Thrash (22 page)

PJ whimpers from the other side of the
bed and then barks loudly. Her butt’s up in the air, and she
continues to whimper. Ruby wipes her nose and crawls the three feet
to the corner of the bed and peers around and screams. She scampers
around the corner while she wails. Jumping up on the bed and out of
the way, PJ lies down and whimpers with all of her attention
focused on Ruby. I stand up and look over the side. Ruby’s scooped
up a bloody Tegan in her arms and has her once clean hand, which is
now covered in dripping blood, over Tegan’s neck. “No!” Ruby cries
and screams the word again and again until all that’s left are tiny
little whispers of disbelief and pain. I grab one of Princess’s
throw blankets and hand it to Ruby. We create a makeshift bandage
to try to stop the bleeding.

“
Stay here and keep
pressure on that. I’ll get the vet over here ASAP,” I say and walk
to the sliding glass door. “And we’re going to find Princess, I
promise.” I rush out of the sliding glass door and down the deck to
where Grady’s bent over in the grass. He shakes his head back and
forth.

“
This is wrong,” he grinds
out. “So fucking wrong.” I get closer and find Chief lying in the
grass. His body is limp, and his chest isn’t moving. Grady stands
and wipes his eyes. Chief’s dead.

“
This ain’t fucking
right,” he says while he makes a circle and raises his hands in the
air. “Chief’s dead. Are you fucking happy now?” he screams as he
charges at Trigger. I take a look at Trigger, whose eyes are red
and glassy. He sucks up the tears that are threatening to fall. He
just stands there as Grady makes impact and slams him into the
grass. Laying his arms out at his sides, Triggers takes hit after
hit that Grady offers. Jim doesn’t let it get too far before he and
Wyatt pull Grady and Trigger apart. I stand motionless on the side
as I watch my club fall apart, and each of my brothers come to
terms with their individual losses. After I’ve taken my moment to
be selfish, I walk over to Trigger and lift him off the ground.
Grady mainly went for his gut and didn’t do much damage to his
face.

“
Come on, we have to find
Princess,” I say and lead Trigger back into the house as our
brothers follow.

Chapter 17

”
Warehouse on Fifth,” I
say and hang up the phone with the deputy chief. My brothers and I
are crowded around the table in the chapel with maps and ammo laid
out in front of us. I look around the table to find them nodding,
with the exception of Ryan. He’s scowling at the map with his gun
in his hand. He’s been making us all a little more than nervous the
last several hours, but nobody has big enough balls to tell him so.
Ruby tried to talk to him, but all he did was stalk past her and
bark at her not to fucking talk to him. Ever since, we’ve just let
him be. Even Grady’s noticed how he’s taking the situation, but I
don’t know that it’s going to change his mind about anything. That
is, if and when we find Princess. And here’s hoping we find her
alive and unharmed.

I load up my body with as much
firepower as I can. I got a gun in each ankle strap and a knife in
my right in addition to the knife on the left of my waist. Two
extra rounds of ammo in my pockets and a gun in its shoulder
holster as well as one in the back of my jeans and the rifle over
my shoulder. Five guns and two knives in total and enough
ammunition to take down half an army. My brothers are all locked
and loaded with as much firepower as I have, if not more, as they
file out of the chapel. I let everybody else go in front of me,
and, as I walk out last, I take one final look at the chapel with
the realization that if shit gets too violent, I might not see it
again.

It’s days like today, when shit goes
south and everybody’s falling apart on the inside and the club’s
battered on the outside, that I hate this life. I sometimes wonder
what could have become of me had I been a garbage man or maybe a
cop. Cops aren’t any less dirty than we are. The only real
difference is that we get to play by our own rules, and I like that
a fuck of a lot more than the shit they have to go by. But maybe if
I was a garbage man I wouldn’t have had to see my mentor dead in
the grass, and I wouldn’t be walking into what could very likely be
a trap in order to save a girl who never asked for us to do any of
this shit on her behalf, but deserves it all the same. And I know
where my head should be, but all I can think about is Nic and if
she’s safe. All I can do is battle with the urge to ride to her
house and make sure everything’s okay. That’s not where my priority
needs to be right now, and I can’t do that to Princess. We got a
tip that there’s a few black sedans outside of a warehouse on Fifth
Street. It’s our best lead so far and, it’s been hours. If she’s
not there, we might be fucked. This isn’t our first rescue mission,
but it is the most personal. I just hope that Wyatt took me
seriously when I told him that if I don’t make it back, he needs to
make sure that Nic is taken care of.

