Witness (2 page)

“Knew what?” Jax shouted from the next room.

“Dash has a hard-on for the witness,” Hunter replied.

“Fuck you!” Dash said, shoving him back. “I fucking told you—”

“She’s a looker,” Pete said, appearing at the end of the hall. He grabbed his crotch again. “Don’t blame you for wanting to fuck her, man. No problem seeing if she’s up for some fun before she’s in the ground.”

Jax rounded behind Pete, none of the same humor evident on his face. “This gonna be a problem, Dash?”

“Don’t matter,” Pete said, shrugging. “We’re family, ain’t we, Dash? Bitch goes in a ditch.”

Dash wondered if his face would melt off, though he wasn’t sure if it was embarrassment, fury or some combination thereof. That anyone had been able to read him well enough to know he had reservations pissed him off—that he was suddenly the star of his very own interrogation even more so.

Because he didn’t know. Fuck him, he didn’t know. Ten years could do a lot to change a person—he was proof enough of that. Maybe Rennie wasn’t the same as he remembered. Maybe she was a bitch now, rather than the sweet, kind, sexy-as-fuck girl he would have once sold his soul to touch. To protect. To love.

Long fucking time ago.

Still, those feelings had been very real to him.

But fuck if he’d let them see any more than they had already.

“In the fuckin’ ditch,” he confirmed, his gaze locked on Hunter. “Club comes first. Gunner doesn’t have doubts, does he? Neither should you.”

He brushed passed the prick before he could start in again, and stalked to the kitchen, his steps thundering with more bravado than he felt. Once there, he threw open the door to the fridge and pulled out a Sam Adams. Half of it was drained in less than a minute.

Hunter’s doubts compounded his own. His temples throbbed and his heart raced at a gallop.

He had no idea what he’d do with Rennie Jones. He owed Gunner the world and then some, and he’d sworn his oath. Lucifer’s Legion before all, and
all
included whatever pissant life he’d led before.

Never had he thought he’d see Rennie again, and sure as fuck not like this. By this time tomorrow, she’d know what kind of man he’d become.

He just hoped he figured it out before then.

Chapter One

She’d been here before.

The vein-chilling, hard-pounding, sweat-inducing edge to which only pure panic could drive a person—oh yes, Serenity Jones knew this place well. She’d visited numerous times over her short and rather unremarkable life, most often for reasons or problems fabricated by an overactive imagination. The first true anxiety attack had come at age nine, when she’d been certain her father was right, and she would spend an eternity in Hell. The most recent had been nearly seven years earlier, when she’d come face-to-face with the reality that she didn’t believe in Hell, or God, for that matter, and the world wasn’t as terrible as she’d been told.

Sessions with her therapist had taught her that panic—the sort that was produced in the mind—was the brain’s way of reacting to disorder-induced fears as though she were in actual danger. Serenity had always assumed finding herself in an actually dangerous situation would bring about a different sort of biological reaction. She’d been wrong.

Her arms hurt, stretched above her head, joined by a cuff at the wrists. At least, she assumed it was a cuff. The blindfold prevented her from doing much outside of guessing.

Blindfolded. Cuffed. Holy fuck, what happened?

There was the panic again—pulsing through her body like an old friend. She kicked her legs out, the flaps of her dress—or skirt, she couldn’t remember—sliding across her skin. Her feet, bare, rubbed against what felt like a concrete floor, catching on jagged particles. Pebbles? Whispers of dirt met with her skin. A thick, pungent but familiar smell tickled her nostrils. Motor oil?

Tears burned her eyes, and something else burned too. Her shoulder. Her right shoulder was torturing her. God, what had she done to her shoulder?

Serenity whipped her head, trying to dislodge the blindfold. No use. It didn’t budge.

Slowly—oh so slowly—the panic began to ebb. Not due to lack of reason or fear, but rather because it had nowhere to go but down. Her hammering heart sought a more reasonable tempo, her body—cold, clammy and drenched with sweat—began to rein in the tremors. Wisps of clarity penetrated the hard fog surrounding her brain, and she forced herself to think.

All right, Serenity. Focus. What’s the last thing you remember?

