Fractured & Formidable: The Sacred Hearts MC Book V (24 page)

Revelator…

Trig was quiet, like sniper quiet, in the seat beside me. I
didn’t particularly feel the need to fill the silence as we drove, but at the
same time I could tell something was eating my partner, and that was just
something I couldn’t leave alone.

“What’s eating you man?”

“What, aside from my club getting shot to hell, my best
friend dying and the fact my Sunshine girl is wrecked?” He made a sound
somewhere between derisive and disgusted and his hands tightened on the wheel
of his Jeep, the steering apparatus giving a groan of protest.

“It’s not real yet. Reaver being gone,” I said, and it
wasn’t, at least for me. I was still running on a mixed fuel of anger and
fading adrenaline. Mostly rage at this point and if it was one thing that could
fuel me for days at a time it was my rage. I cracked the knuckles of my left
hand.

“It’s as real as it gets buddy… It’s as real as it fucking
gets,” Trig observed dispassionately and I turned my attention to the dark
rushing past the outside of the windows.

“Yeah,” I agreed quietly.

By the time Trigger pulled us past the gate and up the long
drive of Point Nowhere and finally up to the corrugated steel building, I was
ready to work out some of this aggression. More than ready.

We climbed out of the Jeep beside my Chevelle, our doors
clipping shut in unison. Dray pulled up beside the Jeep with Dragon in the
passenger seat of his Trans-Am. We waited as Doc climbed out of the back and we
went into the building pretty much in order. Dragon, Dray, Trig, Doc then me.
Disney stood up from where he’d propped himself on the edge of a low table
against one of the opposite walls. He clasped hands with Trigger and then me,
and looked just about tore up from the floor up. Emotion shining in his brown
eyes, silently pleading with us to tell him it wasn’t true.

“Sunshine is back at the club with Hayden in Reave’s room.
Cutter, The Kraken’s President is in with Hayden but I really need you to go
and look out for our girl,” he held out the keys to their Jeep and Dis nodded,
taking them and held out my keys to me.

“Thanks man,” I gave him a watered down half smile.

“He’s really gone then?” he asked us quietly. Trig couldn’t
look at him, his gaze pinned to the floor, and so I did the talking.

“Yeah man. Doesn’t feel like it, but we need to be strong
for each other as much as for our girls.”

I hugged him. Dis was a sensitive guy and had had a bad run
of it. Reaver had been his mentor as he’d been coming up in the club. Dis
choked, and cracked a little on the surface and a low rumbling laugh filtered
towards us from across the room. I stiffened and looked over, our guest was
none other than the dumb son of a bitch I’d beaten the motherfucking brakes off
of in the ring a little over a month ago, the illustrious Nord. I sniffed.

“Dis, Blue, Cell, get you gone back to the house,” Dragon
ordered and his voice rang, cold steel.

“If you don’t mind, Pres. I’d like to stay. This is the best
part.” Duracell’s expression was cold and he was sporting a hell of a bruise
along his cheekbone.

“Surprised you got this big bastard to cooperate,” Dray
remarked. Blue smiled, showing a whole lot of teeth and Dis sniffed, clearing
his throat.

“He didn’t. He was aiming for Blue and I jumped him from
behind. I choked him out the way you showed me,” Disney gave me a look and I
let my pride shine right on through.

“Scrapper to the last, ain’t you Puddin’?” I asked looking
up at him.

He nodded, “It was just him and one other dude that broke in
to the out building with our rooms in it. Duracell shot the other guy; he was
going to shoot me in the back while I was choking the shit out of this one.” He
was looking the man hanging from the ceiling up and down before eventually
tearing his eyes from him and meeting Trig’s.

“I wish I’d been in the main building, maybe if…” Trigger
was already shaking his head.

“Don’t even think it. Just do me a solid, and go look after
our girl. You did good Dis. You did real good.” Trigger pounded the equally
tall, but way lankier younger dude on the back. Dis made for the door, Blue
keeping pace. Silent as ever.

“See you back at the house bro!” Duracell called and Blue
waved over his shoulder. Those two had the weirdest fucking dynamic, but none
of us had quite figured it out yet. Truthfully, it was none of our damn
business.

