As I start for the van, Rocco’s Maserati pulls into the lot. I hear Jack curse behind me and stalk toward the sleek, black car. He comes to a dead stop when the back door opens and Celeste steps out with Gina.
Her eyes lock with mine and my body goes numb. All the hurt I swore she was done feeling stares back at me as the tears spill from her chocolate eyes. My boots take to the pavement, swallowing the distance between us as she buries her beautiful face in her hands and releases a sob that rips through me. It’s a sob I’ll remember long after the nightmare is over, long after the final stance, long after the hole is dug and the dirt is turned.
My arms wrap around her as I pull her against my chest. I don’t remember the last time I shed a tear, but I’ll never forget the ones that escape me now. They’ll always stick with me. They are the first tears I cry as a father.
“I will bring her back,” I swear as I squeeze her.
“What if you don’t?” she cries into my chest. “What if we never see her again? I’m so scared, Jagger. I’m terrified I’ll never hold my baby again, that I’ll never see her smile or hear her laugh.”
“Not going to happen,” I answer quickly.
Too quickly.
She pulls out of my arms, wipes her face with the sleeves of her shirt and looks back at me. I used to think I’d always remember the younger version of Celeste, the wild girl with big brown eyes that loved me hard. Even after Alexandria’s disappearance, after the guilt robbed her innocence, I still saw her as the girl that gave me her firsts, the girl that supplied me with the smiles I lived off.
Now I’ll remember her as the woman.
The broken woman relying on me to bring back the missing piece of her soul.
The mother terrified for her child.
“How did we become this?” she whispers. “How did we become your parents?”
I reach for her hands, raise them to my mouth and brush my lips across her knuckles.
“Don’t say that,” I plead hoarsely. “We’re not them. We’re going to get her back,” I say, waving a hand behind me to the men straddling their bikes. The men ready to kick up their kickstands and ride the wind. “My dad didn’t have this.”
“What if this is the reason she’s gone?”
“Celeste, please, you have to trust me.”
I’m asking her to trust me.
To trust my club.
But I’m not sure I trust them either.
Like Pipe I’m losing my religion.
Faithless and hopeless.
I am the wanderer.
The lone man who will do anything to save his daughter.
Watch me motherfucker.
Chapter Forty
I don’t know who gave this fuck a license, but it needs to be revoked. I thought he was a maniac in a wheelchair until we put the motherfucker behind the wheel of a car and gave him free reign. Now I’m not so sure I’ll live to rescue my daughter.
I’m about to shout at him to pull over so I can drive the rest of the way when he stops short. My body jerks forward and I brace my hands against the dash to prevent myself from slamming into the windshield.
“Holy fuck,” he barks, staring straight ahead.
I watch as the rest of club splits. Bikes ride up on each side of the van before pulling in front of the Satan’s Knights’ Albany clubhouse.
If you could call it a clubhouse. Every window is busted and the walls are full of bullet holes. My stomach sinks as dread churns in my gut. Fearing I’m too late, I jump out of the van knowing Wolf won’t physically be able to restrain me. Stalking toward the ruins, a hand reaches out and grabs the back of my cut.
“Hold it,” Stryker orders, pulling me behind him. “We don’t know what we’re walking into. You need to let me go in there first.”
“Cobra, your head, keep your fucking head, boy,” Jack bellows.
Shrugging out of Stryker’s hold, I back off and let him lead. Holding his gun steady, his boots crunch over the glass as he kicks open the door. We barely get our feet in the door before there are weapons pointed at our heads.
“Bas,” Stryker shouts, holding both hands over his head. “Not looking to shoot you, man, I just need to speak to Rush,” he says, dropping his gun onto the filthy floor for extra emphasis.
He might be dumb enough to drop his weapon but that doesn’t mean the rest of us are. No, we keep those fucking Glocks aimed directly at these assholes.
“Rush ain’t fucking here,” the guy named Bas reveals as his eyes dart around, assessing each of us. Jack steps to my left, Blackie right on his heels.
