by Vivian Gray
“Maybe we should talk about this later—”
“If you’re trying to tell me you don’t want the job, that’s fine, and we’ll plan out the transition differently. Get some feedback on who might be right as the next one to step up. But if it’s just you trying to fret about whether or not I’m in my right mind? I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, Brass, I just didn’t have a reason to make the change.”
Brass nodded again, and a smile split his face. “Yeah. Okay. I’ll take this on.”
“Good. Now, I need my girl back so you can have your club.”
Brass let out a laugh for the first time that morning. “Let’s make that happen.”
But as Brass walked away from the table, Jet had to work even harder to keep all those feelings he wasn’t going to feel right now boxed up in his chest. If this didn’t work, if he couldn’t get his baby and his woman back – would he be left with anything at all?
Chapter Seventeen
The first thing Bree noticed was the crying. Her head ached, her body felt awkward and strange, and someone was crying nearby. It was the kind of crying that had started a long time ago and was going to continue on for a very long time. It was soul-rending and exhausting, and she knew who it was. She’d only ever heard Cat cry like that, however, when Cat was sure no one was watching.
There was something soft underneath her, as awkwardly as she was collapsed on the surface, and that was something. Bree shifted slowly, trying to find the edges of the space around her. Her head was reeling. Memories were loose and fragmented, and it took work to find all the disparate pieces and put them back together into something like a timeline.
Cat had called. She’d gone out. Kane had arrived. Kane had taken her. Someone had hit her to shut her up.
Cat had called. When she went out, she’d had her phone, she’d been playing a game waiting for Cat. She’d dropped her phone in the pocket of her sweater when – She grabbed at the sweater, not caring that her head was pounding at the motion, even though she didn’t try to move her head.
The pocket was empty. Her stomach twisted hard, and she had to swallow to keep from being sick. They must have taken it from her.
“Bree?” Cat’s voice was still thick and choked with tears. “Bree, are you awake?”
The first response in Bree’s head was to tell the girl to go fuck herself. If not for Cat she would be in absolutely none of the situations she was in. A little voice in the back of her head whispered that some of those situations – primarily the ones that involved Jet – were still pretty good. She wasn’t interested in that right now though. This fucking bitch.
“Don’t talk to me,” she said, keeping her eyes closed. “I hated you before, and now I want you to die.” Maybe it was cruel, but she’d been hit so hard she lost consciousness. God alone knew what that could do – could have done – to her baby.
Cat started crying again, and she backed away from Bree. Bree heard the shuffling sounds of fabric; she figured Cat was curled up on the floor. But there was also a weird, metallic sound. Like... chains?
She opened her eyes, then immediately slammed them shut again. The light in the room felt like it was stabbing directly into her brain. The room started spinning, giving her no real sense of up or down; it felt like she was about to tip off whatever it was she was on, and that she might fall forever.
“Where are we?” she asked, trying to brace herself for another try at vision.
“I thought you wanted me to die,” Cat said peevishly.
“I do,” Bree said, with all the venom she could manage. “I truly do. But until I can murder you with my bare hands for getting me into this mess, I’m going to ask you questions. You can answer them or not, I don’t really care right now.” You bitch, she added silently. And she really did care; she needed to know what Cat knew to figure out what the hell to do next.
There was another sniffle, and then a sign. Bree felt something cold pressed into her hand. “Here,” Cat said.
It was a cold washcloth, and when Bree pressed it up against the ache in her head – well, it didn’t actually feel better in any meaningful way, but it felt a little less awful. When she tried to open her eyes again, it was actually possible.
It took her a moment, and then she realized where she was. This was Cat’s old room from when she was a teenager. Bree had stayed here with Cat during one of the many vacations when it wasn’t worth it to go back to her own parents’ house. They’d sat in this room and done manicures and stuff, watching TV until way too late. It was one of the times when she’d really felt like Cat was her friend, not just someone who found Bree to be useful.
Cat was curled up on the floor near the bed, her knees to her chest and her arms around her knees. She must have retreated as soon as she passed Bree the cloth.
Bree thought about sitting up, but that was way more movement than she wanted to attempt right now. She stayed flat on the – bed, this was Cat’s old bed – and let her body begin to reorient. She couldn’t feel any particular pain in her body, other than her head. She felt the soft twist of the baby moving. Those were good things. Maybe she was okay. Other than her head hurting so much. She almost certainly had a concussion; her thoughts were fuzzy, and her vision wasn’t quite right.
“Why are we here, Cat?” Bree tried to keep her voice steady, but the anger that was tearing her up was way too much to hide. Cat had put them all in danger.
Cat shook her head slowly, then rested her forehead on her knees. “I didn’t want this.”
“Tell me what you did want, Cat.”
