Snare: Road Kill MC (A Novel) (17 page)

I'd had enough of Riker since day one.

Riker leaves the room, casting a last glance over his shoulder. That one look speaks volumes. Riker tells me with his eyes that this is an intermission. He'll be back, and then it's game on.

I stare at the closed door for a few moments then turn to Mover. I know I shouldn't ask him the burning question because he's lied about my virginity, and I know that it bought me time from Riker's plan. But why would he do that? Why was he there in that VIP room when Snare came and found me. “Why did you lie?”

Mover clasps his hands, and my gaze latches onto his fingers. I can't help thinking that one of them was just inside me.

He doesn't miss my shiver of revulsion. After a moment, he replies, “I can't answer that now.”

Of course not.
I taste vomit at the corner of my mouth.
Gross.

Mover speaks his next words so low I can barely catch them. “Don't be afraid.”

I bark out a laugh.
Yeah, right.
I crank my neck to scowl up at him.

He nods. “I deserve that. All you know is I'm a man you pleasured, a man that shared something intimate with you that you didn't want to give.”

“All true,” I say then add in a venomous hiss, “bastard.”

He nods. “I've had to be. But remember this, no matter what occurs, I am not who you think I am.”

“I have a daughter,” I say, the first hot tear racing from my eyeball to my jaw.

“I know.” His reply is soft, and I have time to think he's strangely cultured for a bike president guy and checker of virgins, when someone opens the door and walks through.

He looks like another biker dude, but not. He's tall and muscled like the rest of them, and I automatically press my knees together.

“I'm Tad,” he says.

“What?” I ask.

“Tad,” he repeats. “I'm gonna get ya all fixed up.”

Right.
I tense. “Don't touch me.”

He throws up his hands. “Whoa, filly! Don't get your sweet drawers in knots.”

I stare at him, willing his death with my eyes.

He chuckles. “Mover said you'd be spitting mad. But there's puke to slop and a bathroom stop?” His dark brown eyebrows pop, his eyes like frozen coffee.

I reluctantly nod. “Yeah,” I say in a sullen clip. He says the word
bathroom
, and the urge to pee is so strong I squirm in my chair.

“Then I'll untie you, and we can take a little trip to the john.”

He unties me. I think I can fight, run—get away. But I stand up and fall.

Tad scoops me up into his arms before I hit the concrete floor.

My arms aren't doing what I tell them. Because my brain tells my body to move, and I lie there in the arms of a potential attacker.

“It's okay,” Tad says. A fold of skin gathers between his eyes.

“No it's not.” My tears ruin my clothes, instantly drenching my shoulders as the big man walks me to the far end of the room, my arms like limp noodles as one dangles as he carries me.

He sets me outside the door and says, “No fooling around. Don't like hurting chicks.”

My eyes roam his face. I crawl inside the bathroom and kick the door closed.

His voice drops, vibrating through the door with ominous promise. “I will if I have to.”

I shake my head, trying desperately to clear it of the drugs, the concussion I'm sure I have. I sway as I stand, gripping the knob as a handhold.

It's only then I realize Mover slipped out without really answering my question.

Snare

“He's out,” Wring says, grinning.

I'm not smiling. I already told them that Noose was in good hands. But because they're all war buddies, or just plain buddies, they had to go take a look-see. He zonked. They loaded him full of all the good shit.

“Okay,” I say, folding my arms and glaring at them.

Lariat gives me a pointed glance, his muscular thighs split by his ride. “Stop freaking, we're gonna get Sara. Had to make sure our boy was gonna live.”

“Viper said—”

“—Viper said if Sara was not in immediate danger. I think daddy fucking dearest taking her is
immediate
danger.” Wring's icy-blue eyes are dead marbles in his face. He means it. All of it. “I'm a literal guy. I take Vipe's words and interpret them as I go along. Trainer's on Noose so we don't have some Chaos caboose of retaliation in the hospital while we go fetch your girl.”

I look down at my hands, not even sure how to tell them. Fuck, better just jump in the deep end of the lake. “Riker...” I toss my fingers through my hair, tugging on the strands.

“Your father?” Wring confirms quietly.

I jerk my head in a nod. “Before they beat the fuck out of me and Noose, he told me that Sara had a kid.”

Lariat and Wring wait.

“She's mine.”

Lariat's eyebrows yank up, and his mouth parts. “Let me get this straight.” He laughs and holds up his hand when I scowl at him. “You screwed your sister—”

“Step,” I grit, giving him an unfriendly look.

“Stepsister,” he says, but a smile hovers on his lips.
Prick.
“And you manage to get her pregnant?” He shakes his head. “Truth
is
better than fiction.”