Serenity panted for air, shoving back the urge to vomit. Her last memory was Ellison. Ellison seeing her to car, favoring her with one of his swarmy lawyer smiles, and vanishing in her rear-view mirror.

Then—nothing.

No, not nothing. Squealing brakes. Stomach falling. The twisted scream of metal. A flare of pain. The car caving in.

Okay, so she’d been in an accident.

Her heart began racing once more as her panic cycle shoved her into another round. Serenity bit her lip and kicked her legs out again. Again, her skin took the brunt of dirt and scattered bits of debris. Again, she inhaled in the increasingly familiar scent of oil and exhaust fumes.

A car accident didn’t explain why she was blindfolded and cuffed.

Then it hit her. The missing pieces. Ellison had smiled his swarmy lawyer smile because they’d just concluded dinner—the same dinner he’d talked her into taking with him after the last meeting to rehash her testimony.

The testimony she was supposed to give tomorrow. Or today, more likely.

The testimony that would put Gunner Pierce permanently behind bars.

When the panic started climbing this time, Serenity didn’t fight it. She couldn’t if she’d wanted to. The tears that had assaulted her eyes began to fall, and everything in her went with them.

Gunner Pierce had every reason to keep her away from the witness stand, and endless resources to make that happen.

She was here because he wanted her to be here. Because he wanted her silent.

The only question was, why on earth was she still alive?

Serenity twisted, her tightening stomach alerting her that she was about to be very sick. She didn’t know where she was, but she did know she didn’t want to vomit all over herself. Instinct commanded her to turn just before the wave hit, and she emptied her stomach onto the floor beside her.

“Fuck,” she whimpered, the sound more a sputtering sob than anything else. That horrible sick feeling overwhelmed her, and at once her head was pounding. The inside of her mouth stung.

Something slid hard against the floor. Then she knew—she wasn’t alone.

Someone, her kidnapper, had just witnessed her moment of weakness.

Serenity choked on another sob and leaned her head back. She hit something—the wall, probably—and pulled ineffectively again at her cuffed wrists. “I know you’re there,” she said, her voice shaking too much to be controlled, but she was proud that she’d managed words at all. “And I know who you work for. And we both know why I’m here. So let’s skip the formalities and get down to business. I’m supposed to die. You’re supposed to kill me. Just…” She paused and inhaled, the bitter sting of a new wave of tears prickling her eyes. “Please…don’t drag it out, okay? Just do it.”

She waited for an answer, and received it in a long-drawn out breath.

Then he—she assumed it was a he—moved. Heavy footsteps carried away from her. Away, then a door slammed. The echo reverberated through her body like a shotgun blast. Had it been any louder, she likely would have freed herself from the force of her jump alone,

“Hello?” she called. “Are you there?”

No answer. No breathing.

Her kidnapper had left her.

Serenity swallowed, waited a beat, then began pulling against the restraints in earnest. Her shoulder protested, sending fiery hot jolts of pain through her body. She resumed kicking, searching for something—anything—that would give her location away. That she could drag over with her feet, that she could use.

But there was nothing. And even with two good shoulders, she would never be able to pull herself out of the cuffs. Blood thickened the air, followed by a pronounced sting at her wrist. All she’d managed to do was cut herself.

A violent tremor seized her body, enveloping her with a blanket of cold.

She was going to die here. That wasn’t the panic talking, it was reality. She was going to die for Tanner Wilcox, because she couldn’t keep her mouth shut. Because she hadn’t wanted to. She’d been warned that going after Gunner Pierce could get her killed, because he wasn’t a man to fuck with.

Of all her father’s sermons, the one about doing the right thing was the one that had stuck. No matter how big a jerk Tanner had been, he hadn’t deserved to die, and his killer shouldn’t go unpunished.

Easy words to say when free. Harder to swallow now.

Now when all she had was that terrible pain in her shoulder, the sting in her wrist, the aches in her arms, and the endless sea of black staring back at her.

* * * *

Control was something Dash didn’t relinquish. Ever. He’d fought too fucking hard and lost too fucking much to have it taken from him so effortlessly. Especially not at the pleading cries of a girl who was twelve hours past her time of death.

He couldn’t lose it now.

