by Katie Ashley
“Where is the American woman?” I demanded.
“Fuck. You.”
Pressing my knife against his throat, I growled, “The gringa with red hair. Where is she?”
When he shook his head defiantly, the seething anger racing through me reached a volatile point—one where I no longer saw reason. Since he was of no use to me, I plunged the knife into the man’s throat. After severing his artery, I released him, letting him drop to the floor.
Sputtering and convulsing, he began to bleed out over the white marble floor. As I stared down at the man in disgust, rage filled me. Although I should have reined myself in, I couldn’t stop myself from kicking him over and over again in the gut and groin.
Once the man was still, I jerked my knife out of his neck. Since I could always use another weapon, I took his rifle and swung it over my shoulder. Just as I started out of the bedroom, a low moan caused me to whirl around. The room had appeared empty when I looked inside. As my gaze flicked around the room, another moan came from the other side of the room. With my finger on my gun’s trigger, I started slowly across the marble floor. When I got around the side of the bed, I was met with the sight of a pool of blood and a female body.
“Jesus Christ,” I muttered at the sight of the crumpled form in front of me. Shifting my guns, I dropped to the floor. It was a woman wearing only a man’s white dress shirt. Besides the blood, her body was black and blue with bruises. Someone had done a real number on her. It was obvious she had been left to die.
My hand froze after I’d reached to push the strands of auburn hair out of the girl’s face. Sarah had auburn hair. Was it possible that I had unknowingly found her? Could it be this easy?
“Sarah?” I questioned. “Sarah?” My tone had grown frantic. Her swollen eyelids fluttered at the sound of my voice. “Are you Sarah Edgeway?”
“Annabel,” she whispered.
It felt like a harsh kick to the gut that it wasn’t Sarah. But at the same time, I knew I had to save this girl. Drawing her to me, I slid one of my arms under her back and the other under her legs. When I eased us off the floor, she cried out in pain. “I’m sorry. I’m going to get you help. I promise.”
She surprised me by opening her eyes and gazing up at me. “J-Jesus?” she croaked.
It took me a moment to process that with my unkempt hair and beard I’d made her think of the religious figure. At the hopeful look in her bloodshot eyes, I felt terrible for having to let her down. “No, I’m Rev,” I said lamely.
My words seemed to be of little comfort to her as she grimaced in pain. “Hurts.”
“I know. Stay with me. I’m going to get you out of here.”
When I got to the doorway, I stuck my head out and peered left and right. It appeared to be clear, so I started out of the bedroom. Cradling the girl in my arms made it a little more difficult to make our way through the maze of rooms.
Just as I got to the doorway of the house, the stinging bite of a bullet pierced my left calf. “Motherfucker,” I groaned before whirling around. The moment I saw it wasn’t one of our guys who might’ve shot in mistake, I started firing. I clipped the guy in the shoulder, sending him crashing to the ground.
Throwing open the front door, I waited for any gunfire in response. When everything remained silent, I eased out onto the veranda. Peering into the night, I saw one of the relief vans sitting outside the gates. My left leg dragged slightly behind me as I hustled as fast as I could. I was halfway across the courtyard when an explosion rocketed through the compound, sending me crashing to the ground.
The next few seconds ticked by agonizingly, as if the world had slowed to a crawl. The blast had robbed me of my hearing, and I struggled with the feeling of having cotton in my ears. Gradually, I heard a chorus of agonized screams along with various voices yelling.
“Come on, Rev,” someone said at my side. I glanced up to see Chulo standing over me. He grabbed my arm and helped hoist me up. I then bent over and picked up the girl. “Fuck, man. You’ve been hit.”
“It ain’t bad. She’s in worse shape,” I replied.
“You sure you got her?”
I nodded. “You just cover our asses, so I don’t get nailed again.”
“You got it.”
Carrying Annabel with my wounded leg seemed to take forever to get through the gate. Just as we reached the van, Breakneck came running over to us. “You found her?” he asked, his face lighting up.
