Ransom (Dead Man's Ink #3)

by Callie Hart

  “She’s caused nothing but trouble since the day she showed up, man,” he says. “She’s distracted my friend. Brought Ramirez here. It’s her fault that one of my brothers’ girlfriends is dead. If she hadn’t come back to New Mexico with us, it would be status quo as usual. So no. I really don’t give a shit if you shoot her in the head. Have at it, Alfonso. Either way, I’m walking out of this basement, and I’ll be climbing over your dead body in order to do it.”

  “Bullshit,” Alfonso snarls. “You’re just trying to rile me. She’s Rebel’s bitch. You wouldn’t just let me kill her.”

  Cade pulls an ugly, disinterested face. “Only one way to find out. Test your theory.”

  “How about you don’t test that theory.” I adjust my grip on my gun, sweating over every inch of my body. “How about you let us both by and none of us gets hurt. I just want to get my father and go.”

  “And I told you, your father is fucking dead, whore. We killed him days ago.” He glares at Cade, shaking his head violently from side to side. “I’m not letting you walk out of here, asshole. No fucking way. You humiliated me. You scarred me. You’re going to wish you’d never been born.”

  “You’d be surprised how many people have said that to me,” Cade muses. “None of them ever followed through, though. Some of them tried, of course, but…you know how these things go.” Alfonso looks like he’s boiling inside. I’ve never seen anyone look so angry before. Cade takes a step forward, eyes fixed on the man hovering halfway down the stairs, standing between us and freedom. “Once upon a time, I might have felt sorry for a guy like you, Al. I might have gone a little easier on you the other night. It was pretty clear you were a pathetic, weak, useless sack of shit. I might have just broken a rib or two and let you leave with your pride in tact, but I don’t know. After years of dealing with spineless, pitiful losers who can’t get anything done, I just couldn’t take it anymore. I just had to make you feel worthless. See, I enjoyed it.” Cade takes another step forward, smiling at Alfonso in the most arrogant way.

  “Stop right there, motherfucker. Don’t you take another fucking step.” Alfonso briefly swings his gun around and points it at Cade, but then he swings it back, aiming it at my head. A jolt of adrenalin fires through me, mixed with a considerable stab of relief. I suddenly know what Cade is up to.

  He doesn’t want Alfonso to shoot me. He wants Alfonso to shoot him instead, presumably so I can get a round off and put the bastard down. It’s a horrible, horrible plan that will never work, but I’m sure he knows that. He’s a smart guy. Why the hell would he even dream of risking his life on a long shot like this?

  “Your mother must have been so fucking disappointed in you,” he says. “I have no idea how you fooled Ramirez into hiring you, but he must be kicking himself pretty hard too right now. You can’t even come down here and do this right.”

  “You’re a fucking dead man.” Alfonso trains his gun on Cade, giving him exactly what he wants. He’s going to shoot him, no doubt about it. I want to scream. This is really fucking bad. If Cade gets shot and Alfonso kills him, he’ll be shooting me three seconds later and Cade’s sacrifice will have been for nothing. I can’t breathe. What does he want me to do? How can he expect me to get this right? I’m not Jamie. I haven’t been to war with him. We haven’t saved each other’s asses more times than I can count. My father is probably already dead, and the guilt of that will cripple me for the rest of my life. If I have to carry the guilt of Cade’s death around with me, too, I don’t think I’ll survive it.

  “Do it,” Cade snaps, sneering at Alfonso. “Take your fucking shot. Take it. What’s the worst that can happen?”

  That last comment seems odd. What’s the worst that can happen? Why would he be talking Alfonso through this? It makes no sense. It dawns on me almost instantaneously, though: Cade isn’t talking to the man on the stairs. His, ‘take the fucking shot. What’s the worst that can happen?’ is aimed at me, and he’s waiting on me to follow through and squeeze the trigger.

  I can think of plenty of terrible things that can happen. I could list them off in my head, but there’s no time. There’s no fucking time whatsoever. Cade takes yet another step forward, gritting his teeth. “Come on!” he shouts. “Fucking do it! DO IT!”

