Wolf (The Henchmen MC #3) (14 page)

I exhaled loudly. "You weren't supposed to be there. You were supposed to be at Reign's. I told Summer..."

"No effing way," she laughed. "Oh, that makes so much more sense now."

"What does?"

"That ridiculous dinner party. None of us understood why the hell we were there except that Summer threw a holy fit at any of us who said we weren't going to be able to make it."

"I wanted to keep you all safe," I admitted.

"While you created chaos."

"I didn't want any of the friendleys thinking it was any of the other friendleys doing the dirt," I said, referring to Hailstorm, The Henchmen, Richard Lyon, and the Mallick family- all the organizations that, while they did less than legal things, had a moral compass. I didn't want any of them to start pointing fingers and causing a war where there had always been peace, even camaraderie.

Lo was quiet for a long minute, looking like she was struggling for the right thing to say. "That night, babe, that night is burned in my memory," she said and I know she didn't mean the night of the bombing. She meant the night that she found me when I was sixteen. "When I close my eyes, some nights, I still see it clear as I did then. You were too young to be that broken. Sixteen with scars a grown woman would never be able to walk around wearing. And not just all these ones," she said, running her hand down the tattoos on my arm, tattoos I got to cover up what was underneath. "I mean the ones you wear on the inside. I didn't know you. You couldn't even speak to me your face was so swollen, but I knew you. I understood. Our souls spoke in the same language- the language only women can fully understand, babe. And the second I picked you up off that street, I knew I would give anything to see you able to carry your own weight again one day, to see you smile or laugh, to see you start to heal."

"I tried, Lo," I said, my voice a desperate whisper. I did. I tried so hard to brush it off, to bury it deep and move on, to be a better, stronger woman. I tried every day of my life.

Her hand grabbed mine and held tight. "No. You didn't
try
. You succeeded. It took a long time, years, but you healed from the outside in. But because I spoke your language, babe, I knew that there were some scars, the ones marked deep down on your soul, that might never heal. I understood that. I never expected you to live one day like all of that never happened to you. It would be hypocritical of me to expect that of you when I didn't expect it of myself."

"Lo..." I said, shaking my head. She was going to tell me about her past. She thought that by telling me, by letting me in, that maybe I would feel comfortable enough to do the same. But I didn't need that. I didn't need the gory details.

"I was wrong to hide it. I was wrong to think that what happened
to
me would define the way others would see me. It wasn't my fault that I married someone who wasn't who I thought he was. It wasn't my fault he beat me, that he pushed himself on me. It wasn't even my fault that I stayed. I was young. Older than you were, babe, but way too young to deal with that. I didn't see a way out. But when I finally did, I took it."

"Lo," I broke in, needing to tell her that I had already found out about him. "I know about Damian Crane."

Her body jerked and I could see betrayal crossing her face. "Cash told..."

"I snooped, Lo. I know I shouldn't have, but I could never sleep. There were only so many books I could read, so many articles I could browse. I looked into all of you at the beginning. I knew you were married. I knew you left him. I didn't know he beat you." My lip trembled slightly before I forced it to relax. "But you're right- it didn't change the way I thought about you. It doesn't define you. You're you. You're the baddest bitch I've ever met and you taught me so much about how to be strong, how to overcome, even though I didn't know there was something like that for you to overcome, I think I felt it. I felt it in my gut."

"Wolf is hunting Lex, isn't he?" she asked, sounding like she already knew the answer.

But I gave it to her anyway. "Yes."

"I know it's not right of me, but I really hope he finds him before Reign, Cash, and Repo catch up."

I exhaled a sharp breath, thankful she said it so I didn't feel so wrong to think it. "Me too."

"Then let's just sit here and be not-right together, yeah?"

"Yeah," I agreed, snuggling back down into the comfort of the big, warm bed.

A while later, getting in beside me, but on her side to avoid chafing her sore back, she broke the silence. "One night, Cash came in while I was sleeping and picked up one of my books..."

"Oh no," I groaned, smiling at the awful thought. Lo, badass leader lady that she was, was also a hopeless romantic. This was proved by the fact that she devoured endless smutty romance novels. It was something I used to tease her about all the time.

"Then he started reading one of the sex scenes. Out loud."

At that, I felt a laugh, inappropriate given the situation, but uncontrollable, burst from my lips. I threw my head back and let it wash over me, an image of the sexy blond biker sitting there reading a dirty scene to an embarrassed Lo crossed my mind... it was just too good. "Were you mortified?"

"Words can't even describe."

"Did he tease you about it?"

Her smile went soft. "No. He tried to force me to relax, not be embarrassed. Then, well, stuff happened."

I felt my smile turn a little devilish, "Stuff, huh?" I asked with an eyebrow wiggle. "Is he as good as the word on the street?"

"God, babe... so much
better.
"

I laughed. "It's good his STD check came back clean last month then."

It was her turn to burst out laughing. "We should probably stop monitoring him so closely from now on."

"Hey, if he's got nothing to hide then he shouldn't..."

"I think I love him, Janie," she broke in, the words tripping over one another. When I didn't immediately respond, she gushed on, "I know it's fast. It's... too fast. It doesn't make sense and..."

I shook my head, silencing her. "Lo, when has love
ever
made any kind of sense?"

"I think he loves me too," she admitted, her voice a little hopeful.

"He fucking better," I said immediately and she smiled. "He doesn't see what a prize he's got with you, he's an idiot. I mean... he
is
and idiot..."

"Hey," she broke in, trying for offended, but she was smiling too much.

