Chapter 7 #2
Merc slapped a hand on my shoulder as he and Bolo walked by and we all watched as the guys carried the unconscious man into the clubhouse. We followed behind them and I moved Rue over to one of the chairs and had her sit.
“Everyone, this is Rue. Rue, this is Kilo, Flir, Drifter, Strike,” I said, naming off the rest of my brothers.
She smiled at them as they all greeted her. They were blatantly staring at her black eye. She seemed to be gaining her composure again. That unshakeable nerve I saw in her the first day when she’d helped Camila was back.
Going to the bar, I poured some whiskey into a glass, then brought it and sat next to her. I handed the glass over. “Why don’t you tell us what happened?”
She took a sip of the drink, made a face, then stared down into the amber liquid as she started to speak. “I haven’t…told anyone else about all this. That man’s name is Rhino.”
Relay snorted out a laugh. “That’s almost fitting. Kind of an insult to a rhino though.”
The others chuckled at that, but stopped when Rue continued.
“He has something to do with my brother’s disappearance. And…I’m pretty sure he’s murdered people.”
Everyone stared at her, barely moving. None of us asked her to keep going. We waited until she tossed back the rest of the alcohol and took a deep breath.
“Kids keep dying over on Seventh and Hill Avenue,” she continued.
“Most of them have been homeless kids. Teenagers that no one would miss. But about six months ago, my brother went missing. I found him there and tried to convince him to come home with me. He…” She sighed, hanging her head.
“He told me he was happy where he was, with his new family, and that I needed to leave it alone.”
“I’m guessing you’re not leaving it alone,” I said, taking her hand once more.
Her fingers squeezed mine and she left her hand in place as she kept going.
“I’ve been trying to figure out what’s going on.
And mostly I’ve been running into dead ends.
I tried the police,” she looked over at me, “but they barely even looked into my brother’s disappearance before declaring it drug related and closing the case.
Ryan is sixteen. He doesn’t do drugs,” she snarled.
My brothers all looked at each other, but didn’t say what we suspected. Gangs often lured teens away with drugs. Or money. Something had encouraged Ryan to leave his sister behind, not once, but twice.
She huffed out a calming breath. “He had a friend who used to stay with us. Bad home life,” she explained, “but after Ryan…left…Teddy ran away and started living on the streets. It’s…not right, but I went to speak to him a couple weeks ago and I put a tracker on him.” She looked around the table.
All my brothers were watching her with intense looks.
We were a pretty intimidating group of men, but she didn’t seem scared.
I liked that. Liked that she didn’t seem to get shaken very easily.
She’d approached me with only the slightest nerves, knowing she was going to ask me to help her get rid of a guy. This was my kind of woman.
I never knew I had a specific kind, but nerves of steel and a spine of iron seemed to be it. Not to mention hypnotic green eyes.
“The other night, I started following Teddy’s trail and he led me to Rhino.” She shook her head. “I don’t have proof of anything yet, but he has to be involved somehow.”
“Even if he isn’t involved with what happened to your brother, he’s trash,” I told her. “Good Samaritans don’t punch a woman in the face and then follow her back to where she works to finish the job.”
“He gave you that shiner?” Drifter asked.
“Yeah, when he caught me following him. I didn’t have my sedatives or gun on me, so I punched him in the throat-”
“Fuck yeah,” Code said with an appreciative chuckle. He coughed when everyone looked over at him. “Sorry. I just like a woman who fights back.”
“Don’t we all,” Hype said with a laugh.
“Go on,” I told Rue. Usually I was the one cracking jokes, but they wouldn’t come knowing that she’d been in danger.
“I managed to get away. I thought it was over, didn’t go back.
I really don’t have a death wish,” she told me.
“I thought I was just following a teenager. I didn’t think I’d actually find anything except maybe Ryan.
I really didn’t think I’d run into someone like him.
” She pointed over her shoulder for emphasis.
“So he knows where you work now,” Relay said, giving me a pointed look.
“Yeah,” I answered his unasked question, which was ‘are we going to kill him’. “We’ll get whatever information we can out of him, then take care of it.”
“That’s going to make her investigation run dry,” Kilo pointed out. “Unless we can get some actionable intel.”
“I can get something out of him,” Relay said, tone dark.
“And even if we don’t, we’ll start looking into it,” I replied.
“Oh I can’t ask you to-”
I scowled at Rue until she broke off. “I’m not letting you wander the streets at night looking for one or more killers. These guys are kidnapping and offing kids. You think they’ll think twice about murdering a woman?”
She shook her head in answer to my question. “But it’s not your problem.”
“It is now,” I told her.
She searched my face, then nodded. “Thank you. I can’t seem to let this go.
Maybe if… Maybe if kids weren’t continuing to die I wouldn’t need to search for the answer of why Ryan is refusing to come home, but I can’t just turn my head.
Not when I’m the one bringing their bodies back to my hospital’s morgue. And…”
“And what?” I prompted her.
“Maybe it’s selfish. But I’m still hoping to somehow get to Ryan. To convince him to come home.”
“We’ll figure this out,” I told her, squeezing her hand. That wasn’t selfish. She felt obligated to protect her brother.
“There was another guy there that night too,” she said. “I could take you back to the building he came out of.”
“Good. Always helps to have more information,” I replied. “Now why don’t you wait up here with Hype, Code, and Merc? We’re going to talk to Rhino.”
“No,” she said, standing with me. “I’m going, too.”
“Rue-”
“He might have been the one to take my brother,” she insisted. “Or lure him away…I don’t know. I just want to hear what he says. Blood doesn’t bother me.”
There was no way she could work as a paramedic and have an issue with blood and gore.
That wasn’t what worried me. It was the other things he might say, the things he might confess to.
I was all too familiar with the structure of these types of operations.
I wasn’t sure she was ready for what he might tell us.
“You can leave and come back up here at any time.”
She nodded and followed me down our back hallway to the room we took anyone we needed to ‘talk’ to.
Nerves of steel. I grinned as she lifted her chin and walked into the room as I held the door open for her.
Rhino glared at us from the chair he was tied to.
I wasn’t sure when he woke up, but the gorilla was pissed. This was going to be fun.