His question caused my chest to tighten in agony. I didn’t know how I was going to kill his hope. Finally, I shook my head. “No, man, this isn’t Sarah. I found her in Mendoza’s private quarters. She’s been beaten almost to death.”
Breakneck’s face fell. “It’s not my Sarah?”
“I’m so sorry. Maybe one of the others has her.”
Shouts and gunfire tore our attention to what was happening beyond the gate. Our group of men came around the corner of the house. Some were running, while others were barely limping along. Most were covered in blackened soot and ash.
“What the fuck happened?” I demanded.
“The bunker where he kept the girls . . .” Bishop shook his head. “It was rigged with explosives. The second we got through the alarm system, someone blew it all up.”
I closed my eyes. It was a fucking coward’s defense strategy. Destroy the evidence of your crimes when you were about to get caught. In this case, Mendoza sacrificed the lives of the young women for no reason at all.
When I opened my eyes, I saw that Breakneck was staring wide-eyed at the flames billowing into the night sky. It was painful to watch as the realization washed over him. An agonized cry tore from his lips as he sank to his knees on the ground. To come this far only to lose Sarah in the end was brutal.
“Okay, boys, let’s get the fuck out of here before the reinforcements arrive,” Chulo ordered.
With anguished eyes, Breakneck whirled around. “No. We can’t leave. Sarah’s still in there.”
Bishop placed a hand on Breakneck’s back. “I’m sorry, man. She’s gone.”
“You don’t know that. We don’t know unless we find her body.”
Chulo grunted in frustration. “Listen, man, you forget any idea about going back for her body because there ain’t nothing left. That place was wired so tight the feds won’t find a scrap of anything. You get me?”
Although a look of defeat flashed across Breakneck’s face, he didn’t respond. He once again resumed staring at the flames.
Glancing down at the girl in my arms, I said, “Chulo, we need a hospital for her.”
“And for you,” he replied.
“You were hit?” Bishop questioned.
“It’s nothing.”
“Yeah, well, that nothing looks like it’s bleeding pretty bad,” Nero observed.
“Whatever.” With the girl weighing heavy in my arms, I went to get her settled in the van. When I started to ease her down on the seat, I noticed the blood pooling down her thighs. “Jesus,” I muttered. Whirling around, I grabbed Breakneck’s arm. “Forget about me. She’s hemorrhaging or something.”
Breakneck threw a glance at Annabel before returning his stare to the inferno at the compound. “I . . . I can’t.”
Grabbing him by the shoulders, I shoved him into the side of the van. “Listen to me. I’m sorry we didn’t get to Sarah in time. I’m sorry that you lost her. But you can’t shut down. We’ve got a girl who needs your help.”
Breakneck shoved me away. “Fuck you!”
“Guys, we gotta move. Now,” Chulo said.
The second van cranked up its engine. I shook my head at Breakneck. “What about your fucking Hippocratic oath, huh?”
Breakneck glared at me. “My little girl was just murdered, you bastard. I don’t give a shit about anyone else. You can fucking bleed out for all I care.”
“You think this is what Sarah would want? You think she would be proud her old man was refusing to treat someone—a girl who had been through the same hell she
had?”
Breakneck refused to look at me. Instead, he was staring at something on the girl’s hand. He brushed past me to go over to her. He took her hand in his and then brought it closer to his face. “This was Sarah’s.”
My brows rose in surprise. “Maybe this girl and Sarah were friends.”
Breakneck gently laid the girl’s hand on her chest. He exhaled an anguished breath. Glancing over his shoulder at Chulo, he said, “We need the closest hospital or clinic. With that bleeding, coupled with whatever internal injuries she’s sustained, she’s got maybe an hour. I need to get in and stop the bleeding.”
Chulo glanced from Breakneck to me. “Thirty miles up the road there’s a hospital. It ain’t much, and it sure as hell ain’t no trauma center.”
“I’ll make do,” Breakneck replied.
“One good thing is most of the staff can be bribed, and we’re going to need that for sure,” Chulo said.
“Fine. Let’s go,” I replied.
