by Carina Adams
Neo had my sister in his arms, carrying her to one of the couches. She was hurt, that much was obvious. Her face had numerous cuts, there was blood smeared across one cheek, and she was holding her right arm, which was draped across her chest, with her left. I tucked my gun back into my jeans and rushed to her side.
“Someone find Ratched!” Rocker shouted above the noise.
I sank to my knees, trying to assess the damage. “Cris, talk to me. What hurts?” I practically whispered, fighting to keep my voice level. I’d been to almost every one of her fights, and I’d seen her get her ass kicked. But this couldn’t compare. I felt like I was looking at a client and not my little sister.
“My arm.” She lifted her uninjured hand and wiped at her cheek, only managing to smear blood everywhere. “I think it’s dislocated.” Her voice was hoarse, and I could tell she was fighting through the pain.
“It’s ok. We’re gonna get you fixed up.” Her face had been used as a punching bag, and there were numerous spots that were already swelling and turning a horrible shade of blue. I wanted to kiss her, to offer some sort of comfort, but I didn’t know where to touch her without causing pain, so I just patted her hand weakly instead. “Can you tell me what happened?”
Before she could answer, Ratched appeared at our side. “Let me clean her up, ok?” Her voice was soft but full of authority. “Call Doc. Right now.” I nodded and stood, trying to give her some room.
Ratched had been a trauma nurse in Iraq before coming home and deciding to settle in the OB field. She said that being King’s ol’ lady was more than enough excitement for her, and she just wanted a normal job and to cuddle babies. She’d gotten plenty of action over the years though, always stepping in to sew one of us up and tend to us when we were hurt. She was kind and gentle, and nothing like cold-hearted tyrant she was named for, but it just fit her. If she was telling me to call in Doc, then it was bad.
“I already called him, he’s on the way,” Hawk told me as he led me to a table where Neo, Rob, and Cris’s boyfriend, Caleb, stood.
“Princess was attacked.” Rocker filled me in, ignoring the ‘Thank you, Captain Obvious’ glare I sent his way. “She’d just finished a session and went out back to take a call. She hadn’t said goodbye to Caleb, so he went looking for her. She had two guys on her.”
Thankfully Caleb had left the door open and the gym was empty so Neo heard him shout. The two men with Cris were trying to force her into a van, but she wasn’t going without a struggle. “They’d worked her over pretty good.” Neo explained. “But, they obviously didn’t know who they were dealing with because she took one down right as we got out there.”
“And the other?” Caleb paled at my question.
“You told me to carry, so I’ve been carrying.” Neo snapped. “He picked her up, and I could see her arm was broken and she couldn’t fight anymore. I couldn’t reach her and I wasn’t gonna let that fuckah get her in the van, so I did what I had to do.”
Rocker left the table, most likely to send someone to do cleanup, and Hawk grabbed his phone. Jesus! Two dead bodies in the middle of the city, in broad fucking daylight, in the back of a building owned by a Bastard, was bad news.
Before I could ask any more questions, the door opened and I turned hoping to see Doc. Instead, Jon Greenwood walked in. I turned to Caleb. “Did you call him?”
I didn’t know if the blood he was trying to scrub off his hands was his or if it belonged to Cris, but Caleb was not a Bastard and was having a rough time handling what had just happened. Seeing his boss only made it worse and a look of panic crossed his face. “I didn’t. But, if he’s here, they must have found the bodies.”
Fuck! I caught Jon’s eye as he surveyed the chaos in the room and he sidestepped a few of the women, heading straight for our table. He was a master at hiding his thoughts, but the surprise at seeing Caleb next to me was as clear as day. He wasn’t here because of Cris.
He didn’t bother with pleasantries. “Matt, have you heard from Taylor today?” I shook my head, trying to remember where my phone was. Pulling it out of the pocket on my cut, I checked for missed calls. There weren’t any. “When was the last time you talked to her?”
I didn’t like his tone and narrowed my eyes. “Saturday night. What in the fuck is going on, Greenwood?”
