Chapter Eighteen
Briley sat in the back of what was surely a van, bound and blindfolded, fighting to stay calm. Her head was fuzzy, and she knew that she’d been drugged to knock her out; what she didn’t know was how long she’d been unconscious. It could have been thirty minutes, it could have been twelve hours.
Then again, how much time had passed between being knocked out and now didn’t matter, really, since that was the past. All that mattered was what was coming – what the next five minutes, sixty minutes, four hours would bring. Besides, thinking about what had happened before meant that she’d think about…
Oh, God. Oh, no .
An image of Rebel flashed in her mind’s eye now, and the tears welled up behind the blindfold. He was dead, she was sure of it: there was no way that anyone could have survived three gunshots to the back that passed right through to the chest, and she was sure that she’d heard one more just as she was succumbing to the effects of the drug. Seeing as these boys had shown up intent on shooting to kill, she had to assume that they’d taken a head shot. She also had to think that they’d hidden the body, cleaned up the blood; they wouldn’t want to tip off that anything bad had happened.
No witness left behind. No evidence. No crime at all. Nothing to see here .
Which meant that all she had on her side was time: she had to hope hard that Dux and Drake got home not long after Rebel’s murder. She knew that when they found her gone – TV on, a mug of cold tea sitting there, her phone and purse still on the coffee table – they’d immediately jump to Michael and Crusher. They’d call Wolf and Scars and Ice, they’d call everyone , and then those boys would do what they did best.
As a woman who’d seen just how effective a few of them were at taking down a compound of rabid cult lunatics, she could scarcely imagine what the whole of the MC could do, if they set their minds to it. If Wolf pointed them in a direction, and instructed them to let loose, what would that look like?
She thought it might well be hell on earth.
Just then, the van stopped suddenly, and Briley was jolted sideways. There was a laugh from the front of the vehicle, and she gritted her teeth and sent up a quick prayer. She had a plan – not a terrible one, considering that she’d only had about twenty minutes of conscious thought to formulate it – and she had to turn in an Oscar-worthy performance now.
But it would only work if Michael was here, wherever ‘here’ was. If not, and she was alone with these two men and the living nightmare named Crusher, she was dead. It was just that simple.
The door beside her opened, and automatically, she turned in that direction even though she couldn’t see anything.
“Well, well, well... look who we’ve got. Briley Cross, you fucking bitch.”
Despite the malice and hatred in the voice, her heart still jumped with a tiny bit of hope:
He’s here .
Rough hands grabbed her now, yanked her over and out, and she found that she was instinctively crouching, trying to protect her stomach. She was jerked up straight, though, and dragged across what felt like loose earth or sand. She decided to not resist being bodily moved: she didn’t want them to punch her in the stomach, or knock her out so she fell forward.
“Oh, look at that ,” another man spoke. “Look at how eager she is to get inside with us, Web.”
“Huh,” Michael responded. “I thought she’d be more trouble, man.”
“Well, we killed one of her biker asshole boyfriends right in front of her,” said a voice behind her. “Maybe the poor little thing is in shock.”
“You two,” barked the man who had called Michael ‘Web’. “You fuck off, right now. Go back to Utah, lay low and wait until I call you. I’ll let you know when to come to the clubhouse for your patches.”
Murmurs of assent, footsteps walking away, then the roar of the van engine. Briley listened to it fade in the distance, and that’s when she heard crickets. Like, literal crickets, loud and trilling and close. It suddenly occurred to her that she must be someplace with lots of nature, and she hoped that if she was going to die, it was at least going to be in a beautiful spot.
Then she remembered the two steady little heartbeats on the ultrasound, the little hearts that were beating safe and warm in her own body, and she resolved to protect them for as long as she could. She’d find a way to keep drawing breath until Dux and Drake and The Road Devils found her.
Until they find us.
