Devil's Heart, page 10
part #1 of Executioners MC Series
“Well?” he snaps when nobody responds.
“Not that we know of, boss,” a man mutters. “I can find out for sure.”
“How long will it take?”
A shrug. I sense it more than see it.
I wonder if a lady like Jasmin could ever settle for a man like me. It all seems too simple now, sitting here drunker’n hell. It seems like the simplest thing in the world. Just throw her on the back of my bike and ride someplace far away where we don’t have to deal with this sort of shit. I grin sideways. Then I notice Danny looking at me urgently. He’s mouthing something. I squint, which is damn hard because the room keeps—No, my head, swiveling on my neck like it’s just gonna roll off.
Keep it together, he mouths again.
“Oh,” I whisper. Everybody ignores me.
Trevor is too busy shouting at one of his men.
“ … find out right fucking now so I can gut this bitch!” He turns to Danny. “If this is a lie, I am going to feed you her fingers.” He stands up, letting go of Tiffany’s hair. She falls forward with a shudder. He paces over to Danny, taking his time with each step. He’s like a fucked-up version of a ballerina. “You might think that’s just big talk. ‘Feed you her fingers.’ It sounds like something people just say, eh? The sort of shit assholes are always talking in bars and stuff like that, eh?” He jabs Danny’s pudgy belly with the hilt of the blade.
He kneels down, staring up into Danny’s face. I’ve never seen Danny scared, at least that I know about. If he does get scared, he’s managed to keep it to himself. But right now he’s scared. It’s written on his face like a message. Pale and scared and on his way to being half dead.
“But it’s not,” he says. “I’ve done it before. I got these whores down in El Paso and I took them to a basement I’d rented and I cut one bitch up and fed her to the other one.”
“You’re a fuckin’ liar,” I growl, spitting blood and everything else onto the filthy floor. “A fuckin’ sad liar,” I go on, when he turns to me. I can’t let him go in on Danny again. Let him mess with me if he wants to mess with anybody. “You expect us to believe that shit? You cut one of my hands loose and leave the rest of me tied to this chair, I’d fuckin’ break your neck. Without these stupid fucks, you’d be nothin’.”
The whole room bristles at that, a bunch of tough men wanting to prove themselves.
“A bunch of fuckin’ idiots who want to kill for another idiot. I’m done with you. Screw the whiskey and screw you. I just want Jasmin.”
I close my mouth hard, biting down on my teeth. I didn’t mean to say that. I’m letting go too much. All this time, I thought I was something else. But it turns out I’m just a man after all.
Trevor is halfway to me when he stops. He takes out his phone and swipes to answer it. I guess it was vibrating.
“Is this a joke?” he says, a grin breaking across his face.
He looks like the happiest man on the planet.
“Good!”
He hangs up and skips over to me. He leans down, whispering just so I can hear.
“Be careful what you wish for, Wolf.”
16
Jasmin
I squeeze my knees as they drive me through the blackness. Squeezing my knees helps to distract me from the fact that I could be heading to my death. I have no idea where we are. As soon as the Pagan’s Sons got their hands on me, they stripped me of all my clothes and dressed me in overalls to make sure I wasn’t hiding a tracker or a weapon. It made me sick, but luckily there was only one old man there when I was naked and he didn’t try anything funny. I think it was Yates who made sure of that. He doesn’t want Wolf’s lady disrespected, after all.
I try to focus on my fingernails digging into my knees and nothing else. I read an article about that once. Apparently people can reach some sort of calm by focusing very hard on one specific body part. My upper arm pulses with the sort of sharp pain that makes me want to scream. I fight down the urge. That would give the game away, after all.
I have to be strong now. For Mason and Tiffany but also for Freddie and Mom and Dad. For everybody.
“You see the game last night?” the driver mutters.
“What game?”
“The game, you dumb fuck. The fuck you mean, what game?”
“You tellin’ me in the whole country there was only one game last night?”
“Fella, talking to you is like talking to a fuckin’ cow.”
