Copper grinned, “Never thought the day would come that I would be happy to see your ugly mug.” He pulled Badger in for a slap on the back. “You got any idea what happened to Phoenix?”
Badger looked to the floor and slowly shook his head. “I saw one of the Octacunts jab a needle in his neck right before they started throwing concussion grenades. When we all started coming around, we were locked in the panic room and Phoenix wasn’t with us.”
“Ah, I was wondering how they managed to get all of you brutes in there without there being a few bodies scattered around.” Copper clapped his hands together loudly, “Enough with the chit-chat, let’s see if we can get our caged birds to sing. You want your guy or my guy to do the honors?”
“Eh, let ‘em both have some fun. We’ve got three for them to play with.” Badger chuckled and headed toward what we called our interrogation room.
It was time to get the party started. We had Octavius’s son gagged, stripped down to his boxer briefs, and strapped to a metal table in the middle of the room. Octavius was tied to a chair and blindfolded. The other guy was tied to a chair on the other side of the room, gagged, but not blindfolded. Carbon was standing beside his tool box of torture, bouncing on the balls of his feet like a kid ready to rush the candy store. Coppers’ enforcer, Batta, was pacing the length of the room, casually swinging a baseball bat by his side, and whistling an eerily upbeat tune.
I considered both of these men my brothers, would do anything for them, but it straight up creeped my shit out when I saw them let their crazy out first hand. Kidnapping our president was the most severe offense either of them had dealt with in their years as a club enforcer. Add to that trying to kidnap and sell his daughter, killing a prospect, and nearly killing Duke, I wasn’t sure I would be able to handle what they dished out. I’d seen both of them work someone over, for far less than what these three had done, and that was hard to stomach.
Copper and Badger exchanged a look, communicating silently. They each turned to their respective enforcer and nodded. Let the games begin.
Carbon’s voice was ice cold when he spoke, “Remove his blindfold.” Copper ripped it off his head. Whatever reaction we were expecting, didn’t come. The expression on Octavius’s face remained the same. He actually looked bored.
Carbon covered his hands with vinyl gloves and picked up a pair of rusty bolt cutters. “Where shall I start?” he mused. The boy’s eyes widened and he started to thrash around on the table, sounds of fear and panic escaping around the gag. Still no change from Octavius. “Cover his eyes.”
Copper looked curiously at Carbon, but did as he asked and replaced Octavius’s blindfold. What was he doing?
As soon as it was in place, Carbon quickly turned and faster than anyone should be able to, he snipped off Hector’s thumb with the bolt cutters. Hector grunted and groaned around his gag. Octavius’s posture changed. It was slight, but I saw it, and from the looks of it, so did Carbon.
Carbon made eye contact with Batta and gestured to Hector. Batta silently crossed the room. With one swift motion, he swung the bat and hit Hector’s left knee. Hector screamed loudly behind his gag. This time, Octavius sat up as straight as he could, listening intently. Interesting.
My skin broke out into goose bumps when I heard Carbon’s chilly tone, “Ready to talk?” Octavius was visibly trembling and beads of sweat had formed on his forehead, but he didn’t respond. “Okie dokie,” Carbon sang. He returned to Hector and removed a toe with the bolt cutters. He stepped out of the way so Batta could bring the bat down on Hector’s right forearm.
Hector immediately started gagging and heaving. Carbon looked down at him and shook his head, “Pussy. Already puking.” He sighed, “Remove his gag. Can’t have him choking on his own vomit and dying just yet.” The gag was removed and Hector spewed forth the contents of his stomach. He screamed in pain, puked again, and sucked in huge lungfuls of air. “Octavius!” he screeched. “Help me!”
Octavius stiffened. His face turned red and his breathing doubled. Then he bellowed, “No!” He was trying with everything he had to get out of the chair. “What have you done to him? Let me see him! Get this off of me!”
Carbon chirped, “Don’t think so. Start talking or we keep going.”
