Kaeden Read online

  “Boss, this is my girl, you understand? This is my fucking girl, and these bastards, this Reaper bastard, he took her instead of killing me. I was ready to die, boss; you’ve got to believe that. I stood there ready to die for this club. I’ve never asked for anything. Not once. But now I’m asking. I need this girl.”

  He watches me for a long time after I’m done talking, in silence, and then sighs and folds his arms. He leans back in his chair, looking almost like a surly teenager.

  “If the Nine Circles can take our women any time they want,” I go on, when he just keeps staring at me, “then what the fuck are we? What sort of men are we? What sort of club are we? We both know what that sick fuck could be doing to her right now. Our only hope is that he wants to keep her alive; alive and … so that he can use her as a valuable hostage. But you didn’t see him, boss. Even with a mask on, I can tell there is something wrong with that man.”

  “Silence,” Dirk mutters, finally unfolding his arms. “There’s more going on here than you know about.”

  “What do you mean?” What could be more important than this? I almost ask the question but stop myself. I don’t want the boss to think I’ve completely lost my head to this girl. Hell, I can’t let myself think a thing like that. I’m an outlaw; I’ve got to remember that. Then what is this new pain in my chest, this ache, every time I think of her cute-as-hell smile?

  “Reaper used our concern for you as a distraction last night, burning down three of our warehouses and damaging four more. He killed two unpatched men and injured Kenny; shot him right through the hand. You got off lucky with that shoulder shot, Silence. Kenny’ll never use that hand right again. They made fools of us last night and now you come in here talking to me about some piece you haven’t even made your old lady. How long’ve you known this girl, eh?” He leans up, his eyes going wide and his old man’s lips covered with clinging spit. “You don’t come in here demanding shit, Silence, not after last night.”

  I lean back, trying to process it all. Warehouses destroyed—which means guns and merchandise destroyed—and others damaged; men injured, dead. It’s difficult to believe that so much has happened in so little time, but Reaper must’ve planned this. His original plan must’ve been to take me and distract them that way, but his crazy fucked-up desires got in the way. Still, he got what he wanted: the club worried, distracted, their top hitter lying with lead in his flesh.

  “Fuck,” I mutter.

  “Fuck is right,” Dirk says, leaning back again now. He unclenches his fists with a visible effort and lays his hands flat on the desk.

  “We still have to find her,” I say a moment later, even if I know it’s the last thing I ought to be saying right now. He expects me, as his top guy, to immediately start going after the Nine Circles. What he doesn’t want to hear is that I’ve lost my head to some girl who isn’t even my old lady. But I’m not here to be what he wants me to be, goddamn it. I’m here to … Fucking hell, everything has flipped on its head overnight, and now I don’t even know how to justify myself. I’ve never even felt the need to justify myself before today. I open my mouth, searching for more words, but no more come. I can only stare at the boss and wait for a response.

  He chews the inside of his cheek, his mouth closed, and then clicks his neck from side to side. “That isn’t what I expected you to say,” he mutters.

  “Yeah, me neither,” I admit. “But there it is, boss. Just think of it like this. If you had a girl you actually gave a damn about and she was being held by that crazy fuck, what’d you do?”

  “But as far as I know, you’ve only known this girl for, what, a few days? If every girl one of our fellas fucked was considered an old lady, then what the fuck would we do? We’d have more old ladies than brothers; ten times more. We can’t waste club resources on just another girl.”

  I lean up, unable to stop myself, and then stand up like a bear rising to its full height. That’s how it feels, anyway, and that’s how the boss looks at me. “She’s not just another girl, boss. She’s my girl.”

  “But not your old lady,” he says, narrowing his eyes. I can tell that I’m dangerously close to going too far. “Did you not hear what I said, Silence? These bastards’ve done more than kidnap some girl last night.”

  “Boss,” I say, “you need to know that she’s more than some girl to me. I’ve told you that already and I don’t like hearing her talked about like that. I don’t know why, all right? If you want the truth of it … But I have to find her, and I know that’ll be a hell of a lot easier with some club resources. So will you help me or not?”

