Perfect Chaos

by Nashoda Rose

  “Ready?”

  Tanner nodded. “Yeah, broken. Ready to do anything to stop it. Even to trust a complete stranger.”

  “Kai,” I breathed. I closed my eyes, my body shivering beneath him as the betrayal sunk deep. He set me up for the fall.

  “Robbie’s brothers needed the money and Robbie was paid a lot of cash to do it.” Tanner laughed. “The kid was a sick bastard. He wanted to rape you like he did the other girls he fucked with, but Kai wouldn’t let him.”

  Tears spilled from my eyes as I broke. Everything was a lie. Robbie was paid to hurt me. Tanner knew what Robbie was doing to me. It was all a lie in order to get me to break. To trust Kai and join them for what … so Connor was easier to coerce into working for them because I was in their grasp? To keep me close?

  “They have your brother, you know. He’s alive and well.” He chuckled. “Well, I don’t know about well, but he’s alive.”

  I faked a gasp of shock and hoped like hell he believed it. I didn’t need him knowing I had already been told about Connor.

  Tanner shrugged. “Don’t know why they risked taking him. Deck would’ve been a better choice. No family. No ties.” He sighed and his grip around my neck loosened. “But now … now, Georgie, things are all screwed up because of you. You told Deck about Kai and I, didn’t you?”

  “No,” I lied. “Tanner, that’s ridiculous. You know I’d never do that.” I kept my eyes directly on him, knowing he’d be able to tell I was lying if I looked away.

  He paused and I felt his hands tightening on my neck as he thought about it. “I saw you kiss Deck in the car, Georgie.”

  Double-fudge-fuck.

  “If you told him, they’ll kill him, you know.” I nodded. “I know you’d never want that to happen to him.” Okay, he was going to believe me. “Kai doesn’t agree, but you’re weakening. I saw it when you were drinking after the purge. Do you know how many times you called out for Deck?” Shit, I couldn’t remember anything. “You need to be brought in now, Georgie. It’s too risky, you being on the outside.” I thought of London; Deck said she’d be tortured until she broke.

  “Tanner. No. It will ruin everything. If I disappear, Deck will start a war.”

  He laughed, throwing his head back. “War has already started.”

  It was my moment. I grabbed his wrist with my opposite hand, the other above his elbow and I hooked my foot around his, raised my opposite hip at the same time as I pulled on his elbow.

  It was one solid movement and it knocked him forward and off-balance. We rolled, so I was on top of him, and I didn’t stop as I jabbed my fingers into his eyes. He screamed and writhed beneath me, hands going to his eyes. I scrambled to my feet and at the same time reached into my back pocket and pulled out my cell while I dove for the front door.

  I heard him yelling as his footsteps thudded after me.

  My hand was on the doorknob and turning when his body slammed into me, the momentum pushed me hard against it, knocking the wind out of me. My cheek pressed to the door, I pulled my arm out enough to glance at my cell still clutched in my hand. I hit redial then dropped it to the floor before he realized I’d placed a call.

  “You fucked him. Didn’t you?”

  I felt his cock hard against my ass and he held me trapped between him and the door. “Tanner. Let me go,” I shouted. I needed whoever I’d redialed to hear me. “You’re hurting me. Get out of my house.” I hoped like hell someone had already picked up the phone and was listening.

  Tanner knew exactly what I’d done and yanked me back, with his arm hooked around my neck then smashed his foot into my cell, the plastic shattering. “Who did you call?”

  “I don’t know.” I was trying to think of the last person I talked to, but my mind was in escape mode and not on thinking things through.

  His fist barreled toward me and I shifted to the right and it smashed into my forehead. “Who did you call?”

  “Fuck you, Tanner.”

  He had me by both arms, his body close to mine. I didn’t have enough room to knee him in the balls, and my head was still reeling with pain from the blow to the head. “It doesn’t matter. We’re leaving and we won’t be back for a long time. When they’re done with you, you’ll be good. And Deck … ” He chuckled in my ear and cold shivers raced through me like stabbing icicles. “He won’t want you. You’ll be so damaged, no one will.” He kissed the side of my neck. “Except me. I will, Georgie. I’ll look after you like I always have.”