Octavius had stilled, I assumed to contemplate his next move. Unfortunately for him, Carbon wasn’t a patient man. Apparently, Hector wasn’t either.
“Octavius! What the hell are you doing? Talk! Help me!! Make this stop!”
Carbon turned to Hector and arched a brow. “I don’t know what he did with him. I would tell you if I did. I swear it,” Hector rambled.
“That doesn’t help me with my problem at all. Sorry…” Carbon laughed, “Oh, wait, no I’m not.” Two seconds later, Hector was missing half of his ear.
Hector’s high-pitched screeching could outdo a banshee on any given day. “My ear!! Help me, please, Octavius, please make it stop!” Hector was sobbing for all he was worth, blood oozing from his hand and his foot, and was that, oh hell, had he pissed himself?
“I find it interesting that he seems to care more about what happens to Hector than to his own son…” Carbon said to the group. “Or, is that a ploy to spare the boy?” Carbon cackled like a crazed maniac. “Damn, I’m so fucking giddy I’ve started rhyming.” Carbon shook his head and just like an etch-a-sketch, his face was wiped clean. The ice cold killer was back. “Remove the boy’s gag. I want to hear his screams.”
Carbon slowly approached the table, hands steepled in front of him, index fingers tapping together as he surveyed his tools. “Stop!” Hector bellowed, louder than I thought he could manage in his current state. “That’s not his son!!”
“Shut your mouth, Hector!” Octavius yelled.
“Why? You’re shutting yours enough for the both of us!”
“Not another word out of your mouth!” Octavius commanded.
“Why? What are you going to do about it? You may not know what it means to be a real man, but I do and I’m not about to let that boy be tortured because of you and you’re stupid obsession with Phoenix!”
Octavius was shaking with rage. “You don’t know anything!! It’s not stupid. I have every right to hate him! He ruined my life and then he did it again and again and again. No way am I telling these imbeciles anything about him when I finally have power over him!”
“It is stupid. No one knows what he did to you and if no one knows, it can’t be that bad. You can’t always win. You can’t always be the best. You can’t always have all the power.” Hector paused for a moment, heaving in breaths before he changed tactics. His voice was less anger-filled and almost encouraging. “Don’t you see, Octavius? You do hold all the power right now. Only you can decide if this stops or if they continue to torture me and that boy. At least get him out of this. You are the only one who can do that.”
Octavius seemed to brighten at Hector’s words. “You’re right. I do have the power.” He grinned evilly and looked toward Hector, “I don’t give a shit what they do to you or to him.”
“Enough!!!” Carbon bellowed. Even the boy, who had been thrashing around on the table and yelling into his gag the entire time Hector and Octavius were bickering, stilled. “Gag them!” He yelled, pointing at Octavius and Hector. Carbon walked to the table and sliced through the boys gag with a wickedly huge knife. “You his son?”
The boy quickly shook his head, “N-n-no, and I know where Phoenix is!”
Carbon bent down to the boy’s face and bared his teeth, “You ever see a clown pull a string of handkerchiefs out of his pocket?” The boy hesitantly nodded. “That’s how it will look when I pull your intestines out through your mouth if I find out you’re lying to me.”
The boy squirmed but didn’t break eye contact with Carbon. “I’m n-not lying. I saw him shove a man through the doors that led to his basement. The man was tied up and looked like he couldn’t stand very well. I don’t know if that’s Phoenix, but he was dressed like those guys.” Th
e boy motioned with his head toward those of us on the sidelines. “He had that same leather vest on.”
Carbon turned to face Copper and Badger with a raised brow, as if to say, what now?
Copper and Badger had some silent conversation through a series of grunts, nods, and hand gestures. It was truly amazing to watch. Copper stepped forward, “Take those two back to their cells.” He looked to the boy and narrowed his eyes, “We’re going to let you up, but you ain’t leaving this room just yet. I’m going to ask you some questions and you’re going to answer all of them. If I think you’re fucking with me, I’ll let Carbon and Batta loose on you, got me?”