  I fire. For good or for bad, I fire. The recoil of the weapon exploding in my hands sends a shockwave of panic through me, and for a moment I’m too stunned to react. Time catches up quickly, as though someone is leaning on the fast forward button, and I see Cade launching himself toward me. Alfonso has disappeared from my line of sight, but does that mean that I shot him? Is he fucking dead? I don’t have a clue. The oxygen leaves my lungs as Cade tackles me to the ground. I make a pained ufffing sound as he lands on top of me, his body covering mine, and I can’t breathe, hear, or see anything. My ears are still ringing from the gunshot. Cade rolls off me and spins onto his back, gun raised, pointed at the stairs, but Alfonso isn’t there.

  Another shot rings out, loud and violent. A bullet hits the concrete wall next to my head, and Cade starts firing, this time aiming at the ground where we were just stood a second ago.

  Alfonso is sprawled out on his side, grimacing, his shirt and his neck drenched in blood. I didn’t kill the bastard but I certainly managed to injure him. Cade’s gun barks again, and Alfonso’s body jerks as the bullet hits him in the stomach, just below his ribcage.

  “Fuck.” Cade grabs me by my shirt and literally slides me behind the wall next to us. A tower of boxes topples over between Cade and Alfonso, sending rubber sex toys tumbling out over the floor.

  “You fucking whore!” Alfonso screams. “This isn’t over. This isn’t fucking over!”

  “Oh, yes it is.” Out of nowhere, Rebel is tearing down the basement stairs, Carnie behind him. The two of them are shooting rapidly, over and over again, and Alfonso is bleeding freely. They shoot him countless times, in his torso, his legs, his arms, and finally, when Rebel hits the bottom of the stairs, in his head. The air smells metallic, of gunpowder and blood.

  Through a haze of concrete dust, Rebel emerges like some kind of ruthless god. He’s covered in blood, his shirt torn, his right hand bleeding, but he looks invincible. He looks terrifying—a nightmare in the flesh—and I have never been happier to see him.

  He drops down to his knees and takes me in his arms, his hands frantically roaming all over my body, looking for injuries. “Jesus, Soph. Are you okay? Tell me. Are you fucking okay?”

  “Yes, yeah, I’m fine, I’m fine.” I really am, which is a goddamn miracle. I should be dead, or at least severely injured, and yet I’m pain free, completely fine. Weird. Not that I’m complaining. Rebel holds my face in his hands, his cool eyes traveling over me, trying to find signs of discomfort, despite my protests. “I’m okay, I promise,” I say, leaning my forehead against his. He lets out a deep breath, hugging me to him. “Are you okay?” I ask.

  “I’m fine. Everyone is fine.”

  “And…” God, I don’t think I can say the words. “My dad? Is…we were too late, weren’t we? Is he…is he dead?”

  Rebel slowly shakes his head, a tiny smile playing at the corner of his lips. “No, sugar. We weren’t too late. Your dad’s alive. He’s just fine. He’s waiting upstairs for you now.” He places a deep, slow kiss on my lips, and my head swims. I’m so fucking relieved. I’m ecstatic. My father’s alive. He’s alive, and he’s waiting to see me. I used to resent my father, feel stifled by him most of the time, but right now I’ve never needed him more.

  “I don’t know about you, sugar,” Rebel says, brushing his thumb along the rise of my bottom lip. “But I’d like to get out of here before the cops show up. What do you say?”

  I manage a weak smile as he helps me up from the floor. “I say I couldn’t agree more. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  REBEL

  Ramirez is dead. Keeler is still sitting on the porch with his head in his hands when we go outside. He informs us
that Julio told him to remind me of the agreement we came to, and then he left. Keeler stops talking. He rocks silently back and forward, knees drawn up underneath his chin, and we leave him in peace. Grief is a funny thing. You think revenge will fill in the hole that grief causes inside you, but more often than not revenge only makes the hole deeper. Bottomless, in some cases.

