3. LINK
It took four hours to get shit sorted.
A quick Google search told us there was a rental place a thirty-minute drive away, and Nyx and Giulia took off to pick up a van and a fuck ton of water and sports drinks from the nearby Walmart.
I didn’t want to know what Giulia had to do to help the women, but giving them some privacy to do it had been hard enough.
There’d been cries of pain, moans of discomfort, and each and every time I heard their hurt, I wanted to grind Lancaster’s dick into dust.
That my violence would never be able to come to fruition pissed me off all the more.
I was glad the fucker was dead, but you could only die once, and that bastard? He needed to die a thousand times.
With our backs to the women as they cleaned up using the baby wipes Giulia had also brought with her, I wasn’t entirely sure how they thought they could scrape off what appeared to be weeks’ worth of grime with some wipes.
I mean, baby wipes were good, but that good?
Hell, I wasn’t even sure if a good old soak would get the crap off their skin.
But, try they had, and though they didn’t look or smell much better when Giulia came to us to let us know they were done, the women appeared a bit perkier, and by perky, I meant they didn’t look like they were going to die on us.
Which, considering we were leaving Sarah behind until we could return with the appropriate gear to bury her, was too apt.
Death was on the horizon if we didn’t make it home and fast.
Amara was the weakest, and I figured that was because she’d expended the most effort by escaping her cage—I wasn’t even sure how she’d done that, but I was grateful she had.
Only that clanging noise she’d been making had given us a clue as to their location. She’d made all the difference in our search.
Ghost was weak too, but she had a smile on her face which I didn’t particularly understand, but fuck, if she could find something to smile about then I was glad for it.
She’d curled into me as I hauled her into my arms and sighed when I walked her through the forest.
“We’re going to be okay,” she’d told me, and I really fucking hoped she was right.
“‘Course you are,” I’d replied gruffly.
“No. I mean it. We’ll be okay. Now that we’re out of that place… we’ve survived worse.”
Worse?
Sweet fuck.
I couldn’t have this conversation.
Couldn’t. Have. It.
But the ghost went on, killing me softly with every spoken word.
Telling me about the ship that had brought her over from Europe, followed by a truck ride where they hadn’t seen the light of day for eighty hours.
Holy fuck.
What these women had been through had me wanting to scream.
Then, something occurred to me. “He didn’t kidnap you, did he?”
Ghost rocked her head on my shoulder. “He bought us.”
Fuck.
I blew out a breath as my brain started rattling around inside my skull. I couldn’t focus on that, couldn’t focus on anything other than getting them back to the clubhouse where Stone could sort them out.
She’d bitch about it at first, but she was one of us, knew the score, and knew how shit worked so she’d help. Even if that involved her cursing us to hell as she went about her business.
I could deal with that, I could, mostly. I just wanted the women to get help. I couldn’t imagine what they’d been through, couldn’t begin to understand how someone could imprison them the way they had.
“It’s okay,” the ghost soothed, making me flinch because if anyone needed soothing, it was her. Not me.
“No, it’s not,” I’d retorted, managing to control my tone enough not to bite at her.
I wasn’t feeling soft and gentle, wasn’t feeling tender and easy. None of those were my usual state of play, but I had to be all four of them because Ghost and the other women deserved no less.
“It is,” she tried again.
“Ghost, it’s the exact opposite of okay.”
She tilted her head to the side. “My name isn’t Ghost.”
“You whisper like one,” I countered, like it made total sense and maybe it did to her because she snickered.
“I like this name.”
“You do?” My lips curved despite themselves. “I aim to please.”
She snorted. “This I doubt.”
“Then you’d be wrong. Got the best rep in the MC,” I boasted, but I wasn’t really. I didn’t give a fuck about rep, didn’t give a shit about what the club bunnies thought about me. I liked what I liked, took what I needed, simple.
But if it made Ghost laugh?
Yeah, I’d talk smack all damn day.
“Will we cause much trouble for you?”
My brow puckered at that. “Don’t worry about that. Just worry about getting better.”
“A dead body will cause more trouble,” she muttered in that soft voice of hers, a tone so quiet that it made me strain my ears to hear it.
“I didn’t say that,” I chided, even if she was right.
“You didn’t need to. It’s true. But I know that isn’t why you’re helping. I didn’t mean it that way.”
“If we wanted you dead, we’d work to that end. We want you to live, Ghost. Didn’t come all the way to the border just to stick our thumbs up our asses and gawk at you.”
“That sounds uncomfortable.”