Suddenly, the blindfold was ripped from her face, and she screwed up her eyes, squinting around a well-lit cabin. It was very bare and dirty, and she swore again that she was not going to die here. No fucking way.
“Briley Cross,” Michael said again, an ugly smile spread right across his disgusting face. He gestured at the massive man standing next to him. “My friend here has a few questions for you.”
Without any warning, without even a word, the man (who surely had to be Crusher, with hands like that ), punched Briley in the face. It was so fast that she didn’t even see it coming. All she knew was that with a single blow, she was on the floor, her nose was bleeding, and she was utterly terrified already. She suspected that he’d barely used one-tenth of one percent of his enormous strength, and it was still enough to take her down.
“OK, bitch,” Crusher grunted. “Where’s Brian Fielding?”
She blinked up at him, her bound hands cupping her nose to staunch the steady flow. Whatever she thought this man could want with her, this certainly wasn’t it. “ Who ? I don’t –”
“Don’t mess with me, you dumb whore.” Crusher hit her again, this time on the side of her head, and she felt her vision start to dim. “I know that those Road Devil fuckers had something to do with him going missing, so how’s about you tell me which one of them actually killed Fielding? And where they stashed his body?”
“I don’t – ” she started again, then she realized that she was wasting time by talking to the wrong man in the room. There was going to be no reasoning with Crusher, partly because he was asking her things that she had no clue about, but mostly because she didn’t have anything that he wanted or needed.
But I might have something for Michael. OK, girl, remember the plan. Aaaaand show time .
“Right-Guardian Michael,” she said thickly; her nose was swelling horribly and it made enunciation damn near impossible. “Please protect Gideon’s baby in my womb.”
“What?” Michael goggled down at her. “ What did you just say?”
“Right-Guardian, I carry the heritage of Gideon.” Briley scrambled to think of some more Biblical-like words, hoping that they were at least close to the bullshit spouted in the cult. “I am so joyful that his seed has bore fruit in me, and I am blessed to have been chosen. Please save him.”
“ Him ?" Michael repeated.
“Gideon’s son.” Briley lifted her shirt to show her gently swelling stomach. Thank God she was showing in all the right ‘mother-to-be’ ways, instead of looking like she’d just eaten too much Chinese food. Carrying twins meant that she already looked bigger than her actual four months, so it was all the more convincing. “His – his progeny. The future of The Garden is here .”
“Shut up , cunt,” Crusher snarled and raised his closed fist again. “I asked you a question.”
Briley closed her eyes, dreading the body blow to come, steeling herself for impact. She waited, holding her breath, covering her stomach with both bound hands – but the punch didn’t come. She cracked open her eyes. What she saw what would, under normal circumstances, be utterly terrifying – but at this moment, it was the best possible scenario.
The best for now .
Crusher was clawing and groping at his neck, at the knife sticking out of his neck. Blood gushed down his throat, soaking his upper body, and for one sickening second, all Briley saw was Rebel standing in front of her, his chest blown open. She blinked hard, and Crusher reappeared. He was staggering around in a circle now, kicking at furniture, fighting to stay on his feet.
“Web.” He gurgled the name, but his rage was still audible under the gasps for air. “What the fuck have you done?”
“You dickhead,” Michael said quietly, almost affectionately. He produced a second knife, and without any hesitation, he jammed it in the other side of his oldest friend’s neck. “My name is Michael, and I don’t listen to you. I serve Master Gideon as he takes his appointed place on the throne of righteousness on the Ethereal Side, and it’s now my duty and honor to protect his scion in this world.”
“You fucking lunatic ,” Crusher sputtered. “You can’t seriously believe in any of this cult bullshit?”
“Hal,” Michael said, watching as the other man fell to his knees, then keeled over sideways onto the filthy wooden floor. “It’s all I believe in.”
**
Eight minutes later, Briley and Michael were in a truck, heading slowly down what she now knew was a lonely mountain road. It was stunningly beautiful even in the pitch black, she idly noticed, and she took a deep, calming breath, happy that part one of her plan had gone so well.