  Alan Romera stands like a statue when Sophia steps out onto the porch. His face is carved marble, his shoulders rounded in on his body, as if bowed under a great and unbearable burden. Sophia bursts into tears the second she lays eyes on him.

  “Daddy?” she whispers.

  “Hey, pumpkin.” The Doc twists his filthy handkerchief over and over in his hands, looking very unsure of himself. “Are you…are you all right?”

  Sophia nods. “I am. I’m so sorry. God, Daddy, I’m sorry.”

  I back the fuck off. Sophia doesn’t need me loitering on the peripherals as she tries to explain where she’s been for the last six months. He’s going to hate me. He’s going to fucking despise me. Cade saved his daughter in one way, but I was the one who really took her away from him. I was the one responsible for guilting her into staying here in New Mexico.

  There’s so much blame to be thrown around, though. So many fingers to be pointed. I’m too fucking tired and worn into the ground to bother with that right now, so I let Sophia tell her father the truth, and I accept how he’s going to feel about me.

  At the end of the day, it’s how Sophia feels about me that matters, and I’m hopeful that that won’t be changing any time soon. As she speaks to her father, I see him shaking his head, her bowing hers. At once point, the doc takes her head and holds it in his, and she collapses against him, sobbing silently. I want to go to her and take her in my arms, to comfort her, but it’s not my place. Hard though it may be for me to remember, she was the light of someone else’s life before she was the light in mine. Alan hasn’t seen her in six months. They both need this time together to heal the hurt between them.

  I wait twenty minutes; it feels like an eternity. I’d give them even longer, but Cade points out the red and blue flashing lights approaching down the distant fire road leading to the farmhouse and it really is time for us to go. All six of us run over the back fields, heading toward the bikes we left stashed there. Alan makes noise about staying, talking to the cops, explaining to them what happened. It’s only when his daughter tells him how that will pan out for the rest of us that he gives in and runs.

  We’re about three hundred meters from the bikes when the loud, crashing sound of another explosion tears through the early hours of the morning. We all stop, mouths hanging open as the farmhouse goes up in flames. Wood detonates in every direction, rocketing straight up into the air, and the night sky is alive with fire and smoke.

  “You set your charges,” Cade says, staring back over his shoulder at the inferno.

  I don’t say anything. Just nod. It had to be this way. We couldn’t allow the cops to match our DNA with blood spilled at the scene. They’d have found evidence of every single one of us inside that house. We’d all have been fucked.

  The police lights soon blend in with the warm glow cast off by the burning building, and we move on. The sound of our motorcycle engines rumbling into life is blotted out by the roar and crackle of the fire at our back.

  I carry Sophia’s father on the back of my bike as we head back to the compound, and no one stops us. We travel across the desert, aching in our bones, tired and exhausted, and as the miles pass us by and the stars wheel overhead, I do something I haven’t done in a very long time.

  I pray.

  I thank the higher powers of the universe, whomever they might be, that we all made it through tonight safely. I show my eternal gratitude for the fact that the woman I love wasn’t hurt, and that she didn’t lose her father. Beyond that, my mind is empty and my heart is full.

  Sophia is safe.

  The club is safe.

  That’s all that really matters.

  ******

  I know something’s up as soon the compound gates peel back and I see Danny sitting on the steps to the clubhouse, waiting for us. He looks just as tired as we do, which is worrying since things here should have been quiet compared to what just went down on the other side of Freemantle. There’s blood in the dirt. Blood on the ground by the barn.

  Cade sees it, too. He’s tensed, his hands gripped into tight fists at his sides as he jumps off his bike and hurries over to Danny. “What’s wrong? What happened?” he demands.

  Danny cracks his knuckles, shaking his head. “Shay,” he says. “Shay went crazy after you left. She said…”

  “She said what?” Cade

  “She said she was going to show you what a mistake you made tonight. She was so angry. No one could stop her.”

  Carnie’s off his bike and standing in front of Danny now, his arms wrapped tightly around his body. “What did she do, man? What did she do?”

  “She shot Fatty in the fucking head, man. She went down into the barn, and she…” Dread passes over Danny’s face. “She let her out,” he whispers. “She set Maria Rosa free.”

