Rogue (Dead Man's Ink #2) (3 page)

“You might be wrong,” Carnie whispers. “I get bad feelings all the time. Your brain plays some epic tricks on you sometimes.”

“He’s not wrong, asshole. He’s never been wrong.” The dull thump of Cade punching Carnie in the arm is quiet, but Carnie’s yelp of pain isn’t. “Jesus, man. Shut your fucking mouth. You wanna get us killed?”

“I don’t think he’s seen us,” I whisper, ignoring them. “But I can’t be sure. Time to leave.” Leaving is the very last thing I want to do. I want to storm into that building and shoot some motherfuckers. I want to dig the point of my blade into Hector Ramirez’s chest and watch the light go out in his eyes as the steel bites deeper. But Ramirez is a smart guy. He knows I’m coming. There’s no way there’s only six people in that building. He will have an army of men hidden out of sight, ready to end our lives before we even step foot on the fucking farmhouse porch.

“Come on, man. We’ll get the fucker, don’t you worry. But this ain’t how it goes down,” Cade says. I let him pull me back, let his words deaden the boiling adrenalin storming my veins, calling for revenge. I suddenly feel exhausted.

“All right. All right,” I take a deep breath, uncurling my hands, not realizing they were clenched into fists. As I retreat from the farmhouse with my boys, ducking low to remain out of sight, I feel sick to my stomach. We’re leaving with our lives, but somehow it feels like a defeat. I’m chanting the same words over and over as the farmhouse shrinks and disappears behind us.

This isn’t over, motherfucker. It’s only just begun.

TWO
 

SOPHIA

I’ve given up screaming. It didn’t get me anywhere for two days so I figured why waste the energy. I haven’t seen Rebel in ten days. Ten days couped up in his cabin while he’s out there doing god knows what and I’ve been going bat shit crazy. I thought we were past this. I thought this part was over. I should have known by his silent, brooding mood on the way back from Alabama that things were right back to where we were in the beginning. More fool me for assuming that me agreeing to help him, me turning down the opportunity to flee back to my family, me
fucking
him
for fuck’s sake, would change things between us. Now, I just feel foolish. For all of it.

There
was
a brief moment where I did get to step outside. Seventy two hours after Rebel put the Humvee in park and bundled me into his house on the hill, locking the door behind me, the prospect, Carnie, showed up and drove me out into the desert, kicking and screaming. He wouldn’t tell me why at first, but after an hour of me chewing his ear off, threatening to scream blue murder the whole time we were sitting in his shitty, beaten up Firebird, the guy caved.
 

“The cops are tearing the compound apart, looking for evidence to link the club to that shooting in Los Angeles.”

I’m horrified when it takes me a beat to remember what he’s talking about—the shooting at Trader Joes, where all those civilians were killed by men wearing Widow Makers cuts.
 

“Yeah, one of Rebel’s uncle’s friends called and gave him a heads up. Told Rebel the police caught the guys who did it in Irvine, still wearing the fake cuts, drunk as all hell. The fat one who was supposed to be the club president confessed that they’d been hired for the job. Gave up Maria Rosa in a heart beat, in exchange for a lesser sentence.”

“Is she still going to cause problems then? This Maria Rosa?”

Carnie gets a far away look in his eye that looks almost romantic. “From what I’ve been told, the Bitch of Columbia causes problems wherever she is in the world. I wouldn’t be surprised.”
 

He drove me back to the compound at nightfall and took me straight back to the cabin, ignoring my colorful language and my threats to take him out at the knees.
 

That was last Wednesday. Now it’s Wednesday again. Tomorrow morning I should be getting up at seven and going for a run before heading to my Human Sciences class. Instead, Carnie, with his busted up glasses and his hipster side-parting will bring me my breakfast and refuse to tell me anything, and I’ll swear at him or completely blank him depending on my mood. The cycle repeats itself endlessly, over and over.
 

Tonight, however, Carnie’s already dropped off my evening meal. I called him a soulless bastard and threw the plate of meatloaf at his head, but the thing missed him entirely and impacted with the wall. I need to do some serious work on my aim. The meatloaf has sat on the floor since then, getting colder and staler by the second, in amongst the shattered shards of the chinaware.