We load up in three SUVs and take off
downtown. The bikes are too loud, and even though we’re all suited
up with bullet-proof vests and we’d have our helmets on, there’s
too much exposure to the neck and legs when riding, and this is a
mission we can’t take a single chance fucking up. The trip downtown
is shorter than it’s ever been before. Jim drives the SUV I’m in
with Ian in the passenger seat and Trigger next to me. It isn’t
until we’re close to the warehouse that we creep up and cut the
lights. Once we’re in the far end of the parking lot and all three
SUVs have arrived, my brothers scatter about to cover the area. We
discussed all this shit before I got the call from the deputy chief
with this tip. Everybody knows where they’re supposed to
be.

I take my position beside Ian and
behind Trigger, who’s taken the lead—and nobody was willing to
argue with him about that—as we walk very quietly to the side door.
Grady, Wyatt, Bear, and Jim follow behind us. They’re all good with
a gun, but Jim likes to have his sharpest shooters in
front.

All of the windows are covered or
boarded up, and the thick concrete walls make it difficult to know
what’s going on inside, if anything. I stalk around the corner and
find a man in a black suit with slicked back black hair holding a
gold gun. He turns from side to side, but not enough that he’s able
to see me watching him. I pull up the AR-15 with the suppressor and
super sonic ammo, click off the safety, and center it on his skull.
Just as he turns and catches sight of my gun gleaming in the
darkness, I pull the trigger. The bullet hits him at the corner of
his temple, and he crumples to the ground. I give him a quick look
then turn back to my brothers and give them a nod.

Trigger lifts his hand and gives two
swift knocks on the door just as I get back in formation. The door
opens but a foot or two when Trigger pops two shots into the guy’s
skull, using his suppressor. Ian stands by and catches him as he
falls to the ground to avoid making a sound, then drags him out of
the way. We walk through the door as silently as possible. The
warehouse is dark as fuck, and I can’t see much of anything with
the exception of some agricultural equipment in the center of the
room we’re in, which is far smaller than the building is. The
warehouse must be broken up into several rooms. Trigger leads us
through the room, careful to keep us in shadows. A skylight on the
roof provides enough light to cast a slight blueish glow over the
space the farther we move into it. All I can hear is heavy breaths
and the occasional scuffle of a boot. Up ahead on the right are two
more guys who stand shoulder to shoulder with their backs toward
us. I breathe a slight sigh of relief that Mancuso didn’t send his
top team, but if he did send his top team then this is fucking sad.
These guys are fucking jokesters if they don’t know better than to
turn their back on the only entrance to the warehouse aside from
the boarded up dock in the back.

I look over to Ian and nod at the guys.
He squints and nods in confirmation that it’s not Michael, who we
have orders not to kill unless we have to. We train our guns on the
backs of their skulls and, with near perfect aim, shoot. Both of
their skulls break apart at the point of contact, and blood shoots
out as they tumble toward the ground in unison.

“
You would turn your back
on your family for them?” a voice with a thick east coast accent
says. His words are clipped even in his fury. We move past the two
dead bodies we just put down and into the second room. It’s empty,
but in the expanse beyond the room we’ve just entered is another
room, which appears to be much smaller. Where the two larger rooms
are without any lighting, the small room in the back has a single
light bulb hanging overhead, which gives us a decent line of sight
to see what’s going on.

“
No, I’m protecting my
family,” Princess screams angrily. In front of me, Trigger picks up
his pace at the sound of her voice. Less than thirty feet away now,
and I can see her. She’s tied to a chair, which is on its side. The
kid standing over her can’t be any older than her, even though his
size begs to differ. The longer I look at him, the more
similarities I can see between he and Alex. There’s absolutely no
doubting that he’s her twin. Fuck.