My lips twitched and I was on the brink of making a joke about how she’d be surprised, but if anyone knew what it meant to be uncomfortable, it was her.
Inside, I wriggled.
I knew that sounded weird.
A thirty-plus-year-old guy fucking wriggling? But I was internalizing my fidgeting because I couldn’t do shit about it at the moment.
I was used to wanting to fidget on my bike, so I forced it inside, just like I did now.
I focused on that and split it with getting us back to the van Giulia and Nyx had rented.
The vehicle was a big one with three rows of seating where we each placed one of the women.
We’d probably have to set fire to the damn thing and lose our deposit because there was no way the upholstery wasn’t ruined after this trip, but that was neither here nor there.
Storm, our VP, was good with shit like that, so he’d be the one to dispose of the vehicle when the time came.
Giulia handed them all something, and I saw they were bags of trail mix and a large bottle of sports drink.
When she passed them bottles of pills next, I wanted to wince at the amount of pain they had to be in, but I took a step back and muttered, “Giulia, drive safe.”
“Of course.” She sniffed. “I’m a good driver.”
Nyx chucked her under the chin. “Gonna be hard with that smell. They’re gonna moan and cry and… It ain’t gonna be easy,” he finished, tone heavy.
“I could have been one of them. If he’d managed to get me out of the bar, if he’d managed to get me into his car, only fuck knows where he’d have taken me, what he’d have done.” Her chin tilted impossibly higher. “I’m good. We need to get going.”
She reached up on tiptoe and kissed him real fast before she spun around and headed for the driver’s seat.
Without waiting on us, she began the slow reverse down the rough track and I had to admit, she did a pretty good job of getting them out of there.
Nyx, his body tense as he stared at his woman in the driver’s seat, grumbled, “Fucking hate cages.”
I smiled. “You just hate that she’s riding in one.”
“Should be riding bitch on the back of my hog.”
I clapped my hand on his back, amused at his grouchy tone despite the situation. “You gonna piss on her and mark your territory? I wanna be there to watch you do it because she’ll fuck you up, brother.”
He shot me a scowl. “What does that have to do with me hating that she’s not riding back with me?”
“Because you’re gonna blow your wad with her if you try and hold on too tight.”
Nyx growled under his breath. “Do I have to remind you what she’s just been through? And what she’s currently doing as she transports more of her attacker’s victims across the goddamn state?”
“The woman kicked a guy hard enough to rupture his fucking balls, dude. She attacked Luke back. She came out the victor. You forget that and you’ll underestimate her.” I shrugged. “It’s no skin off my nose if you suffocate her to death by trying to keep her safe, but?—”
Nyx raised a hand. “Enough, Link. I’m not in the mood.”
I shrugged again, watching as he took off for his bike, climbed astride the beast, and set off.
The second he did, and the second Giulia saw him, she drove off from where she’d been idling, waiting on us to haul ass.
“Why you needling him?”
Shooting Steel a look, I muttered, “I’m opening his eyes.”
“Why? It ain’t like this is a new piece to Nyx’s puzzle. He’s always been protective of bitches. What he saw in that cabin must have been like a knife to the fucking gut for him.”
“Giulia’s good for him,” I replied softly. “I don’t want him to fuck it up by being too Nyx.”
“Maybe that’s what she likes. She’s glued to him enough. Fuck, they’re both like squids.”
My eyes widened at that. “What the fuck does that mean?”
“Means they’ve got their tentacles all over each another.”
That had my nose crinkling. “That’s fucking gross.”
“True though. They’re sucked onto one another. Probably for life knowing Nyx. He ain’t one to get serious unless it was hardcore shit.”
Because I agreed with him, well, not the fucking tentacle stuff, I just said, “We need to get you a different porn site. You’re watching too much hentai.”
He flipped me the bird. “Fuck off. Let’s get going.”
I smiled even as I climbed onto my bike. Nyx and Giulia hadn’t waited on us, so it was definitely time to catch up.
Somehow, we had to right the wrongs that had occurred in these woods, a forest that, with the light of morning, was a beautiful, if still eerie place.
It was hard to think of all the monstrosities that had gone down here, harder still to think of the dead woman back in that cabin.
I felt as big of a bastard as Lancaster for leaving her there, in that fucking place, but I didn’t have much of an alternative.
It was amateur to bury a body in the woods, and disposing of her remains…I exhaled.
No.
She deserved a sweeter ending than what she was going to get.
As I kick-started my hog, I thought about how I could make that happen and began the journey home. A journey that Sarah would never make again.