"I'm kidding. He's good people, Lo. You know I'd tell you otherwise if I didn't think he was."

"Janie... I know he's got a wicked reputation of being a vicious son of a bitch," she started, watching my face for a reaction, "but I think Wolf is a good man too."

I felt my face go soft and could see the anticipation on her face. But it was too soon. I didn't have anything to tell her yet, not really. Her and Cash moved fast and furious, both of them with the balls-to-the-wall personalities that they had. It didn't surprise me that once they got over their initial hangups about each other that things progressed quickly. She had a whole night's worth of stories to tell me. I had next to nothing.

So I stayed silent and listened while she talked.

Eventually, she tired from pain, me tired from tears, we both drifted off to sleep, Harley and Chopper standing guard by the door.

We woke up with no word from Cash, though he had promised Lo he would keep her updated. A knot of fear and panic twisted tightly in my stomach. Why weren't they keeping in touch with us? Was there simply nothing to report? Or were things bad and they didn't want to tell us, worry us?

Lo attempted to keep the mood upbeat. She cooked. She caught me up on the goings-on at Hailstorm and in the town in general since I went MIA. In a town as wild and mostly lawless as Navesink Bank, a week out of the loop meant there was a lot that went down that you missed.

She passed out that night, I stayed up and read, trying to pretend I wasn't freaking out inside.

Her cell rang early the next morning, making her fly up on the bed, awake in a split second and fishing her phone out of her back pocket. "Cash?" she asked almost frantically into the cell. There was a pause, her face both fell and twisted in amusement, a combination I didn't know how to interpret. "As if that's possible." Another pause. "What's up, Shooter?"

If she had been looking at me, she would have seen my entire body jolt.

Shooter.

There was only one person around with the name Shooter.

I knew him from reputation, being a contract killer, the best damn sniper I had ever seen.

I also knew him from the night of the bombing.

--

It all started on a night when I couldn't sleep. I sneaked out of the barracks and moved across the quiet grounds to get to the command center where I could get some privacy. Then I powered up the laptop and I just screwed around for a few hours. I wasn't looking for anything in particular when I found a forum that had a thread by a woman named Alex who had information on Lex Keith and was looking for someone else with either more information or a way to bring him down.

And, well, I couldn't help myself. I opened the thread and I scrolled down. Not only was Alex a brilliant hacker, she was dedicated. With the sheer amount of information she had on Lex, from browser histories to where he got coffee, to the names of the foster families he had lived with growing up. From the looks of it, she spent years collecting the information. Some of it was useless, just nonsense. But she had other things too. She had information on the rape kits from women who claimed Lex Keith had assaulted them. Worse yet, she had pictures and videos that she must have stolen from Lex's hard drive.

I was a page in, stomach churning, when I came across them.

The pictures of me.

The pictures he took when he had me.

Eight years before, I was sixteen. I was young and invincible, fearless. I paid no attention to the warnings my mother gave me about walking alone at night, about the buddy system, about the parts of town not to cross into. We had the Third Street Gang to worry about, after all.

The ironic thing? I had passed by the Third Street guys a mile or so back, sitting on their stoop, watching their hookers walk up and down the street. I had been catcalled, my young ego taking the harassment as a compliment and I offered them a saucy smile over my shoulder. They didn't chase me. They didn't do anything but nudge each other and offer me an invitation that I didn't even need to decline.

That's the funny thing about a false sense of security... I thought getting past the Third Street guys was the worst part of my walk home. When I crossed from the slums into the more suburban area, I thought I was home free. What was to fear? There were working streetlights, nicely maintained houses, white picket fences for fuck's sake. There was nothing to be afraid of there except having someone call the cops because some teenage girl all decked out in gothic rebellion was on their streets.

So when a car slowed and someone called to me, I turned easily, expecting to need to give someone directions.

They created the phrase 'young and stupid' for a reason.

It didn't even phase me that the car had two men in the front seat and that I was alone and defenseless. That danger didn't even register.

So when the car fully stopped and the door flew open and I realized my mistake, it was too late. I was thrown in the backseat with the man who had been riding passenger, using everything in my very small, very soft and untrained body to fight, to try to get free- nails, fists, teeth, feet. I tried everything until a fist collided to the side of my head and everything went black.

I woke up a while later, shoulders screaming and colder than I had ever been in my life. My eyes opened slowly, consciousness coming back to me in pieces. First, I realized my shoulders hurt because I was hanging by my wrists. Second, I realized I was cold because my clothes were gone. All of them. I was naked. I was also in a basement, all cinder block walls, cement floors, and no windows. Third, I had the blinding, crippling understanding of what was going to happen to me.

I was naked in a basement hanging from my wrists after two men abducted me off the street. I might have been dauntless and a bit dense about my own mortality, but I wasn't dumb. They weren't holding me in their basement chained up and naked to teach me how to play canasta and talk about how much better things were before technology started tearing us apart.

No.

I was going to be tortured.

I was going to be, I swallowed hard at even having to think the word, raped.

And there was nothing, not a damn thing I could do about it.

At the time, I had no idea who Lex Keith was. He was still young, still paying his dues, working his way up in the criminal underbelly. His name wasn't even on my radar. As such, I had no idea that he wasn't just a rapist. He was a sadist. He got off on pain and he was very, very good at finding new and inventive ways to create it. Some days I was sliced open, little superficial cuts all up and down my arms, cuts designed to sting and scare me, but not cause any permanent damage- just little white scars I would learn I could cover with tattoos.