“How’d you figure that?”
“All you do is squirt milk outta your damn udders.”
A gruff laugh. “You know that don’t mean a damn thing. It’s a shame we don’t get to have some fun with this bitch.”
“Yeah, well, we might be able to still. That old fucker was lucky, getting a good look at those tits.”
“We could pull over here, get it done quick.”
“What happens when the boss finds out?”
“I didn’t know he was so against stuff like that.”
“He ain’t, but he’s against soldiers who don’t know how to do what they’re told.”
“Yeah, yeah. It was just a thought. For fuck’s sake, no need to go all weepy on me.”
I close my eyes even with the black bag over my head. I want to sink far back into the blackness, get as far away from my eyelids as possible. Just distance myself from this messed-up situation. I don’t shiver and I don’t cry. Maybe that’s a pathetic thing to be proud about, but I am proud. I won’t let them see just how terrified they’ve made me.
“Right.”
The car door opens. A warm breeze blows in like an electric radiator, blasting warm air against my ankles. They’ve given me hospital-style flip-flops, basically just cardboard. They crinkle as I step from the car. I have to hold the driver’s hand. He squeezes just a little harder than he really has to.
“All right, walk steady now,” he snarls. “No fuckin’ around.”
He leads me across some gravelly ground. It’s all I can do to keep one foot in front of the other as he drags me along. Eventually, he pushes me into a room. A heavy door slams behind me.
“You can take off the hood now,” somebody says from the end of what I’m guessing is a hallway.
I guessed right, I see when I remove the hood. I’m standing at the end of an almost pitch-black hallway with a couple of vague lights at the end of it. The bald man from the bar stands at the end, hands stuffed in his pockets and a grin on his face. His cheeks are flecked with red, the same with his clothes. An abstract painting of blood and tattoos.
“Come on then. Don’t be shy.”
I walk toward him. Distantly, I wonder if a heartbeat can kill somebody. Not a heart attack, but a heartbeat. Just a regular heartbeat picking up and getting quicker and more powerful until—I push the thought away. It’s not going to help me now.
“You should curtsy. I’m the king around here, bitch.”
He leers at me, hands stuffed in his pants pockets. They shift around down there. I try not to think about what he’s doing.
“I’m not going to do that,” I mutter. I find the courage somewhere, though I have no clue where exactly.
The leer drops. What replaces it is even more unsettling. A smile of delight. He shrugs. “You’ll do more than curtsy before this is over. Come on. Don’t keep me waiting.”
He turns and walks through a glass-paned door. The light glows through it, the glass distorting. I follow him.
It takes every tiny piece of self-control I have not to scream when I see them. Tiffany looks the best of them. She isn’t bleeding, and there are no bruises or cuts on her. But she’s drenched in sweat and she has this panicked look on her face that I’m guessing only I can recognize. Outwardly, she seems calm. But I’ve known her for a long time.
Mason is covered in blood and something else, dripping down his chair. Something brown. At first I think a rusty pipe is dripping on him, but then I spot the whiskey bottles scattered around the room. His head is down, as though it is heavy. With a visible effort, he looks up at me.
His eyes widen for a fraction of a second.
Then he goes completely berserk. He thrashes around in the chair, trying to leapfrog over to me. “Not her!” he roars, spitting blood and whiskey everywhere. “You son of a bitch, not her! You fuckin’ son of a bitch! I’ll kill you. Do you understand me? I’ll fuckin’ kill you if you lay a finger on her! You son of a fuckin’ bitch! You fuckin’ asshole! You fuckin’—”
Of all the things that have happened today, this is the one that gets me the most. If I wondered if he really cared before, here is proof. But then how drunk is he? How much whiskey have they forced down his throat? It’s clear he’s drunk just from the way he looks, how bloodshot his eyes are, the way he roars and roars as if unaware of where he is. I swallow, trying to keep my exterior ice-cold. I have to be carved from ice.