Time for part two… choose your moment .
“Are you OK?” Michael asked her. “He hit you very hard.”
She turned to look at the man who had saved her from that monster Crusher, knowing full well that she was in a moving vehicle with a different breed of the exact same nightmare. Michael was a murdering bastard – she’d assumed that before she’d seen it with her own eyes less than ten minutes before, but now it was totally confirmed – who was now so solicitous and concerned for her, anyone would think that he was the father. He’d cut the tape from her wrists, then buckled her into her seatbelt, his hands so careful and gentle that she was shocked. Briley had to keep playing on that side of him until she saw her opportunity.
“He did,” she said, holding a towel to her nose, deliberately making her voice weak. “I hope Gideon’s son is all right.”
His eyes flashed. “He will be. Gideon’s offspring is destined to survive and lead The New Garden.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “I feel the same way. I think it was meant to be that I was brought to you today – that Gideon’s baby has been returned to where he belongs.”
“It was fate, indeed.” He stopped at a junction to a major, paved road, and she realized that civilization had to be near. “I think that since you took Master Gideon from us, that it’s karmic balance that you should carry his son. It’s a penance, but it’s also a divine form of forgiveness.”
She froze for a second, stunned that it hadn’t even occurred to her that of course Michael knew about what she’d done to Gideon. She hadn’t seen him that night after she’d knocked him out in the basement, and things had been a whirlwind one way or another ever since, and she just hadn’t clicked the puzzle pieces together in a ‘big picture’ kind of way. That was the problem with careening from crisis to crisis: all you ever saw was the chaos smack in front of you.
Well. Time to crawl and scrape and beg, especially since he seemed to be fully into the baby thing, so much so that he was willing to overlook her killing his precious master. This was nothing but a gift, and she wasn’t going to look beyond that, not for one second.
“I was very wrong to do that,” she said, keeping her head carefully bowed. “I was listening to evil people, men who had stronger wills than my own. I’m sorry, Right-Guardian.”
“Well, you are just a weak female vessel, it’s true… but now you have met your destiny. You will be redeemed.”
“Yes,” she agreed, mentally rolling her eyes at the blatant sexism. “I know my role. I welcome it.”
“Then we start fresh,” he told her. “For now, I need to get him to safety, then contact my brethren. We will have to change everything, all of our plans, in light of this joyous news.”
“Yes.” She gave an experimental little cough and was gratified to notice his worried glance over at her. “Most joyous.”
“How’s your head?”
She raised a shaking hand to her temple, made sure that he saw the tremor. “It hurts a lot. My eyesight is all blurry, and I think – I feel like I’m going to throw up.”
“You think you have a concussion?” He sounded horrified. “Do you need a doctor?”
This was what she’d been hoping for, and now that it was on the table as his suggestion and not hers , she could start to use it as leverage… carefully.
“Oh,” Briley said, keeping her voice small. “I don’t know. I mean – I suppose it’s possible . He did hit me right in the head.”
“Twice.”
“Yes. Twice.” She waited a beat, then continued. “Can a hard hit to the head hurt a baby? I mean – is it like a shock to the whole system that the baby feels too?”
“Oh, my God. I don’t know.” He shot a look over at her again, and she didn’t even have to try too hard to have tears brimming in her eyes. “Does your stomach hurt?”
“A bit.” She bit her lip, then gave a small gasp and doubled over. “ Ohhhhhhh .”
“What? What?” Michael was trying to watch the road while also looking over at Briley. “What’s happening?”
“I don’t know,” she whimpered. “Everything hurts suddenly… my head, and my stomach, and my back.”
“Shit.” He pushed the accelerator flat on the floor and she was suddenly worried that he’d kill all of them in his rush to save the baby’s life. “I’m taking you to the hospital.”
