We roll into a small town just over the Arkansas border. There’s a bar called The Last Stop where we’re supposed to meet up with the other clubs. We’re not the first to arrive. A row of bikes is lined up outside along the dirt parking lot.
“What do you think this is the last stop for?” Hero asks, joking.
“Last stop before you get to hell?” I offer and we both laugh. Nothing about this is funny. Some son of a bitch has Elise, but he meant to take Hannah. After all this time?
He pulls the door open and holds it for me. It’s dark inside and smells of whiskey and urine. Why the fuck does it smell like urine? Every head in the bar turns to look at us. The bartender reaches under the bar and I know he’s reaching for a shotgun. Then there’s the sound of a chair scooting across the floor and I take my attention away from the bartender briefly to see Wreck approaching us. “Blood,” he says, holding out his hand. The giant bald man has a head that looks ridiculously similar to a circumcised penis, a nasty case of cauliflower ear and a face that might have been run through a meat grinder, but he’s good people. He turns to the bartender. “They’re good. Lords.” When he reaches me, he pulls me into a half-hug, slapping my back. Wreck’s a Hellraiser, and from what I know of the man, he lives that to the fullest.
“Good to see you,” I say. “You remember Hero?”
Wreck nods, holding his hand out for Hero to shake.
“Thanks for meeting us,” Hero says. “Wish it were under better circumstances.”
“Ain’t that the fuckin’ truth. When we heard some jacknut made moves against the Lords by nabbing a woman—I was ready to kill a motherfucker, she an old lady or not.”
“That’s the thing; he got the wrong woman. And the woman he was going after is my old lady now, but he wouldn’t have known that. The stupid fuck took our VP’s wife.”
Chairs and barstools scoot across the floor all over the room as more men leave their tables to gather around us.
“Boss’s old lady?” Wreck asks.
“Yeah. It’s bad, brother. Bad.”
“Where is he?” another Hellraiser asks, though I don’t see which.
“Injured. We were attacked by Riot. Had to cuff him to the bed then knock his ass out to keep him put.” The room lights up with hoots and laughter, even if it fades too soon.
“Sit down. Have a beer,” Wreck says. “We’ll go soon as the others arrive.”
Hero and I take a seat at the bar where the barkeep already has two icy brews uncapped and waiting. This’ll be my only one, but it tastes good going down. More and more ally clubs begin to wander in. The brotherhood is real.
I fill the group in on what went down with Elise and the Riot who attacked while we wait for Tommy’s call. He doesn’t disappoint. Tommy’s a good man to have on the team. Knows his shit better than most.
This fuck is heading toward the border. We have to intercept him before he crosses over.
We spend the next half hour planning our attack and then break. Heading for bikes, or in our case, unfortunately, the van.
While I’m driving, I try Hannah’s phone again. It goes to voicemail. Hero tries Brinley. “Voicemail, too,” he says. Those women. If was of the mind, I’d tan her ass for this. She fucking promised she wouldn’t do anything stupid. Hannah Brown is damn lucky I don’t hit women. What am I supposed to do? The woman I love is out doing god knows what, but Elise is in imminent danger. She has to be the priority.
After checking in with Duke next back at the Missouri chapter to let him know the state of play, we follow the leads Tommy’s given us to a backward, hole-in-the-wall town called Dead River. It’s literally only big enough to have one gas pump at a stand. Can’t even really call it a station, but it surprisingly has a pay-at-the-pump option.
We talk to the man who runs the stand. Describe the guy and the car we’re searching for.
“Well now,” the man says, scratching at the stubble on his face. “Seems I seen that car.” We know he did. Tommy gave us the info from the credit card ping.
“How long ago?” Hero asks.
“Hmm… maybe a couple hours ago, give or take. I can check the camera.” Camera? I look over the pump and sure enough, there’s a small camera embedded in the pump face.
“Yeah. If we can get that information, it’d be great,” I say, hoping like hell to hurry the old man up.
