Chapter 18
Nash
“Then give me a fucking prescription for antibiotics,” I growl, uncaring that the doctor is looking at me like I’m a piece of shit.
“Mr.—” He looks down at the binder in his hands. “Cutler, I advise against leaving without medical consent.”
I inch forward, the way he shrivels a little making me feel somewhat better about my recent incapacitation. At least I still have some intimidation factor left. “You don’t even know my name. Why should I fucking listen to you?”
“If you leave, we aren’t liable for—”
“Get me the fucking prescription. Do I look like a man who’s willing to sue someone? I have other ways of righting the wrongs done to me.”
I swear I’d hear him swallow a gulp of air if the nurse standing five feet away didn’t gasp at my threat.
He nods quickly, taking several steps to the side to avoid having to walk within arm’s reach of me.
The doctor stops right in the doorway, looking a little green. “Mr. Cutler, there’s also the matter of your insurance. I—”
He freezes when I narrow my eyes at him.
“I’ll let the business office know you’ll send us the information as soon as you can.”
“You do that,” I mutter, wanting to laugh as he scurries away.
Quickly deciding I don’t even need the fucking antibiotics he claimed I did, since they’ve been pumping me full of them for two days, I head out of the room. I imagine the doctor’s more likely to call security than head to the pharmacy.
“Why is everyone leaving your room, looking like you just threatened their entire families?” Angel asks from his propped position on the wall.
“Bunch of pussies.”
He nods, understanding completely. We aren’t exactly the most approachable men. You can’t do the jobs we do and stay nice and pleasant.
“Here,” he says, just before tossing a stack of clothes at my chest. “Figured you wouldn’t want to walk out of here with your ass hanging out.”
Instead of going back into the room to change, I head toward the bathroom in the hall.
Every step causes one or more of the wounds on my body to sting with pain.
Several are bad enough to make me almost wince, but showing anyone that I’m hurting would be confessing to a weakness I can’t reveal to anyone.
Not even Angel, despite him being the closest thing to a friend I have, and that’s not saying much because I don’t know shit about him.
Needing to breathe fresh air for the first time in two weeks, I don’t take long in the bathroom, refusing the entire time I’m in there to look in the mirror. I don’t need a full body scan to know what was done to me. I feel the ache of it with every movement of my body.
“You have that fucking determined look in your eye,” Angel says as I walk past him after leaving the bathroom without a word. “You aren’t exactly in fucking peak fighting form, Nash.”
He doesn’t touch me or try to stop me as I walk past the front sliding doors of the hospital.
“Lauren is going to be pissed if you get me killed,” he mutters as he redirects us toward a truck in the parking lot.
“I’m not going to get you killed,” I tell him. I’m not fucking responsible for his ass. “Do you have any idea where they took her?”
Angel told me yesterday that the one I had so much interaction with was escorted away by that Cerberus group.
“She won’t come to any harm with Cerberus,” he says after we both settle inside of his truck. “She’s fine.”
“And I’ll verify that for myself,” I tell him, same as I did yesterday when we had this conversation. “Are you taking me to the bus station? Don’t exactly have my fucking passport.”
“I’m not taking you to the goddamned bus station,” he grumbles, clenching the steering wheel when some idiot pulls out right in front of him.
“What’s their address in New Mexico? I guess, just get me as close as you’re willing to take me.”
I’m not asking the man for shit, but I’m also not going to turn down the offer either. I’m in no fucking position to turn anything down right now.
“They haven’t left town yet,” he says.
“Why not?”
He turns his face in my direction “I don’t fucking know. I’m aware of the fucking club but I don’t subscribe to their fucking newsletter or anything.”
I huff a humorless laugh.
“They’re more likely to fucking have her prosecuted than killing her. They would’ve let me do that back at the compound if that’s what they were planning to do.”
I clench my hands on my thighs. He still hasn’t given up on the idea that she needs to die, despite what I’ve told him.
“But seriously, you should just walk away from all of it. Being on Cerberus’s radar is never a good thing.”
“I don’t give a shit about Cerberus,” I snap, reaching for the handle above my head when he slams on the brakes to avoid another fucking collision.
People in fucking Mexico sure as shit don’t know how to drive.
“I just need to know that she’s okay.” My words are expelled on a growl from the pain the quick movement caused me.
Angel looks in my direction once more. “Maybe leaving the hospital early was a mistake.”
“Would you have stayed a second longer?”
He shakes his head. “I would’ve been gone the second I woke up. I was starting to think you were a pussy for staying.”
His grin tells me he’s mostly joking, but I don’t feel an ounce of fucking humor in anything right now.
“Do you have any idea what your plans are?”
“Past finding her? Not a fucking clue.”
“The other guys scattered to the fucking winds when Cerberus showed up right behind us at the compound, but I’m sure they’re still available for work if we need them.”
“Work?”
“I was hoping you had a bead on where fucking Cortez might have slithered off to.”
I shake my head. “They kept me in a cell except when they needed me for something. Other than people screaming and begging for help, I didn’t hear shit.
I don’t even know if it was Cortez’s compound.
The only hint that it might’ve been is Pirro.
