The Jokers. She’d had no idea that they would act so quickly. She’d barely gotten back to her apartment after that last visit with Roger. Barely gotten in the house and tossed her keys into the small dish on the side table in the tiny, linoleum-floored foyer before the door burst open behind her. She hadn’t even had a chance to turn around before a blow to the back of her head had made everything go black. When she’d woken, bound, a bunch of gang bangers staring at her, abject terror had surged through her, a word that itself wasn’t even enough to describe her primal fear. She had fought against hyperventilation, heard only the sound of her heart beat pounding in her ears, her head spinning with lightheadedness, trying to fight off the urge to vomit.
They’d said nothing to her, but the look in their eyes needed no words, no translations. She wanted to demand answers. Where was her sister? Where had they taken her? Was Stacey even still alive? She’d said nothing but clamped her jaw tightly, cursing herself for her stupidity, her naivety. These might not even be the same gang members who had taken her sister. And, as the police had calmly reminded her the last time she’d spoken to them, she didn’t have any actual evidence that her sister had even been kidnapped.
She was so damn foolish. And now look at what happened. Another gang or club as her so-called captor emphasized, also obviously had grudges against the Jokers, but were they good guys or even worse guys? Steel Kings. She had never heard of them before. Where did they come from? As a matter of fact, where was she?
She remembered being in a truck, covered by a tarp, the smell of pot wafting into her nostrils, calming her in spite of her efforts not to breathe it in. She didn’t want calm. She wanted anger and frustration. She even welcomed her fear because it kept her senses sharp and alert.
The sound of the motorcycle rumbling in her ears, the vibration of the engine beneath her, the rock-hard musculature of the man in front of her took up her entire world of senses right now. What would happen to her? No, she wasn’t going to let this be her last moments. No matter what, she would escape these guys, and she would find her sister. She had to!
Nikki would do anything for her sister. She had to keep searching before the most awful of thoughts became true. Whoever had taken Stacey wasn’t planning anything good. At the worst, she could already be dead. Second worst—and something that she really didn’t want to contemplate—her sister might be sold as a sex slave. To disappear forever into an underground visited by the worst of the worst. Sequestered in a house somewhere, or maybe taken to a ship bound for some international destination.
Worst-case scenarios flooded her thoughts, prompting a catch in her throat, warm tears to fill her eyes and spill down her cheeks, only to be swept away by the wind and the speed of the motorcycle upon what she rode. Perhaps taking her farther from her sister, destroying any hope she might have of finding her again.
Stacey! Stay alive, I’m looking for you!
The thought brought her little comfort. Who would be looking for her? Blinking through her tears, the headlights of the motorcycle barely catching the tail lights of the other members of the club as they sped down the narrow asphalt highway, Nikki tried to swallow her fear. As long as she was on the motorcycle, he couldn’t do anything to her. As long as she was on the motorcycle . . .
At that moment, the bike slowed and he swerved. Despite her alarm, she remembered to lean into the turn with him, aligning her body perfectly with that of the guy in front of her. He pulled into a turnoff and then stopped in front of a small, cinderblock structure. A restroom, a rest stop, but it was empty and deserted. No other cars in sight. He pulled the bike to a stop, turned off the engine, and climbed off.
“You have to pee?”
Did she have to . . . yes, she did! She nodded, then slowly climbed off the bike, alarmed when her legs barely wanted to hold her upright. Now the adrenaline was wearing off, and every muscle in her body felt stiff. She glanced toward the small structure, two brown doors interrupting the gray structure, two dim light bulbs in metal cages shining over each, attracting moths, flies, gnats, mosquitoes, whatever other creatures buzzed around the night . . .
“Where am I?” she asked abruptly. He eyed her for several moments with a frown.
“Where do you think you are?”
Without thinking, she snapped back a reply. “How the hell should I know? The last thing I knew, I was in Albuquerque. Now would you mind telling me where the hell I am?” A lifted eyebrow was his only reaction, and she instantly regretted her outburst. She shouldn’t be smart mouthing anybody, not in her situation. He offered a small shrug.