Trevor walks over to him and places a hand on his arm. “Stop,” he says, though he’s smiling. He enjoys it. “You’ll have plenty to shout about soon. Fellas, don’t be rude. Get the girl a chair.”
There’s nothing I can do when the men emerge from the shadows and grab me. I don’t even try to fight. They drag a metal-frame chair across the floor, making a loud eeeeeeeee noise like nails on a chalkboard. Then they shove me down into it and quickly tie my arms and legs to the arms and legs of the chair. I feel glued to it, they do it so tightly. The rope burns into my skin.
“What’d you think?” Trevor asks. He grabs Mason’s face and turns it toward me. Mason stares at me with eyes so full of emotion I just want to hold him. But at the same time he seems more scared than I could ever have imagined him before. Maybe it’s the whiskey. Or maybe it’s the bare fact that we could all die any second. “Ready to talk?” he goes on in a growl. “I don’t wanna cut this bitch’s fingers off one by one, Wolf. I really don’t. Look at those hands. I can think of some better uses for hands like that. But what fuckin’ choice are you leaving me? Just give me one address.”
“Why?” Mason snarls, not even looking at the man grabbing his jaw. He stares at me. “Why, Jasmin? Why are you here? Are you here?” He pauses, trying to get ahold of himself by taking a deep breath. It doesn’t look like it works.
I just shake my head, not sure what I mean by it. If anything.
“They sold her to me,” Trevor says, grinning. “Fifty thousand for this little slut. A bargain if you ask me. Now what’re we gonna do? An address, or I start cutting.”
“You know I can’t do that,” Mason growls. “Fifty grand? That’s fuckin’ chump change. I’ll give you a million if you let us go.”
“A million. Where’s this million then?”
“I’ve got it.”
“Where?”
“I can take you there.”
Trevor glances around the room, chuckling. “And I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.”
From the shadows, the men laugh. They sound like a bunch of hyenas.
“No, you ain’t got a million. All you’ve got are lies and a shitty club that never did anything worth talking about. I’ll give you one last chance. Give. Me. An. Address.”
Mason shakes his head at me, screaming at me with his eyes. He’s telling me sorry, I realize. Sorry for what they’re going to do to me.
I swallow, spit tasting like acid.
“Fine.” Trevor walks over to me. He stretches his steps out as though purposefully taking as long as possible. He slides the blade from his shirt with a flourish. It’s long and thin. It’s not difficult to imagine my eyeball right on the end of it. He trails it down my neck. “It’s time to have some fun—”
Crack-crack-crack. The gunfire pounds against the side of the building.
Immediately, it is chaos, men roaring at each other, the metal-on-metal sounds of guns being loaded. Most of the men leave the room, Trevor roaring at two of them to guard us. The gunfire goes on, getting louder and louder. The guards stand just off to the side, rifles in hand.
Then Mason falls onto his side and starts having a fit. At first I think it’s some sort of plan, but he froths at the mouth, his whole body trembling. His chair collapses to the side. He lands with a heavy thump. Outside, something explodes.
“Shit, he got shot!” Danny roars, jumping up and down in his chair. “Sit him up, dammit! Sit him up!”
The guards glance at each other. One is around my age with a ginger ponytail and a tattoo of a dragon on his neck. The other is middle-aged with a pot belly and hairs creeping up his neck. If this was a different world they’d be standing on a building site sharing a cigarette. The dragon-tattooed man shrugs and wanders over.
Mason moves quicker than a snake. He slides one hand free of the rope. He must’ve been working on it for hours, and he’s barely got an inch. But it’s enough. He throws his whole body up, grabs onto the man’s gun and spins it, all with the chair still lodged to him. They fall together.
Bang. I slam my eyes closed, the light blinding me. The sound rocks around my head, echoing again and again.
When I open my eyes, both guards are dead, and Danny and Mason are helping to untie each other. It looks ridiculous, these chairs hanging off them as they contort themselves into the necessary shapes. Mason jogs over to me as Danny helps to untie Tiffany. She just sits there, nearly catatonic, staring off into space.