  Rage gripped me at his words and I wanted to shout at him that he was a lying, disgusting piece of shit. Instead, I kept my voice calm and controlled. “I won’t leave you. We can do what we’ve always done. Nothing will change. Think about what you’re doing. You’ll ruin everything.” Whoever these people were, they must have had him in their grasp since he was fourteen, maybe younger. He’d been watching me for ten years. I was his assignment since Robbie.

  To think Connor was in these people’s control. Why? What purpose? How many did they take like Connor? How many children, men, women disappeared? When had Kai been taken?

  “Deck will come after them, Tanner. They don’t want that, right? They’ll be mad you’ve put that on them. We can just let this go. Forget it ever happened.” Like hell. If Kai or Deck didn’t kill him, then I would.

  “So, you do know about the organization?”

  Fuck.

  I recognized the cold, smooth surface when it touched my cheek. Shit, I had Robbie’s haunting memory to prove it. I also knew Tanner was really good with a knife; Kai had trained him and I was beginning to wonder who else had. Did he have scars on his body like Kai?

  “Kai has been too easy on you. Look what’s happened to that London girl. He should’ve brought her to them when he was told to instead of hiding her.”

  “Hiding her?” I wanted to keep him talking as long as possible. If we moved locations, whoever I called wouldn’t find us. “What do you mean, Tanner?”

  He laughed. “Kai showed up at the auction because he was going to get her out of that shit. Then Deck got her out and Kai thought she’d be safe. But they found out about him being there.” What? Holy shit, my mind reeled and I felt sick as I realized how powerful these people were. “Kai was ordered to bring her to them. Funny thing is … she ran away. Coincidence? No. I think Kai took her and hid her from them. Until she escaped him and we found her. Of course, this is only me guessing, but they will know soon enough.”

  “Why do they care? She’s harmless.”

  He grunted. “Kai cares about her. That makes her deadly.” His breath wafted across my ear as he leaned into me. “And I know what you’re doing. Time to leave.”

  I reacted, not carrying if he cut my face or stabbed me. I wasn’t going with him. But he was ready and slammed the butt of the knife down on my head so hard I crashed to the floor then nothing.

  “WE HAVE A problem.” Hearing Kai’s voice was a reminder of the sharks we were now swimming amongst.

  “Yeah, a shit load. And you’re the one who brought this hell down on us. Where is Tanner?” Vic had been looking for him for hours. Even with Kai’s possible locations, the guy had vanished, leaving me with an uneasy feeling that he knew something was up.

  “Call came in from Georgie. He has her.” My hand clenched the phone as a cold wave gripped me. I immediately put my hand up and signaled to the guys. Josh and Tyler shot to their feet and we were already running from the office while Vic went to the cabinet on the far wall and entered a combination. A click sounded on the opposite side of the room and he strode over, pressed on the wall and a door popped open revealing a walk-in closet.

  “Where?” I said as I joined Vic and began dressing for war. I put on my holster with my guns and knife then grabbed Josh’s while Vic did the same and grabbed Tyler’s. They’d have the car running and waiting for us outside the door.

  “I’m on my way to her place. That’s where she’d said on the phone, but I suspect it won’t be for long.” Kai’s voic
e didn’t have the usual cocky tone to it and that fucked with my head.

  Fuck. Vic and I ran for the car as I kept talking. “Where would he take her?”

  “In,” Kai said.

  I stopped with my hand on the door, the car idling outside the window. Tyler watched me as I stood frozen for a second. “In?” Fuck, no.

  “Best guess … he found out about you and her hooking up. I warned them he was too close to her. I tried to get him off the assignment, but she trusted him, so it was easy for him to keep an eye on her.”

  I slammed my palm into the glass door and ran out to the car. “Who the fuck is them, Kai?”

  Silence.

  “Kai. Jesus. You know better than anyone what will happen if she’s taken to this organization.” I jumped in. “Georgie’s.” Tyler shot out of the parking lot.

  “I’m here already.” I heard Kai’s car door shut and he sounded like he was running. A loud bang and then, “it’s too late.”