As the gravel outside crunched beneath the departing Jeep’s
tires, I turned my attention back to our guest. His hands were cuffed in front
of him, the hook from an engine hoist mounted to the center beam that was the
spine of the outbuilding’s ceiling, held the links between the manacles fast.
His arms were stretched high above his head and he’d been hoisted so his feet
hung a good four to six inches off the ground.

He had a blue bandana between his teeth and his hair hung in
a long ass fucking braid down his back, wisps escaping and flying around his
face. Someone had relieved him of his jacket and cut, which lay in a heap on
the floor beside him. The moniker of the suicide king made bile rise hot and
furious along with my rage, scalding the back of my throat. I racked my neck
from side to side and found the Nord’s gaze fixed on me; I met it with a hard
stare of my own.

Dragon pulled a metal chair from against a wall and walked
out to where he was in front of, but a decent enough distance away from the
man. He set the chair down and sighed.

“Got some questions for you boy,” he said as he pulled out
his cigarettes and shook one from the pack. He pressed it between his lips. When
he spoke again it sent the cancer stick bobbing as he fished for his lighter.

“’n how you answer is gonna have a direct bearing on how you’re
treated from here on out,” he punctuated his proclamation by lighting his cig.

“You get me?” He snapped his lighter closed, and rolled his
dark eyes up to meet the bastard’s. The bastard hanging from our ceiling like a
side of beef.

The Nord snorted and turned his head. Dray went up and
pulled the gag out of his mouth. The Nord spit and kicked out at Dray, barely
glancing his shoulder as the younger, more agile man ditched off to the side. I
growled but The Nord was speaking.

“Man, fuck you!”

Dragon cocked his head to the side and dropped into the
seat, slouching, leaning way back. He hooked a thumb into one of his front belt
loops, and cigarette grasped between index and middle fingers, took a
thoughtful drag.

His dark eyes raking the other man over in contemplation, he
exhaled, the smoke curling up towards the ceiling before he said dryly, “Now
you see, so far we’ve treated you with as much hospitality as we could muster.
I mean sure, you been hanging there a while, but you ain’t been beat on and you
sure ain’t dead. So you might be a bit uncomfortable, but I’m just trying to
have a friendly chat here is all. Think we can do that?” The Nord’s expression
was stark, as blank as a slate that’d yet to be written on.

“So, what made you boys decide to pay us a house call?”
Dragon asked.

The Nord turned his head to the side and stared off into
space, pointedly refusing to answer. Dragon’s mouth turned down at the corner
and an eyebrow went up, he didn’t look at all surprised or amused in the same
expression. Trig’s hands fell on my shoulders, fingers wrapping around my
collar and I let him take my coat. I rolled my shoulders and stripped my shirt over
my head, and then I cracked my knuckles on both hands, squeezing them into
fists, getting a feel, making myself ready.

“Like I said, how this is gonna go is going to be completely
up to you. We ain’t gotta do this.” Dragon contemplated the stubbornly silent
man and finally after several moments of silence sighed out.

“Go to it Rev, don’t hurt him too bad or too quick,” Dragon
ordered. I nodded, Doc’s voice filtered out from the corner just at the edge of
The Nord’s vision.

“Oh there ain’t nothin’ Rev can do that I can’t fix. I can
put him back together enough to take plenty of what we dish out and have him
comin’ ‘round for a round two.” The Nord’s eyes widened a bit as Doc ejected
some liquid from the tip of a hypodermic needle.

I went to the bigger man and Dray caught him around the
legs, holding him fast like a heavy bag for me. It wasn’t fair sport, but then
again, I had no problem letting the deepest darkest part of me take the reins
here. There was no guilt for what I was about to do. None at all. The image of
my girl’s tearstained face, of Everett’s low and strained voice telling me that
one of these fucks had a gun pointed to my Red’s head, in her face and that she
fucking told the SOB she
forgave him!
Knowing he was going to pull the
trigger, knowing he was going to snuff her out and take her from me
for-fucking-ever
…

No, there wasn’t one iota of guilt as I let my first punch
fly. If anything, there was a surge of utter satisfaction. The Nord gave an
oomph of surprise as my kidney shot landed and he writhed, flopping like a
landed fish for several moments. I knew how much that shit hurt but there was
no sympathy to be had. Not from me, not from my brothers. He was going to die
tonight; we just didn’t need him to know that. We needed him to believe he had
a chance at survival. We needed to give him a glimmer of hope to hold on to,
that if he told us what we wanted to know, what we needed to know, that the
pain would stop. That he would be tended to, that we might even let him go.