“I wanted someone to take care of me. You looked so happy with Jet, and I wanted that too. And Kane – he seemed so rough and dangerous, but in a good way. In the fun way. But then he hurt me, and then there was more. He…” Cat glanced to the side, her teeth caught between her lip. “He didn’t let me go. And he kept – whether I wanted to or not sometimes. And he wouldn’t ever wear a condom. So he... I…” She trailed off again, and it only took a moment for Bree to connect the dots.
Bree had known how grateful she should be that Jet was who he was. That things had gone like they did that first night, and every night since. But the visceral reminder of how grateful she needed to be was more intense than she would have anticipated.
“I’m sorry,” Bree said.
Cat nodded. “I haven’t decided what to do. Not that it matters while he’s got me locked up.”
“Have you been here the whole time?”
She shook her head. “Just last night. He came back to the warehouse where the Runners meet up ranting and raving. People were really scared and trying to get him to go. I tried to hide, I thought that if he couldn’t see me, he’d forget to look for me.” Cat shivered.
“That didn’t work out?”
“Clearly it didn’t.” That rough snap in Cat’s voice was reassuring. The furious bitch was still in there somewhere. That was a good sign. Cat sighed. “He found me, grabbed me, tossed me in his car. Told me that we needed to find somewhere to hole up. He said all his places would be watched, and that we needed to go somewhere ‘they’ wouldn’t think to look.”
“And you thought of your parents’ house?”
“They’re in Spain for the rest of the summer. It was the safest place I could think of, and the way he was looking at me – Bree, I swear to God, I thought he’d kill me if I didn’t give him what he wanted.”
Sitting up seemed risky, but it was a risk she found herself willing to take. Keeping the cold cloth pressed against the painful spot, Bree got her free arm under herself and slowly levered herself up. Cat was there in a heartbeat, arranging pillows so that Bree didn’t need to hold herself up as she waited for the world to right itself.
“Tell me why he wanted you to call me.”
Cat curled up on herself again, but this time at the foot of the bed. Although Bree had one crystal clear image of planting her foot in the center of Cat’s chest and shoving her over, it seemed too rude. Even for her.
Even when she was really angry.
“I don’t know what happened between him and Jet tonight,” Cat said. “He was scared though. Not just afraid, scared. Talking like someone was after him. He thought that if he grabbed you, Jet would have to back off. Maybe even hand over the War Choppers. I told him that there was no way he’d let that happen, but Kane wasn’t having any of it.”
“So you thought you’d just throw me on the chopping block to save your own ass.” There was that rage again, threatening to boil over.
“I never once fucking thought you’d meet me,” Cat snapped. “Jesus, Bree, I’ve been nothing but shit to you for actual years, and I thought you were finally done with me. I don’t know why the hell you met me. I was sure we’d get there, and you’d be long gone. I thought then Kane would be done. Or he’d – Well, one way or the other, he wasn’t going to use me for that.”
“But then he did.” The anger was still there, but Bree couldn’t keep it at the same burning high level.
“Only because you’re an idiot.”
In a weird way, that was fair.
“God, Bree. How many times did I need to be a monster to you before you were going to notice that I was? I don’t get it. I’ve been horrible to you for years, but you just keep coming back for more.” Cat was sad now, deeply sad in a way that didn’t make much sense.
“I don’t know. How many times did you need to be a monster before you stopped?” It felt weird to turn Cat’s behavior around on her, but it was also true. Why the hell was she being made responsible for Cat being out of line, again?
“I don’t know. Stupid backstory bullshit. Mommy never loved me enough, blah blah blah. It doesn’t much matter, I guess.”
Bree shook her head hard. “It matters to me, Cat. I tried so hard, and I told myself you were being a friend, and you just... you weren’t. And I thought you were, that was the ridiculous part. I really thought you were doing your best to be there with me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You should be. Look what’s going on around us? Because you were – what? Jealous? Angry? Sad?”
“Some of everything, I think,” Cat said. Bree made herself subside for just a moment. “Jealous that you had someone other than me. Lonely. Sad and angry that I was by myself, that you were paying attention to someone else instead of me. I wanted you to be my friend again.”
Bree sighed and gently rubbed her hands over her face. She touched the spot where she’d been hit. The area was tender and made her wince, but nothing shifted around in a gross way or anything. She almost certainly had a concussion. Sounds didn’t feel right in her head, and her vision was still kind of blurry.
Get out of here, she told herself. Get out of here and then worry about your concussion.
“How many of them are there?” she asked Cat.
Cat curled up again, tighter and tighter. “Kane and at least three others. They’re scary fucks, Bree, I’m not kidding. We don’t want to get close to them.”
“Do we have a way to get help?”
Another head shake. “Kane took my phone ages ago, and yours isn’t in your pocket. There isn’t a landline in the house anymore.”
“Computer with an Internet connection?”
