Twisted Steel: An MC Anthology: Second Edition

by Elizabeth Knox

  “What. Fuck that!” Spark fights with the steering wheel to keep the truck on the road. That last hit must have fucked up the chassis. We are drifting slightly to the right.

  “He won’t hurt me. As long as I’m with you he will try to kill us all but if you let me out, he will leave you alone. I know him and all of his acolytes.” She looks me right in the eyes as if this were a viable solution.

  “No, there is no fucking way that I’m just going to drop you off on the side of the road for the fucking cult to come get you. I told you once already that I was not going to let anyone get you so if I have to give up my life to prevent that shit from happening then that is just what the fuck I’m going to have to do. Don’t say that shit to me again!” I push her head down so that it is further covered by my body. I turn in my seat and let out a few more shots. I hit nothing but at least the car behind us has to slow down a bit.

  “How much control do you have?” I bark at Spark.

  “How much you need?”

  “Enough to get on the side of them?”

  “No can do. I can turn us around?”

  I nod knowing exactly what he was talking about. It’s tricky especially with Dela basically curled up in my lap but it would buy us some time.

  Spark grabs the emergency brake and swings the car so the front is facing the car behind us at the same time putting the truck in reverse so we don’t lose much ground. The sudden movement is enough to surprise the fuck in the car behind us and before he can stop, I pop off two shots, both of them landing right in his forehead. Their car swerves right then left before it careens quickly into the trees on the side.

  Spark rips the wheel to the right and turns us around again so that we are facing the right way. The truck sputters and groans as the frame twists and warps at the speed we are making all of these maneuvers. “Shit, it’s going.” Spark uses all his might to fight the steering wheel.

  We are going to crash, the only question is are we going to crash in the trees or are we going to crash down the fucking edge. “Dela, we’re going to crash. If you wake up before I do. Hide under my body. If I’m dead you take this fucking gun and you shoot anyone who comes near here you understand. My brothers are almost here so they will find us. You get to them. That is your only fucking option you understand me?” I shake her one good time.

  “Wyatt.” She grips onto my shirt, her breath coming fast.

  “No, stop the bullshit! Do you understand?” I scream at her as Spark groans again trying to compensate for the truck wanting to turn to the side.

  “Yes! I understand,” she screams back.

  There is a loud groan and then the back of the truck is lifted up again. The car behind rams us once again and then there is nothing. I don’t hear anything but a high-pitched ring as the truck is flung up into the air and down to the side. I see darkness and light a few times flipping over and over until I start to black out. There is nothing I can do but hold onto Dela and pray that we make it through this and when we do that Dela is still here with me.

  14

  “Wyatt! Wyatt! Wake up!”

  “No! Get off me! Stop!”

  I hear people screaming but my eyes refuse to open. Spark groans next to me but I don’t know what is going on.

  “Wyatt!” Spark screams again.

  My brother is screaming for me, I roll my eyes upwards trying to force my body to do what I want it to do.

  “Wyatt!” This time the scream is from Dela but is moving away from me. She’s moving away.

  They have her.

  My eyes pop open and the first thing I see is her legs as they are being pulled out of the window. My hand flies up and I grab hold of her.

  “Wyatt. Help me! Help!” she screams, and I pull her again. I look to the side briefly to see Spark still in his seat. He is moving around but it looks like he is stuck between me and the door. His side is lying on the ground. I can see the dirt through his window.

  He reaches up with his free hand and grabs onto Dela’s leg as well.

  “Get the fuck off of her!” Spark screams out.

  My gun is on the floor. I can see it but I can’t get to it. I reach behind my head and pull up the headrest. The small piece of the chair comes out immediately and I use the two sharp points as a weapon. I grab the hand that is trying to haul Dela out of the car and bring the makeshift weapon down right on his wrist.

  “Ahhh! he screams out, and Dela drops against the truck. The tension between the two of us pulling in opposite directions no more.

  “Pull me back in! Pull me back!” She scrambles to get in the truck but we need to get out. I can’t fight them stuck in the truck and there is no telling if this shit is going to blow up or anything like that.

  I quickly assess myself making sure that I’m not fatally injured. “Spark! You good?” I grab at him and pull his seatbelt off.

  “Yea, I’m just stuck under you. Move your ass.” He pushes at me.

  “Dela, get off the door so we can get out.” She jumps off but immediately starts screaming again. There must be more outside.

  I swing my body around in my seat and use my feet to kick the door open. It opens after just one kick. I jump out and Spark is right behind me. I left my gun in the car but there is no time to go back for it. There is a man in a dark gray robe pulling on Dela, dragging her on the ground trying to get her back up the side of the road.

  “Get the fuck off her!” I roar and rush him. I feel a twinge of pain in my side but there is nothing that I can do about that right now.

  I knock Dela out of the way and I easily overpower the man in the robe. It’s obvious that he isn’t trained in combat. He brawls but he doesn’t have the skill that I have. All these years in the bureau is enough to make me a lethal person. Dela backs up and Spark grabs her and pulls her behind him. More shots pop off in front of me. They are shooting at me but nothing is going near Spark or Dela. Maybe she is right, that they won’t hurt her. Still won’t change anything. I’m not going to give her up to them just to save my own ass.