  It was as if pieces of my soul cracked then bled as his words hit me. I closed my eyes as I inhaled the fear. “Fuck.” I had to pull my shit together or Georgie would be just as lost to me as Connor. I had no misconceptions of who these people were. Even with all my abilities, contacts and power, trying to get anyone out … chances were pretty fuckin’ slim.

  “Kai,” I said quietly. “I know you’re not like them. You tried to save London. You know what they’re capable of. Don’t let them have Georgie, too.”

  “If Tanner’s told them anything, it’s too late to stop.” He sounded resigned and it pushed the fear into my stomach, churning like a cyclone. “We’re all finished.”

  “Where would he take her?”

  “The shed maybe? But he’d know I’d find him there.” Kai was silent a few seconds and I could hear him getting back in his car. “The school.”

  “School?”

  “Georgie’s old school. Tanner was taken by them as a kid. He was trained, if you want to call it that, and Connor was his first assignment. He hung out at the motorcross track where he met Connor and Georgie. Became friends. When Connor died, his new assignment was Georgie. Tanner used to watch Robbie cut her.”

  “Jesus. Fuck.”

  “He was to tell us when Georgie was … vulnerable enough to trust me.”

  I was pulsating with so much fury I thought I was going to break. Vic must have seen it because he leaned over the seat and squeezed my shoulder.

  We knew one another pretty damn well and right now, I was volatile as hell.

  Kai gave me the directions and I repeated them to Tyler who had turned around and headed for the highway. “Deck. I suspect Tanner killed Lionel. He set this in motion.”

  “And that means?”

  “It means he wants them to bring him and Georgie in.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “So you can’t have her.”

  “Fuck.” I ran my hand over the top my head, back and forth then down my face.

  “Meet you at the location.” The line went dead.

  I threw the phone on the dashboard. “Tell me you’ve found something on this Tanner kid? Anything, damn it.” I stared out the window but saw nothing. The fear had changed to rage, and the rage was now a cold-steel determination to destroy and conquer anyone or anything that stopped me from finding Georgie.

  Vic sat forward so each elbow rested on Tyler’s and my backrests. “I narrowed it down to one missing boy a year before this Tanner kid showed up at the motocross track where he met Connor and Georgie. A ten-year-old Michael Donald vanished from his Toronto home, never to be seen again. No leads, nothing. He fits Tanner’s description with the compilation. Time frame is right. I’m guessing whatever organization we are dealing with took him in, tortured him, trained him, brainwashed the kid.”

  Tyler shook his head. “Jesus, he was a kid.”

  I glared at Tyler. “Yeah, who can make Georgie disappear.”

  “I know, Boss. But whoever these people are, they’re taking in children. They need to be stopped. Fuck, Connor would do whatever it took to take these guys down.”

  Yes, he would. Connor was the guy who always helped the kids wherever our missions took us. And now he was part of an organization that destroyed them. “And we will.”

  Josh spoke from the backseat. “Why would he want to bring her to them? Kai says he has a thing for her. I’d think he’d want to get her far away from these assholes. Not a chance would I let those fuckers near my girl.” Josh cleared his throat. “Sorry, Boss.”

  “If he knows her and I are together, the only way to get us apart is to bring her in. If Kai is right, there is no escape from these people, so trying to run would be stupid.”

  Our advantage, they had no idea what Kai had told us. If Tanner had yet to make contact with the organization, then there was a chance we could stop everything from snowballing into a total cluster-fuck of a nightmare.

  We drove for a half hour before Tyler pulled over on the shoulder and nodded to a school down the block. “Looks like this is it.”

  It was two minutes later that Kai pulled up behind us. Tyler reached over and put his hand on my arm. “I know you’d like to blow Kai’s brains out right now. Fuck, Boss, I do, too. But he wants London, that gives him a reason to go after them.”

  I wouldn’t kill him, but fuck, I wanted to. Just the thought of Kai’s involvement in this … I unclipped my seatbelt and got out. Kai was standing with a knife in hand and without his usual air of cockiness.