The lawyer matched my angry glare. “No one has seen or heard from her since Sunday morning. Her father is very worried.”
No. No fucking way. My mind was moving on hyper-speed. “Tank?” I yelled to be heard over the commotion. “Call Jessie, right now!” He didn’t hesitate, just pulled out his cell and dialed.
I grabbed my phone and hit Becky’s number. “What’s up buttercup?” She laughed as she answered.
“Where are you right now?” I demanded.
“At home. Matt, what’s wrong?”
“I need you to grab Grams and take her to Katie, and I need you to do it right now.” A few years ago, we’d developed a code so that I could tell her when things were bad without a chance of someone overhearing us. Grams was the gun she kept loaded.
“Katies’s or Fred and Darcey’s?” she asked in a panic. Fred and Darcey were family friends that would keep her safe and was usually where I sent her. But, Katie was Rocker’s little sister who owned a veterinary practice with Becky’s fiancé. Kate’s house was a fucking fortress. After she’d had a nasty bout with an abusive boyfriend a few years ago, Rob had made sure she could fend for herself and had a state of the art panic room installed. It was the place we sent some kids that needed extra protection before a trial.
“Katies’s. Then I want you two to take Gram to the Vet’s.” It was important that she knew she needed to get her fiancé out, too.
“I’m leaving right now,” she said, and I heard a door close in the background.
“Call me when you’re both there, ok?”
“I will. And, you’ll explain then?”
I promised I would and hung up. Christ, I hoped she’d be ok.
Rob was back, piecing together the problem on his own. He’d pulled out his phone as well. “I’m checking with the prospects. Ian, call Ellie. You, call L.K.” My phone was halfway to my ear when Wiz appeared in front of me.
“We’ve got a problem.” The kid’s voice was shaky and his hands unsteady as he set the tablet onto the middle of the table. Slowly, he scrolled through a group of pictures.
The first was of Taylor. She was in a store, looking through a rack of clothes. She was laughing at something or someone out of the frame. The next was a picture of Jo and Jessie sitting at an outside table in a little bistro and laughing. I recognized the outfit Jo had on this morning. I’d told her the jeans hugged her ass perfectly and that she needed to take them off and come back to bed. The next one had been distorted, but each woman was looking at the camera and now had a number where their face should have been. The final picture was of Taylor. She was tied to a chair and was beaten. The number three had been carved into her forehead. It was swollen and bloody, obviously new. Wiz swiped sideways one more time and there was a black screen with red letters. “An eye for an eye? No, a life for every year you stole. I lost many years.”
They had them. Whoever it was, they’d taken our girls. The noise Tank made sounded more like a wounded animal than anything else. A bottle went flying across the room and I heard someone swear. I didn’t realize my legs had given out until I fell to the floor.
Jo
The room where they had me was pitch black, cold and damp. I could smell the mildew, so I assumed it was a cellar. My arms, pulled tight over my head, had fallen asleep ages ago and now they were just numb. I felt something crawling on my stomach and tried to convince myself that it was just my mind playing tricks on me, maybe a breeze blowing against the hair that made it feel like something much more. I struggled against the cuffs that kept me spread-eagled and tied to the top of the bed, but it was still no use. I couldn’t move.
If I closed my eyes and concentrated real
ly hard, I could feel the sun on my face as Jessie and I sat outside, soaking up the rays and catching up over a Danish and java. It had been such a fantastic day, from waking up next to Matty, breakfast with the kids, seeing Jess, and then realizing I hadn’t needed to study because I was going to ace my test anyway. Nothing was in the correct order, though, and when I thought back, it seemed like I’d gone to school first. I spent my time trying not to lose my mind by focusing on putting my day in the right sequence.
The fire alarm had gone off, and I’d followed the professor and other students to the back of the campus instead of leaving via my usual exit. The exit that I’d left the prospect outside of, making him sit on a bench in the shade to wait for me. I still couldn’t be sure how I’d been grabbed. There were hundreds of people around me as we hurried out of the building, so how did someone find me in the crowd and then manage to get me away without anyone stopping them?