“But –” She gave another low moan, wondering if maybe she shouldn’t have majored in Drama. “But what do I tell them about my head injuries?”
“Fuck.” He stared ahead, thinking hard. “We can’t have them thinking that I hurt you. They’d never let me stay for all the tests and checks.”
“I know.” She gave a small sob. “I need you there, Right-Guardian. We both do.”
“And I can’t deliver you into unknown hands without staying and keeping watch over Gideon’s heir.”
“No, definitely not.”
“I might have to wait outside the examination room, out in the hallway,” he said reluctantly. “You can tell them that you were… mugged. Maybe someone struck you and stole your purse and phone, and I’m just a good Samaritan who was driving by and brought you to the hospital.”
“That – that’s a very good plan,” she said slowly, thinking that it actually really was . “I’ll feel much better knowing that you’re close by. I’ll feel protected and safe.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do,” he said. “Let me just think now where you could have been mugged, and where I was coming from and going to when I saw it happen. They’ll ask all kinds of things like that, after all, and it has to make sense.”
“Yes.” She gave another small gasp of pain, put her hands over her stomach. “ Aaaahhhh . It’s hurting more now.”
“We’re thirty minutes away,” he told her. “Hold on. Let me decide what to tell the police. ”
She closed her eyes and held her breath, hoping against hope that she would be allowed to be fully alone with a doctor, a nurse, a goddamn cleaning woman … anyone that she could pass a note to, or whisper a few words in their ear. It seemed too good to be true right now, though, so she just held her own hands tightly, hoping that Crusher hadn’t really hurt the babies. She didn’t feel any pain at all, he hadn’t touched her abdomen, so she was pretty sure that they were OK. Still, a hospital visit would be very welcome now, for more than one reason.
Something was nagging at her, though, some detail that she’d surely overlooked. It wasn’t surprising, considering that she’d concocted this entire hare-brained scheme in twenty minutes whilst still fuzzy from the drugs, tied up and blind in the back of a van, after seeing Rebel murdered. All she’d been thinking about was getting Michael invested in her pregnancy; she’d been working on the assumption that he’d do anything to save Gideon’s son, so she hadn’t really looked much beyond getting him baited and hooked.
Now that he was, she needed to nail down just what was making her feel such disquiet. Why was she suddenly not feeling awesome about being in the hospital, when what she wanted was to be around other people? Something about the tests – or maybe it was about the –
The police .
She sat straight up, so quickly that Michael jumped. He looked over at her, and she knew that she didn’t have to fake the look of terror that was stamped across her face.
“No!” he exclaimed, assuming the worst. “You can’t lose Gideon’s son!”
She barely heard him over her own buzzing, spinning thoughts:
I killed Gideon, and he knows that. If I get him arrested at the hospital, if I tell them all about Crusher and the cult, you’d better fucking believe that he’ll spill everything on me.
And not just me – Dux and Drake, Ice and Viking, and Violet. The whole of the MC, maybe, because who knows how much he knows? And what happens when they run my ID?
Shit. I’ve got to get away from him. Now. Any way that I can.
Hold on, babies… this is gonna get bumpy.
She took a deep breath, then let out the most blood-curdling shriek that she could manage. She threw her head back, as if overwhelmed by the pain, and gripped her stomach.
“What?” he cried. “What’s going on?”
“I think – I think he’s coming now!”
Michael’s eyes were bulging out of his face. “How? No! It’s too soon!”
“You need to check,” she panted. “Please, please…”
“I need to get him to the hospital!”
“It’s too far… it will take too long.” She twisted and turned in her seat, writhing in pain, readying the next lie, hoping hard that he was a typical man who had no clue what an advancing pregnancy looked like. “ Please , Right-Guardian! I’m six months along, which is viable for him to live outside my body. If you deliver him, then surely it’s meant to be this way.”
“That’s true,” he muttered, turning sharply into a secluded rest stop. “Gideon’s son is strong, even in the womb, so he will enter the world triumphant.”