  EPILOGUE

  REBEL

  We should have killed Maria Rosa a long time ago. Cade told me over and over again how sure she was that she was going to get out of the basement, so fucking sure, and I didn’t listen. I mean, why the fuck would I? The door to her cell was an inch thick. She was injured for a long time. How could she escape? I should have known better. I should have seen Shay’s betrayal coming a mile off as well. She’s been simmering for months, quietly and sometimes not so quietly mad over Sophia’s presence in the compound. There are steps that should have been taken a long time ago, and now a Widow Maker is dead, and a psychotically dangerous woman is on the loose.

  Two days have passed since the farmhouse. I thought we’d have some tearful phone calls back to Seattle, where the Doc and Sophia both told their family they were fine, that they were both alive and well, but that hasn’t happened. Sophia’s mom is away on some church retreat in the wilds of Alaska, so she doesn’t even know Alan was missing. As for Soph’s sister, Sloane is so entrenched in her studies that it’s normal for her to be MIA most of the time anyway. So it goes that after some long, painful discussions, Sophia has come to a difficult decision, and once again she’s making sacrifices for the club.

  I hug her to me, throwing my arm around her shoulder as we walk down the hill toward the clubhouse. Night is all round us, pressing in from all sides, endless and eternal. There are no clouds, but the stars seem to be strangely absent, too. Everything is blackness—a strange, heavy kind of night.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” I kiss Sophia on top of her crown, holding her to me. She’s shivering a little despite the warm breeze, which teases at her hair, lifting strands, sending them whirling up around her head.

  She takes a deep breath and then lets it out slowly. “Maybe,” she says. “Maybe not. I thought this would be over by now. I just thought…”

  “You can pick up the phone, you know. All you have to do is pick up the phone and call them. No one in the club will think badly of you for it. You know that, right?”

  She nods, biting her lip. “I do. But this kind of makes sense in a way. I just can’t believe my dad agreed to it. He’s always played everything by the book. He’s a conformist. He’s never broken a law in his life. The fact that he’s about to lie to the cops…a DEA agent, at that…” She shakes her head, stunned. “I never thought he’d do this. Never in a million years.”

  I’m more than a little surprised too, but then again I know exactly what Alan’s going through. I know there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for this woman, no matter how drastic or complicated it seemed. The morning after the farmhouse, Lowell came to the compound, and this time she had a warrant. She ripped the place apart. Thanks to Shay, there were no weapons on the property, and no hysterical Columbians locked in the basement. Lowell went away frustrated and furious, promi
sing to figure out exactly what part we played in Hector Ramirez’s demise, along with our involvement in the transportation of weed and cocaine. As soon as she walked out of the door, Cade said we needed someone on the inside. Someone who could tell us what she was up to. How close she was getting. And Alan Romera put up his hand.

  “I’ll tell her Alexis called me, asking for money. I’ll tell her I know she’s with you and that I think she’s being held against her will. If she thinks I’m in communication with my daughter, she’ll be in touch with me regularly. I’ll feed her information. She’ll tell me what she knows, too, surely?”

  Soph looks around at Cade first and then back at me. “If she thinks I’m here against my will, she’ll come after you.”

  I smile, trying to reassure her. “And maybe she does. But you just tell her the truth. That you want to be here. She won’t be able to disprove that. We alter a few of the details relating to how you came to be here, maybe, but other than that…”

  She nods. She squeezes her father’s hand, tears in her eyes. “What are you going to tell Sloane? Mom?” she whispers. Her voice is thick; I can hear the ache in it. I can feel perfectly well how badly she wants her mom and her sister back in her life, and it damn near kills me.

  Alan’s eyes shine brightly, too. He places a perfunctory kiss on his daughter’s head and then squeezes her hand back. “I can’t tell them this, pumpkin. I can’t lie to them. Not if I can avoid it. So maybe I just don’t tell them anything. Maybe that’s for the best. I’ll be there for them. I’ll take care of them and support them. And when the time comes, we can tell them absolutely everything together. It will be better that way.”