Chapter Twelve
A lone vehicle occupied my warehouse forecourt as the heavy electric gates whirred open. The metal sign clattered against the metal gate. ‘Henderson Logistics’. The only freight there tonight was the body of a hanging woman. No product, no bike parts, just a body. A live one for now.
I knocked the bottom of my key fob, closing them the moment I passed through the motorcycle-sized gap; the mechanism reversing and the gates slowly sliding closed behind me.
Inside the concrete walls, I vanished from the outside world.
Anyone who was brave enough to scale the concrete panels was met with rolls of razor wire.
The only way over was to be ripped to shreds in the process.
The razor wire had come from Eastern Europe, the type illegal here. A death trap with one slip.
Skinny’s van was parked in front of the doors.
The first of us here. Thrash, President of the Notorious, was on his way, the Rats not far behind.
Soon this place would look like a fucking party.
I needed to give out fewer keys, no matter what Dougal ordered.
The more people who knew about where and what this place was, the quicker the Kings would find us.
And now, with Thrash knowing about this too, the word would get out.
I’d spent years investing in the place. Making it look legit.
Signage. Contact numbers. The occasional lorry coming in or out collecting or dropping off legal bike parts.
Police had never flagged the warehouse. It was boring.
Normal. But the increasing number of motorbikes that showed up at its gates, especially in the last few days, was going to set a rabbit away.
I shook my head, pushing through the steel-infused front door into the office. The warehouse lights scattered shadows everywhere. A mass of grey, black and the lick of light.
Skinny was on the warehouse floor. The girl in front of him, but I couldn’t see her clearly.
His frame covered her. Slowly, I moved to the windows, my brain focusing.
My eyes seeing but not seeing. But on my arms the hair prickled, a growing weight in my stomach.
Skinny shifted, just a fraction, his shadow moving off her, bright white lights catching her face.
Darkness and shadows hung on her skin, something wet glistening.
Her legs flailed, kicking out at him. Where were his hands? Her head was pinned back, exposing her throat. Red dripped down her chin onto her neck. What the fuck had he done?
My heart beat erratically, my feet moving quickly over the floor and through the door, out under the stare of the warehouse lights.
She was fighting. Struggling. Trying to get him off her. My pace quickened. Urgency flooded my veins.
Skinny heard me now, cocking his head over his shoulder, creating enough space that I could see what the fucker was doing. Her trousers were open. And she was fighting every fucking advance of our vice president’s hands as he tried to gain access to her fucking cunt.
“Chase?” he called out. “Fucking lower her down, mate. It’ll be easier to fuck her on the floor.”
I jolted to a stop, staring. Just for a second.
My heart skipped a beat or two, pulsing in my ears, my brain filling with something.
Blood. Heat. Pressure. The trickling prickle of rage.
I’d felt it before. When Mikey had gone under the wheels of that truck.
I knew what was happening but could do nothing to stop it. Nothing.
I didn’t think as I reached for the handle in the side wall, forcing it up, the chain loosening. The weight of both their bodies dragged them to the ground. The woman’s legs crumpled underneath her, Skinny falling on top of her and recovering quickly.
“Perfect, brother,” his voice was breathless.
Skinny regained balance quickly, his forearm pinning to her throat, his other hand ripping at her leather trousers. The leather put up as much of a fight as she was. Underneath him, she was growling and spitting. A dog fighting a wild cat. Only this one was caught in a trap. The fight unfair.
My arm closed around his neck, my other clamping around the back, creating a vice. I’d caught him by surprise.
“What the fuck? Chase?” he gurgled, my forearms squeezing harder, my elbows pinning the sides of his neck.
I yanked him backwards, never releasing the pressure from his neck.
His body went limp in my arms. I counted the seconds.
The woman on the ground lay gasping. Three seconds.
His entire body weight was in my arms now.
There was a tiny whimper from the floor.
Six seconds. I waited another four then I guided the unconscious body of my vice president to the ground.
He was asleep. The blood would return to his neck.
His body would come round quicker than his brain, and in those few seconds, a minute max, I needed a fucking plan.
Glancing at the woman on the floor, I watched her roll to her side, tucking her legs into her chest. The foetal position. Her very first sign of vulnerability and I reeled, a cocktail of emotions rolling over my skin, deep, intrusive, unfamiliar. Fuck.
Reaching for Skinny, I dragged his limp body through the warehouse, his boots scratching at the concrete, the sound echoing around the huge space.
It felt like I was moving a dead body. And, fuck, I’d moved countless ones.
But this was going to take some explaining to Dougal.
I laid the thin man on the floor, locking the front door and the office door behind me when I stepped back into the warehouse space.
She still lay there. On her side. Not moving.