  “Not,” Dirk says, standing up himself now. He’s a big man, but much smaller than me. “You can have Shotgun, but that’s all. I can’t waste brothers on something like this. It’s just … fucking hell, Silence. I was counting on you for this.”

  “Reaper’ll be with the girl. How about I promise that me and Shotgun’ll kill as many of these fuckers as we can when we save her? But I need to leave now, boss, because if you’re not going to help me I’ve wasted enough time already.”

  His eyes get even narrower. I get the sense that he’d like to force me to do what he wants, but that he knows there’s no way he can manage it. Instead he waves a hand at the door. “All right, but find this girl quick. I want you back taking orders as soon as goddamn possible. Jesus, Silence, do you love this girl or something?”

  I take a step back, the question is so unexpected. The boss has never asked me about how I feel about anything; it’s never been relevant.

  “Love her?” I laugh, because that is the response a man gives when love comes into the conversation. But the laugh sounds hollow even to me, forced, like I’m pretending to be the man I was before all this went down. “I don’t know, boss,” I go on, seeing that he actually expects an answer. “I guess I don’t know what to say to a question like that. I hardly know her, truth be told. All I know is that the idea of this bastard laying a finger on her makes my blood turn cold.”

  I leave before he can ask anything else, pacing through the bar and going out to my bike. My shoulder tugs at me every few seconds, but once I get used to the constant presence of pain it isn’t so bad. I climb onto my bike and then dial Shotgun.

  “Any update?” I ask, when he picks up.

  “I’m riding back to the clubhouse now. I’ll be there in ten. Just sit tight.”

  “All right.”

  I hang up the phone and climb from my bike, wander to the clubhouse, and lean against it. There’s a packet of cigarettes in my pocket, which I guess Shotgun put there thinking I’d want them after getting shot. I take one out, along with a lighter, and stare at them both. I stare at them for a few minutes—which feels like a long time with Fiona constantly on my mind—and then light it … and then toss the still-lit cigarette to the ground and crush it with my boot.

  “Did you find her?” I ask, when Shotgun comes walking over.

  “I think so,” he says, picking at his scar, something he does when he’s nervous. So, something he very rarely does. “What did the boss say about more men? I’m guessing you asked? And I’m guessed he told you about everything that happened.”

  “Yeah, and yeah. But he said no. We’ve got to get riding. It’s just me and you, Shotgun.”

  “Then let’s get to it. Just follow me. I’ll brief you when we get there.” We bump knuckles and walk back to our bikes. “Let’s stop off at the armory on the way, too. Our personal armory. I reckon we need some rifles.”

  10

  Fiona

  Reaper paces up and down in front of me, the light from the naked bulb catching his smile at weird angles, making him look ghoulish one moment and clown-like the next. There’s something horribly unsettling about this man, who on the street might look normal—except for his size—but down here in this basement looks like a true psychopath. It’s like he can finally let the real him out. The basement is empty apart from us: him pacing, and me tied to a chair with my arms behind my back, my ankles s
ecured to the table legs. It’s a disgusting position to be in: exposed, open to any attack he decides to throw.

  But he hasn’t hit me … yet. He will, though. It’s just a matter of time. Upstairs, men laugh and glasses clink, a party happening right above hell.

  “So you really expect me to believe that you don’t know anything,” he says, walking over to me slowly. He has his hands behind his back and he leans down, grinning at me. “Is that what you are telling me, Fiona? That you are this man’s old lady and you have never overheard one single detail about the business?”

  “I don’t know anything,” I mutter, for the tenth or eleventh time. “I just … We don’t exactly talk about his work, you know. One time I tried to ask him about work and he went crazy, started throwing dishes everywhere and almost hit me. He told me I can’t ever ask about his business because it’s none of my business.” My writer’s mind spills out the details I didn’t even know were part of this false story. “One time he told me that if I ever asked about his job he’d take me out into the desert and kill me. I’m his old lady, sure, but we haven’t got a good relationship. I think he might hate me, a little, and love me just as much.”

