by Heather Long
“Thank you,” Vaughn snapped and then shoved Jasper back a step. “That’s what I said.”
“Doc can look after her,” he argued.
“And then what?” I asked.
I knew.
I knew the moment he wanted us to put her in the car.
This was not how this week was supposed to go.
“Then we’ll take care of her,” Jasper said. “Keep watch here. Don’t leave without telling me.” He pivoted on his heel.
“Where are you going?”
“To check on our package—”
“He’s out,” I told him. Not giving him that excuse to duck this conversation. “Doc gave me a sedative for him.”
Jasper making decisions on the fly was something I was long acquainted with, as was his gut. Sometimes, he just had to follow it, even when he couldn’t explain it in logical or rational terms.
“Did your gut say take her?”
Scowling, Vaughn folded his arms. He’d spent the last week keeping a low profile behind the scenes, but he’d been there every single hour she was. He’d been the first to notice the abuse. Or at least the first to tell me. Who the fuck knew what Jasper had seen or when he had seen it.
The door opening behind me saved him from answering. Doc stuck his head out. “Tell me you punks picked up the asshole who did this to her?”
Jasper and I could hash this shit out later. He shoved past me to get to Doc, and I slowed Vaughn with a hand to his chest. “He’s not gonna listen right now,” I told him in a low voice. “You need to back off on picking this fight tonight.”
“You always fucking say that,” Vaughn snapped, though he didn’t raise his voice. “He’s always got some shit going on…but this is fucking different.”
I caught his eye, and I nodded. “It is different. But back off. We need him to calm down so we can ease his grip out. Then we can get her where she needs to be.”
As far the fuck away from us as possible.
Raking a tattooed hand through his hair, Vaughn nodded. “But if he doesn’t chill this shit out, I’m gonna break his fucking jaw.”
Yeah. I got that.
The last year, Jasper had gotten worse. More controlling. More tight-fisted. More invested in every single thing we did.
I got it.
I did.
But he wasn’t making friends, and his attitude was grating on the friends we did have.
“Fine.”
In the room where Emersyn lay on a flat surface that was more a table than a bed, I planted myself near the door. The unnatural stillness aggravated. Not two hours earlier, she was moving in those silks above the stage and freaking me the fuck out with those plunges and climbs.
Fuck. Seeing them in videos was one thing. She took my goddamn breath away in person, and I hadn’t missed the moment she’d locked eyes on me. There’d been desire there. The same desire that flickered in her hotel room.
Better to nip that shit in the bud. Still, I couldn’t get over how amazing she’d been up there, and now? Seeing her like this? Pale? Bruised? And lying helpless on that table? Doc better give us some goddamn answers.
“How many breaks?” Jasper demanded.
“Easily three or four,” Doc explained. “Look…” He had the images up on a screen. “I’m not an expert, but I can read these well enough and I got a friend looking at them right now…”
I glared at him, but Doc just rolled his eyes.
“You can trust him.”
“We don’t trust anyone, Doc,” Jasper told him in a cold voice. “You had to earn it too.”
“Pretty sure that shit was the other way around, kid, but whatever helps you sleep at night. Now look…”
Then he walked us through a patchwork of injuries she’d sustained. It was like she’d broken or cracked nearly every bone in her body. Worse, there was soft tissue bruising. Have to do an MRI to get more explicit information, but he didn’t have that equipment.
“Why the fuck is she naked?” Vaughn demanded, and I ripped my gaze from the screen to where she lay. There were blankets up to her chin, but I hadn’t seen her dance leotard or pants lying off to the side before until Vaughn held the black mesh outfit fisted in his hand.
“Because I had to do a full exam.”
“If you—” Jasper started, and it was Doc who glared this time.
“You finish that sentence, kid, you better do it with a bullet to my brain, because I’ve beaten men to death for less charges. She’s a fucking child. Not to mention an abused one. She’s barely got tits.”
She had plenty of tits.