“Y-yes, sir.”
Once the boy was released from his restraints, he sat up on the table and answered every question Copper asked. When Copper was finished, the boy continued to talk, telling us anything and everything he thought we might want to know.
Copper stood, “Let’s go get our president.” He clapped the boy, who we now knew was named Coal, on the shoulder, “You’re coming with us.”
CHAPTER 27
Dash
I stopped by the panic room to let Ember know we were heading out to get Phoenix. She of course hit me with a barrage of questions that I couldn’t answer. I promised her I would come get her as soon as we got back and then I would answer as many of her questions as I could. She didn’t seem to like that very much, but she kissed me and told me to go bring her dad back.
Ember didn’t know it and would likely be pissed as hell at me when she found out, but I had her and Jamie remain in the panic room even though there was a skeleton crew of members staying behind at the clubhouse. I didn’t know how things were going to go once we got to the farm. Anything could happen, but I knew she was safe as long as she stayed in that room.
From what Coal told us, we should be able to enter the property without issue as long as we were in the SUV’s we drove back from the cabin. “They’ve got a chip or something on them that opens the gate. The gate can’t be opened without one of the chips,” Coal explained. “Once we’re through the gates, we can drive one SUV to Octavius’s house and the other two need to go to the building with his main office in it.”
“Why can’t we all go to his house?” Badger asked.
“Because they never do that. He goes home to change into fresh clothes, while the others go to the office and wait for him to arrive.”
“How far is the office from his house?” Copper asked.
“Not far, maybe 50 yards or so.”
“How many people will be at the office building?” I could see the wheels turning in his head; Copper was already mapping out a plan of attack.
“There shouldn’t be many, if any, at this time. When he has been out for business, he calls the members of his council that weren’t with him and tells them when to meet him at his office. It’s really just the executive council members and a handful of their sons who are old enough to start trying to climb the ranks that you have to worry about. The workers aren’t going to try to stop you and I seriously doubt any of the kids would try anything either.”
Copper rubbed his thumb and forefinger over his chin, “How many of these council members and kids are there?”
Coal started holding up fingers and mouthing numbers, trying to quickly tally up a number to give Copper. “Should be about six council members and four sons, I think. I don’t know them all and I’m not exactly sure who was in the other SUV’s when they drove up to the cabin.”
Copper started nodding his head, still rubbing his chin. “We can handle 10. I’ve got Octavius’s phone,” he held it up and wiggled his hand. “And looky here, an old text to a bunch of men telling them to be in the main office for a council meeting in 15 minutes.”
We all laughed. This guy really was an idiot. He left trails and clues all over the place and did half ass jobs, like only changing the inside code for the panic room, but his biggest mistake, besides crossing us, was being a creature of habit. When someone always did the same thing, followed the same routine, never changed their ways, it made stuff like this too damn easy. Too. Damn. Easy.
I leaned back in my chair and crossed my arms over my chest, “So, we’re going to ride in there, send one SUV to the house and the other two to the office, find Phoenix, then send a text to have them come to us, yeah?”
Badger grinned, “Sounds about right to me.”
Copper slammed his palm down on the table and stood. “Me, too. Let’s roll.”
Suburbans or not, cramming eight big bikers into one did not make for a fun ride. Not a one of us would be considered small, and from the smells surrounding me, some wouldn’t be considered clean either. Copper and Badger were up front while Coal was tucked in between me and Carbon. The kid looked terrified. I don’t know if it was because of what we were about to do or if it had more to do with Carbon. Either way, the kid couldn’t freak out on us. He was the only one who knew where Octavius’s house and the office building were.
Trying to help him maintain his composure, I started talking to him. “You said your parents work at the dairy farm?”
He startled at the sound of my voice, but quickly recovered. “Yes, they do, but they work on the real side, not the other side.” He had said something like that earlier, but we weren’t after those details at the time.
“What’s the real side and the other side?”