I cross my arms. “It's my life, dumb ass.”

Wring's palm cups his chin. “I don't give a ripe fuck about schematics. Sara is Snare's property. If she has a kid, and the kid is Snare's—even more important we get her the fuck away from psycho daddy.”

I nod. That's how I see it. I can be pissed at Sara later. Pissed that she needed me more than ever and
still
walked.

Pissed that I didn't see my kid for the last four years.

Right now she's in danger, and I don't know where our kid is. The situation's gotten fucked up on a whole new level.

“I couldn't make this shit up,” Lariat says, grinning.

Me and Wring give him the
shut the fuck up while you're ahead
look.

“Anyway,” Wring says, giving a last sharp glance at Lariat, who bites his lip to control his shit, “we don't have a scrap of intel. Noose, who normally secures the morsels that allow movement, is out for the count. We need to move into Chaos territory and see if we can't find Sara ourselves.”

“What about this fuck, Mover?”

Lariat looks at me. “Viper's been stalling him. Says that he can't find two of his riders, and their disappearance is under suspicious circumstances.”

No shit.

“It gets us some breathing room to locate Sara.”

My chest is tight. “Riker might be hurting her right now.”

Wring's large hand is suddenly gripping my shoulder. Our eyes lock. “You can't help your woman if your head's up your ass, Snare.”

He's right, and I hate that he is. I let out all the air that's trapped in me, trying to ease my tension.

“It's time for us to teach you a little bit of tactical, bring you up a notch so you can knock skulls if you need to.”

I jerk my chin back, and his hand falls to his side. We stare at each other from the same height of around six foot two. Pound for pound, we're pretty evenly matched. “I totally understand the procedure of skull knocking,” I comment in a flat voice.

“Quietly?” Lariat says like a half question.

I swing my gaze to him.

He spreads his palms. “You might be Mr. Judo. But we're knotters.”

I remember the knot board at Noose's condo. Fucker can makes some mean ties. I'd seen him use a rope like a gun. Hell, like a passion. A dark one.

I nod. “Okay.”

“Okay, what?” Lariat asks. I notice his eyes sparkle like black diamonds in his face. In anticipation.

“Yes.”

Wring and Lariat have a sort of similar potential. Like the promise of night descending.

I know it'll happen, and it'll be dark when it comes.

*

Our bikes rumble between us as we smoothly move into triangle formation.

Wring leads, and Lariat and I make up the other points. We're in for a hike, but time's of the essence. We don't need to go back to the club and switch out cars like we did when Noose went after Rose and Charlie—when Ned's huge property had to be secured.

We're scouting
, Lariat had said.

I don't know about scouting. I'm more about wanting to find Sara and get the hell out.

If I hadn't been kept by Chaos, I would have already gotten Sara. Had her and the kid in a safe spot where Riker would've never found her.

But me and Noose were busy getting our asses kicked.

No amount of doctoring took away the painful remnants of their fists. Miraculously, I didn't have a broken bone.

Still feel like I went through the washing machine on spin cycle.

Every bump in the road and curve reminds me of the last twenty-four hours. I'm so tired my teeth ache. But Sara's with Riker. And somehow, that knowledge takes the place of sleep, food, whatever.

My worry over the unknown danger that Sara's in sustains me. I'll fucking sleep when I can touch her again.

Wring's words had been, “I always fuck up the enemy better on a full stomach.”

Amen.

So we'd eaten anyway and were now on a do over of the scene when we rescued Noose's old lady, Rose, from Chaos a year ago. Only to have Ned get his ass killed and all of us questioned to death by the cops.

We're going into enemy territory again and taking our chances.

Lariat and Wring had given me the ten-second lesson on stealth. It's really more about attitude. Attitude breeds technique and so on. It was still way too much information crammed into a capsule of time. Not enough practice, with me so deep in my fucking head.

What's really struck me during the instruction is how different Lariat and Wring are as people when they're teaching something they believe in.

And they believe in each other. The code of Road Kill. We're brothers.
That
unifies us. And the common goal of my girl in trouble. Her life and sanity are on the line.

Not in that order.

We pull up to a copse of trees, a mile from the warehouse where Noose and I just got our asses beaten. I'd recognize the boxy, 1950s flat-roofed architecture anywhere.

“Deja vu,” Lariat comments dryly.

Can't argue that.
Or the fact that my body doesn't want to go near where I just got my clock cleaned. The entire run smacks of last year, when we got Rose away from her crazy ex-brother-in-law and fucked-up flesh-peddling bank boss. It'd been personal then. Me and Noose are tight—getting Rose mattered. Because it mattered to Noose. Now that Sara's life hangs in the balance, it matters on a whole other level.