“Just west of downtown Oklahoma City—”
“Oklahoma City!” she gasped. Terror swelled upward, and once again the overly familiar surge of nausea roiled in her stomach as a cold chill raced down her spine. Stacey! She fought back the tears and bit her lip to hide their trembling. The Jokers had taken her through New Mexico and Texas and into Oklahoma? Were they taking her where they had taken her sister or somewhere else? Where was Stacey? Arizona, Southern California, Mexico, or was she already on a ship bound for God knew where?
“No, no, I can’t be in Oklahoma! I—”
“You have to pee?”
The question was asked patiently, but the man’s stance was anything but patient. He glanced from her down the road where the other motorcycles had disappeared and then back to her.
“What’s your name?”
The frown deepened. “Look, lady, you have to pee or not? If you don’t, we’ll hit the road. It’s not a good idea to be out here alone—”
She barely quelled a snort. Seriously? He was telling her where it was safe or not? She opened her mouth to argue, then decided that that argument could wait. She had to empty her bladder, desperately. With a huff, she quickly turned from him and hobbled toward the bathroom door, yanked it open with an accompanying loud squeak, and entered, listening as the heavy door thudded shut loudly behind her.
Two stalls, both of them with broken doors, but at this point she didn’t care. She walked into one of the stalls, already reaching to unbutton her pants, her nose wrinkling in disgust and a gag rising in her throat at the sight of what remained in the toilet. Maybe the water wasn’t working, but she didn’t care. She held her breath, avoided looking into the toilet, and quickly yanked down her pants, squatted over the toilet seat—no way in hell was she going to sit on that—and peed like a racehorse. A minute later, after finding the last few scraps of toilet paper, she shook her head and yanked up her panties and jeans and left the stall.
She glanced once at the rusty sink in which lay a used syringe, and then, again grimacing in disgust, simply wiped her hands on her pants and reached for the door, wanting to get the hell away from there. Discouragement weighed heavily on her shoulders as she left the bathroom. The guy was still there, half-leaning against his bike, legs crossed casually at his ankles.
She didn’t know what got into her, but she wanted to run, to get away, to run from everything. Back to Albuquerque, back to Stacey, back to the calm life that she’d lived only a week ago. A surge of panic consumed her and without thinking, she turned and bolted into the darkness, knowing even as she took her first steps that she would never escape. She had to try anyway. Forcing her stiff, battered body forward, she ran into the darkness. Behind her, she heard a curse and then footsteps racing after her, catching up, closer, and then she was falling, tackled around the waist, plummeting toward the ground. She landed hard, the air knocked from her lungs, her heart pounding so hard by all rights it should have exploded then and there.
The man straddled her and flopped her roughly over onto her back, his body spread out on top of hers, his hands holding hers to the ground, his face mere inches hers, staring down at her, jaw clenched, lips pressed together in annoyance, his stare locked with hers.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Her chest heaved, her breasts pressed against his chest, her hips nestled against his own, his legs straddling he
rs. To her horror, she felt his arousal against her groin. He ground his hips into her groin one time, and then his lips dipped toward hers. No! No! She would bite his tongue off! She would—his lips touched hers, a feathery caress, not at all what she expected. Nikki was so surprised that she froze, her mind tried to understand as his warm lips brushed against hers, almost soothing, almost . . . for a second, and a brief second it was, she relaxed in his grip, surrendered, but then reality came back to her in a rush. A sound escaped her throat, and she pulled away, the sensation of the gentle pressure of his lips against hers permanently implanted in her memory banks.
Without a word, he scrambled off her, lifted her up from the ground, and grabbed her hand. He held that hand like a lover would, but he was no lover. He was her captor, and he wasn’t letting her go. A myriad of emotions raged through her. Shock, dismay, the sexual attraction that she couldn’t deny. Shame on her! Exhaustion suddenly flooded through her, along with despair and fear, not only for herself, but for her sister.