“You know who I am?” Parrish says as he tucks his gun inside the front waistband of his jeans, showing a gesture of good faith.
“Of course I know who you are,” Bas answers, eyeing the rest of his men before he lowers his own gun. “I’ve been expecting you.”
Ready to pounce at those words I charge forward but again someone pulls me back.
“Let me guess,” Bas starts, pointing a finger toward me. “She’s yours.”
“Damn fucking straight she is. Where is she?” I growl, pointing my gun at him.
“Whoa, whoa, you got it all wrong, man. She ain’t here,” he yells. “And everyone standing in this room is just as fucking livid as the rest of you. We had no idea Rush was doing this. The motherfucker completely blindsided us. You don’t believe me, look around,” he instructs.
“That don’t mean shit,” I shout. “I’ve been around long enough to know when a war is staged to cover your tracks.”
“Bas doesn’t work like that,” Stryker defends. Stepping forward he turns his gaze back to Bas. “Before he puts a bullet between your eyes I suggest you start talking, man. Not going to be able to keep him down for too long so make it quick.”
“About five hours ago all hell broke loose,” Bas starts, pointing a thumb to the man next to him. “This is Needles, the treasurer of our club.”
Blackie and Jack both extend their hands to the treasurer as Bas continues to introduce the few other patched members before he resumes telling us his side of the story. I listen closely, never dropping my weapon and no one asks me to either.
“Needles noticed some shit was off a few weeks ago,” Bas begins.
“There was money missing from the club’s accounts, transfers that didn’t make any fucking sense. I tried cornering Rush, but he wasn’t having any of it. He told me he’d have my patch for doubting his authority. Then I found he was taking advantage of our leasing contract with Triton Containers. He was taking out contracts on containers and outsourcing them for a profit, a profit our club didn’t see a nickel of,” Needles informs.
“It goes deeper than that. Rush is off the rails, he’s all junked up too,” Bas offers.
“Anyway, Bas and I sat him down earlier without the rest of the club. We thought we’d give him an opportunity to explain what the fuck was going on before we took the matter to church. We barely got to say a word before he went fucking ape shit. He started freaking out in the office, throwing shit all over the place,” Needles tells us.
“He must’ve ripped six lines of coke in a matter of minutes,” Bas adds. “Then he started shouting about your guy Deuce.” He points to Jack and continues, “Says you sent him in here.”
“How did he find out?” Jack questions.
Bas turns his gaze to Stryker.
“You remember Ally, don’t you?” he asks, leaning against the bar. He crosses his arms and stares at Stryker, waiting for him to answer.
“Who’s Ally?” I demand, lowering my gun.
Stryker swipes a hand over his bald head before he blows out, what looks to me, like a sigh of relief.
“Who the fuck is Ally?” I repeat.
“She’s Rush’s whore,” Bas supplies. “But your boy Stryker here had a soft spot for her.”
“I’d hardly call it that.”
“Call it what you want, you’re the only one who gave a fuck whether that cunt lived or not. Now it looks to me like
you’re relieved the bitch is still breathing. If I were you I’d cut that attachment because your girl Ally is the reason all this shit is blowing up. She caught your boy Deuce in Rush’s office. My guess is she ratted him out for a fix of whatever junk Rush was shining in her face.”
“That must be the broad Deuce said Rush is obsessed with,” Jack states.
“Obsessed?” Needles scoffs. “That man needs her rancid ass like he needs oxygen, he’s fixed on her. His old lady caught him a hundred times fucking that shit and threatened to cut his dick off, but the motherfucker kept going back for more.”
“Don’t talk about her like that,” Stryker grunts. “He’s the reason she’s a fucking mess. He got his hooks into her when she was young. He turned her into a junkie and made her everything she is.”
“Really don’t give a fuck about some washed up cunt right now,” I grind out. “Get to the point when you tell me where my daughter is,” I demand.
“I don’t know where your daughter is. Like I was saying, we tried to confront him over the missing money and he started shouting about Deuce being a rat bastard. Then he went off the wall talking about some Russian, said the Russian was coming and he was going to kill him. I don’t know anything about a Russian,” Bas says.