“What she does have are bruises over three quarters of her torso. How the hell she performed like that, I don’t know. But she’s got cracked ribs, that had to be impeding her breathing. She’s broken every single one of her toes, some of them multiple times. She’s had broken fingers. A broken wrist. Twice on the right. Old healed fractures to her arms and both legs.”
My gut curdled with every single word.
“Someone is beating her.”
The fucker in the trunk.
“And you better make sure he doesn’t lay a finger on her again.”
Oh, Doc didn’t have to worry about that. I was going to cut every single one of his fingers off.
Jasper flexed his hands, his whole expression blank and his eyes icy. I knew that look. Nothing good came from that look. But I couldn’t argue with it either. I glanced from him, back to Emersyn, then back again.
“You’ll have to tell him,” I warned him.
A single nod. “She goes back with us.”
“What about her head?” Vaughn asked, the belligerence in his voice noticeably absent.
“Concussion most likely. Contusion from where she hit the stone, looks like she caught a corner. I’ll do a couple of stitches, but I’m not seeing swelling yet. Need to get her to wake up and check her cognitive functions, but she’s probably wiped, poor thing.”
The sympathy in his rough voice was hard to miss.
“Gonna put her on an IV and get some fluid into her and do a couple of other tests. Then I’ll get you some scripts. You taking her to the clubhouse?”
All three of us nodded at once. No way I could justify sending her back. That was a lot of damage for one asshole. Not to mention all those other assholes letting it happen.
“All right, get out then while I do this. Give me an hour.” Doc turned his back on us, and I moved back into the hall after one more look at her. Vaughn didn’t move, and Jasper jerked his chin at me.
Yeah, probably a better plan to leave one of us in there with her.
“We need to get rid of the car,” I warned Jasper. “I can put him in the storage locker and deal with it. Then come back with a clean vehicle. Someone needs to pick up Freddie.” Since he’d been left to stew all this time. His mood would be a real treat.
Not my problem.
Not this time.
“Secure him and take care of the car, but don’t slip and let him die. We keep it quiet for now,” Jasper ordered. “Family only.”
“You were right,” I told him as I headed for the door. “He doesn’t die quick.”
I didn’t wait to see what he had to say to that. I checked my watch before scanning the area once more. The car needed to go, so I’d get Ripper to take it over to the chop shop. Fucking pity, I liked the damn town car.
I’d build another.
Inside, I started the engine and stared into the darkness. My phone buzzed, and there was a single word from Rome on it.
Done.
Behind me, a light flared as Jasper lit a cigarette. He was a sliver of a shadow against the side of the building that the headlights barely glanced off of as I pulled out. “Back in an hour,” I called, and he lifted a hand.
Fuck me. Emersyn Sharpe was going to come home with us.
That just had “epically bad idea” written all over it.
Sending her back seemed worse somehow.
Go fucking figure.
Only after I
dealt with the fucker in the trunk, did I hand the keys to the car over to one of the rats who wanted a spot. We didn’t just take everyone, but Petrov wasn’t a bad kid, just came from a shit home life, and who around here didn’t? He was barely sixteen. The scrawny bastard was all arms and legs. He’d started hanging around a couple of years earlier. He made the mistake of trying to lie to Raptor about his age.
That didn’t go over well.
We got it. Didn’t mean we would let him get away with those kinds of lies. But he had a license. I knew, ’cause I taught him to drive and took him for his test. “No joy riding. Don’t break any speed limits. Go straight to Bertie’s, tell him it’s the usual and to put it on my tab. Then have one of his guys give you a ride home.”
Petrov smirked. “I can manage—”
I cuffed him in the back of the head and knocked the smug smile off his face. “When I want your opinion, I’ll ask. Do as you’re told, and do it now.”
One sober nod, and the kid took off. I diverted through the converted warehouse we’d taken over, bought, and remodeled to suit us over the last few years. Some sections were still wide open and in need of work. Others shaped up nicely. The arcade and game rooms were probably the nicest because we spent the most time in them.