My inhale is raw, but it steadies me, the twinge of pain in my ribs—I use it. Wring didn't have to convince me that pain can be consumed like fuel.
Anger will help,
he'd said during their brief stealth tutorial.

That's damn skippy, because I've got enough rage to fuel us forever.

We get moving. I use the skills they taught me about walking, staying on the balls of my feet and centering my weight like a thread between solid objects—pulled from behind and in front. My breaths are evenly spaced and vital, my eyes on the spot where I'll be with each new step I take.

When we get close to the Chaos fortress, we slow to a crawl, moving between the branches like the wind. Our faces are painted with classic camo coloring.

But in some dim corner of my mind, I believe my heritage is bleeding through.

It feels fucking natural to wear war paint.

To entertain killing. Not for sport.

For vengeance.

*

“We can't waltz into the place. It's like fucking Fort Knox,” I explain to Wring in a frustrated whisper.

He moves his head forward like a bird after a worm, his nose knifing between the foliage that borders the woods from the big cinder block warehouse.

“Water table is high in this region. I'm figuring no basement,” Lariat comments, checking out the warehouse from his position beside Wring.

Both men are lying on their bellies, looking perfectly comfortable.

I fucking hurt, but I maintain the same position as them.

Lariat taps the tip of his index finger along the end of the binoculars, then carefully lays them against his chest. The movement is subtle and deliberately quiet.

“You say there's a garage at the back?” he asks without turning to look at me.

I nod. “Yeah, the cop took us out that way.”

Lariat's lips twist. “Fucking cops, complicating a perfectly fine acquisition mission.”

I stifle a snort then turn to him. “Lariat, I thought this was a look-see.”

“True, but if something bad's happening to Sara, a look-see gets upgraded to a seek and destroy.”

“Is that military speak?”

He shakes his head. “Nah. Just my interpretation.”

We hear a noise, and Wring and Lariat instantly still. Like mannequins.

I look around, and they shake their heads.

Oh yeah. I close my eyes and drop my jaw. Those two explained that hearing becomes more acute when you take sight out of the equation, when the bones of your jaws open and allow more sound to pass through your ear canals. Or some shit like that.

There.
Movement to my left. I roll, opening my eyes as I move.

A big guy with a Chaos cut is about to land on top of me. I'd know the fucker anywhere.
Good ol’ Butch.

His legs are planted wide, as though he will bend to scoop me up. I jerk my foot up like I'll plow it through his asshole.

Butch sinks soundlessly, giving a mad clutch to his nuts, his eyes round as he slowly lands on his ass.

Wring slips in behind him, bending his forearm around the man's beefy neck. It's almost like a lover's stance.

Except for the strangling.

Butch claws at Wring's forearms, and Lariat moves smoothly in front of Butch.

His legs are furiously kicking.

Lariat winds up his double-knotted rope. Much smaller and more stout than what I saw Noose use. He swings it like a pendulum, striking Butch in the nuts a second time.

The guy's eyes roll up in his face, and he passes out.

Wring holds him for three minutes, finally letting him drop. He slides out from underneath the Chaos rider with a roll and twist, then stands. A look passes between him and Lariat. I'm not included. Then suddenly, their faces turn to me, and I am. I'm very much a part of the moment.

Lariat holds out a hand, and I take it. He's jerking me to my feet before my next breath.

His voice is quiet. “Let's go see about Sara.”

We move.

*

“Bad way for that guy to go,” I comment softly.

Wring nods, giving me a sharp glance. “Death by Ball Tap.”

Lariat grins.

And Puck the cop had thought me and Noose were hard cases?
He'd revise that opinion if he met the ball-buster duo.

I don't have the heart to laugh about the Chaos douche nozzle. Could be I'm going fucking crazy until I can get to Sara. Or because my own nutsack crawled up my ass to escape once it saw what was happening to his.

Lariat gives a light tap on my shoulder. Two.
Wait
.

“I don't like it.” Wring's voice is uneasy. “Anything could fuck us. The cops showing up. Sara not being here. More Chaos.”

“Nerves?” Lariat questions softly, his dark eyes like black razors.

“Not usually,” Wring replies.

“Fuck,” Lariat says.

When the hammer is drawn back on a gun, Wring flies forward, tackling me to the ground as a gunshot blows my hearing away.

Instantly, blood begins to pool, running like a red river toward where I lay in a stunned pile.

Lariat's hit, and Wring's already turning.

The gun swings in a Chaosʼs hand. The barrel’s pointing at Wring. His rope swings through the air like a double-sided flail, catching the hand before the bullet leaves the chamber.

Wring springs up and is on the Chaos MC dude like white on rice. His fists fly in a blur of pummeling maniac.