  “She doesn’t belong to you,” the man under me says as I push his face into the dirt, trying to get him to stop fighting.

  “Fuck you. She belongs with us now.”

  “He’ll die before he will let you keep her,” he grunts out clearly winded.

  There is another shot, this one explodes the man’s head. I jump up in surprise only to see another man in a gray robe holding the gun. He raises it up to me this time.

  I could try to rush him but I know that he would pull the trigger long before I made it to him.

  Another loud pop echoes and I flinch thinking that the bullet has hit me. Instead, the man in front of me is the one to buckle to the ground crying out in pain and holding his leg. I look over my shoulder to see Cody on the ledge, his gun drawn and aimed at the man on the ground.

  “You good, brother?” Cody calls out. I nod but know that I don’t have time to speak with him. I need information and I need it now.

  I run over to the man that is on the ground and do my best to turn him back over.

  “Where is your compound located? How many people are there? Who are you?” I shake the man trying to get him to answer me.

  “You will never best Gaia,” he speaks as if he is praying.

  “Cut the shit. Tell me what the fuck I want to know.” I shake him again. I see him moving his tongue around in his mouth.

  “Fuck no!” I squeeze his mouth trying to pry his teeth open. He has something in there. He bites down hard and almost instantly his mouth begins to fill up with foaming acid. His eyes bulge and he claws at his own throat as the poison drips down his airway. He grunts and wheezes for a few seconds before he stops breathing altogether.

  Spark runs up behind me. “What the hell happened?” He took a look at the man on the ground. Blood and mucus still trailing out of his mouth and nose as the poison is still running its course through the dead man.

  “He killed himself. Cyanide capsule.”

/>   “Oh fuck. These fuckers aren’t playing around.” Spark stretches his arm back.

  I turn to look at him for the first time and see that he is bleeding from his head and down his neck. “You good?” I point to his head.

  “Yeah, it’s just a fucking scratch.”

  “Wyatt!” Brendan calls for me, my eyes dart to him. “Dela!”

  My eyes scan the area for her quickly but she’s not there. I see her running down the hill.

  “Dela, stop!” I call for her and start to run after her. It takes me only a second to catch up to her. When I do, I can see that she is in hysterics.

  “No, get off of me! Get off!” She tries to pull away from me.

  “No, Jesus Christ! What are you doing? Where are you going?” I turn her and grab her by her shoulders and hold her steady.

  “This is too much! There are too many of them! Didn’t you see what just happened! They would rather kill themselves off then go back to him without bringing me back! They’re too many of them. They will kill all of you. I can’t be responsible for that. I will take my chances alone. Just let me go!” she cries and begs to get away from me.

  “Dela, stop! Just stop right now! Where the fuck do you think you’re going to go? Where are you going to hide? You have nothing. They are going to make sure you never have anything. This is my fucking choice. I chose to put my life on the line. My brothers chose to put their lives on the line for you. There is nothing that you can do or anywhere that you can go that will make us just give up. If you run, they will follow you but so will we. You’re family now whether you want to believe it or not and there is no way we are just going to let you go.”

  “You don’t mean that. You can’t mean that,” she speaks softly, calming down.

  I press my mouth to hers. “The second you laid in my bed and moaned my name you became mine. I mean every fucking word.”

  She stares at me for a second before she completely crumbles in my arms. “Wyatt, it’s too much. It’s too much.”

  “You let me worry about it being too much. Just stay with me. That is all you have to do, have faith in me.”

  “I do.” She nods her head and I walk her back to the cars.

  When I get there, I see Brendan down in the ditch taking photos and examining what is now the crime scene. He takes photos of the men that were involved in the highspeed chase. He is the most thorough of all of us. Being in deep cover situations more than the rest of us he is probably the best of everyone here to figure out what’s what.

  “Where the fuck did they come from?” Cody comes up next to me.

  “From the shopping center. She heard them whistling.”

  “Whistling?” Brendan turns from what he is doing.

  “Yeah, he whistles when he is near. The fucker paralyzes them before he strikes.”

  “What? What does that mean?” Dela asks from my side. “I told you that is his favorite song.”

  “Yes, but it also holds a different meaning for you. I’m almost sure that any of the women that are at the compound know what that song means. It’s a scare tactic. It seizes you up when you hear it. Allows fear to take over. It’s a mind game. He knows that when you hear that song you will be easier to catch,” I explain my reasoning to her. Her eyebrows furrow in like she doesn’t believe what I am saying but after working with countless trauma victims, I know it to be true. That song is a trigger for her. Like PTSD. She’ll forever react in some way to that song no matter where she hears it.

  “So he knows that we have her?” Cody speaks up.

  “You think?” I point to the destroyed truck and cars and the bodies on the road.

  “Then we need to get some help. From what Dela has said there are way too many of them and not enough of us. You need to bring this up to the ADD.” Cody looks at me knowing what that means. There is a possibility that I could lose my job, they could suspend me because I’ve been looking into a case that they told me was closed. They told me to fuck off but how could I when the proof was dropped right in my lap.