He wanders back to the stand and goes inside through a back door. There’s not even a window on the front of the wood. It legit looks like a fruit stand we’d see on the side of the road back home, but there’s a whole wall of cigarettes, a small assortment of candy, some nudie magazines, a cash register, and apparently below where the register sets, there’s a shelf with the computer hooked up to the video feed. He calls up the video and scrolls until we see the car with the time stamp. Two fucking hours ago.
Shit.
“Thanks,” I say. “Do you know which way he left?”
“Yep. Seems to me he turned right at the stop.”
“Right? But that heads back north Oklahoma way.”
“Yer right, but that’s where I saw him turn.”
Why the hell would the man head back north when he’s trying for the border? A disturbing thought hits me. Does he know that we’re on him? Is he taking us on a wild chase? Either way, we have to follow the lead wherever it leads us.
While I’m driving, Hero calls Duke again to fill him in. We drive for fucking ever until we have to stop for the night. It sucks, but if we don’t get rest, tracking the man will become virtually impossible. A sleep-deprived mind helps no one, especially not Elise.
Boss predictably loses his shit when he finds out we’ve stopped for the night. I ask about Chaos and Crass. They’re doing well enough that they’re being moved from intensive care. Scotch has been with them while contacting all our friends. I feel better knowing a brother in good health, a badass brother at that, is there for protection in case any Riot cowards decide to try it on again with our injured men.
I check into the hotel. Hero walks down to a food truck that sells Chinese food. I can deal. Love those noodles. He walks back with two big bags, one for each of us, then we each kick off our boots and take one of the beds. We watch the news, checking for anything out of the ordinary, while we eat. He’s keeping his shit together, fortunately and unfortunately, because if the asshole pulled something, we’d have a direction to go.
As soon as I’m done eating, I throw the bag away and flip off the light closest to me. Getting up early to make better time. Allies have spread out all over the region. Covering a greater surface gives us a better chance of finding her. Plus, he might be looking for Lords, but the chances of him knowing we brought along the Outcasts, Hellraisers, and Sons of Sin are far less likely.
I close my eyes and listen to Hero moving around the room, throwing his trash away. My brain doesn’t want to shut off, so my sleep is fitful. My alarm goes off when it’s still dark out. Hero and I check out then make a call to Tommy. It sounds like we’ve woken him up.
“Sorry, bud,” I say. “But we need a direction.”
“No, it’s fine. I only fell asleep about fifteen minutes ago. Been up all night. His card has pinged again in a few places. Last place was a hotel near Tulsa.”
“Right. Send the info to Hero.” I click off and take the interstate leading up Tulsa way. We spend hours on the road. The hotel he stayed in was two hundred miles from where we stopped. It’s not much, but doesn’t appear to be a roach motel, either. Flipping off my headlights, I do a slow scan of the parking lot. His car’s not here.
Shit.
We park in front of the lobby. It’s transition time from the night auditor to the daytime clerk. I block the night auditor’s path and her eyes grow wide. “Not here to hurt you,” I say. “Need information. There was a man…” Hero hands her his phone with the pics that Caity had taken. “Did you see this car?”
“Yes. He checked out probably an hour ago. I remember because it was an odd time to check
out. He had a woman with him in the car. I saw her sleeping in the front seat when he took off. I didn’t know he had a woman with him when he checked in.”
“She was sleeping?” I ask.
“She appeared to be. Head hanging back against the headrest with her neck bent in sort of an uncomfortable angle. She’ll feel that one when she wakes up.”
“Do you know which way they went?”
“Sorry, no,” she answers. “I can’t see from inside.”
“Right. Thanks very much,” I say.
She smiles at me but looks to Hero. “If you ever want to grab a drink, I know a few spots.”
“That’s kind of you, but my wife doesn’t like me to date other women and besides, I’m just passing through.”
“That’s cool. Should’ve figured a guy who looks like you would be taken. What about you?” she asks me.
Clearly, the woman has no problem with bikers. That, or she wants to take a walk on the wild side. “Thanks for the offer, but ditto what he said. Wife and passing through.”
She shrugs. “It was worth a shot. Have a good rest of your day.”