As we started the van, I surveyed Breakneck one last time. With muscles taut throughout his body, the heart-wrenching agony was written over his face as well. His baby girl was dead. Murdered. It was likely that the finality of Sarah’s death would leave him a broken man. For our mission not to have been completely in vain, Annabel had to live.
With a swift nod in his direction, I tried to convey to Breakneck all my unspoken sympathy along with my thanks.
He shook his head. “Don’t be thanking me yet. She’s got a helluva long way to go to survive.” Although there was doubt in his voice, there was also a hint of firm resolve.
FIVE
ANNABEL
As I floated back into consciousness, a sigh escaped my lips. The excruciating pain that had cloaked me was gone. While I appreciated the blessed relief, a sudden panic seeped into my pores. Did the newfound peace mean I was dead?
Prickly fear crept from the top of my head down to my feet, and I shivered. My groggy mind whirled with questions. Where was I? What had happened to me? When I tried desperately to widen my eyes to see where I was, they would only open halfway. They felt too swollen to fully open.
Just as I struggled to remember what had caused my eyes to swell, the events of the last few hours came racing back to me. Mendoza’s face masked in rage, his fists flying in fury, and his harsh words, “I’ll kill you for letting another man’s name come off your lips.”
When a bright, blinding light snapped on above me, a hoarse scream broke across my busted lips. Any peace I had felt was fleeting as I realized I wasn’t in heaven. Instead, I was surely back in hell. But as I started thrashing around, I realized I wasn’t in Mendoza’s quarters. I was laid out on a hard table. Once an antiseptic smell entered my nose, I couldn’t help wondering if I was in a hospital.
“It’s okay, sweetheart. No one is going to hurt you.”
I froze at the kind words, which were spoken with such care. Fluttering my eyelids, I managed to open my eyes enough to see someone I didn’t recognize in front of me. He didn’t wear a Diablo’s cut. Instead, he was outfitted in medical scrubs. As if he could sense my fear and the questions I had racing through my mind, he said in a low, kind voice, “My name is Dr. Edgeway. One of my men found you back at the compound. You were hurt badly, and you needed surgery to save your life.”
Vaguely I remembered men arriving at the compound. Even though I had been in such agony, I remembered the chaos around me—the screaming¸ the explosions, the loud, threatening voices. But Mendoza had beaten me so badly I couldn’t do anything but lie on the floor and await my fate. Just as I felt myself fading, I had seen Jesus. He had gotten me out of Mendoza’s quarters. My savior had told me his name. I racked my brain to try to remember it. Finally it came to me.
“Rev?” I questioned.
The doctor’s brows shot up in surprise. “He’s just outside. If you want him, I’ll have him come in.”
For reasons I couldn’t understand, I wanted the stranger with me. “Please.”
He nodded. As he turned to the door, the room began to grow darker. I fought hard to stay awake to see my savior. When I saw him framed in the doorway, I couldn’t fight any longer, and I once again fell under the harsh tide.
When I resurfaced, I found myself in a darkened room. Relief flooded me as I imagined I must’ve made it out of surgery. When I shifted in bed, pain tore through my abdomen, causing me to gasp. A warm hand met mine, and I immediately jerked away, recoiling from the touch. I could hear the panic in the muffled cry of apprehension that escaped my lips. Who was touching me? Where was Dr. Edgeway? I didn’t like the nearly constant uncertainty I now felt.
“Shh, Annabel, it’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you.”
That voice. It didn’t belong to the doctor from before, but somehow it was still familiar to me. Slowly I turned my head on the pillow, searching through the darkness for him. A light flicked on over my head, and I was finally able to see him. His kind blue eyes met mine, and they instantly eased some of the fear. The striking color seemed such a contrast to his mahogany hair. He sat in an uncomfortable-looking chair pulled up against the bed. In the silence, I drank in his comforting appearance—his long, jeans-encased legs, the T-shirt that appeared to be covered in blood or dirt, his shoulder-length hair that was swept back from the face that gave me a reassuring smile, his broad chest.
