“What does he have planned?” Mace had spent most of the day in a worse state than I was in. He was shaking and throughout this discussion he’d been sitting with his back to the wall and his face in his hands. “What is he going to do?”
Rubbing his chin slowly, Duke thought long and hard before answering. He took that long that I assumed that he wasn’t going to answer at all and I was watching Mace waiting for the explosion that would come from him. With every second that passed, the pressure built inside me again and I had no doubt that Mace was a hairs breath away from passing his point of no return. Eventually, though, Duke came to a conclusion.
“I don’t think that they intend to do anything to Ava and Gia. We know that he also has another woman from the area, Scarlett, and that she had been working when she was taken. Ava and Gia, however, had been in your home together.” He stopped again and frowned. “In criminal psychology, that would be viewed as a possible multi-motive move. Ava and Gia were undoubtedly aimed at you, but Scarlett wasn’t involved with them and is of no huge relevance to you apart from being a passing friend to you and close friend to Ava.” I totally got what he was saying now.
“Scarlett is aimed at someone else,” I looked at Mace who was just figuring it out too. “Someone who holds her as valuable to them that Demingo is trying to make a point to?”
“Could it be Adam?” He asked.
“Or,” Duke interrupted, “someone requested that she be taken to make a point to this person. We can’t discredit the possibility of this being a job for someone too.”
“That actually makes more sense,” Coleman said. “Someone has been trying to take out two families in Piersville. We know that there must be someone living close by who is carrying out this shit for whoever it is. Maybe Scarlett means something to them?”
“Fuck me, this just gets worse,” I groaned, pushing my hands through my hair forcefully and almost giving myself a bald patch with frustration.
“So, how do we find them?” Mace asked, looking more with it than he had up to this point. “And why are they including me in this shit?”
“You were part of the raid in 2014,” Kai pointed out the obvious.
Sighing, Mace walked over to where Noah had thrown the chair against the wall, and with a roar he started swinging at the hole that was there now. The pain coming from him matched my own.
After a couple more hits, Coleman grabbed onto him from behind, holding his arms to his body so that he couldn’t throw any more punches. The strength in Coleman must have been immense because Mace was one big guy, yet his arms were stuck to his sides. Either that or he was letting Coleman hold him still.
“We’re gonna find them,” Coleman growled at Mace and turned to look at me too. “We’re going to find all of them. But you need the calm the fuck down, Mace.” Mace hung his head, still panting for breath. “What good are you gonna fucking be if you’re out of your damn mind or have a broken hand because you’ve been an asshole? No fucking good is what. Now get yourself together.” He ended it giving Mace a shake.
Watching all this with a sense of remote entertainment I thought over the people that we now had involved in looking for the women, as well as the level of experience and training that we all had. Why this hit me now I’ll never know, but all of a sudden, I had a feeling of calmness and confidence that I’d never had before. We would find them, and when we found Demingo, the other side of our training would become the valuable asset as we put it to the best use possible.
Turning to say something to Duke I was cut off by Kai’s phone ringing and her saying, “It’s Bo.”
The room went silent as Kai spoke to her. Once the plan was in place we hustled to get our shit together, leaving half of the group behind to assist Mace with finding Ava, Gia and Scarlett. A lot of intel was coming in on their location so I didn’t doubt that he’d be mobilizing himself soon.
It was time to get my fucking woman back.
I didn’t know how long I’d been here for, how long I’d been sitting in this room that smelt of rotting garbage. It was long enough that my wrists were bleeding, the blood trickling down my arms slowly. Every time I moved and pulled, the tension keeping my shoulders where they were, it felt like they were going to rip out of the sockets. My injured hand was on fire and I couldn’t move my fingers, then again, I couldn’t move them on the other hand either. They’d been above me for so long that I doubted I’d ever be able to move them again.
At some point, a woman had come in and had stood in front of me staring as one of the guys tried to pour water down my throat faster than a human body could take it. Each time he did it, he got a perverse enjoyment out of me choking as it went down the wrong pipe and then frantically coughing and gasping for air. The whole time she hadn’t said one thing and she hadn’t done anything, but I didn’t trust anyone.
I’d started sweating and shivering even though it was cold and I was struggling to keep my eyes open. The horrible thought that my injured hand was somehow infected wouldn’t leave my mind. I knew from stories from dad about his days in the military that infections like this could kill someone and were so easy to get, and I hoped that someone found me soon.
I didn’t know how long I was hanging there as I drifted in and out of consciousness. I’d tried to keep my eyes open and tried to stay lucid, but the shivers were too much and I hurt all over now. Even the sound of the door opening now hardly registered in my mind. I didn’t feel fear when someone was in the room like I had before, I just felt like someone had set fire to my body and was then torturing me with knives.