If Sloane were here she would have figured out how to free herself from this fucked up situation. I can guarantee it. She’s resourceful, independent and stubborn, and she wouldn’t give up until she found a way to get what she wanted. That makes me even madder as I sit and watch The Hangover for the eighteenth time. The TV in Rebel’s cabin has no reception, just a handful of DVDs, all of which are the same kind of stupid, mindless humor I would never normally watch. Now, I’ve seen every single last one of them. I’m beginning to know them line for line.

Alan is just confessing that he drugged the other guys in the movie when the door to the cabin flies open and Rebel stalks in, larger than life. It’s the last thing I’m expecting, given that I’ve been asking to see him for the past week and a half and he hasn’t graced me with his presence. A part of me got to thinking that maybe he was hurt or something. Injured, to the point where he was laid up and incapable of walking. Standing in the doorway now, I can see that he’s walking just fine. He glances down at his feet and scowls at the debris from my evening meal on the floorboards.

“What the fuck?” He looks at me like I’m a naughty child, caught misbehaving, and I automatically shrink back into the sofa. I catch myself, almost screaming out loud at how ridiculous my reaction is. I shouldn’t be shrinking from him. I’m a fucking prisoner. I’m allowed to revolt if I damn well want to. “Got a problem?” I snap, sitting up straighter.

“Yeah. There’s fucking food all over my damn floor. I hand-sanded these floorboards,” he growls.

“Then you should have thrown me in the basement or something and had done with it, shouldn’t you?”

“Don’t fucking tempt me.” Rebel steps over the mess and slams the door behind him, locking it before he storms into the room. I try not to flinch as he comes to a stop in front of me. “Stand up, Soph.”

I take a deep breath. “
No
.” My skin feels tingly, the same way it used to when I would defy my father. Not that I’m comparing the man standing in front of me with the mild mannered preacher left worrying about me back in Seattle, but this situation feels…it feels very much like I’m about to get punished.

Tilting his head to one side, Rebel drops into a crouch so that our eyes are at the same level. His are ice-blue, cold. Intense. So fierce I can hardly meet them. I’m proud of the fact that I don’t look away, though. “What seems to be the problem?” He asks this slowly, as though he’s wrestling with his temper.

Had a bad night, buddy? Well guess what? So have I.
Leaning forward so my face is closer to his, I breathe deep and even down my nose, trying to tame my own anger. “You’re fucking kidding me, right?”

He blinks. He’s frozen solid, staring straight at me. He’s holding himself back, but from what I’m not entirely sure. Not for a second do I think he’s going to hurt me, but there’s something about the brooding, stillness of him that’s intimidating. “Have you been bored or something?”

“You could say that.”

“You know what’s not boring?” Calm. He’s too fucking calm. It’s beginning to put me on edge. He continues speaking softly, but there’s a dangerous lilt to his voice. “Being chased down, raped and murdered. That’s not boring, right?”

“This place is a fortress, Jamie. I would have been fine out there with everyone else. How many people do you have living at the compound for crying out loud? There must be twenty motorcycles here at any one time!”

He cocks his head again, frowning. He’s probably wondering how I know that; you can see nothing but trees and then a distant ridgeline from the cabin windows.
 
With so little to do all day, I’ve gotten really good at listening, though. I knew nothing about engines before I came here. I don’t really know anything about them now, either, apart from the fact that each one sounds different. I’ve spent hours laying on Rebel’s bed with my eyes closed, listening hard. Figuring out which motorcycle was which. Who was coming and going. Not knowing who was riding what, of course, but still.

Rebel’s eyes flash, the muscles in his jaw jumping as he grinds his teeth. “Raphael Dela Vega’s here. In town.”

“Wait.
What
?” My arms and legs suddenly feel very cold, very numb. That…that makes no sense. What would he be doing here? My anger towards Rebel doesn’t matter anymore. Bile rises up in the back of my throat as I try to process this piece of information, but it’s as though it just won’t settle in my mind. New Mexico is so far removed from Seattle, and so very far removed from Los Angeles. My brain tries to scramble, to come up with some logical reason why Raphael would be here, here of all places. Some reason other than the fact that he must have come for me. I draw a blank.
 