“Back in the day, he used to deal with a Russian, but that was years ago. I don’t remember his name. He’d come around every once in a while with fresh pussy. Rush would sample and decide if he wanted to keep them around. That Russian supplied us with some of the finest whores we’ve ever had skirting these walls, but he hasn’t been here in years, not since Bas took the VP seat,” Needles explains.
Anger grips me in a vice as I hear the truth I’ve always known become a reality. For the longest time it was Rick’s word, his findings and his theories of what Yankovich did to the girls he took. Now I’m in a clubhouse with men that wear the reaper as proudly as I do. It all becomes clear. While I was hunting the man that took these girls, they were the men who fucked them. They didn’t ask where they came from or if they were once good girls who were taken by a monster. They didn’t wonder if they had a good family missing them or dreams they wished to one day conquer. They were nothing more than a piece of pussy.
“Before we could ask him what the fuck he was ranting about, four prospects charged into his office. Three of them had your guy, and the other had the baby,” Bas says, turning his eyes back to me. “She appeared to be fine, a little scared maybe. Rush called in Ally right away. The junkie may not be worth shit but she took the kid. I know that doesn’t make it better for you, but you’d rather your baby girl be in Ally’s arms than any of the assholes who took her in the first place.”
Trying to hold my voice together, I lower my gun and swallow down the lump in my throat.
“Was she crying?”
“No,” he answers.
Sighing, I roughly run my fingers through my short hair.
“Deuce was fucked up. The prospects gave him a beating. He was barely conscious, but he kept telling Rush to let the kid go. Rush flipped. From what I could gather taking the kid wasn’t his plan. I’m figuring he sent the prospects to grab Deuce and send a message to your club. Deuce had the kid and they took her too.”
“We tried to get the kid,” Needles reveals.
“That’s when Rush started shooting up the place. Got two guys in the back that need to be buried and another bleeding out in his bed. It got real ugly real fast. Before we knew it he had the prospects take Deuce, Ally and the kid out to the cage. He shot his way out of the clubhouse and took off with them,” Bas tells us.
She may not have been crying when she entered this hell hole but when she left Skylar had to be fucking terrified.
“We got to find his daughter,” Jack tells Bas. “Do you have anything? Any fucking idea where he could’ve gone?”
“No, man, the only things we found were two leasing contracts. Both of them are scheduled days from now.”
“Wait a minute, there’s two?” Jack questions. “Deuce was only able to find one.”
“There’s one scheduled for Red Hook that’ll leave through the harbor and the other is an intermodal shipment, a road shipment headed to the Canadian border. Both are set to leave on the same exact day,” Needles reveals.
There it is.
The second shipment Rick was talking about.
It all falls into place for me.
“Rush is going to go to Yankovich,” I mutter, turning to Jack. “He’s going to ask him to get away with Skylar. They’re going to be on one of those shipments.”
“We need to figure out what he’s exporting,” Riggs points out.
“I don’t give a fuck what he’s exporting,” I fire back. “I’m over saving the world’s women from Yankovich. All I give a fuck about is making sure Skylar is safe,” I sneer.
“Cobra, you need to pull it together, man,” Blackie advises. “If we don’t think this through, we can wind up causing more harm than good. You don’t want that for your girl. Now come on, get your head together. What the fuck is Yankovich going to do with a baby? She’s more of a nuisance than anything. He’s not going to move her with his shipment, he’s going to get rid of her. Like he led us to the docks to take out the men that violated Gina, he’s going to hand us Skylar. We just have to figure out how and where.”
“Listen, whatever you guys need, we’re here. We’re not much, but we’re willing to help,” Bas offers.
“I got a kid too,” Needles adds. “I’d be losing my fucking mind right now. You say the word and you got yourself a bunch of beat up bikers ready to fuck shit up.”
“No kid deserves to pay for the sins of a devil,” Bas agrees.
No they don’t.
A child should never pay for anyone’s sins.
Not the devil’s.
Nor her father’s.
