37. Blake
37
BLAKE
“Logan?” Mace chokes out. He checks everyone else’s reaction like he needs to make sure he’s not the only person seeing the man standing before him.
The problem is, everybody else is just as shocked. Everybody’s gaping. Everybody’s speechless.
Including me.
I’m daring my eyes to tell me they’ve deceived me. I’m wondering if there was more than Coke in the soda can I’m clutching.
But he’s real. Logan in the flesh.
It’s been over three years since he died. Three long years have passed. That Logan bears the evidence of—he still resembles himself but different.
Older. Worn down. Battle fatigued.
Mason’s older brother’s got scars. Both physically and metaphorically. From the damaged energy he exudes to the slash mark along his cheek and across his throat. He’s been through things in his time away.
The only way to describe his eyes would be to say they’re haunted . In the past, they were a baby blue like their father’s that many women loved. The color’s morphed from being reminiscent of the sky to being closer to glacial ice that makes you uncomfortable when on the receiving end.
A man that’s seen and experienced things no person should.
I know this after one look at him.
His straggly, unwashed sheets of brown hair and overgrown beard confirm this. So do the clothes he’s wearing that are riddled with holes and dusted in dirt and grime.
Logan’s been to hell and back. Whatever his story is, wherever he’s been all this time we’ve presumed he’s dead, he’s got the ghosts to show for it.
Finally, after several seconds of stunned silence go by, Silver makes the first move. Fitting, as the vice prez of the club who’s recently returned from his hiatus. He steps over to Logan as if about to investigate whether we’ve got an impostor in our midst.
“Son,” Silver says. He grips Logan by the shoulder like a father figure. “We should head inside. You can tell us about... you can tell us where you’ve been all this time.”
Logan blinks several times like he’s been in his own trance. His expression’s void of any real human emotion. There’s an emptiness to it that makes you think of the walking dead. A man that’s lived and died and no longer can tell the difference.
But he lets Silver lead him away from the party. Everybody else in attendance watches on, still unable to move or think up anything to say.
I force myself to get up out of my chair. Korine gives me a knowing look, her brows knitted in concern. She gets exactly what I’m about to do.
I go to Mace and collect him in much the same way Silver did Logan. We leave the patio behind and follow Logan and Silver into the club office. Only a few others trickle in, like Tito and Bush.
“What’s going on?” Mace says the moment the door’s closed. He strides up to Logan in a sudden burst of energy, his face twisted in anger. “You’ve been alive all these years and you didn’t tell us? What kind of fucked-up games have you been playing, Logan?”
“Mace,” Silver starts.
“You let us think you were dead?! That you’d been shot and run off a fucking cliff? You know what it was like finding your bike totaled? Learning from the cops what had happened and how you hadn’t survived that big of a fall? That fucking coyotes likely ate your remains?” he rages in a thick rumble. Veins pulse at the sides of his neck and in his forearms as he clenches his hands into ready fists. He takes more steps toward his older brother like he’s tempted to swing on him. “Were you trying to escape the MC and what it meant to take over for Pop? Leave me with all the fucking problems, huh?”
“MACE!” Silver bellows. “Enough.”
“C’mon,” I say, cutting in between. I serve as a buffer, easing Mace back with a hand to his chest, holding eye contact with him in hopes it’ll help him snap out of his temper. “Hear him out first. Hear what he’s got to say.”
Mace inhales a tense breath, his expression no less rabid.
Attention shifts to the other side of the room, where Logan’s with Silver, still looking every bit of a dead man who’s alive. Silver clamps his hand on Logan’s shoulder again to rouse him out of his prolonged stare that’s as haunted as it is vacant.
“Tell us, son,” Silver says. “What the hell’s happened to you all this time?”
Logan’s throat bobs with a hard swallow. He blinks a couple times, then strokes a hand over his unkempt beard. A faraway look glazes over his face the more he seems to think on what to say about his whereabouts.
“I was shot, and I was run off a cliff by Madrigal. I don’t know what happened next… ’cept I woke up in their hands. In some border town. They were fixing me up,” he explains, his speech slow and stilted. “They were gonna use me as slave labor. Then something happened. Their leaders were taken out. The whole cartel was up in the air.”
“We took out their kingpin, Javier. His brothers too,” Silver clarifies.
“Some of the guys who had me in their custody struck some kinda deal with somebody else. An American. Guy by the name of Rooker. They sold him me and a couple others. Guess to offload us ’cuz shit was going down.”
“What did Rooker do with you?” I ask.
“He brought us to another dump. Back in Texas. Smuggled us in.”
“Why do I feel like nothing good came of your stay there?” Tito sighs with a solemn shake of his head.
Logan pierces him with a stare that’s lifeless and disturbed. Exhaustion rings his pale blue eyes. The scars etched onto his skin draw more attention to how worn down he is. They speak for themselves.
“It was nothing I would ever wish on anybody,” Logan says after a long pause. “Rooker’s the leader of a cult—the Chosen Saints is what they call themselves.”
“A cult ?! Holy sweet fucking Jesus,” Bush swears with a whistle.
Mace takes a step toward his brother, his gaze narrowed in suspicion. “A cult? That’s where you’ve been all this time, Logan?”