Rebel shifts for the first time, wincing a little, like he’s in pain. “I don’t even want him to
see
you here, Sophia. If he does, he’ll likely try and find a way into the compound, and then what? Someone’s back’s turned and you’re lying in a pool of your own goddamn blood? No. No way.” He says this so quietly, and yet there’s such determination behind his words.

“You haven’t been by here in ten days,” I growl.

He blinks again, staring straight at me. “Would you have wanted to see me?”

“Yes! I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be kept in the dark over what’s going on in the outside world! You…
we slept together!
And then you’re just gone. You lock me up and then you just vanish off the face of the earth.”

“So that’s it? You just wanted someone to come fuck you? I’m sure any of the boys would have obliged you if only you’d have told them.”

I react without thinking. I’m lunging at him, my hand flying out to strike him across the face before I can stop myself. My palm makes contact with his cheek, a loud cracking sound filling the room. “Don’t you fucking dare,” I grind out. “Don’t you dare do that. You fucking buy me like I’m nothing but a lump of meat, like I’m goddamn
property
, and then you make me care about you. You make me think you care about me. You trick me, make me look like an absolute idiot, and then you try and make me out to be some sort of slut, too. Don’t you fucking
dare
.”

My whole body is vibrating with anger. I’ve heard the saying ‘seeing red’ before and I’ve thought nothing of it, but now I know it’s actually a very literal term—it’s almost as though I’m seeing him through a red haze.

Rebel runs his tongue over his teeth, slowly lifting his hand to touch his fingers to the red welt on his face where I struck him. He speaks carefully, very slowly. “Sophia, please know, you’re just about the only person on the face of the planet who could get away with that right now.”

“Yeah? Well, if you don’t get the hell away from me, I’m gonna do it again, asshole,” I spit.

“I went out with the intention of killing a man tonight. You think I’ll have any moral objection to tying up a misbehaving woman?”

I lean forward even further so that our faces are no less than an inch apart. “
Try me
.”

Rebel’s calm, overly controlled behavior should have clued me into the fact that he’s been on the verge of snapping this whole time. He rockets forward, hands grabbing me by the tops of my arms, pinning me to the sofa. “You really don’t want to do this with me, Soph,” he breathes.

I do, though. I want to gouge his eyes out. I want to smash my fist into his face so hard that he loses teeth. I want to break his bones and watch him bleed. I think maybe he expected me to back down as soon as he grabbed hold of me, but I don’t. I twist underneath him, slamming my knee into his side. He doubles over, huffing out a deep, pained breath. Wrenching my arms out of his grasp, I slip out from underneath him and drive my clenched fist into his side as hard as I possibly can. Rebel grits his teeth, snarling between them, jumping to his feet.

“You’re fucking crazy!”

“I guess that’s what happens to a person when you lock them away for ten days on their own, and then show up accusing them of being a whore.”

“I didn’t accuse you of being a whore.”

“You may as well have done. You think just because I slept with you, I’d want to sleep with any of your gross, Neanderthal groupies? I’m not some club hooker to be passed around like a damn party favor!”

He comes at me again, reaching for me, and that’s when I notice the blood on his hands. My mind instantly rewinds to what he just said about setting out to kill someone tonight, and I reel back. Oh my god. No, he couldn’t have. Did…
did he actually do it
? Rebel sees my anger change to horror and swiftly stops in his tracks.

“What?”

“Your hands, Rebel. What the fuck is all over your hands?”

He looks down at them, a small frown creasing his forehead, eyebrows banking together. The expression he’s wearing screams innocent confusion, however the wet blood on his hands screams something else entirely. His face is ashen.

“I don’t…”

I scream when he staggers sideways and crashes into the couch, dropping to one knee. “What the hell? Rebel?
Rebel
!” He looks like he’s on death door. “Oh, god, please…what’s wrong?” I touch his side, the side I rammed with my knee, my hand comes away covered in blood. His t-shirt is drenched with it. I didn’t notice before since the material is black, but now that I’m looking closer I can see the dark, wet stain spreading across his stomach.

“Is this…is this
you
?”

Rebel nods, holding one hand to his side. “Go and get Cade.”