Ribs moving slowly up and down, knees tucked tightly up to her chest, bound hands clutching at something I couldn’t see.
She should have been on her feet. She should have been escaping.
Or fighting. I liked it when she was fighting.
When she was full of venom, scratching and cursing.
I didn’t like her quiet. Scared. I wanted the fight. The tenaciousness. The wild cat.
Carefully, I crept closer, not sure what I was going to find.
“Jazz,” I called out softly as I crouched down beside her, reaching towards the big metal hook she pulled to her chest. “Jazz, I’m going to unhook your hands, ok?”
She didn’t answer. She didn’t move or look up. Or to respond.
I peeled her fingers off the heavy, rusting metal, guiding the black cable ties over the hook.
She winced. The movement hurting her. I pushed the strands of hair from her face, one sticking in the blood that had dried at her eyebrow.
Her breathing quickened, but no sound. Her face was hot against my fingers, red blotches already formed and bruises following under the rawness.
Fucking Skinny had done a number on her.
When she had no way of defending herself against him.
And, my fucking God, she must have taken some.
As I guided her into a sitting position and the lights shone on her face, the damage was clearer.
The eye below the split was swelling, puffiness pushing out from under the blindfold.
Her lip was burst open, complementing the cut Grim had already given her.
And the jawbone on the opposite side was already filling with fluid, a shadow of a bruise underneath.
Underneath it all, she was still stunning.
Skinny hadn’t knocked the fight out of her yet. Not just yet.
“Chase?” she whispered, the sudden noise making me jolt.
“Yes, Tiger?”
“Thank you.”
My throat swelled. Invisible hands squeezing at my windpipe.
Thank you for being complicit in my kidnap. Thank you for letting them hit me and suspend me from the fucking ceiling. Thank you for stopping them from raping me. Thank you.
The words seemed to stab at my heart. My throat swelling more. Under my arm, she trembled. Cold or shock. I didn’t fucking know. She lifted her hands to her face, pushing the hair further back from her face.
“Can you stand?” I tried to ignore the words she had spoken. Tried to stop them coursing through my mind.
“Yeah,” her voice trailed off.
“Come on, then.”
I propped my arms under hers, hearing the gasp of air she took as I pulled her to her feet.
And then I turned, glancing over my shoulder to the men watching me through the glass.
To my president, standing with his arms crossed over his chest, and to the vice president, wobbling up to the window, a brother supporting his weight.
Fuck.
“Stay here,” I instructed, placing her gently back on her feet.
“Wait,” she called just as I moved away. “Let me do myself up. I don’t want them seeing this. Don’t want him seeing this.”
She motioned to the leather trousers that were still open.
I nodded, standing in front of her, my back providing her with some privacy as she did herself up.
Dougal shook his head at me through the glass window.
Seven or eight Rats stood beside him, all watching me.
I’d better come up with a fucking good excuse. And fucking quickly.
“Ok, done.” Her voice rang from behind me, intoxicating, and I shook my head, hoping to ignore it.
“Stay here,” I instructed.
“Like I can go anywhere else.” She muttered.
I walked to the door, pulling out my keys and unlocking it, the Rats inside swarming, watching me intently.
“Why the fuck have I found my Vice President locked in the office and you out there with that Kings’ whore?”
“He was trying to fucking rape her.”
“So what? You wanted first dip?”
“Nah, Grim did. Fucking Skinny’s fucked her face right up. Grim’ll go off it. You heard him. No one was to touch until after he got his go.”
Dougal sighed, crossing his hands over his chest and turning to the wiry, skinny VP, who stood beside him now looking sheepish.
“Chase is fucking right,” Dougal grumbled in that low Scottish rumble. “He’s gonna be pissed off enough that you’ve fucked her face up like that. We all know he likes a looker.”
“So now what?” I asked.
“Guess we’d better get that video out to the Kings. String her back up, Chase. Might as well get some good content to get their blood pumping.”
I glanced back at the woman standing in the middle of the warehouse, with the heavy hook lying on the floor next to her and the look of defeat on her face. I had no choice. There was nothing I could do here.
I turned, walking back to the handle in the wall. The heavy metal hook scraped the floor, dull and resounding. Jazz stiffened, her head following the sound. If she was thinking up an escape plan, she didn’t act on it; her face was trained on me as I strode back over to her.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered as I took hold of her bound hands.
The skin around the plastic ties was now mottled red. I hooked it over the metal end. She didn’t fight. She was just still; her blindfolded stare boring into me.
“Fucking hell!” A voice came from behind me. “That’s fucking Jazz. It’s you guys who took her?”
Jazz’s head shot to the doorway, to the blundering mass of man with the fiery red hair and beard to match.
“Thrash?” Surprise flooded her words, then resolution.