  “We bring her home,” I ordered. Because if we didn’t, my darkness would smother the only good parts of what I had left and I’d never come back from that—nor would I want to.

  “YOU KNOW, I used to stand on a milk crate outside the shed and look through that window.” He nodded to the left at a dusty window at the back of the shed. “I’d watch Robbie with you. Hear your sobs. I wanted to soothe you, hold your hand, but they wouldn’t let me.”

  I whimpered against the black rag he’d shoved in my mouth. “That’s how I knew what to do when I cut you at the shed. Then Kai refused to let me do it again. But I knew I was better at it. I knew how to help you, Georgie.” He reached out and I flinched away, but he managed to stroke the side of my face. “We’re connected, you know. We share the same pain. We’re the same.”

  My eyes widened. I had no idea what the hell he was talking about. My knees ached from kneeling on the hard, plank floor and he had my arms behind my back and tied with a belt—just like Robbie had done.

  “Have you seen Kai’s scars? They’re bad. He must have fought them a long time. Me … I was only ten, so I didn’t fight them for very long, kind of like you didn’t with Robbie.”

  That’s because I was already broken, you bastard. Connor dying, Deck leaving, had destroyed me already.

  “They won’t like it that Kai failed to keep you and Deck apart. You know it was why he couldn’t leave JTF2 for those two years? They pulled some strings, made sure he was kept in the military until Kai had you completely immersed with us.” I moaned against my gag. He tilted his head to the side. “Kai … he’ll be brought in, too. They won’t kill him for it, but he’ll be tortured. Or maybe they’ll just torture the girl while he watches. He should’ve done what they asked and brought the girl to them when he was supposed to. They will make him suffer. He probably already knows it.” He chuckled as he ran a finger down my back. “Vault will be pleased with me for bringing you to them as soon as I found out you were with Deck. And if they’re not … ” he shrugged. “At least Deck will never have you.”

  Vault?

  He crouched down in front of me, holding out a carving knife. He tilted it back and forth, sliding his finger down the edge of it. “We’ll be here a while. My message won’t reach France until it goes through the channels here.” He ran his hand over my head like I was his puppy dog. “But I can help you. I’ll take away your pain like you want, Georgie.”

  “You fucking bastard,” I shouted against the gag, but all tha
t came out was a roar of moans. I rolled to the side, but I couldn’t get up with my hands tied behind my back. He yanked me back up to my knees and came up behind me, pressing down hard on my back until my cheek pressed into the floor.

  The knife punctured my lower back on my side and started to drag up. I felt my skin separating, the blood leaking down my side and I tried to move, but his weight wouldn’t allow it. It didn’t feel deep, just enough to make me bleed. What I didn’t know was how much worse it was going to get.

  “Oh, it’s not that bad. Wait until Vault have you. Then you will know pain.” He ran his finger down my spine like a soft caress and I felt his lips brush against the small of my back. “I’ll erase him from you. Make you forget him, Georgie.”

  Like hell, he could ever do that. No matter what was done to me, I’d never stop loving Deck.

  “When we go—”

  There was a loud bang as the door flung open at the same time as the small window shattered and glass flew everywhere. The door ripped off the rusted hinges and swayed twice before it fell to the floor, just missing Tanner and me.

  My eyes widened when I saw Kai and Deck standing in the doorway and Vic and Tyler climbing through the window, all with guns pointed at Tanner. Except Kai, he had a knife but it was as good as a bullet. He could throw it quick and accurately and Tanner knew it.

  Tanner looped his arm through mine and dragged me backward two steps until we hit the wall, a shovel and spade wobbling on their hooks. He held the jagged knife to my throat and his other arm locked around my chest.

  I was drooling from the gag in my mouth and trying to inhale large breaths through my nose. My gaze hit Deck, but he wasn’t looking at me. He was locked on Tanner.

  Kai lowered his knife, slipped it back in his holster and took a step forward. Tanner’s grip tightened and I felt the slight puncture of the tip of his knife.

  “What are you doing, Tanner?”

  “More like what are you doing, Kai? Did you tell them about Vault? Looks like you did or they wouldn’t be here right now. No matter, they will deal with you as soon as they get my message.”