I worked him over methodically, but he was one tough son of
a bitch. Doc finally stepped up, a scalpel in his hand and cocked his head to
the side considering, after about an hour of us getting nowhere.

“Think we should be thinking more like Reave.”

We all went very still and I swallowed hard. Doc was one of
the milder mannered brothers. For him to go there, to even be standing here,
was a testament to how far and how deeply losing his woman affected him. The
Nord, tried feebly to raise his head, he was bleeding pretty freely from his
nose and a cut on his cheek, another above his eye.

“Doc…” I said but the older man wasn’t listening to me.

“You killed my woman,” he said softly, “She had kids,
grandkids… What am I supposed to tell her grandbabies? Huh? What do I say to
her daughter, to her granddaughter, her grandson?” he asked softly.

“You tell them she was a
whore,
” The Nord sneered.

Duracell snorted, “That was really original. Hey Doc, step
off man, I’m tired of playing with this fool. I got a better idea.”

Doc was staring daggers up at the Nord, who was staring
right back and smiling pretty fucking evilly. Doc stepped back and let
Duracell, who was holding a handheld little Taser, step up. Duracell smiled,
and it was that smile he usually reserved for the girls back at the club when
he was tryin’ to get some. He fired up the little Taser with a loud crackle and
for the first time, The Nord looked uneasy.

Duracell started with the soles of the dude’s feet. He
started talking, then screaming when the pain, mixed with the smell of his own flesh
cooking, got up to his nose. Took everything I had not to gag. None of us let a
damned thing show. Truthfully, I didn’t think Duracell had it in him to get
that evil. At any rate, we got what we fucking wanted but it wasn’t pretty.

When Dragon was sure he’d told us everything, he put the
fucker out of his misery by blowing half his face off, and half his fucking
brain with it, with his fucking hand cannon. We all stood lost in our own
thoughts for a minute before Dray swore, low and fierce.

“Fuck!”

“Think he was lyin’?” Doc asked, and he half sounded
hopeful.

“No.” I said dispassionately.

“Who the fuck you think it could be?” he asked.

“No one at the club,” Trigger was scowling, “Not a brother
or one of the Ol’ Ladies but someone near the club…” My partner was scowling
one of the deepest and fiercest scowls I’d ever seen on record from him, and
I’d seen some real doozeys in my time.

“A fuckin’ rat. Huh. Didn’t see that one comin’,” Dragon
uttered and we all exchanged looks.

The Nord had told us that there weren’t supposed to be that
many men at the club; that it was just supposed to be a few of us guys and the
women. That the Cunt’s VP had given the order, but they all knew the orders
came from Griz. They were told to go in and take all of the girls out. No one
had bet on any advanced warning coming through, that a sniper would get two of
them before they even breeched the front door. He’d said they’d been assured
that six guys would be enough.

“Seriously, who the fuck you think it could be?” Doc said,
and he looked like he was past his fucking limit for tonight.  

“We never would have had any warning at all if Data hadn’t
hooked up those fucking cameras down the drive and off the back fence,” Trig
grunted, “That’s what makes me say none of our boys or women are the rat, they
all knew about the cameras, but The Suicide Cunts didn’t or they would have
avoided them. I mean, shit, they would have been easy as fuck to avoid if they
knew they were there but they walked right on by. Data called immediately,
blathering on about motion sensors texting him, which let me and Reave get into
position before they hit. Let us warn Dis and the guys out back.”

“They had way more information than they ever should’ve had
in the first place. We need to find that leak,” Dray stared dispassionately
down at the body on the floor.

“Cops have wind of a war going on, we’re going to have to
lay low for a while, and if those cock suckers have any sense at all, they will
too. We know if any of ‘em got away?” Dragon glanced from one face to the next.

“I got two out front.”

“Chandra took out one, Everett got another, Reaver hurt the
one that got him bad but I finished him off.” I ticked them off on my fingers
as I listed them off.