  “You’re right. Let’s call this in. We don’t need a bunch of bodies just lying on the road.”

  “What about her?” Winnie speaks up now.

  Dela is already stepping away from the scene. She already told us that she couldn’t trust anyone, that meant government officials as well. What the hell could I do to keep her out of the hands of the bureau. They would want her to make an appearance. They would want to question her. I couldn’t let that happen.

  “She is going to vanish. Winnie, I want you to take her back to the clubhouse and keep her locked down. No one in and no one out. You understand. At least until we know what the outcome is going to be,” I order.

  “Wait, you are locking me up? Isn’t that the same thing as them? I don’t want to be locked up anywhere,” Dela complains.

  “I’m not keeping you locked up for shits and giggles. You have the entire world coming for you and the only place that I know you will be safe is at the damn clubhouse. You are going to stay there until the threat is gone. Once it’s gone if you really want to leave, I’m not going to hold you,” I snarl at her. She is getting on my nerves with this shit. I understand her wanting her independence but I’m going to have to cut all that off while she is still in trouble. One fucking problem at a time.

  She nods her head but she doesn’t say anything else to me. I give Winnie the go ahead and the two of them jump on the bike and they ride back to the compound. When he checks in and tells me that they are safe, I know it’s time to make that call.

  I pull out my phone from my pocket and dial my office. I have a lot to explain. I might as well get this over with now.

  15

  I have been sitting in the interrogation room for hours. I explained the situation to my boss but he didn’t seem to want to let it go. He was dead set on making me out to be the one in the wrong. The evidence was clear. I forwarded all the photos that Brendan took of the truck, the cars behind. The bullet holes in the frame and the blown-out window. It was obvious that this was self-defense but they weren’t letting it go as self-defense nor were they focused on the fact that there was a cult right in their backyard. They were more focused on what they could do to get me in jail.

  “Why didn’t you call for backup the second that you realized that you were being followed? Why didn’t you pull over?”

  “That would have been ill-advised as the two cars were already in chase and shooting at us. My main objective was to get my brother away,” I say, making sure to keep my voice even. As of right now they don’t know that Dela was with us only that the cars followed us from the shopping area and opened fire. I told them about them trying to pull us out of the car and when I tried to question them the one person alive killed himself. Everything was evident in the photos that I sent to them. I made sure that Brendan kept copies in case they decide to say that they couldn’t find them. You would be surprised at how many times evidence just disappears here. I wasn’t going to have any of that shit.

  “Where is the girl?”

  “What girl?

  “The girl you are sure that they are after. You told us that she wasn’t with you but that doesn’t make sense.

  “What about that doesn’t make sense? It’s what happened. Maybe they thought she was with me,” I reply.

  “So, where is she?” Tommy asks again.

  “I just told you, I don’t know.” Something is off with my boss. There is no reason that he should still be asking for her.

  “You’re lying!” he yells at me.

  I sit back and look at him. He is too invested in this.

  “Why don’t you ask Emerson?”

  “He doesn’t . . .” Tommy snaps his jaw shut. He just showed his cards. My Assistant District Deputy knows who Emerson is and is trying to help him. Dela was right, this cult’s reach was wide.

  “Tell him, he will never find her and to just leave her alone.”

  Tommy stands up and stands by the door. “Are you sure thi
s is the fight that you want to have?”

  “I don’t have a choice, it seems.”

  “Your whole family will be affected.”

  “My whole family, you mean everyone’s family. Yeah, I know. That doesn’t mean I’m going to stand down.” I get up from my seat now. “Are you holding me with something because according to all the evidence that was provided to you this is self-defense. Unless, of course, you want to dig deeper into the people that were injured?”

  “No, of course not, Wyatt, we all know that you have always been above reproach.” He smiles and backs away from the door. “You’re free to go.”

  “Thank you.”

  I step by him and out of the back room.

  “Oh, by the way, Preston should be checking in any day now. We have some folks flying out to check in on him,” Lynch says from behind me. My head turns slightly but I don’t address him. He wants me to show fear. He wants to let me know that he has the upper hand. He could have my brother killed if I don’t give Dela up but he could do that anyway.

  I walk over to my desk and pull out a few things there is no way that I’m going to be able to come back here while everything is going on. I would have to go over the Assistant Deputy Director’s head but I didn’t know who I could trust. There is one, Deputy Director Bowman, down in Washington that I have run into from time to time and he seems like a no-nonsense type of person. I could only hope that he hasn’t been affected by the cult over here. I can only hope.

  I send off his contact information to Brendan and Cody on my phone and tell them to get everything we know over to Deputy Director Bowman. They don’t ask questions, just do it.

  My car is in the parking lot of my office building, I jump in the front seat. A knife slides up to my throat before I even have time to react. Someone was hiding in the back seat.

  “Shit!” I freeze.

  “This is how this is going to go down. I can have you and your entire family killed. Everyone you ever cared about. I can destroy your name and your career. But I won’t do it if you give us what we want. Just let her go. Delaney means nothing to you.”