Chapter Forty-one
Forty-eight hours.
My daughter has been missing for over forty-eight hours. We’ve surpassed those crucial hours and there is still no sign of her anywhere. I used to think God spared me. He took Alexandria and left me. Now I know it wasn’t God, it was Satan. I want to ask the devil to take me. I want to beg in the depths of Hell, barter my life for the sweet life of my daughter.
Take me.
Leave her.
Please. Please. Please.
I’ll do anything.
I can wish until I’m dead but it won’t happen.
I’ll never get the chance to go before the evil demon and plead my case.
So I sit here in her room and do nothing. I don’t cry, there are no tears left to disperse. I don’t shout either. What’s the point, no one will hear me, just like they can’t hear her.
Numbly, I watch the detectives go through her stuff. I know they’re grasping at straws but what can I do?
Nothing.
Not a damn thing.
As parents, we take a silent vow to protect our children. We make it our purpose, our life’s mission. We swear on everything we believe in we’ll keep them safe. They’ll grow before our eyes, we’ll instill all our values into them and pray we have nurtured them and loved them enough to tackle the world. Then we’ll take a step back and watch them soar so when we lay our head down for our final rest we can say we fulfilled our promise. We gave it our all, and the world is a better place because of the life we brought into it.
I gave the world beauty, but I won’t be able to watch it grow. I’m not going to get the chance to rest in peace knowing I gave my all to my daughter. I failed her.
I couldn’t keep her safe.
I brought her into this ugly world and I lost her to it.
Defeated as a mother, as a human, I helplessly watch the detectives.
They took her toothbrush earlier. Do you know why? Because they don’t believe they’ll find her. They’ll swipe her DNA from it so when they find her body they can identify her. That’s why they took her hairbrush too.
There is no justice to be served.
Just like there wasn’t any served for her aunt.
The door opens to the bedroom and I lift my head expecting to find my mother, father or Gina. None of them have left my side since I returned from the hospital that wretched day.
My eyes find Cobra standing in the doorway. He’s wearing the same grim expression he’s had every time I’ve seen him since we stood in front of the ice cream truck staring at Skylar’s discarded teddy bear.
Trust him.
It’s the last thing he said before he took off with his club, promising me he’d return with our daughter. Now he stands as defeated as I feel. As I scramble to my feet, my hope, trust and faith fade.
“Why are you here?” I rasp.
“What do you mean why am I here?” he asks hoarsely, stepping closer to me. I raise my hand and force him to stay put.
“Don’t,” I order. “You said you’d bring her home.”
“I will,” he insists. The power that once fueled those two words is no longer there. He’s giving up. He might not know it but I see it, it’s there in his eyes. He doesn’t know what to do. He can’t make it right and he’s just as useless to our daughter as law enforcement.
“I found some stuff out,” he offers. “It’s not much, but it’s more than we knew before and a whole lot more than the cops have. The men who took her didn’t harm her. Someone saw her and she was okay. Did you hear me? Celeste? Someone saw her and they swore she was okay.”
Shaking my head, the tears I thought had dried up begin to surface again and stain my cheeks. I think he expected his words to provide me with some sort of comfort, but all they do is sear me and leave deeper wounds.
“I wish you never came back,” I shriek.
They are words I never dreamed I’d ever say. For so long I prayed for him to return, wished for fate to throw us together one more time.
“Before you came back into my life, I thought I was an awful mother,” I confess. “I thought I wasn’t enough, that she was lacking the normality others had by not having her father in her life. I tried to make up for her not having you, I tried to be both a mother and a father. I swore I’d do all the things a dad would do for his daughter. I’d protect her. I’d grill her dates. I’d even walk her down the aisle when the time came. I knew in the back of my mind no matter how hard I tried, it wouldn’t be enough. Then you came back. I thought it wasn’t fair to keep either of you from one another. I didn’t fail without you, Cobra, I failed the moment I told you she was yours. I failed as soon as I trusted her life in your hands,” I cry.
Wanderer (The Nomad Series Book 2) Page 28