  I feel bad lying about Kaeden, but I’ll feel worse if Reaper takes that pistol from his hip and presses it against my head.

  “If what you are saying is true, then you have no worth to me. You are just some useless whore I can kill whenever I feel like it. Why should I keep you alive, or unharmed, if you are no use to me?”

  “But I am!” I snap, showing way too much fear. I challenge anybody not to be afraid when they have a giant psychopath standing over them. “Like I said before, Kaeden will pay a lot of money for my release. But he does care about me. And he also cares about respect! If you keep me alive and unharmed, unspoiled …” The phrase unspoiled feels perversely ridiculous on my tongue, but it’s the same phrase I overheard Reaper use with his men earlier. “Then you’ll be able to use me as leverage. If you hurt me, or do something worse, he’ll probably just let you keep me.”

  As I spin this tale I pray that it’s not true, that he’ll d save me no matter what. The moment I keep returning to is how he roared out for me to stop when I offered myself up. That must mean he cares … right?

  Reaper takes out his gun, a big silver thing with a massive barrel, and idly aims it at me. I’ve never had a gun pointed at me before today, and all the thoughts I had about it beforehand, how I would react, how brave I would be, how I would stand my ground, they all evaporate with the possibility of death lurking in the pitch-dark barrel. I keep waiting for a flash, constantly on edge, constantly flinching. All he has to do is pull that trigger … it seems unreal.

  “I have a feeling that you’re playing games with me,” he says. “I don’t like cunts who play games; I have to be honest with you. Maybe that’s unfair of me. Maybe cunts have every right to play games as much as anybody else, but I can only tell you my personal opinion. I knew a cunt once who tried to play a game with me. She was sitting in that chair, in fact, right where you are. She wasn’t dressed as whorish as you, but …” He shrugs and sighs, as though discussing the changing weather. “She was spinning me a tall tale and I didn’t take kindly to that, so I removed her from the chair and I bent her over and I stripped down her pants, and then I took this gun and I slid it deep inside the cunt’s cunt. I slid it as deep as it would go—without lube—and then I asked her if she was spinning me a tale. She admitted it then, and told me the truth. But by then it was too late. It was too tempting, you see: the way she was bent over with that barrel stuffed right up inside of her. I pulled the trigger.” He winces, shaking his head. “I wouldn’t recommend it, Fiona. I really wouldn’t.”

  I lick my lips, abruptly wishing that I really did have something to tell him, something small, something that would buy me some time. But … “I really don’t know anything. I swear to God, I don’t. I swear on my parents’ graves. I don’t know anything about his business. You can do whatever you want to me and that answer will never change! Because it’s the truth!”

  “You’re right about one thing,” he says, getting very close now, so near that I can smell women’s perfume on him. I don’t know where he got that scent—it’s not the same perfume I’m wearing—and just thinking about where he might’ve picked it up sends chills through my bones. “I can do anything I want with you now, cunt. Any damn thing. So why don’t you think about that for the next half hour, eh, and maybe you’ll decide to stop being such an uncooperative little whore. Because you need to know one thing: I won’t be so nice once I get some whisky in me.”

  With that, he barrels to the creaky wooden staircase and walks up, opening the door and disappearing into the cheering above. I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding until it comes rushing out of my lungs; a sob follows it, a single tear sliding down my cheeks. I ignore the pain and the devastating knowledge that he really can, like he says, do anything he wants to me. Instead I focus on slicing at the ropes that bind my wrists. I’ve been at it all night, running the jagged nail of my forefinger against the material. At first it seemed futile, but after ten-plus hours, the rope is halfway cut. My finger burns and stings, but I press on, slicing my finger even quicker.

  I try to keep Kaeden from my mind, because every time he rises up in my head he doesn’t have anything nice to say. My mind is playing tricks on me, sure, but that’s what I get for having an overactive imagination.

