Honey Whiskey (A Bastards MC Novel) (40 page)

Rob had slammed his fist into the
table and stood up. “You’re not the only one worried! I understand
what you’re going through. I love L.K., too!”

I sneered at that. “Don’t you fuckin’ tell me
you understand! The love of your life is safe and sound fifty
fuckin’ feet away. It’s not Cris out there, its Jo! So, the
priority isn’t as great as it would have been, is it? You don’t
have one fuckin’ iota of a clue about what I’m goin’
through!”

He’d grabbed me and shoved me
against the wall, getting in my face. “Shut the fuck up, Matty!
Jessie is out theah, too! I thank Christ that Cris is heah, that
she’ll heal quickly, yeah. But, I have a prospect that’s MIA.
Tank’s ol’ lady is still missin’. And, I don’t know if Jessie is
dead or alive and bein’ hurt. I love her!” he hissed. “So I fuckin’
get it!” He let go of me and backed up. “Get the fuck out! Don’t
come in heah again until this shit is ovah!”

So, now I had nothing to do but
pace around the room and apparently stare at the dickhead that Jo
used to be married to. Fucking fantastic! I grabbed a bottle of
water and threw myself onto one of the couches.

Bear woke me up later. I don’t know how long I
was out, but I sat up in a panic. “What’s wrong?”

“Wake your ass up, Mateo, we got
something!”

I was up and off the couch in
seconds flat, following him into court. It had been turned into a
command center of sorts. Papers and pictures lined the walls,
laptops and tablets covered the tables, and someone had set up a
projector so everyone could see what Wiz was looking at.

Rob stepped up to my side. “Scott
Dyer died three yeahs ago.” I snapped my head toward him, shocked.
We’d have known, wouldn’t we? “After Providence, he never came home
because he was convinced someone was looking for him. His little
brother Seth inherited everything when he died.”

“There’s no record of a little
brother.”

Rob looked at the wall where Wiz
was using his finger to draw a circle around a building. “His
parents sent him away when he was young ‘cause he had the same
issues as his brothah. A sadistic fuck from the word go. They even
went as far as changin’ his last name to his mother’s maiden name
so that he wasn’t associated with them.” That way no one in their
high society social circle would know.

“A few years ago, the Dyers were
killed in a cah crash. The police ruled it as a homicide, but theah
were no suspects. Seth never came forward to collect his
inheritance and no one could find him, so they ruled him out. It’s
still an unsolved case.”

“We only found
him ‘cause he flies back and forth between heah and Moscow couplea
times a month. Flies coach, never draws attention to himself. But
in Europe he’s a big time sleaze, runs all of his brothah’s
businesses. He looks enough like his brother for Wiz’s facial
recognition to flag him, though.”

“
And we think he’s behind
this?”

“We know he is.”
Grabbing a file off the table, he grabbed a picture of me I’d never
seen. It was grainy and beyond blurry, but it was definitely me.
And behind me was Bear. “A few years ago, right after Scott died,
Seth hired a PI to find you. The only lead he had was this girl.”
He handed me another picture, one that had been used as a sales ad
for one of Scott’s girls. One of the women I’d carried out that
night and given another chance on life.

“She was no help, not really. But,
she was able to tell the investigatah that there were three of you.
One named Tank, one named Bear, but she never caught your name.” I
swallowed. He’d been trying to track us down for years. “Tank and
Bear are common road names so the PI couldn’t narrow it down. Until
last spring when Will hired him to dig up dirt on you.”

I clenched my fists at my side.
Fucking Billy. Rob ignored me and continued. “Once he had that
picture and your name, the rest was easy. He got moah pictures of
you from Dyer, givin’ those to Will, and then focused his attention
on the club, and the three of you. His first attack was Ellie.” I
looked back at Bear, who was watching Wiz with a fierceness I
hadn’t seen. “It looks like he had business that dragged him away,
or we’d have been doin’ this last fall and not now.”

“
Where is he?”