That scarred motherfucker used his name to garner respect at the fucking bar they took me from. ”
His jaw clenches, his hatred for Cortez so thick and heavy that just hearing his name pisses him off.
“Why was that motorcycle club there in the first place?”
“Shadow, the VP, said they tracked a freshman girl there who was taken from Lindell University a couple of months ago.”
“They just go around looking for missing girls?”
“They take contracts. I think they use the money to aid in rescuing others. Their goal is to try and put an end to all of it,” Angel explains.
“A fucking futile task if there ever was one,” I mutter.
“Yep,” he agrees. “They think they’re better than us, despite the outcome being the same. They do it with a little more structure and that somehow makes them the fucking experts. Like we aren’t risking our lives for the same thing.”
I don’t argue with him but getting paid for what I do is secondary.
I hate knowing people are suffering what I went through.
I want to put an end to every man who has ever victimized someone the way I was forced to.
I’d never abide by some code of ethics to do it, but I commend those Cerberus assholes for being capable of it.
“You think finding this girl will make what happened to you better, but I can tell you from experience, that it won’t.”
“I need to hear her story to determine what my next plan is.”
Silence fills the cab of the truck, Angel grunting on occasion when idiot after idiot races around him like he’s simply on the road to be in their way.
“She mentioned someone named Alani.”
“In what context?”
“Right before I was going to shoot her in the fucking head, she asked if it meant that Alani was going to be okay.”
I nod, fully understanding her position.
I thought she was part of Pirro’s band of fucking perverted misfits too, but there was care in her touch when she treated my wounds.
There was a softness in her reassurance without words that she wasn’t there to hurt me even though what she did caused pain and discomfort.
She gave me looks, when it was my turn to hurt her, that she wasn’t going to hold it against me.
She mentioned that they’d hurt us both if we didn’t comply.
Pirro threatened her to control me. Why would he do that if she was a valued member of his team?
Alani, whoever she is, was her reason for doing all of it. They controlled her through that threat.
“Did Cerberus have a list of people they took from the compound? Was this Alani person one of them?”
Angel shrugs. “I got you out of there and that’s it. The others who were there weren’t my concern.”
And that’s the biggest difference between what we do and what Cerberus does.
If they were there for one girl, but they stuck around to aid everyone else, then they are better men than us.
Knowing that doesn’t make me feel any different, however.
Going through what I went through makes me want to tighten the reins in my life even more, not stick my neck out further for people I don’t know.
I accepted long ago that I wasn’t a very good man.
I don’t have compassion or empathy for others.
Some people are dealt a really shitty hand in life, but it’s not my job to pull them out of it.
After this latest experience, I’m even less willing to risk my own safety.
“That’s all she said?”
“Didn’t have much of a chance to say anything else before Cerberus showed up and took over the entire thing.”
My skin crawls at the thought of them not showing up and Angel killing her.
What would I have done if I’d woken up in the hospital to the news of him putting a bullet in her head?
Would I be able to sit calmly and see things from his point of view?
Would I have done the same if my job was to pull him out of that man-made hell?
Why does it even fucking matter?
I know the answer to that, despite not wanting it to be true.
That woman somehow got under my skin. As much as I’d like to say that I could never do the things she did to protect this Alani person, I know that’s a lie.
I did those things to fucking protect her, didn’t I?
Angel pulls up to the front door of one of the nicer hotels in Monterrey.
“How do you know they’re here?” I ask, leaning forward so I can look up the side of the building as if by chance she may be standing in one of the windows for all the world to see.
“Fox told me.”
He’d mentioned some of the other guys being there for my rescue. I figured Fox would be the last one willing to tag along, considering the man’s claim on always working alone.
“How the fuck do I find them in this massive hotel?”
“Follow the scent of fucking leather,” he says in a serious tone. “Let me know if that bitch isn’t here, and I’ll personally escort you to New Mexico.”
I look at him. The man is making it very clear that he’s not her biggest fan, despite the explanations I’ve tried to provide.
“Here,” he says when I open the passenger side door.
I look from the wad of cash in his hand to his eyes. I don’t fucking want it. It feels too much like a goddamned favor.
“I’ll take it out of your next job.”
I scoop the money out of his hand, not telling him that I doubt I’ll take another job he arranges.
Angel doesn’t hesitate to drive off the second I close the truck door. I’m left standing on the curb outside of this swanky ass hotel, in borrowed clothes, covered in bruises and scars.
I don’t acknowledge anyone as I walk inside, shoving the money in the front pocket of my jeans. I spot one of those leather-clad motherfuckers smiling and chatting with one of the front desk clerks, like he’s lining up where he’s going to stick his cock when her shift ends.
Without hesitation, I approach him.
“I want to see that woman,” I snap when he notices me, positioning his body between me and the woman behind the desk.
His fucking hero complex is coming off him in waves. The name tag identifying him as UGLY on his chest has to mean something else, because the man, on anyone’s standards, isn’t a bad-looking guy.
“No,” he says, his white teeth flashing when he sneers at me.
I might’ve been able to take this asshole to the ground if I were in fit form, but Angel was right. I’m nowhere near that right now.
“Then you’ll take me to see Kincaid,” I say, shifting gears, although I’m not certain it will keep him from knocking my lights out.