They reached the motorcycle and without a word, he climbed on, then waited for her to climb on behind him. She gazed once into the darkness surrounding them, broken by nothing . . . no street lights, no structures, no nothing, just the blackness of the Oklahoma plains. Oklahoma. She was hundreds if not a thousand miles from her sister.
Nikki choked back a sob, placed her hands on the guy’s shoulders, and then climbed onto the bike behind him. She had no fight left, at least not for the moment. She wrapped her hands around his waist, interlocked her fingers around it, then found the foot pedals where she rested her feet. Once again, he throttled the bike and then shot forward, heading ever deeper into the darkness. Deeper into despair and anguish. Deeper, perhaps, into the end.
5
Seth
“So where is she now?” Levi asked.
“In my cabin.”
Since Grady had left the compound to live at Callie’s house in town, Seth had moved into the recently vacated cinderblock cabin. He’d gotten rid of all the ramshackle furniture that Grady had in there; most of it looked like leftovers from decades ago. He’d bought new stuff online and had it delivered. A couch, a recliner, a bed; and the rest he’d gotten from local retail stores, like bedding, towels, and crap like that. He didn’t want to spend a lot of money, but he did want to be comfortable. He was one of the few members of the motorcycle club who didn’t work at least part-time.
No one knew about his past. That he was one rich bastard, his grandmother having left him a trust that ensured he’d never want in his life. The money was tucked safely away in a bank in downtown Oklahoma City, handy when he needed it, otherwise invested with a financial planner out on the East Coast. He checked in every week or so, sent or received a call from his guy on his cell phone when needed, but otherwise, he let his planner handle things. His needs were simple. A roof over his head, his bike, and gas for his bike. That was about it. He paid his fair share to the club, like everyone else. That was the deal, and everyone stuck to it. To support the club—food, utilities, gas, property taxes, repairs and such—every member of the club paid Levi a percentage of their work checks.
Some guys worked better-paying jobs than others, but it didn’t matter what you made. The percentage that went to the club was the same for everyone. Everyone knew that going in. No one had ever balked, and he doubted they ever would. The Steel Kings were family. Sure, they butted heads on occasion, but what family members didn’t? Church took care of business, and if an argument needed to be settled, a special meeting was called, some more private than others. Their club was an entity in itself, and they were a community, much like the communities in suburbs all across the country. They were self-sufficient. They minded their own business. The lived on the edges of society but supported themselves with good old-fashioned elbow grease.
It was for that reason, among others, that the Steel Kings had a long-standing feud with the Jokers. The Jokers were an outlaw gang. They involved themselves in criminal activity because they were too fucking lazy and too fucking greedy to work for what they wanted or needed. They were predators.
Seth shook his head and pulled his thoughts back to the present. The woman. In his cabin. What the hell was he going to do with her? He knew the rules. If you brought someone into the club’s property, even if it was temporary, you were responsible for his or her care. You paid for their food, their needs, and so on. He could do that. He could provide for the woman if he chose to keep her.
His history wasn’t something that he liked to even think about, mostly because it made him sick to his stomach. Just the memory sent him into a tailspin of anger and frustration. Even now, years past the event. To say that he was estranged from his Seattle-based family would be an understatement, and he thought of them as little as possible.
He referred to the whole sordid mess as “the incident.” Because of that incident, he’d spent two years at the Clallam Bay Corrections Center, a medium-security facility whose inmates consisted primarily of violent offenders. Seth learned a lot during those two years. He’d learned to trust no one, to keep his mouth shut and his fists ready. By the time he got out, he was hard, angry, and lost.