Rob nodded at the projection on
the wall. “He has a warehouse in Manchestah. We think he took the
girls the theah.” Manchester? That was an hour’s ride. Shit!
Fuck!

“
Why haven’t we left
yet?”

My friend tipped his head. “Easy
tiger. We’re goin’. We’re just trying to figure out the best way
in. This dick’s got heavy hitters on his payroll. This isn’t us
goin’ up against Jo Schmo’ and his gang bangahs. This is serious
shit. As soon as we have a route, we’re gearin’ up and hittin’ him
hard.”

*****

It felt like it took forever to
get loaded up and on the bikes. Tiny drove the Expedition, because
while we didn’t know what condition we’d find the girls or the
prospect, we doubted any of them would be able to get on the back
of a bike. The ride itself didn’t last as long as I thought it
would, though. Probably because I spent the entire time imagining
how slowly I was going to kill the men that took her.

We parked a half-mile away, not
wanting the sound of fifty Harley’s to tip this Dyer prick off. The
warehouse was extremely quiet as we approached, and I didn’t see
one guard. Either he believed we’d never find him or he was already
gone. The door was down in seconds and we were in, guns
blazing.

As my brother’s swarmed through
the rooms like ants out of a nest, I stayed back, searching for any
place they could be holding Jo. There were only four guards, and
none of them expected an attack, so it wasn’t really a challenge.
Rob and I broke down every door, but there was nothing. As each
empty room passed, my heart sunk. She wasn’t here.

“
Here! They’re back here!” I don’t
know whose voice it was, but I sprinted down the hall trying to
find them.

The room was already filled with
Bastards. I wasn’t prepared for how the girls would look, and
seeing them was worse than a swift kick in the balls. Taylor was
beaten so badly I wasn’t sure she was even coherent. Jessie, fuck.
Jessie was almost unrecognizable. They’d both appeared to have
survived the worst kinds of torture. Rob shoved me out of the way
to get to his girl, Tank not far behind.

“It’s bad. She needs to be taken
to the hospital,” Doc was telling them. “I don’t even want to move
her.”

“Prez! You need to see this!”
someone shouted from the hall.

My heart stopped. Jo wasn’t here.
I grabbed Taylor from Bears arms, shaking her hard. “Where is Jo?”
She opened her eyes. They were filled with relief, but there was
something else there too. “Where the fuck is Jo,
Taylor?”

“
She’s been through enough, Mateo!
Leave her!” Bear snarled at me.

“
Rocker!” Tiny’s
voice boomed into the room just then. “There are bodies out
here!”

I fell against the wall as two
hands grabbed my shoulders, holding me up. “It’s not her, Mateo. It
isn’t her!” Hawks voice was close to my ear. “We’ll keep
looking!”

“They took her, Matty.” The voice
was small and weak, coming from the bed in the corner. “They took
her because she said Lily was your daughter and that you’d sent her
to the safe house.”

Safe house? What safe house? I
turned to Jessie, sure she must have heard wrong. The poor girl was
hurt badly enough that I couldn’t bear to see it, and I had to look
away.

“She said that it was an old
family camp. That she’d have to show them the way.” Taylor spoke
from behind me. “I tried to get her to shut up, but the stupid
bitch wouldn’t stop.” Taylor started to cry, and I closed my eyes
against the sound. She never cried. Bear was able to quiet her, and
she clung to him as he carried her out.

I swallowed. I knew where she’d
taken them. Her family’s summer place. But it was out in the middle
of nowhere and there was no way we’d be able to sneak. They’d hear
our bikes from miles away. Why would she do something so fucking
stupid. I punched the wall, making Jessie jump.

Tears streamed down her face. “She
did it to save us, Matt. But, he’ll kill her.”

I only had one option right now.
Save her or die trying. And I couldn’t do it alone.