Still, that didn’t explain the way his gut tightened every time she twisted against the handcuffs. How he’d had to tamp down his instinctive need to tell Rennie everything would be all right, as though that was his call to make. He’d already fucked up by bringing her here. But everyone else was at the courthouse, watching Gunner’s fate unfold. And he had nowhere else to go.

The clubhouse had always been his oasis—his place to collect himself, to calm the fuck down—or freak the fuck out, if necessary. His home, the only home that mattered. Now tainted because he’d infected his present with his past.

The anticipated calm had yet to settle in. He doubted it would. Not while Rennie was in the clubhouse garage. Panicking. Terrified. Defeated. Of course she would be—she’d always been smart. She knew what kind of shit she was in.

She knew who she’d fucked with.

She just didn’t know about him.

Dash stomped to the kitchen. Once there, he paused, overwhelmed, and forced himself to jumpstart his brain and remember why he’d come in here in the first place.

Towels. Water. First-aid kit.

Because she was hurt. Hurt when she was supposed to be dead.

Hurt because he’d rammed his cousin’s Chevy into her Prius. Damn thing hadn’t stood a chance.

With the supplies gathered, Dash steeled himself and made the return trip to the garage. He had no idea how much time he had before one of the others—Hunter, Butch, Pete, Jax, Sawyer, any of them—returned. Without Rennie at the courthouse to offer her testimony, there was no telling how long the holdup would last.

How long he had before someone learned Rennie was still alive and kicking.

Emphasis on kicking.

Dash edged the garage door open and did his best not to react when his eyes landed on her trembling body. Rennie was just as he’d left her. Her legs scraped, her arms shaking, her otherwise modest skirt hiked to mid-thigh from her struggling, the bandana he’d secured around her eyes still in place, her light brown hair hanging loosely from her ponytail. He knew the second she became aware of him. She inhaled raggedly and pushed back, like she wanted to make herself smaller, and the little throaty whimpers she likely didn’t even realize she made resumed in full force.

Fuck.

Rennie Jones. Why did it have to be Rennie Jones?

Dash steeled himself and pressed forward. It didn’t matter who it was. He had his job. He owed that to Gunner.

Never mind that in the world according to Gunner, Rennie was supposed to be long dead by now. Dash had yet to figure that one out—how he could do right by the man to whom he owed everything, yet keep his own hands clean.

Gunner had asked him to do a lot of ugly shit. Murder had never been on the list.

“Please.”

Dash stopped short.

“Please,” Rennie repeated, the sound bleak. She flexed her hands against the cuffs, which drew his attention to the trail of red making its way down her arm. She’d cut herself.

“Shit,” he muttered, then immediately echoed the sentiment for having spoken at all. The last thing she needed was a thread by which to identify him. That would only make things even more fucked up.

Not that they could get much more fucked up.

Rennie had gone statue-still, probably not having anticipated hearing him speak. Then, she swallowed, “Please, I don’t want to die.”

Dash exhaled. So she’d changed her mind, then. Or perhaps this was survival instinct kicking in. No use for bravery. She had nothing to lose by appealing to his humanity.

Even if he’d used up the last of it in bringing her here.

“He told you to kill me, didn’t he?” she continued, dragging her wrists forward as far as she could. Fresh rivets of blood pooled around the cuffs. “But you didn’t. You brought me here.”

“You’re hurting yourself.”

So what was the harm in talking? Rennie hadn’t seen him in over a decade. Odds were she’d forgotten all about him. He hoped she had. That’d make things easier.

Dash edged as near as he was willing to venture, mindful of her legs. “Stay still now,” he continued.

She shook. Her fingers flexed. Her toes curled. “What…what are you going to do?”

Dash situated himself at her side. “Here,” he said by way of answering, and dabbed her mouth with one of the towels. She gave a violent jerk in response. “Chill out, okay?”

Chill out.
Had dumber words been uttered?

Apparently, Rennie didn’t think so. The transformation from terrified hostage to emboldened, angry phoenix was truly remarkable. “Chill out?” she echoed. “You have me cuffed and blindfolded. How the fuck am I supposed to react?”

In spite of himself, Dash grinned. “Ah. Now you’re pissed. Gotta say, I like this better than barfing all over the place.”