“She’s just gone into shock,” Mason says, tugging at my ropes. He fumbles them a couple of times, cursing under his breath. “How the fuck did they know we were here?”
“They put a tracker in my arm,” I tell him. “An implant.”
Mason pauses for half a second, staring up at me. “You really are the bravest fuckin’ woman I’ve ever met,” he snarls, freeing my arm. “Stick close, all right? We’re getting you ladies out of here. Danny, you good?”
“Yeah, I’m carrying her.”
“All right. I’ll take point. If you can run?” He turns to me.
“Yeah, I can run. Let’s get the hell out of here!”
17
Jasmin
“Here.”
I hand Tiffany the mug of coffee, but she does not take it. She’s sitting on the end of the bed with her hands in her lap like a kid waiting for a bad parent to pick her up from school. There’s no emotion in her face whatsoever. It’s like she’s a zombie. All the life has been sucked out of her. She’s had two showers, but she keeps looking down at her hands as though expecting to find blood or dirt there.
I sigh, putting the coffee down on the side table.
Then I sit next to her and put my arm around her. It’s still aching from where they took the tracker out (on my demand), but using the other arm would mean asking Tiffany to move over. I think even that is beyond her right now. I only saw the end result of the torture. She saw, or heard, a lot of it. Maybe this is normal in their world, but to us this is a different planet.
“You can talk to me,” I mutter.
“Can I get a glass of water?” she asks quietly.
“Sure.”
I take her empty glass into the bathroom and return with a full one. She’s sitting in the exact same position, staring off into space. But really she’s not staring off into space. She’s staring off into that warehouse and the madness that happened there. Trevor and most of his men got away when they realized they were fighting a losing battle. Maybe it’s the thought of him still being out there that has everybody high-strung.
She takes the glass, looks at it for a moment, and then sips slowly. “There’s nothing to say. I’m tired, Jasmin.”
“I’m so sorry,” I mutter, putting my hand on her shoulder. I give her what I hope is a comforting squeeze.
“Sorry for what?” she asks.
I laugh, but a tear slides down my cheek too. If I felt secure about Mason and the whole situation when we were in the warehouse, seeing Tiffany just makes me wonder … what am I doing here? What was I doing with a tracker in my arm? I’m a bartender. I go home and read thrillers on my Kindle and watch TV shows and go out for drinks and go rollerblading every now and then. I don’t …
“For getting you into this mess.”
The sobs attack me viciously, annoyed at me for pushing them down for so long. I try to get control of myself, but it’s an impossible battle. Tiffany opens her arms and lets me fall into her. I cry myself out on her shoulder, drenching her clothes. Every time I think I’ve got them under control, the sobs return with a vengeance. It gets to the point where I have to clamp my hand over my mouth and breathe so slowly it’s like I’m choking. After what must be around fifteen minutes, they go.
“I feel deflated,” I murmur.
“Ha, yeah. Do you think I can sleep here?” She turns, looking longingly at the pillow at the head of the bed.
“Yes, you can,” I say, even if I’m not sure it’s the truth. I’ll make it the truth. “Lie down. Get some rest.”
“What are you going to do?”
I stand up. “To see Mason,” I say, swallowing a lump in my throat. I need to see him. I need to sort this mess out. The mess on the outside and the mess on the inside, too.
I open the door and walk down the hallway. They’ve relaxed the guard a little now, putting one on the outside of the dorms and the outside of the clubhouse instead of right outside the door. I go to Mason’s room, knocking quietly.
“Yeah?” he growls.
“It’s me,” I mutter.
It’s been a few hours since the warehouse, but already he sounds more sober.
“Okay.” The door clicks open. He’s showered, and the doctor has tended to his wounds. He has a few stickers on his face holding cuts in place and his eyes are ringed in bruises. But he still smiles when he sees me, even if it’s a weak smile. “Come on, Jasmin.” He takes a step back and waves me into the room.
He closes the door behind me. I turn to him, just staring. He just stares back at me.