Chapter
36

Jo

The plan seemed like such a great
idea at the time. But, that’s probably because I didn’t think it
through. My mother always told me my tendency to act on impulse
would get me in trouble one day. Of course, I’m relatively sure
that when she said it, she hadn’t imagined I’d have a scary ass
dirtbag with the word ‘PAIN’ tattooed across his knuckles pointing
a gun at me. Well, maybe, that woman did have quite the active
imagination.

The ride was a long one when you
had music blaring or a friend to talk to. When all you had to keep
you company and help pass the time was your conscience verbally
kicking your ass, it took forever. Why couldn’t I have come up with
another lie? I was still half-surprised it worked. What would keep
these guys from killing me once I got them to camp? Or, when they
realized that not only was it not a place to meet my daughter, but
Matty was never coming? I chastised myself and worried myself sick
until Thing two made me crawl closer to the front and give more
directions.

When we finally turned onto the
one-lane dirt road that was used so rarely it looked more like a
deer path than anything else, reality hit me. I’d once told Matty
that was the place I came to make sense of life, my peaceful spot.
I never anticipated it would be the place I came to die. As the
building came into view, fight or flight kicked in. I wondered how
far I’d get before they shot me if I was to push open the door and
run for it.

But, there was nowhere for me to
go. The closest neighbors were ‘summer’ people and wouldn’t be here
for months. I knew these woods and might be able to hide once night
fell, but I had no idea what time it was. It could be the middle of
the day, and I’d never be able to get away if they could see to
follow me.

I was no closer to figuring out my
escape when Thing one parked the van in front of the camp and Thing
two hauled me out, not caring that the sharp rocks of the driveway
were cutting my bare feet. A SUV pulled in behind us, surprising
me. I had been naïve enough to think it was just Scott, his two
goons, and me. The four men that piled out of the other car
definitely put a damper on any escape plans I thought I might
have.

“Where’s the
key?” Scott demanded after Thing one tried the door. I pointed to
the flowerpot next to the door and Thing one immediately kicked it
over and grabbed the key. “Go check it out,” Scott commanded to his
crew. They filed into the house, guns drawn, leaving me with Scott
and Thing two, the latter’s hand holding my arm tightly.

After assurance that the house was
‘all clear,’ Thing two pulled me inside. It wasn’t a huge cabin,
but it had enough room for a family to stay here comfortably during
an extended stay. Downstairs was an open concept kitchen/living
room/family room with a bathroom and two bedrooms off it. Upstairs
had three more bedrooms, a small closet, and a small bathroom. My
hope was that they’d shove me into one of the bedrooms upstairs and
leave me. My grandmother had rope ladders in each room, and I knew
how to use it to sneak out because I’d done it more times than I
could count when I was dating Will.

The thought of Will made me see his smiling
face and that made me think of my kids. I couldn’t allow myself to
think of them right now because then I’d think about how badly I
wanted to hold them, just one more time, and I would act brash. No,
I needed my mind clear so I could come up with a way out of this
mess.

I zoned out while Scott walked
aimlessly around the house, as if searching for something. He
pulled a wooden chair away from the table and carried it to the
middle of the living room before sitting in one of the chairs by
the fireplace and crossing his legs. He simply pointed at the chair
and Thing two forced me that way.

“No one is here,” he said simply,
as if I hadn’t noticed. I didn’t know if he wanted me to respond,
so I stayed silent. “Where are they?”

I met his eyes. “Can I have some
water?” The question was answered by ‘PAIN,’ Thing two’s fist. I
saw it coming this time, though, and was able to move with the
impact the way Nick taught me. The connection hurt like hell, but
it could have been much worse.

“
Why isn’t anyone
here?”

“I don’t have my
cellphone. But, the plan is that when the club goes into lockdown,
her guard grabs her and keeps her safe. Once he thinks it’s not
dangerous for them to travel, he brings her here. I come here and
stay with them until Matty can come get us. Then, we head to Canada
where there is another safe house. He has a route that we take
where we don’t get stopped by border patrol.” I was rambling. I
knew from experience that sometimes people in stressful situations
give way more away than they should just because they’re
nervous.