“Not in here, and I don’t think we can get out of here easily. I’m pretty sure they have someone watching the door.”
“So we’re just here. Waiting.”
“Think your badass boyfriend will come rescue us?”
Bree sighed, wrapping her arms around her middle and trying to ignore her throbbing head. “I really fucking hope so.”
Chapter Eighteen
Once all the moving parts were well-greased, Jet realized how fucking exhausted he was. He’d barely gotten any sleep before Trisha had woken him up, and there was only so much coffee he could drink to compensate. At some point, his body was going to insist on sleep. Better that it happened now, in the club, he reasoned, then at some crucial point when he needed his full attention on the situation in front of him.
He tipped his head back in his booth and let his body go loose. It wasn’t a comfortable way to sleep, all things considered, but it would be an alright way to let his body recharge and rest for a few minutes. In a lot of ways, it would be better than fully sleeping, especially if something happened that needed his immediate attention.
He wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but he felt his senses snap back online when there was a bustle at the front of the club. He opened his eyes and hit his feet in a heartbeat. He wasn’t even sure what he was seeing until he was halfway across the dance floor.
A man was held at knifepoint at the front door of his club, and the point was sharp enough and direct enough that the son of a bitch was standing on his tip-toes. Brick was there, snarling in his ear, and Brass was coming up fast.
Jet recognized the asshole; he’d been here the previous night with Kane and had been one of the men helping to drag his battered leader out the door. Apparently, not all of the Runners have deserted Kane, he noted distantly, as he closed in on the man.
“Name,” Jet snapped.
The son of a bitch continued to whimper, and Jet nodded to Brick. The knife moved just a tiny of a fraction up, and a tiny trickle of blood ran down the man’s neck. He cried out, and then his high-pitched cries started to sound like words.
“Elliot? Is that what you’re saying, you pansy-assed bitch?”
Elliot tried to nod without driving the knife into his throat. It didn’t work particularly well, and the man started to cry. There was a distant part of Jet that felt bad for putting this man on his toes with a knife at his throat. Most of him, however, was cold and calculating.
“Kane send you?”
Another one of those awkward, frantic nods that were designed to keep himself from having his throat cut. Jet nodded at Brick again. As Brick let the bastard down, Brass came up on the other side to block any potential escape route.
“Tell me,” Jet said. He crossed his arms and waited, going for his very best cold, impassive face.
Elliot rubbed his throat and collected himself. “He sent me here to challenge you.”
“For what?”
“Leadership of the War Choppers.”
So it had finally come to this. Jet shook his head tiredly. The son of a bitch could have had a place at his side for nearly a decade, but had chosen this path instead. There was only so much Jet could even take. The cold part of him was ready to accept whatever challenge Kane was going to throw at him, but the other part, the part holding all the feelings, was tired. That part of him wanted to step aside, say that Brass could handle the challenge or not as he wanted. All Jet wanted was Bree back unharmed. Nothing else mattered.
But showing that sort of weakness wouldn’t help him get her back. He had to stay focused. He laughed at Elliot, then laughed at the look on Elliot’s face.
“He can’t have the Choppers,” Jet said. “The Choppers aren’t – just some kind of object I can hand over. The Choppers are a brotherhood. The Choppers are a family. He hasn’t earned his place, and he can’t take it. But please – tell me what that weak bastard thinks will entitle him to lead the War Choppers, since he can’t even manage to lead the Red Runners.”
Elliot’s composure, already shaky, completely vanished. The man had no chill left at all; his hands started to shake, and if he were in a comedy movie, his knees would have started knocking together. Whether it was because Elliot knew that Kane’s play here was idiotic, or because he doubted that he’d make it out of this moment of his life alive, there wasn’t a way to tell. “I don’t know, man. I’m just the messenger, right, like they say? And killing the messenger is a super bad idea, isn’t it? So you don’t want to do that, right?”
Jet considered punching the guy just to shut him up. If his hand didn’t still ache from hitting Kane twice the previous day, he would have done it. “Elliot, shut the fuck up.” Elliot did, after a minute of sputtering to drain out the fuss. “Tell me what he wants. Odds
are good that I need to send him a message, so odds are good you’ll walk out of here. If you piss me off, I can’t promise that all of you will. You hear me?”
Elliot nodded frantically.
“Tell me what Kane wants.”
“He wants to race you. This afternoon. At the old quarry outside of town, on motorcycles. He says you’ll know where. He says it has to be you, not anyone else from the Choppers. He says you know why.” Elliot swallowed hard. “He says he’ll bring the girl, and if you win, you can fight him for her. Otherwise, he’ll keep her and still take away the Choppers.”
Elliot’s eyes closed like he was about to go meet his maker, and Jet couldn’t really blame him for that. The urge to destroy the man for simply conveying Kane’s threat against Jet’s woman was nearly overwhelming.