  “You can’t escape him,” he tells me calmly, sounding none too bothered by it. “He’s done this more times than you’d believe, Fiona. He’s going to go up there and get liquored up and then come down here and play with you. He might rape you, but he probably won’t do that right away. First he’ll mess around with you a little bit, make you beg, make you cry, make you say demeaning things about yourself. You know, that sort of shit.”

  “He’ll save me,” I whisper under my breath. “Kaeden will save me.”

  “Will I?” he laughs in my head. “Shit, I wish somebody would’ve told me. Right now I’m lying in a hospital bed with a busted artery, bleeding out. I’m not coming to save you, you stupid woman. Even if I wasn’t nearly dead, why would I save you? You’re not my old lady, even if you’d like to be. You’re just some girl, some flesh I used for a little bit. That’s all. I don’t care about you.”

  I cough back the tears, but they press on anyway. I know that sleeplessness has something do with it; intellectually, I know that, but it’s little consolation when his voice is so stark and real in my head.

  “And what the fuck do you think you’re going to achieve with that?” He laughs harshly. “You’re going to cut the rope with your fingernail? Goddamn, I knew you weren’t the brightest bulb since you dropped out of college and worked as a two-bit waitress, but …”

  I haven’t told Kaeden about dropping out of college. I hold onto that fact until his face turns to mist, and then I focus everything I have on just slicing the rope, ignoring the way my nail jabs into my finger every time, just working it back and forth as quickly as I can. Close now, so close … I stop dead-still when the basement door opens and Reaper comes lumbering down the steps, far less steady than he was when he walked up the stairs. He walks on shaky steps toward me.

  “I warned you,” he whispers, reeking of whisky and something else. “So, what have you got to say now? Eh? What have you got to say now, you fucking hole?” He leaps across the room and stops close to me, propping his hands on the arms of the chair, his knuckles jabbing into my forearms. “Got anymore tall tales, or are you finally going to tell me something?” He leans even closer, baring his teeth, his breath making me want to gag. “I don’t like being lied to, little whore.”

  “I’ll tell you something,” I breathe, hardly able to get the words out. “I have … I have some information.” My mind does backflips as he leans away; I’m just happy for him not to be so close to me anymore, the threat of violence so real. It’s real now, but it seems more so when he’s dominating m
y personal space.

  “What?” he snaps. “Spit it out.” He seems annoyed that I’m actually offering him something. I guess he would prefer it if he had to wring it out of me.

  “I, uh …”

  He grins. “Go on,” he says. “But remember what I said. I really, really hate liars.”

  “I know where they keep a bunch of guns!” I blurt.

  “Is that so?” he says, nodding like an indulgent teacher. It’s like he knows something I don’t, something that would instantly disprove my lie. “Go on, then, tell me more—”

  Outside—above me—something makes a loud bang; there’s a crack, and then another bang. I have no idea what it is until Reaper instinctively takes out his pistol and goes to the bottom of the stairs. “The fuck is going on up there?” he calls.

  “Gunfire, boss,” somebody replies.

  “Fuck!” he hisses, spinning on the spot and pacing over to me. He hefts his pistol, aims, and then flips it over in his hand. The butt comes down with ferocious speed to within a hair of my cheek, so close I feel a tiny gust of wind. “There is no fucking warehouse I don’t know about, you lying whore. When I return …”

  He pounds up the stairs, the whole basement shuddering. I let out another pent-up breath and then return to the ropes, slicing all the quicker as more gunfire fills the air outside. Kaeden? But I can’t dare to hope. It could be Kaeden, or it could be someone else, someone worse than Reaper, someone who won’t bother torturing me before they kill me.

  11

  Kaeden

  “This is the place?” I ask, as we crouch down on the roof of a temporarily closed restaurant. There’s building work being done on it but all the builders haven’t arrived yet, since it’s only 6:00 in the morning. We hide ourselves in the upper story of the building, behind some wooden scaffolding. The bar sits across the street, the sounds of partying spilling out onto the sidewalk. Everyone’s going crazy, having the time of their lives, glasses clinking, men roaring … and there are about a dozen bikes parked out front. A man sits on the roof of the bar, but he’s barely paying attention, probably pissed to be on guard duty.