Striding past, I was stripping off the suit coat. I had time to change before I picked up the new car and went back for them, but slurping noises halted me mid-stride.
Someone had to be fucking kidding me right now.
Ducking my head into the lounge, I found one of the rats making himself at home with one arm stretched along the back of the sofa with a beer dangling from his fingertips and a busty little blonde going to town sucking him off. She was all but naked, save for a G-string.
Stripper, probably.
They weren’t alone. JD was pounding himself into the ass of another stripper, one hand in her hair and her face tilted up in a grimace of pleasure or pain. Who the fuck knew.
We so didn’t have time for this.
Not to mention… “If I were Hawk, you two would be dead.”
JD’s pounding hips stuttered to a halt, and he jerked around with wild eyes. The slut he’d been reaming let out a mouthy protest, and he raised his hand.
Yeah, not on my fucking watch. I caught his wrist before he even made the full backswing and hauled his naked ass off of her and ignored the sick little pop of him jerking free. From her body. She let out a shrill sound, but I pointed my other hand at her. “Shut up.”
Her mouth snapped closed, and I wrenched JD’s hand behind his back. “That’s a second warning for you, Rat,” I informed JD, and he went stiff.
Well, his shoulders did.
His dick deflated.
Good, I didn’t need the up close and personal. I flung him away. “Clean this shit up and get them the fuck out of here.”
The slut in question shot me a hopeful look, and I snorted. No, I didn’t take sloppy seconds. Thank you very much.
Shaun let out a grunt as he fisted his hand into his stripper’s hair and emptied himself into her mouth before tugging himself free. “I figured I had a minute,” he said with a huff. His face was flush, and his girl was dabbing at her mouth as she looked at me.
I did not have time for this shit. I wrenched JD’s arm a little higher. His harsh exhale betrayed pain, but he didn’t complain. At least not verbally. “Get the sluts dressed. Get them the fuck out of here. Get back to what you’re supposed to be doing. I catch you in here again, and there won’t be another chance.”
Three warnings, and you were gone. They were lucky they were getting that much. One warning usually got you a job with a fifty-fifty chance of getting shot, and that took care of our problems.
Then right against JD’s ear, so he wouldn’t mistake the threat for anything else, I said, “You raise a hand to a woman or someone smaller than you again, and I’ll break it the fuck off.” Another hard wrench to punctuate the point, and then I shoved him off me.
Shaun already had himself buttoned up, and he threw his girl’s clothes at her. “You heard the man, party’s over.” He at least had the sense to shoot me an apologetic look.
We were going to have to burn that fucking sofa.
And the chair.
Hawk wasn’t going to be happy about that, but I was pretty sure he wouldn’t want to sit in JD’s jizz. I waited long enough to see them taking the girls out. Shaun took charge of them. Good. Rome was here earlier, so he better have a good fucking explanation for why he ignored the rats fucking in the den.
They weren’t blooded in, they didn’t get privileges. As rats, they got protection, they got work, and they got a chance. It was up to them to make something of it. The cloying stench of sex clung to the air, and I waved a hand at my face as I headed for my room.
I paused only long enough to shoot Jasper a message.
Me: Had to chase some rats out of the den. Heading back in 15. Status?
Dropping the phone on the bed, I stripped off the shoulder holster and the holster for the gun I kept on my belt before discarding the rest of my clothes. Five minutes under icy spray chased away sleep and rinsed off the blood that had already turned flakey on my hands. I curled my fingers and resisted the urge to punch the wall. It wouldn’t do my knuckles any good, and I had a feeling I was going to need everything I had over the next few weeks.
Five minutes later, I pulled on black jeans, a black T-shirt, and dragged a black jacket over the lot. The suit lay in a heap, and I inspected the blood on it. The dry cleaner’s on 105th could probably get that out. I’d reserve burning it for later if they couldn’t. I only had two good suits, and this one had taken me four months to save up for.
