Bjorn: Teutonic Knights MC (7 page)

He pulled into a church parking lot that adjoined a pedestrian bridge across the I-90. It was both clubs standard drop point, if the person was ambulatory. The clubs would drop on their side and allow the person to walk across. She stepped off the bike and stood tall waiting. There were tears in her eyes, but she wasn’t begging, not like most of the women they tossed back.

“Just do it,” she said.

He didn’t want to hit her, but he couldn’t just let her walk either. Without warning, he gut punched her but pulled the power.

She woofed out air and doubled over, holding her stomach before straightening with a sneer. He’d obviously pulled the punch, otherwise she’d be on her ass. “You punch like a pansy.”

He couldn’t help but chuckle. “You want me to try again?”

She relaxed, knowing another one wasn’t coming. “No.” She forced herself to stand straight. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For not hitting me in the face. For pulling the punch.” She paused. “For last night.”

“Don’t let me catch you on this side of I-90 again.”

She nodded, picked up her duffle, and walked up the ramp and across the interstate as he watched.

“You’ve got a lot of guts, coming here,” Dolch growled, standing at the gates of the Knights’ compound.

“I have information. Information you need,” Peyton replied.

“Like last time?”

“Let me speak to Ironside.”

“Go back where you came from before I beat the shit out of you.”

“Go ahead. I deserve it.”

That gave him pause. “What information?”

“No. I’ll tell you, but I want to make a deal first.”

“Right. Like we’re going to trust you now.”

“Why don’t you let Ironside make that choice? This is way above your pay-grade.”

Dolch fumed. When she buzzed the intercom, and he saw her on the security camera, he couldn’t believe his eyes. To come back here now she was desperate, stupid, crazy, or brave, or maybe all the above.

“Step back,” he said as he swiped his card to open the man gate, pushing it open so she could enter then closed it behind her.

“What’s she doing here!” Honey barked as Dolch led her into the clubhouse.

“Hey, Honey! How’s the face?” Peyton asked. “I didn’t bring you anything this time.”

Honey started to close on her, but Dolch pushed her back. “Can it,” he ordered.

“You’ll get yours,” Honey snarled.

Peyton pursed her lips into a noisy air kiss.

“What are you doing here?” Whiteshirt asked, stepping out of his office when Honey spouted off.

“She wants to talk to Ironside. She says she has information we need.”

“Throw her out,” Whiteshirt snarled. “You come back again, I’ll kill you.”

“You need to hear this!” she said as she jerked her arm free. “If you don’t, a lot of people are going to die.”

Whiteshirt rubbed his beard. “What’s the news?”

“I want to make a deal first.”

“No deals!”

“I want to talk to Ironside! If he tells me no deal, fine. But if you throw me out, and everyone dies, it’ll be on you! Do you want that on your head?”

Whiteshirt pursed his lips. “Fuck it.” He pulled his phone and dialed. “Peyton is here.” He paused. “At the clubhouse. She says she has news, but she wants to make a deal before she tells us.” Pause. “I don’t know, but she said a lot of people are going to die if we don’t hear the news.” There was another pause. “Ten minutes,” he said then ended the call and glared at her. “He’ll be here in ten minutes. He said to wait in kirche.”

***

Peyton, Whiteshirt, and Dolch were sitting in uncomfortable silence when Ironside came into the room. “I told you I didn’t want to see you north of I-90 again.”

“You want to know this.”

“What?”

“A deal first.”

“What’s the deal?”

“I give you this information, you help me get Melissa away from the Saracens and away from Cleveland.”

Ironside sucked on his teeth a moment. “Where’s Melissa?”

“Don’t know. That’s the problem.”

“What happened to her?”

“She got ‘initiated.’”

The three men looked at each other. “What’s that mean?”

“It means Andrew and four other guys took her into the sex room where they raped her over and over again. It means she’s being held somewhere until they can put her on the street turning tricks. It means she’s going to die if I don’t get her out of there.”

“You know this for sure?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Andrew told me. He told me it would happen to me, too, if I didn’t watch myself.”

Whiteshirt looked at the other men. “Does anyone else see a problem here? How are we supposed to help rescue Melissa if we don’t know where she is?”

“I’ll find out.”

“How?” Ironside asked.

“Leave that to me. I’ll figure something out. I found out this information to have something to trade. I’ll find out everything I can, about everything. I’ll trade anything I can learn for help with Melissa.”

“What’s the news?” Dolch asked.

Peyton waited, staring at Ironside. “If the news checks out, we’ll talk about helping.”

“No. The news will check out. I want your assurance you’ll help, not you’ll think about it, talk about it, whatever.”

Ironside drummed his fingers. “Okay. If it checks out, we’ll help, but you have to find out where she is before we move. I’m telling you this now. I reserve the right to change my mind if this
news
turns out to be a big nothing.”

She smiled. “Trust me, this is anything but nothing. So we have a deal?”

“We do.”

“The Saracens are going to hit you, tonight, sometime between seven and nine, at some escort service you run. It’s on Canfield.”

The three men looked at each other. “That’s pretty specific considering you didn’t know shit the last time,” Whiteside said.

