with another roar, Prosper grabbed him by his cut and threw him straight across the room. Straight across it. Reno felt himself flying and landed with a thump against the back wall.

  “Get up! Get up you irresponsible, inept piece of shit!”

  Reno got up.

  Prosper was on him again.

  BAM. Reno’s head snapped back with the power of the punch. Then another vicious blow to his rib cage sent him right to his knees. Then another and another. Then an uppercut to the jaw.

  Reno, moaning, made an attempt to get back up. He deserved the smackdown and was doing his best not to blow lunch.

  “Stay down.” Prosper had his foot on Reno’s neck.

  “Stay the FUCK down, Reno!” Prosper roared the warning. Damn it all to hell, his hand was killing him. He was gonna have to ice those knuckles. Another reason to want to kill Reno. Prosper hadn’t been this fucking-insanely-crazy-mad since Jack Winston had left his girls alone. Twenty fucking years of holding his temper was fucking long enough.