Keys in hand, I checked the phone.
J: She’s still out. Doc doesn’t want her to leave until she wakes up.
That didn’t seem unreasonable.
Me: You sure we can’t make arrangements to get her into a hospital somewhere else?
She was eighteen, right? Her birthday had been a month earlier, I was pretty sure. That meant she was free and clear of parental entanglements.
J: No. She’s coming back with us.
I sighed and stared up at the ceiling.
A week.
I’d give him a week to get his shit together. That should give her time to bounce back and make her own call. We’d also deal with the abusive fuck too. Clean up. I slid my wallet into my pocket after checking I had the extra room key for her hotel. I’d slipped it off her. I needed to go and empty that room today. No one from the show knew where she was staying, but the hotel might report something. Better to just make it look like she checked out.
Jasper was risking more than himself with this move. Raptor would kill us all. And no way Jasper didn’t know it.
Then again, I couldn’t argue with his reasons either.
We were so fucked.
I paused to knock on Rome’s door, but he didn’t answer. I didn’t open the door and walk in, even if it wasn’t locked.
We didn’t lock our doors, but we didn’t barge in either. No one else belonged in this part of the clubhouse. The rats weren’t even supposed to be in our lounge or den. A dull headache throbbed behind my eyes.
I checked the room between mine and his. I might need to install an external lock. Not my idea of fun, but a lot would depend on Emersyn. Inside, the room was clean, the bed made, fresh towels and pillows. It even smelled clean.
A desk and chair were also set up, and one of the walls had a huge painting on it. When the fuck had Rome had time for that?
He didn’t do canvas. Or at least I didn’t think he did. But it was a sunrise. It was put right where a window would be. The room didn’t have a window. None of our rooms did. That was a choice we made to avoid spies and snipers.
Paranoid?
Sure, but we were alive.
I was ready to walk out when I spotted the bear on the bed. It was a little ragged, but it had been cleaned up and a new bow affixed to his neck.
Yeah.
Fucked.
Totally fucked.
I didn’t know the half of it though until I made it back to Doc’s. The drive in my baby—a 2017 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon, sleek, black, and growling with power—had settled some of my misgivings. It did not in any way prepare me to walk into the standoff taking place in Doc’s clinic.
A tousled and wary-eyed Emersyn, pale as death with dark shadows ringing her eyes held up—what the fuck was that? It wasn’t a knife. No, it was some kind of steel tray. She wielded it like a weapon. Vaughn had a hand over his mouth like he was trying not to laugh, and Jasper shot her an exasperated look.
But Doc was actually talking to her in a soothing voice. “You have a concussion. No one here is going to hurt you…”
Only Emersyn’s whiskey brown eyes weren’t on Doc anymore. They pinned to me.
One minute, she had the tray in the air, the next, she stumbled straight to me and threw herself in my arms. I caught her, especially after the way she staggered and pain creased her face. She only had on a T-shirt—Vaughn’s—and her dance clothes were still in a heap.
Fuck, I should have brought her some clothes back.
“Kestrel,” she gasped, and I closed my arms reflexively. “You didn’t abandon me.”
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Jasper glared at me, and I just stared back at him as I held her.
I told him this was a bad idea.
“You’re safe,” I tried to assure her, but she stiffened in my arms and jerked away a little. I tried again. “You’re safe.”
This time, she blew out a breath, then shot a nervous look toward Jasper, then Vaughn, and finally Doc. Some color flushed back into her cheeks, and her mouth tightened.
“Where the hell am I?”
Chapter 5
Emersyn
“Where the hell am I?”
That had been my first question when I woke up to the chilly room, naked beneath a blanket. The second had been the icy realization that not only had I awoken in this foreign room, it was some kind of hospital or clinic.
The last place I wanted to be stuck again was a hospital. No, just no. Worse still, no sooner had I slid off the bed in search of my clothes than my ankle screamed in protest and so did my head. Hot hands had gripped me, and it had just gone downhill from there.