His older brother drops his eyes to the ground. More horrors pass before him, like he’s suddenly time traveled. “Me and a few others were their captives. Their… offerings.”
He trails off without explanation, and though he doesn’t explain, he doesn’t need to. Whatever it meant to be an offering in this cult he speaks of, it’s evident it’s nothing anybody would want to be.
I run a hand through my hair and glance over at Mace. He’s caught between the suspicion of his brother suddenly being alive and the confusion of it. He doesn’t know which direction to go in. Neither do I. Neither does Silver or anybody else.
Logan sighs. “I escaped. Finally… after years. I made it out. But they’re still strong—they might be looking for me. Rooker and his minions. Don’t know much about ’em. ’Cept that they’re affiliated with the Rebels. The prez in prison, Rollins.”
I share an ominous look with Bush and Tito.
“You’re saying this cult that took you is affiliated with the Road Rebels?” Silver repeats.
Logan nods and pierces the room with another haunted stare. “I’m going to murder them. Every one of them for what they did… the things they… I’ll die. So long as they do.”
“We’ll get ’em,” Silver says. He turns around to the rest of us. “Right?”
“Always,” Tito adds. “We got you.”
Bush nods while I say, “We’ll take ’em out like we always do.”
Everybody looks to Mace. He hesitates a second, still clinging to his suspicions of his once-dead brother. Then he scrubs a hand over his head and gives a nod.
“Rooker, this fucking cult, what’s left of the Rebels, they’re dead. All of ’em.”
Logan gives no reaction, if he’s even capable of one. “There’s more to it than that. They’ve still got captives.”
“We’ll get ’em out.”
“No,” Logan says. “You don’t understand. They’ve got captives. They’ve got… my wife .”
* * *
Korine waits up for me. She took my truck and drove herself and Sunny home when the meeting with the guys took too long (I shot off a text and told her to do it). I wave off Bush, who’s given me a ride to her apartment, and then head up to find her waiting for me at her dining room table. She jumps up at the sound of my key in the lock and is rushing toward me when the door falls open.
Her arms fly out to yank me into a grateful embrace. Then come the kisses and mutters of how worried she’s been all these hours. I let her work through it ’til we’re drawing back from each other and I’m able to peer into her shiny dark eyes.
“It’s alright,” I say, stroking her cheek. “I’m okay. Everybody’s okay—or as okay as they could be given everything.”
“What happened? Logan?—”
“He’s been held captive. Some kind of… of cult had him. He managed to escape, but they’ve still got others. They’ve got some relation to the Road Rebels.”
Understanding dawns over her face. “Oh my god, that’s horrible. The things he must’ve gone through...”
“It’s fucked him up. He didn’t tell us everything—or even half of everything—but I can sense it all over him. He’s like some soldier returning from war.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if he has PTSD. How is the club going to handle this? If the Road Rebels are involved, then there’s no telling how deep it goes.”
I clutch Korine’s hand and walk her over to the dining room area that flows into the kitchen. Before I can even offer, she’s beating me to it, bustling over to pour us some iced sweet tea. She returns to the table with both drinks and then drops into her seat with an expectant air.
My girl’s always got my back. She’s always wanted to be by my side whenever trouble’s arose.
Not that she’ll be involved in this. She’ll be kept far from it.
I sip from the ice-cold sweet tea and let out a breath. “We’re gonna have to take ’em out. For what they did to Logan and for what they could do to us. He said they’ve still got hostages. His wife. Some woman, Teysha.”
“Teysha,” Korine repeats, then she gasps. Her eyes widen and she gapes at me much like she’d stared at Logan earlier. “It can’t be the same Teysha that went missing from the diner. Blake, don’t you remember when we picked out the Christmas trees?”
I stare at her, giving no reaction. The name doesn’t ring a bell.
“ Teysha !” she says a third time with even more emphasis. “Remember when we stopped at the Sunny Side Up diner? That older woman Sydney spoke to who was crying about her missing niece?”
It slowly comes back to me thinking on that evening. “That’s right. She’d said she’d been missing for months. It can’t be the same girl…”
“It could be! The woman seemed to think she’d been taken. Did Logan describe her?”
“We didn’t press him for that many details. Mace didn’t catch it either. We’ll have to mention it to Sydney and have Logan describe her.”
Korine shakes her head, her expression one of deep worry. “I can’t even imagine going through what they’ve gone through.”
“Hey, we’ll survive.” I forget about the iced tea and grab both her hands to pull her toward me. Once she’s seated in my lap, I lock my arms around her hips and go in for a kiss that’s full of the love I have for her. She indulges me, smiling against my lips, then resting her brow against mine. “We don’t break,” I tell her. “We survive. We rise up. Never forget that, Kori.”
“I’m not a King.”
“You’re my old lady. Good as.”
She brushes her mouth to mine, teasing another kiss. “I’m yours. I know now I never wanted to be anybody else’s. Even if I pretended otherwise for a while.”
“We were both pretending. Both trying to move on. But we never could. ‘Cuz you’re always gonna be my girl.”
“And you’re always going to be the boy who can’t climb a tree,” she laughs, and I do too.
It’s how we spend the rest of the evening—enjoying each other’s company, being the best friends in love that we’ve always been.