“Yes,” she said, her voice breaking. “ You will save him.”
“I will.”
He unbuckled his seatbelt, opened the door and leaped out of the truck, not even turning the engine off. As he hurried around the vehicle to her, Briley undid her own belt, slid across the seat to the driver’s side. Not allowing herself even one second to think about what she was doing, she wrapped her fingers around the steering wheel in a death grip. And hit the gas.
Her eyes met Michael’s through the windshield for one split second – his were wide and shocked in the headlights as he raised his hands as if he could somehow stop the truck – then there was a thud, and a bump, and he was gone.
Briley took a deep, shuddering breath, turned off the engine, and listened for any noise under the vehicle. There was nothing, but she wasn’t about to go look. She had no desire to see what she’d done, and besides if he was still alive, she wasn’t going to give him a chance to grab her ankle as she stepped out and down. She’d seen her fair share of horror movies where the dead guy was never, ever dead.
“OK, babies,” she said aloud, her voice very loud in the absolute silence. “Let’s think here.”
She looked around properly for the first time, and it came to her that although she was just off what looked like a main road, there was no passing traffic at all. She also realized that if someone did pass, they’d only see the back of the truck; the front was facing the woods, pointed away from the highway. There was no way that anybody could see under the truck, and she relaxed a bit. As long as she didn’t move, whatever was left of Michael was hidden from casual passing sight, and she just hoped that nobody would pull up and park in front of her.
“OK, babies,” she said again. “So we can’t move the truck because I can’t risk anyone finding him, and I’m sure as hell not touching him. I can’t get out and walk, because where are we anyway, right?” She thought for a second. “So that means calling for help. My phone is at Dux and Drake’s place, and I’m assuming Michael’s is on him, and again, I must reiterate that I don’t want to get out of this truck to search him.” Her eyes wandered over to the glovebox, and her breath caught as she remembered that she’d seen him throw his wallet and a set of keys in there, along with some other stuff that she hadn’t been able to identify in the darkness of the mountains. “Unless…”
She reached out and over what felt like a huge distance, and opened the glovebox. She squinted in the shadows, fumbled around – and her fingers touched a cell phone. She pulled it out, scarcely believing it.
“Oh, God, please have bars and battery. Please.”
For the first time in her life, Briley decided that a deity of some kind had to exist, because not only did it have four bars, it had over seventy percent battery. She shut her eyes and clutched the phone, trying to recall one of the twins’ cell numbers. She’d always just scrolled to their names and pushed ‘call’, and she had to really concentrate to visualize any information beyond just a name. The only number that she knew off by heart and could retrieve immediately was Cheryl’s, and Briley didn’t want to call her until she was safe. She would if she really had to, of course, but she wanted to get the guys out here because they’d know what to do with this whole mess. Then Briley could fall apart and call her friend. But for now…
Come on, come on. Think .
A series of numbers came to her mind out of the blue, and without thinking or second-guessing, she tapped them into the cell. There was ringing on the other end and she held her breath again, once again praying to a deity that she’d never really had much time for, wondering who the hell was actually going to pick up.
There was a click, then a gruff, rough voice said, “Who the fuck’s this?”
She paused, unable to believe that she’d called this man. “ Wolf ?”
“Holy fuck. Briley .” There was a clunk, then Wolf was hollering for someone to go get the twins. He came back and said, “Where are you, baby?”
“I – I don’t really know.” Her throat felt tight. “I – the side of a road somewhere, but I think I’m about twenty minutes from a hospital. I just don’t know which one.”
He paused. “Why do you think that?”
“Because Michael was taking me to the hospital and –”
There was the sound of voices and a kind of scuffle, and then she heard Dux (or Drake) say, “Darlin’, are you OK?”
As soon as she heard the endearment, she knew it was Drake on the phone, and suddenly, she felt so far away from him and his brother. She could be sitting in a truck anywhere at all, really, and even though she was talking to them, she had no clue how to get them here .