We turn back to the van. She was pretty enough; long, brown hair with big curls it looked like she put a lot of time into, stunning blue eyes, but she’s not Hannah. No woman on this Earth does for me what Hannah does.
We keep heading north, and while I continue to drive, Hero checks back in with Tommy, putting him on speaker.
“We got him heading for the canyon,” he says. Fucking great. The Grand Canyon.
“Okay, thanks, Tommy, man. We have a destination at least.” Hero hangs up the phone and brings up a map. We decide on the quickest route to take from our current location and I merge onto another interstate.
We eat up the miles, but they take longer to digest than either of us would like. The van is old and so long as we don’t overdo it, it should last a good while longer. Not overdoing it, however, means keeping to the speed limit. The last thing we need is a breakdown. It’s hard though when everything in me wants to floor this sucker and see what she’s made of.
Eventually, we start seeing signs for the canyon. Now, where in the canyon? No clue. Here’s hoping we get another ping off his credit card. When a text comes in from Tommy, I’m ecstatic. The fucker stopped at a small store outside Eagle’s Nest. Hero looks it up to get us a direction and it’s not too much longer before we hit the dusty road where the store sits at the end of the lane. It’s for people heading down into the canyon. End of the Road Stop.
I pull the van in front and both of us climb out to stretch our legs before heading inside. The old man behind the counter looks like he’s been living here since the canyon was a small hole. I’m not sure how he’s even standing. He’s wearing oxygen and wheezes when he talks and even with all that, I know if I stepped out of line, this guy could end me. He has that look about him.
Hero hands him his phone. “We’re looking for this guy, this car. The woman with him was kidnapped and we’re trying to get her back.”
“Man came through all right, but ain’t no woman with him. Not unless he locked her in the back of the van.”
“You sure?”
“Positive. Didn’t see no woman.”
This is getting us nowhere. I got a bad feeling we really were made over a couple states ago. “He’s sending us on a fucking goose chase, man.”
“What do we do now?”
I pull out a pack of smokes from my pocket and light one. This shit just keeps getting worse.
“If it helps,” the old man says, “he took the road down into the canyon and that’s the only one for miles. He ain’t getting off it anytime soon.”
“Thank you, sir.” Hero flicks the man a two-fingered salute and we turn to get back in the white beast of a van. The road is bumpy, full of rocks and potholes in the dirt. Then we finally get the call we’ve been waiting for.
Tommy again. “Get out of the canyon. He was throwing you off. He gave his card to someone because we just picked up his car in the desert. Right outside Lupton, Arizona. It was empty.”
“Godmotherfuckingdammit,” I shout, hitting the steering wheel.
“If you can connect to I-40, you can follow it to Lupton—figure out where to go from there. Keep it together, man,” Tommy warns.
Right. Keep it together when my friend’s woman is in the hands of a sex trader. Easy for him to say—no, it ain’t. He and Boss have been tight their whole lives.
“I’m good now. Hero, find a way to get us out of here.”
I take the loop he found and head back up to the lane with the End of the Road Stop. We find our connection to I-40 and haul ass. We’re a good four hours behind, but they have the van, which means he either ditched it for another or is walking.
I can’t take any chances. Our old van rattles something terrible as I speed down the interstate. I manage to shave off an hour of time. When we reach Lupton, he’s nowhere to be seen. Hero and I set out into the desert a bit to follow a lead someone working at a bank had for us. Apparently when he was heading into work inside the bank, the witness saw a woman coming out of an outside restroom at a gas station next door. A man waited for her, grabbing her by the arm. The two looked to argue and the woman took the man off-guard kneeing him in the balls hard enough to bring him to his knees. Then she took off running. The witness thought it was a lovers’ spat and didn’t want to be late clocking in so he didn’t think twice about it until we came in asking questions.
We’re an hour in when I see something on the ground. It’s lying there, not moving, a body. The question is: whose? When I pull over for us to check it out, we see the asshole beaten to a pulp with a bullet between his brows. No Elise anywhere.
