Chapter 44
Why was everything about getting Eden back so hard? We’ve been successful in most of the jobs we rode on in the past. Jobs where the odds have been stacked against us a thousand times worse than now. And yet, finding my daughter alive proved impossible. After a year of successfully warring with ten different MCs. After a quarter century of succeeding where everyone else failed. After bringing me back from the dead and killing off all the bastards that kept me caged.
Now it’s just one hurdle after another. One dead end after another.
At least this won’t be a dead end. At least we know where she is now. Dead. But at least we know.
And still, it seems impossible to recover her.
Hawk, Cross, and the rest have been poring over the maps and photos of the town of Justice for a day and a night straight. I’ve mostly just looked over their shoulders after they got tired of my suggestions. Those are always the same. Ride in and kill everything that breathes in there. Especially Joker. But he’s mine.
If I’d know that scared-looking kid we left locked in a car on the side of the road over twenty-five years ago would come back to haunt me like this, I’d have… no, I’d still have let him live. But I’d take better care not to kill his mother. If he got to keep at least her, maybe he wouldn’t be so vicious now.
But that kind of thinking isn’t helping now. No kind of thinking is helping. Nothing’s ever gonna help.
I haven’t told Barbie or Summer about the text I got, the confirmation that Eden is gone. Every time I even think about doing that, I remember the day Barbie told me she was pregnant. I see it clear as day, as though it happened just yesterday. The fear in her eyes when she thought I’d be mad, the sheer joy when she realized it was exactly what I wanted too. I promised her I’d keep our children safe, that I’d die before I let anything happen to any of them. I failed. I broke that promise. How can I ever look her in the eyes again? How can I look at myself? I can’t.
“We’ve been going over how hard this’ll be for hours,” I say. “Let’s just ride. Let’s just light up the whole place like the fourth of July. We’re not riding on a rescue mission.”
They all look at me and even Cross seems shocked at the darkness and directness of my words. He’s not the type of guy who gets fazed, ever, but this war, his son almost dying in it, and now the impossibility of getting Eden back alive has taken a toll even on him. I never thought I’d see the day when Cross admits defeat, but we’re getting closer and closer to that point. I hope I’m wrong.
“The problem is, we don’t have enough guys to storm in and we don’t have enough guys to surround the place either,” Cross says. “But we’re gonna do both anyway. I just gotta figure out a way to keep as many alive as I can.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier to lure the guy out?” Rogue asks.
He’s the president of Rogue Angels MC, one of our new allies, and even though they have no dog in this fight and don’t owe us any particular favors, he hasn’t pulled out of this losing fight yet. I wonder if he’s reconsidering that choice right now.
“Joker won’t come out,” Karma says. She’s one of the Forsaken Outlaws, who have also stood by us since turning on Joker and making sure we at least knew who and what we were up against.
At first, we didn’t trust them, because they’d worked with Joker and his asshole MC for years. But they’ve earned our trust since. They’ve been front and center in every battle we have fought so far, going in berserker style. Even though they have no dog in this fight either.
“He knows he has us over the proverbial barrel, hiding in that town, and he loves that kind of control,” she elaborates. “I don’t see a way to get him to come out again the way he did for the battle in the desert. But…”
Her clear blue eyes lock on mine. She can’t be much older than Eden, but she’s nothing like her in any other way. Tall for a woman, with her long blonde hair braided up like a Viking and tattoos covering both her arms and what I can see of her chest. She fights well, better than a lot of guys I know, and she hasn’t been wrong about Joker yet. She has the guy figured out. Not that it’s helped us any.
“But what?” I ask since she’s still just looking at me.
“I don’t think your daughter’s dead,” she says. “That photo, it could be anyone. There’s no face visible.”
“You think he just goes around beating and killing random women and photographing them?” I ask.
I will never come to terms with my daughter’s death, I already know that. But false hope is worse than no hope at all. I learned that a very long time ago, locked up in a small windowless cell.
She doesn’t break eye contact with me. “He’d want you to have no doubt that she’s dead. If she were, he’d send you a photo of her face. I figure he’s keeping her alive just in case things go wrong for him. That’s how he is. A schemer through and through. He always finds a way to end up on top.”
“That doesn’t change anything,” I say. “It’s a fool’s hope, a philosophical answer to a very practical question.”
A lot of them looked shocked as I said it. Truth is, I would give anything to find my daughter alive at the end of all this. But I’ll go insane if I have my hopes dashed one more time. Better to assume the worst. Easier. Eden, forgive me.
“He’s right, we don’t have time to analyze this,” Cross says. “We go in. Put an end to Joker’s scheming the old-fashioned way. With a bullet to his brain.”
“After I spend a couple of weeks cutting him up,” I mutter and the silence that falls in the room is thick enough for things to bounce off it. But I’m done hiding the monster. And Joker’s gonna meet it very soon too.
We spent the rest of the night planning and all of the next day riding to Justice.
The plan we end up with is simple, as most of our plans always are. Surround the town, hide in the hills, and close in slowly. I’ll be riding into town along the main road. Plenty of opportunity for Joker to kill me from afar. But I think he’ll want to do it up close and personal. I’m the reason his parents are dead, after all. I hated his father, Seven. He wasn’t content with just keeping me in a cage. He had to mess with me one way or another constantly. Joker won’t get his revenge, but I will. Just like I got it on his father. I just need to get close enough to stick a knife in his throat.
Twilight is falling as we reach the first of the hills surrounding the town of Justice. A maze of valleys, ravines and yet more hills lie beyond them with the town in the center. We camped out, but lit no fires.
The ones who will be surrounding the town via those hills head out, armed with as many guns and as much ammo as they can carry and night vision goggles. The rest of us will follow the main road into town.
“Try and get some sleep at some point,” Cross instructs before they head out. “We attack before first light.”
I already know I won’t be getting any sleep. Tomorrow’s first light can’t come fast enough.
Cross joins me on the boulder I’ve claimed because it faces east.
“Call Barbie,” he says.
“You think I can tell her about this?”
I can’t see his eyes very clearly, yet somehow, he’s still managing to pierce me with his gaze. “I think you have to. She’ll want to hear it from you.”
He’s not wrong, so I stop arguing. But it still takes a long while before I’m able to dial her number. The line barely rings before she answers.
“Ice? What’s happening?”
She’s breathless and anxious like she already knows. She’s her mother. She probably does.
“We… I failed,” I manage to choke out. “Eden’s… she’s… we’re not getting her back.”
I can’t say dead and my daughter’s name in the same sentence.
She gasps and it sounds like something tearing. Then the line goes so quiet I’m sure we got disconnected.
“She can’t be dead,” Eden’s sister Summer says. “I’d know it if she were dead. We’re identical twins, we’re connected… I always know what’s going on with her… I’d know it if she were dead… I would…”
She’s trying to convince herself as much as us. The desperate hope in her voice is hard to listen to, makes me feel like the boulder I’m sitting on is actually on top of me.
“Are you sure, Ice?” Barbie asks me in a deathly calm voice.
“I will be tomorrow morning,” I say. “When I get the bastard who did this to her.”
“Come back to us,” my wife pleads.
I can’t make her another promise I might not be able to keep. So I don’t.
“I love you both,” I tell them. “The three of you… you’re my whole world. Never forget that.”
Then I let them go. Because there’s nothing more to say.
There’s only what I must do to get justice for my daughter.