“Piper?” A woman’s voice whispered, but I couldn’t lift my head. “Shit,” it said as cold hands held my wrists and the clinking of metal broke through the haze. “We have to get you out of here.”
My arms fell like lead weights in front of me and my upper body followed them, slumping over with my head hitting something soft that was in front of me.
There was no more talking at that moment while someone used their shoulder to help lift me off the floor. I was braced against it and they were pushing. I wanted to run, but I was struggling to even stand with the help that I was getting.
“Piper,” the voice said sharply, and I focused slightly on the dark-haired woman in front of me. My vision was so blurry, but I could just make out how beautiful she was. “We need to get you moving.”
I tried putting one foot in front of the other and walking like I’d been doing for pretty much my entire life, something that I knew how to do, but that now was so impossible. It felt like every part of me had shards of glass flowing through it and like I was made from jell-o at the same time.
“Can’t.” It sounded like I was screaming the words out, but woman had to get me to repeat it because apparently only my lips were moving.
“Piper, listen to me. My name is Boadicea Harvey. I had the honor of serving with Hunter Black in the US Marines infantry,” Hunter’s name cut through the fog and her words sank in. “I’ve been working with a man called Duke to assist with taking down the trafficking ring set up by Jose Demingo. Do you understand?” Nodding my head slowly I tried not to cry as the sharp knives cut through my brain. “We need to move, now. I have a narrow window that I can use to get you to safety. You also need medical attention now. You have a sepsis infection in your arm from what I assume is an old wound on your hand. There are red striations travelling up your arm and if we leave it any longer the infection in your blood will kill you.” She shifted me so that her arm was around my waist and the arm with my injured hand was over her shoulders. I couldn’t feel it so she must have lifted it. “I also know that the blood flow to your hands has been limited over the last 53 hours, so your hands will be useless. I’m not concerned about them being completely damaged though. I can see that some color is returning to them already.” She sounded so militaristic as she catalogued and identified a host of issues at one time. I tried desperately to focus on the words, but I was struggling to hear them and stay away from the fog
that I just wanted to sink into.
My legs started to give out underneath me, but she gave me a sharp shake. “Piper, focus. We’re leaving. I need you to stay awake just for a couple of minutes, then you can lie down, okay?”
I didn’t even have the strength left to whisper a yes or nod. I just weakly tried to lift my leg as much as I could when she moved forward, but the best I could do was to scrape the toes of my shoes across the floor as she pulled me along.
“Are you with me?” She kept asking me as we moved. Each time I’d twitch in some way instead of trying to talk. “We’re almost there.”
She’d just said that when suddenly the world exploded and I heard bangs coming from all directions. There were a couple of flashes of light and then I heard a shout from the woman who was saving my life, before she let go of me and pushed me down into some long grass in front of us.
“Go,” she growled as she held onto her shoulder, blood coming through her fingers. “Fucking go!” She whisper yelled at me, before turning and running toward a group of men that were heading in our direction.
I found the strength to start scrambling away from them, turning back in time to see one of the men backhand my savior before yelling out to the men who were with him causing them to break off into different directions. The woman who had saved me was now lying on the floor unconscious, her shoulder still bleeding.
Jerking forward to run and try and help her, I was stopped by a strong arm banding around my waist from behind. I tried to scream, but a huge hand covered my face and I was tugged backward. This was it, I was too weak to run, the pain was too much. Images of Sam, Hunter, my family and Sasha flashed through my mind. I made one last ditch effort to break away from whoever was holding me back, but at that moment they picked me up and started running toward the trees behind us.
The whizzing of the scenery was a blur that made my stomach roil and the bile raise into my throat. Looking up, I let out a weak scream as I saw the green and black head of whoever was holding me. They had something covering the bottom of their face too. I wondered if for a minute I was hallucinating because there was no way that a troll would save me, would it?
I tried one last time to get away by jerking my body as hard as I could, but the hands just tightened around me as bullets whizzed audibly past us. The sounds of them hitting the trees in front of us was terrifying.
We cleared the first trees and the troll continued running further into the wooded area. Maybe he had a cave around here?
Finally, he stopped and a couple more trolls appeared from nowhere. Figures, I was going to witness magic and something that the movies had capitalized on for years just before I died. I felt them touching me and lifting my arms which had been hanging limply the whole time.
“Medical…immediately,” I heard them saying as someone looked at my sore hand. I could hear the bangs still surrounding us, but they sounded very calm through the swishing in my ears.
“Pipe,” the voice was familiar, but I didn’t know where it was coming from. I was panting and trying to breathe while the fires melted me. “Piper,” it repeated.
Looking up, I saw the familiar green eyes of Hunter. Eyes that I had memorized years ago and then again, the other night. Cool they had a Hunter troll too.
Using the last of my energy, I smiled at him before the darkness took over and the pain vanished.
“PIPER!”