Hero and I quickly dial 911 and wait for the police to show up. They’ve been in contact with Tommy and know we’ve been trailing. Because we’re so far out, we’re losing valuable time waiting, but the cops are on it too. We have the other brothers from the different Lords chapters and our allies out looking too.
In the distance I hear the sirens and see the flashers. When they pull up next to our van, I greet the officer in charge. Typical suit. Not intimidated by a couple of bikers in the least.
“Found him. Didn’t touch a thing,” I say, my hands to my hips as I survey the scene. “I’m guessing with the lack of blood, this was the dumpsite, not the kill site.”
“Thanks, detective,” the actual detective says and we both laugh, even though now I think he’s an asshole. “I got that too.”
“What do you need from us?” I ask.
“If you let Officer Johnson fingerprint you, we should be good to go. We need more, DNA sample or whatever, we’ll be in touch.”
“You know we live in Kentucky?” Hero asks.
“Thornbriar. Sgt. Tommy Doyle informed us of everything. So long as I can trust his word, and as a fellow officer, I trust his word—I’ll find you if I need you.”
“Good show. Now we need to get back on the road.”
As we’re walking to the car, Hero’s phone rings. It’s a number we don’t recognize. He answers on speaker so he doesn’t have to repeat the call. “You got Hero.”
“Thank god,” the voice says. “My fingers were shaking so bad; I didn’t know if I dialed the right number.”
Elise.
9.
Hannah
We had a couple of near misses when we were traveling south, forcing us to lie low, which cut into our travel time, but these were Lords from some other chapter and Lords from any chapter aren’t real happy to see a Horde. Especially a Horde without his brothers for protection. And I had no idea if any of them would recognize Caity as our president’s wife. It was better not to take a chance.
We’ve been following a Riot for close to an hour now. Seeing as there aren’t any Riot compounds close by, we feel as if we’re on the right track. He takes an exit, turning to head for a small town just off the highway. Even bastard bad guys need to pee.
The problem is, once we
get into town, we can’t find him, like at all. Where did he go? Vlad waves us over. Both trucks pull to the side of the road and we get out. He approaches our group.
“I don’t like this,” he says. “Something’s wrong. I feel it.” Coming from a Horde, that means something.
“What are you thinking?” I ask.
“Don’t know, but keep your guard up. Let’s turn back for the highway and keep south,” he orders.
I’d be lying if I said that stretching my legs doesn’t feel damn good, but we’ve got a job to do. I climb back in the truck and our little caravan pulls a U-turn, going off the shoulder almost into the treeline and swooping around back in the opposite treeline before straightening out and heading back in the direction we came from. We only get a quarter mile down the road when a black SUV pulls out of a hidden drive or break in the trees and speeds up until it clips the tail end of Frankie’s truck. She begins to lose control as it fishtails, but she regains it and speeds up.
The black SUV speeds up too, crashing into the back harder this time. When she fishtails again, she loses control, skidding off onto the shoulder and coming to rest by hitting a tree. The SUV speeds up, clipping the back of Caitlin’s truck.
“Grab the Glock!” she shouts at me and I immediately open the glovebox to grab it out.
“Open your window and shoot.”
Shit. Okay.
I can do this.
I roll down the glass, lean out the window, and pull the trigger. Nothing happens. Crap! I forgot about the safety. That takes an extra ten seconds to correct my mistake and then I lean out again, shooting first for the SUV’s tire. I’m not a great shot at high speed. Vlad must hear the shots because he spins around on his bike, almost wiping out. Unfortunately, my ten-second foible gave them time to arm themselves and the bullets start flying.
Caitlin swerves to avoid being hit—these guys are seriously better shots than me—but we hear the tire pop and she loses control. We’ve got no choice but to stop.
“Out of the truck,” Vlad orders. Getting behind the vehicle, he leans around popping off shots. Caitlin, Brin and I jump out and run to the back of the truck. I keep Brin pushed down to the ground blocked by a tire.
Blood Revealed (Brimstone Lords MC Book 6) Page 11