I’d felt a hand on my arm and heard someone say my name, so I’d turned to see who it was. Then someone put a hand over my mouth, and I felt a prick in my neck. I’d tried to scream, to fight back, but the next thing I knew, I’d woken up here. With a man on top of me. A man that had Matty’s face. Even though I knew better, I couldn’t remember any other features of the man that had hurt me.
Every inch of me ached. I’d been roughed up, I could tell that much. Slivers of memories came through the fog, and I remembered someone asking questions, hitting me when I didn’t know the answer or it wasn’t what they wanted to hear. The lower half of my body was bare, and I refused to acknowledge what that meant. I couldn’t remember it, so it didn’t happen.
I was parched, my lips beyond dry. But, I was more sore and confused than I was damaged beyond repair. It was nothing compared to whoever was being held with me, though.
Wherever they were holding me wasn’t soundproof because I’d heard the screams for what seemed like hours on end—horrible, blood curdling screams that came only from someone who was suffering. Suffering badly. It was another woman, I could tell that much. I’d tried to hum over it, to retreat into my mind, but it was too loud. Instead, I spent the time praying her pain would end soon and praying that I would be able to see my kids again. That Matty would smile at me just one more time. And, that if I was taken out of this room and harmed the way she had been, that I’d survive.
Minutes stretched into what felt like years. My body begged me to let it give in and sleep, but I fought against it. I wanted to be awake when the man came back in. I focused on happy memories, trying to bring anything to mind that would drive away the fear.
The pop-pop of fireworks startled me into the present, and for a minute I thought that Matty and the Bastards had found me and were rescuing me from this hell. Then, the screaming started again. Another pop-pop echoed through my room, and then it was suddenly very quiet. It made my entire body shake in terror.
I heard what I thought were footsteps, but my teeth were chattering and every one of my senses was on alert, so the sounds could have been my imagination. As they got closer, I realized that it was someone coming for me. Before I could prepare myself, the door flew open and the room was filled with light that made my eyes squint against the brightness.
The man in front of me was definitely not Matty, even though I could see why my mind had connected the two. He was roughly the same height and build, but that’s where the similarities ended. His hair was lighter and the expression he wore was pure malice. When his lips turned into a leer, I wanted to hide. “You’re lucky da boss man wantsta see ya,” he mumbled as his eyes drifted over my body, “or yous and I’d have some more fun.”
Chapter 34
Jo
The man unlocked the cuff and then dragged me from the bed before I’d even gotten my feet under me. I scrambled to stand up, but he took my struggles as an attempt to fight back. Digging his fingers into my arm painfully, he hauled me up and then backhanded me. “There’s no wheres to go, so don’t fuckin’ bother,” he growled, tugging me along a hallway behind him without letting me put my pants back on.
We ended in a large open room with seven or eight men, all dressed in the same dark shirts and jeans, and all wearing gun holsters over their clothes. They all stared at me, and I felt some relief that my shirt was long enough to fall mid-thigh and hide my lack of bottoms. I searched the room, hoping for a sign of easy escape. In one corner, there was a jail cell with a cot in the middle. In the corner opposite was a tool bench and a large metal chair that reminded me of a dentist’s office. There was no doubt in my mind that is where the screams came from. In the section between the two was a desk filled with things I couldn’t make out.
In the center of the room, four chairs sat in a large circle and a man stood in the middle. Only one of them was empty, and the goon that had me took me directly to it, roughly pushing me down and tying me in, making the prickly rope cut into my ankles and already raw wrists. I was half afraid to look up, not wanting to see the evidence of the torture I’d heard and not wanting to observe what I was about to face.
A familiar voice had me snapping my head up, though, instantly pissed. “What the fuck is she doin’ here?”
“Call it a little extra incentive. We haven’t had any real fun with her yet. She’s the whore fucking your man, right? You must despise her.” A man with a gun goaded her. “I figure it can go one of two ways. We can hurt her for you, and you tell me what I want to know, or you can tell me and we won’t hurt her. That way, you can be the hero.”