He turned to me with eyes so full of hope, “You’re not going to let him come back, right? Octavius?”
“No, we’re not. Why?”
“I’ll tell you if he’s not coming back, but if he is, I can’t say. It could put my family in more danger. I’ve already put them at risk by what I’ve already told you,” he told me, his voice trembling as he spoke.
“He ain’t coming back. That I can assure you.”
“Okay, well, the real side is the actual dairy farm. The other side looks like it’s part of the dairy farm, but it’s where they package drugs and guns to be shipped out.”
“I see. Does everyone there know about the drugs and the guns?”
He shook his head. “No, I don’t think any of the workers at the real farm know about it. He’s managed to keep everything separate.”
“So how do you know about it?”
“I was somewhere I shouldn’t have been and overheard them talking. I was supposed to stay within a certain area of the farm, but there was a pond nearby and I wanted to go swimming. I had to pass by part of the fake farm to get to it and I overheard some of the workers talking. I wanted to know more, so a couple of days later, I went back over there and hid behind some crates. I watched them for a while and left. When I got outside, Octavius was standing there. He told me he wouldn’t beat me bloody and fire my parents, if I agreed to owe him a favor. He didn’t tell me what the favor was or when he would ask for it. That’s the reason I was pretending to be his son. I didn’t know why he wanted me to do it and it seemed easy and harmless, so I agreed.”
“Will the workers who handle the drugs and the guns be a problem for us?” I asked.
“No way. They aren’t there because they want to be. They do that because they have to.” Well color me surprised.
“Why do they have to?”
“Because they owe Octavius money. He loans money to the people, I don’t know why, and when they can’t repay him, he brings them and their whole family, if they have one, to the farm. They have to stay there and work their debt off,” he explained.
“Their whole family?”
“Yep. The men work on the farm and in the field, the women do the cooking and cleaning, and their kids are kept in a completely different part of the farm.”
“The orphanage?” I guessed.
He looked confused. “There’s no orphanage out there. Just a building where the slave workers’ kids stay while their parents work off their debt.”
I tried to keep my face neutral even though my blood was boiling. “Do you know any of the kids?”
“Not really. I wa
s homeschooled my whole life, but those kids were taken to school. Most of the kids weren’t there for too long, a few years at most. Ember, the girl at the cabin, she’s been there for as long as I can remember. I’ve never talked to her, but I would see her around the farm every now and again. I knew she was one of the kids from the other side, because the kids on my side were allowed to play together and socialize. I always wanted to talk to her, she seemed so lonely and sad, but we weren’t allowed to interact with the kids on the other side.”
My jaw clenched. I could feel my molars grinding together. I didn’t want to ask, but I had to know. “Do you know why Octavius went to the cabin to get her?”
“I only know what he told me. He said she had been kidnapped by a biker gang and we needed to go save her.”
“So you didn’t know he was planning to sell her, probably to be used as a sex slave by some creepy motherfucker?”
Coal gasped and a look of horror washed over his face. “He what?” I nodded. “No, I had no idea. I would have done something, or tried to do something to stop it. You have to believe me.”
“Relax kid. I believe you.” I did believe him. He would make a terrible poker player because his eyes gave him away.
“Chit-chat time is over. We’re here,” Copper announced.
We all fell silent. You could hear the gravel crunching beneath the tires as we flawlessly rolled through the gates to the land of lunacy. It was getting dark, so it was hard to get a good look at the place, but you could easily tell the place was huge.
Coal sat forward and gave Copper directions to Octavius’s house. When the house came into view, Coal pointed out the office building. Badger relayed that information to the SUV behind us through his earpiece.
Copper pulled into the driveway with ease. Coal pointed to the doors that led to the basement. For some reason, I assumed we would be going inside the house to get to the basement. Worries of tripping alarms and hidden cameras had danced through the back of my mind the entire way here. An exterior entrance? Alarms and cameras or not, this would be a piece of cake.
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