Kai screeched up to the entrance of the ER. We only just waited for the vehicle to stop moving before we were all exiting and I was grabbing Piper up and running through the entrance doors.
I didn’t even need to yell for help. Duke had called en route and had informed them of our ETA and the situation, so a team was waiting for us and shouted for me to put Piper on the gurney. I did as they told me to, but I wasn’t going to leave her side. I didn’t trust any of these people to not work for Demingo and I couldn’t risk anything else happening to her.
“Septicemia,” one of the doctors working on Piper was saying as he examined the hand that she’d injured before. As he held it, I saw the red streaks making their way from her hand up her arm. Fuck! Then I focused in on her hands and the abnormal color that they were. Just above that on her wrists were deep cuts that were bleeding. I could see blood on the sleeves of her t-shirt, but if she’d had blood on her arms at any point she’d most likely sweated it off. She was drenched.
I stood back focusing in on the medical staff and what they were doing. Fortunately, Blake was standing on the other side of the bed doing the same thing. I vaguely remembered Noah losing it and running toward Bo when she was taken by Demingo’s men. I didn’t know what had happened to him since and although we needed to regroup, my priority was the love of my life lying on the bed in front of me with a group of medical experts working to save her life. On that thought, I swear I whimpered and had to bite my hand to stop myself breaking down completely. I had no idea what they had done to her, the hell that she’d been put through. If, no when she got through this, would she suffer from nightmares or struggle? Seeing Blake reminded me of what had happened to his cousin and the ice that had been taking over my chest squeezed the air out of my lungs.
I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t lose her. I’d never survive. What if they had my son? Where was my phone?
I was patting my body looking for it when I felt a strong hand on my arm and looked up to see Blake holding onto me. “Chill,” he muttered, his eyes going back to Piper. “We’ve got it.” The look of understanding and determination in his eyes smashed the vice around my lungs and I took a deep breath, the black tunnel starting to retreat from my vision. “We got this,” he repeated.
Looking back at Piper and seeing them getting ready to move her, I heard the words that had been said to me not long ago again.
I’m proud of you, too.
I was going to make sure of it. Piper was going to be okay, the kids were going to be okay and Demingo was going to die.
Piper had been in the ICU for two days now. No matter what we tried including using our contacts high up in the government, the doctors wouldn’t let us see her for longer than twenty minutes at a time. Our parents and Sam hadn’t joined us because we still didn’t have a lock down on Demingo so I wanted them to stay safe.
Sam was oblivious to what was going on and was enjoying the fishing trip with his grandparents, but he was starting to miss Piper and had wanted to talk to her each time we’d spoken. We’d succeeded in distracting him initially, but that was becoming almost impossible to do now.
Friends of ours had found Gia, Ava and Scarlett’s location in a cabin outside of Piersville before Mace could even get home. They hadn’t been able to go in until Mace had gotten there because one of the men guarding them was wearing an explosive vest and Mace was just behind Kai in his sniper skills. If they’d shot, they might have set it off and killed the women, so waiting for him to return and take to the trees to neutralize the bomber was the plan that they had gone with. All three women were fine; shaken but no lasting injuries.
Yesterday, Duke, some members of The Knights and Kai had gotten info on a property where some of Demingo’s men were stationed. These men were meant to be monitoring us and making moves on demand from their boss. Fortunately, our men were good and blended into the surrounding scenery so when they went on intel recce’s, they went unnoticed allowing us the element of surprise. As a result, eleven men had been neutralized, two of whom were key players in Demingo’s operation. Unfortunately, it hadn’t been possible to question them, but the photo sent from one of their phones to him would definitely have hit a mark. The photo showed their bodies scattered around the room with the bricks of cocaine and laundered money burning in the corner. The men had picked up the weapons and an anonymous drop off to the authorities had followed. Fortunately, the burning drugs and money had obviously spread to the rest of the building and all that had remained of the isolated building was ash.
There had been an article in the news about it this morning an
d how there were bodies found that were identified by a letter that had apparently blown away from the property and had gotten stuck in a bush far enough away to save it from the fire. In the letter, it outlined that they were a gay cult headed by a Jose Demingo who had shamed their families and the good Lord above by engaging in orgies. As a repentance, they had committed suicide while their leader was away picking up things for them.
I don’t think anyone in any authority believed that bullshit, but we hoped that it struck its mark with Demingo when he read it. They had also had the brains to send the story to the various news channels and publications throughout South America. There’s one thing Demingo took very seriously and that was his dick. He’d considered himself the man, which is probably one of the many reasons he hated us so much. If the photos that we’d recovered from CCTV cameras was correct, Demingo wasn’t as pretty as he used to be, more Frankenstein than frankinscence. His face was melted down one side and he looked hideous. Now, with the news that a man with his name was running homosexual orgie cults…
Compass (Valiant MC Book 1) Page 14