“Save your time and go ahead and kill me.” Taylor snapped. She’d been abused badly. Her beautiful face was almost unrecognizable, filled with cuts and bruises. One of her eyes was swollen shut, but she still managed a glare with her open eye, and succeeded to raise her eyebrow in a gesture that said she didn’t believe he would. “I’m not gonna tell you a fuckin’ thing, you piece of shit.”
When she spoke, I noticed that she was missing at least one tooth. The man with the gun nodded at another man that was standing next to Taylor. The second man, or Thing one as I decided to call him, promptly brought his fist to her beautiful face once more. I winced for her.
She only laughed and spit out a mouthful of blood. “If you think for one second that Mateo didn’t put that little boy on the first plane out of the states, you’re a fuckin’ lunatic. He’s not going to let you get your grubby hands on him.”
The fist flew again. Then again. Hard enough to knock her sideways. It took a second, but she sat back up and shook her head. I wasn’t sure if it was to clear it from the beating or in defiance.
Crazy man smirked. “Fine. We’ll play harder.” Then lifted a chin in my direction, and I noticed that the man that brought me out was standing between me and… Oh, my God!
Jessie was tied in the chair next to me, but I only knew it was her from the hair and her clothes. Her shirt had been practically shredded, hanging off her shoulders and open in the front showing her bra. Down the arm closest to me were hundreds of bright red lines, almost like little scratches. I inhaled sharply when I realized they were cuts. Someone had taken a knife to her, repeatedly. The patches of skin I could see were filled with marks; red puffy perfectly round spots, jagged angry pink marks, and then there were the good old-fashioned bruises. I was relieved to see she looked like she’d passed out.
Thing two, as I was calling the man next to me, at least had the decency to hesitate before backhanding Jessie’s already beaten black body. I struggled against the ropes holding me in, trying to get to her. Blood came flowing out of her nose and she started shaking, but she didn’t open her eyes.
If Jessie, Taylor, and I were here, then… Terrified, I turned to the third chair, positive that Cris was going to be strapped in. Relief flooded through me when I realized it wasn’t her, but instead a tiny spec of a woman that I didn’t recognize. Not that I would want my worst enemy to be here going through this, and I felt awful that she was here, but I was elated that it wasn’t my soon-to-be-sister.
“
Where would Mateo send the kid?” Crazy asked Taylor again.
“Fuck off!” Taylor screamed.
The man raised the gun and pointed at me. Then, without any warning, he tipped his head and turned it to the little woman. He didn’t pause before pulling the trigger. The noise made me jump, and I could feel the tears running down my cheeks as the life slowly drained out of her. I may not have known her, but this was no way to die. Jessie had opened her eyes and was muttering to herself, head moving up and down in a rocking motion. Taylor didn’t react at all.
“You will tell me what I want to know!” Crazy man screamed at us. “I want to know where the boy is! Stop protecting the man that didn’t even bother comin’ after you!” No one said anything. Then, a sadistic look crossed his face and he looked back at Thing one. “Blowtorch.”
Taylor reacted to that. Her whole demeanor changed. It was if she shrank into herself as the color drained from her face. And poor Jessie! I thought she’d been quaking in fear before, but now her whole chair was shaking which made it rattle against the cement floor.
“Ah, fuck!” the man next to me said, before grabbing a handful of her hair and yanking her head back forcefully. “This stupid cunt pissed herself again.” He pushed her head down brutally as he leaned down next to her. “You’re gonna clean that up!”
The men around us laughed as Thing one came back with the lit torch, the gas hissing and spitting. Taylor’s eyes got huge as Thing one walked past her straight towards Jess.
I pulled against my ties, feeling the blood running down my fingers as the rope sliced my skin. I couldn’t handle it anymore. “Stop!” The word came out hoarse, but I knew Crazy heard me when he turned slowly. I swallowed, begging my body to release some saliva to help my burning throat. “I can give you what you want.”
Taylor reacted instantly, suddenly pulled out of her anxious state, swearing at me, calling me a liar.