“I’m – I’m –” She cleared her throat, determined to not burst into tears. When she and the babies were safe and away from whatever was left of Michael, then she’d cry a whole ocean. “I’m OK. The babies are too, I think, but I’d feel better if we all went to get checked out.”
“We’ll come get you. Wait a sec.” She heard a kind of hum for a second, then he was back. “You’re on speaker now. Where are you?”
“I don’t know,” she repeated. “Michael drove us away from a cabin in the mountains, and then we pulled off some road into a rest stop.”
“Why’d he take you off the road, babe?” Dux asked.
She rubbed her eyes, suddenly feeling exhausted at the thought of having to explain all of this. “Because I pretended the babies were coming so I could run him over.”
There was a long silence at that, then Wolf said, “ Did you run him over?”
“Yes. He’s – he’s trapped under the truck now, and I’m afraid to open the door and step out to look around. What if – what if he grabs me?”
“Can you open a window and listen for him breathin’?” Wolf asked.
“Oh.” Briley felt so stupid that this hadn’t occurred to her. “Yeah. Yeah, I can do that.”
“Go on, then,” Drake said. “Listen hard and tell us what you hear.”
She lowered the window a few inches, her heart in her throat the whole time. She was imagining a hand reaching through the crack and grabbing her around the neck, smashing her face against the glass – but there was no movement from below at all. There was also no sound.
No breathing .
She waited a few more seconds, then waited a minute, the phone pressed to her ear. Finally, she said, “I don’t hear anything. I think – if he’s not dead, he’s definitely close.”
“Good. Now listen to me.”
She responded to the authority in Wolf’s voice without any thought. “OK.”
“You need to get to the road and look for some kind of buildin’, or sign, or landmark. Anythin’ at all, alright? Can you do that? Can you walk?”
“I think so.”
“Good girl. You open the door nice and slow, and you keep talkin’ to us.”
“OK.”
“Go on, now, babe.” Dux’s voice. “You tell us every single thing that you’re doing, and what you see.”
Since she had the feeling that she’d hit Michael when he was closer to the left side of the hood, she slid back across the seat to the passenger side. Gingerly, listening with every fibre of her being, she opened the door. Waited. Waited. Waited.
Nothing.
Carefully, she lowered herself to the ground, holding onto the inside strap for balance. Then as fast as she could manage it, she scooted away from the truck, then backed away a few more feet, her eyes nailed on the undercarriage.
“Briley?” said Dux. “You still there?”
“Yeah. I’m out, and I don’t see any movement under the truck.”
“Good. Now, get to the road. Tell us if you see anything.”
Still not wanting to turn her back on the vehicle for even one second, she did a weird kind of crab-like side-step thing, swivelling her head between the truck and the road, back and forth, again and again. It made her feel slightly dizzy, but she couldn’t seem to stop doing it.
“Darlin’,” Drake said, sounding worried. “Talk to us.”
“I’m at the side of the road.” Keeping her body half-turned to face the truck, she glanced around, then looked behind her. Something caught her eye now, and her heart stopped in her chest. “I see – a sign. It looks like an ad of some kind.”
“Describe it.”
“It says…” The street lights were really dim around this spot, and she squinted hard enough to feel the beginning of a headache behind her straining eyes. “It says ‘Open Skies Ranch and Hotel, three miles’. And there’s an arrow pointing to the right.”
“Holy shit,” Wolf said. “I know exactly where you are, exactly which rest stop.”
“You do ?” The relief was so huge, she thought she’d pass out from it. “How far away am I from you?”
“Over an hour, but the way we’re gonna drive, thirty minutes,” he told her. “So you sit down at one of the picnic tables there, you stay the fuck away from the truck, and you stay on the phone. We’re comin’, baby. You hear me? We’re comin’ for all three of you.”