He’d tried just once to contact his mom when he got out, but apparently, the whole family had moved with no forwarding address. It had to have been his stepfather’s idea, but until that day, he couldn’t have imagined his mother going along with it. But what did he know? The phone number they’d had since he was a youngster had been disconnected. Enraged, he’d hitched a ride into the old neighborhood, not terribly surprised to find a different family living in the house he’d grown up in. When he knocked on the neighbor’s door, he’d seen the look of fear in the woman’s eyes after she recognized him.
At that moment, he hated his stepfather Darren with a passion, and his stepsister. In the end, the whole thing had been her fault. The woman told him that the family had moved away a year ago, but she didn’t know where. Whether she was telling the truth, he didn’t know and didn’t care. Not anymore.
He’d left Seattle and headed east, hitchhiking most of the way, not knowing exactly where he was going. It was just past Tucumcari, New Mexico, that a guy on a motorcycle had picked him up hitchhiking. At the time, Seth was nothing much more than skin and bones, hungry, thirsty, and weary. That guy turned out to be Levi Hancock.
Now, eight years later, Levi was president of the Steel Kings motorcycle club, and Seth the vice president. He hadn’t spoken, written, or otherwise communicated with his family since the day the police had taken him away with a felony conviction on his record that ruined any chances he had of doing something meaningful with his life, at least as far as they were concerned. He did have his inheritance in a bank account in Oklahoma City, part of the trust fund that his grandmother had left him when she passed away. He was grateful his grandmother had been gone before all this shit had hit the fan. She had been the only one who ever truly seemed to love him for who he was, forever encouraging, always there for him . . .
“So who is she?”
Levi’s question jarred Seth from his thoughts and he glanced up. Levi was staring at him, expression blank. Seth knew that look and didn’t like it at all. It was like nothing lived behind those dark eyes of his.
“Not sure yet.”
Levi frowned.
“She’s not in a talkative mood,” Seth shrugged, gesturing with his thumb over his shoulder. “I’ve got her in the cabin. After we’re done here, I’ll go and try to have another chat with her. Another thing, Levi. She’s pretty bruised and battered. I don’t know if . . . I don’t know if any of the Jokers . . .” He winced as the word rape came to mind, and he scowled. “Anyway, it might be a good idea to have Doc take a quick look, make sure that she’s okay. No broken bones, no signs of internal injuries, stuff like that.”
“Doc” wasn’t really a doctor, just a former medical student who had dropped out of his fourth year of medical school when the pressure got too much. He’d been with the cl
ub several years now. His skills had come in handy more than once.
“Callie’s due to come by in a little while.” Grady said. “I’ll have her look in with your mystery woman, too. Maybe she’d be more willing to talk to another woman.”
Seth nodded. Callie was an experienced caregiver, a licensed certified nursing assistant who saw plenty at the long-term care center where she worked. It wasn’t just old people she took care of anymore, but younger people recovering from surgeries or sent to rehabilitation following hospital discharge, and an alarmingly growing number of younger patients diagnosed with alcohol or drug-related forms of dementia. She also happened to be a part-time dispatcher for the Oklahoma City PD. Something that surprisingly hadn’t gotten in the way of club business. Yet. He had to give Callie credit. When the shit had hit the fan with her stalker, it had been Grady and the club Callie had turned to, not her police buddies. As much as he’d hated to admit it at first, she was one of them. Maybe she could help figure out who the mystery chick was. Grady was right. She likely would tell her secrets to Callie far more readily than she ever would to Doc.
But what if she was actually hurt? He’d be an asshole not to notice, but maybe he should’ve just taken her to a hospital to get checked out. He could have just taken her there and left her. But he’d hesitated. Why? She might be a good source of information about what the Jokers were up to. He also wanted to know why they had taken her. Something didn’t add up. Were they planning to sell her to a sex trafficker? Or would she suit other purposes? Not only that, but there was something else that prompted him to hang on to her. Something in her eyes. A haunted look. She had pain of her own, pain of loss, that he sensed. He’d seen the look she had in her eyes before. He saw that look every day when he looked in the mirror. Anger, sorrow, pain. It never went away.
Confession Page 4