“How many men?” Dolch asked.

“I don’t know exactly. Around ten or so.”

“Why?” Ironside asked. “They have to know we’ll hit back.”

“It’s supposed to look like some kind of random violence. I don’t know the full details of what they are planning, but I know they have a plan so you won’t link it to them.”

“Again, why?”

“They think you stole some guns.”

“Goddamnit! I knew that was going to come back and bite us in the ass!” Whiteshirt snarled.

“Did you?” Peyton asked.

“No,” Ironside said. “We’re trying to get out of the gun business. “I’m not sure I’m following. If we don’t know they are the ones who hit us, how could they be sending a message?”

“You’ll have to ask them.”

“Maybe they want to see if we will,” Whiteshirt suggest. “If we took their guns, we’d know it was a retaliatory strike. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t suspect them.”

“How did you find this out?” Ironside asked.

“I opened my legs for someone.”

“That’s kind of dangerous, isn’t it? I mean, considering you’re Andrew’s girl and all…” Dolch said.

“I’m not Andrew’s girl. I’m just a girl he likes to fuck. I owe that bastard for what he did to Melissa. I’d cut his nuts off myself if I thought I could get away with it.”

“So this swinging dick just told you everything you wanted to know to get in your pants?” Ironside asked.

“It wasn’t that easy, but yeah. Melissa disappeared two days ago. I was asking around, trying to find out where she went. That’s when I found out something was going down, I just didn’t know what. That night, I asked Andrew about it, and that’s when he told me about Melissa as a warning to not be asking questions.”

“Then what?”

“Then? Then I decided I was going to do whatever it takes to get Melissa out of there. If that meant screwing every man in the club, I would. This guy had been sniffing around before, so I led him on. He didn’t know where Melissa was, or wouldn’t tell me, but he did tell me they had something planned for the Knights. I guess he was trying to impress me. Anyway, while Andrew was away this morning, I took him into one of the guest rooms, and for every little bit of information he gave me, I gave him something back. While he was fucking me, I found out about the hit by pretending the violence turned me on. The information didn’t help me find Melissa, but I thought I would trade it to you for your help.”

“We better put extra security on Canfield,” Ironside said after a moment of silence. “Just in case.”

“Agreed,” Whiteshirt added.

“You said ten men?” Dolch asked.

“Something like that.”

“I’ll assign twenty additional. That’ll make a nice little surprise for them. They’re expecting a couple brothers and they’ll run into ten times that amount.”

“Let’s close the place down to protect the girls,” Ironside added.

“What if she’s lying?” Whiteshirt asked.

“I’m not lying!”

“What if she’s wrong, then?” Whiteshirt amended.

“Then we’ll have lost a night’s income, but if she’s right…”

“Ironside is right,” Dolch agreed. “Too big a risk to
not
shut it down for the night.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Whiteshirt finally said.

Dolch rose and went to get the protection rolling. “What are we going to do with her?” Whiteshirt asked.

“Do you need to get back?”

“No. Andrew won’t miss me tonight. He’s going to meet somebody about something. He’ll be gone all night.”

“Who?”

“Don’t know. I didn’t know about it until he was getting ready to leave. If it’s important, I’ll try to find out.”

“Find out everything. We’ll sort out what’s important.”

“So, what are we going to do with her?”

“She can stay here.”

“Not a good idea,” Whiteshirt said. “This could all be a setup. Unless we’re going to put a guard on her all night, there’s no end of the damage she can cause if she’s left here.”

“A setup for what?” Peyton exclaimed. “I’m risking my ass for this!”

“We don’t know that.”

“You know what? Never mind. I’ll just leave. Fuck it, and fuck you, too, Whiteshirt. I’ll find Melissa, you keep your end of the bargain, then you’ll never see me again.”

“She can come home with me,” Ironside said, seeing Whiteshirt’s point. “If her information is good, we’ll know we can trust her. Until then, she’ll be where she can’t do any harm. You okay with that?” he asked, looking to Whiteshirt.

“Are you going to chain me up like a dog again? If you are, fuck that.”

“I think you’re taking a big risk. She’s already lied to us once.”

Peyton bit her tongue. She hadn’t lied, lied…she just hadn’t told them about Andrew.

Ironside nodded. “It’s my neck I’m risking and nobody else’s.” He pushed back from the table. “Come on,” he said as he rose.

They walked out together and Honey glared at her. “We ready to go, Babe?” she asked, wanting to get Ironside away from Peyton.

“Not tonight.”

“But I had something special planned,” she pouted, her voice dripping sex.

“Maybe tomorrow,” he said, never slowing, dragging Peyton along with him.

Peyton smiled at her as they passed, but said nothing.

Ironside saw Peyton smile, and he also saw the return look in Honey’s eyes. This was a good reminder that she wasn’t his old lady and he was free to fuck whoever he wanted. He smiled as they banged through clubhouse doors. In the past week, Honey had been wild in the bed, obviously trying to reassert her claim on him, and he had enjoyed her efforts, but she still didn’t own him. He belonged to nobody, but he was going to have to keep those two apart or they would be forever cleaning up the bloodstains.