When I realized we were alone in the room, sharp jabs of fear prickled over my skin. My rational mind told me to be frightened of him. He was a stranger—a strange man at that. He towered over me with muscles that could inflict great harm. But everything I needed to know about him was in his eyes. Searching them showed me that he was a gentle giant, and he seemed like someone that I could trust.
At what must’ve seemed like my continued apprehension, Rev held his hands up. “I’m not going to hurt you, I swear. As long as I have a breath in me, no one is ever going to hurt you again. You’re safe.”
I stared at him, weighing his words. “Y-You saved me,” I whispered.
“I guess you could say that,” he replied. I was shocked when he shyly ducked his head. The reaction seemed so foreign from the tough-guy persona he exuded.
“You got me away from Mendoza and that horrible place.”
“Yeah, I did.”
“So you saved me, and I’d like to thank you.”
He glanced up to give me a sad smile. “You’re welcome.”
When I tried pushing myself up in bed, pain once again charged through my midsection like a locomotive, causing me to wince. “Do you need more pain medicine?” Rev asked.
“No!” I answered a little more loudly and emphatically than I should have. I felt embarrassed at Rev’s raised brows. “I’ll be fine,” I added more calmly. The truth was I didn’t like feeling woozy and incapacitated. The last time I had been drugged was when I had been kidnapped.
Once I had ridden out the pain, I asked, “How long have I been out?”
“A day.”
I gasped. “I was out that long?”
“After being beaten and going through surgery, you needed it.”
“How bad was I?”
Rev grimaced. “Breakneck wasn’t sure you would make it through the surgery.”
“Breakneck?”
Rev chuckled. “I mean, Dr. Edgeway.”
“He was very kind to me when I woke up before surgery.”
“He’s an amazing doctor. If anyone could have saved you, it was him.”
Staring into Rev’s face, I recalled more of what had happened before I went into surgery. “I asked him to get you, didn’t I?”
He nodded. “And I came to you.”
“Yes, you did,” I murmured as I vaguely remembered his standing in the doorway before I’d slipped into unconsciousness again.
“I stayed by your side the entire time you were in recovery. It’s probably good we are in Mexico because I’m pretty sure an American hospital wouldn’t have allowed me to stay.”
I couldn’t rationalize why I f
ound myself so drawn to him or why I had felt the need to have him with me during surgery. After all, he was a stranger to me. Sure, he had proven himself to some degree by rescuing me from the depths of hell, but I still knew so little about who he was. Was Rev really a knight in shining armor or had I once again met a wolf in sheep’s clothing?
When I shook myself free of my distracting thoughts, I found Rev staring at me. I hadn’t cared about my appearance since I had been kidnapped. Although I had been forced to look good for Mendoza, I didn’t seek his approval. For some strange reason, though, I now found myself worrying about what Rev thought of me. I brought my hand, which was currently tethered to an IV pole, to my hair. “I must be a mess.”
“No. I was just thinking how much better you already look since the surgery. I was so scared for you when I found you in the compound.”
“I thought you were Jesus,” I murmured, alluding to what I had said at the compound.
“I’m still just Rev,” he teased.
For some reason, I found myself smiling at his response. It felt good to smile again and to have someone tease me. It made me think of the past, before everything that had happened to me with Mendoza. “So, what kind of name is Rev?” I asked.
“Road name.”
I jerked my hand from his in revulsion. No, it can’t be true. Surely someone as kind and caring as Rev couldn’t possibly be like Johnny and his friends.
When I continued staring at him, Rev said, “It’s not what you think.”
“You’re a biker, right? What else is there to think?”
“I’m a Hells Raider. We’re nothing like the Diablos.”
“You sure about that?” I countered before I could stop myself.
A defiant look flashed in his eyes. “I’ve never laid a hand on a woman that wasn’t consensual. And I’ve sure as hell never beaten one. Even if I’d wanted to, my club would have taken my cut if I did. One of our bylaws is that no man is ever to abuse his old lady or any other woman.”