He tightens his fists at his side and
delivers several swift kicks to her stomach. Trigger jumps to rush
at the guy, but he’s got a gun in his hand, so I reach out and grab
him before he can get too far and make any noise. He turns his
head, glaring at me, but I don’t care. I’m not going to let his
temper get Princess or Junior killed. I don’t think Ruby would
survive either loss—Junior because she never got a chance to meet
him, and Princess because she just barely got a hold of
her.

The kid delivers blow after blow to her
stomach before he stops. She’s on the floor, her face is bruised as
fuck, and she’s got drool coming out of the side of her mouth.
Dried blood dots the other corner of her mouth, and her clothes are
dirty as all fucking hell. My throat tightens at the sight. Keeping
a close eye on Trigger and moving forward as quietly as I can, I
train my gun on Junior’s skull. I hate this part of the job—when
shit gets personal—but if Junior kills her, he’s going to die
regardless of who his mother is. If I let Ryan at him, he’s going
to die a slow and miserable death. It’s better that I do it. I’d
rather he die mercifully so I can tell his mother he didn’t
suffer.

“
Please pick me up,” she
says, and her voice sounds so fucking pathetic. Junior pulls at his
hair and curses a few times in what I assume is Italian, then he
leans down and picks up the chair with one hand. In the other, he’s
got that gold gun that all of Mancuso’s men seem to
have.

“
Are you going to tell me
where they are?” he says, leaning down and pulling her head back so
she’s forced to meet his eyes. Her head flops, and her eyes squint
then widen like she’s struggling to see him clearly.

“
I love you,” she says in
a sincere voice. She waits a beat and then her lips form a thin
line. “No,” she says in a much stronger voice than I expect she’s
easily capable of. But Junior isn’t having any of it. He slaps her
across her temple so many times that I think Trigger’s gonna lose
his shit and pop a cap in the kid’s ass right here and now. If it
were Nic… I can’t even go there or I’ll do it myself.

She blows out a heavy breath and takes
each blow like a fucking champ. I don’t know many men who could
have the shit beat out of them like she’s getting and to keep
fighting. In a moment that I’ll never forget, she rights her head
and narrows her eyes at her brother—someone who’s supposed to love
her and protect her—and she pushes against the next blow to her
head. Steeling herself, she yells at the top of her lungs, “Keep
hitting me!”

The words fall out in a jumbled mess,
but the show of strength is what imprints itself on my soul. The
girl has balls—big ones—and if I wasn’t already so fucking stupid
over Nic, I might have fallen in love with Princess right then and
there. “I won’t hurt them.”

It’s just a moment that everybody stops
moving as we watch this small person with guts as big as any of the
men behind me as she takes on someone twice her size with only her
words to fight against the beating he’s giving her. I promise
myself from this moment forward that whatever Princess needs,
Princess fucking gets. I shoot a quick look back to Grady, who’s
still so blinded with rage that I’m not sure he can really
appreciate what’s happening here. If this isn’t a sign of loyalty
to the club, then I don’t know what the fuck is. But that moment
passes way too soon, and Junior’s face turns bright red. He shoves
his gold gun in his pocket and clamps his hands around her neck.
With her arms and legs bound to the chair she doesn’t have a
fucking chance of making it.

“
Tell me where they are!”
he screams into her face. His eyes are wild, and he squeezes her
poor, thin neck as he shakes her back and forth. I want to just
call a time out and throw in the towel and be done with this shit.
I’ve killed enough men in my time, and I’ve seen enough men put
down for a variety of reasons. I stopped counting long ago. I’ve
even seen a few women be beaten, and I’ve seen the aftermath of
what happens when we’re too late to stop the beating. But this shit
is too fucked up. If Princess isn’t okay after this, then Trigger
won’t be okay, and I won’t be okay, either. If I’m not okay, then I
can’t be okay with the club or this life.