Tyrant Chapter 9 #3
I swore I heard her whimper. What the hell?
Why was she so scared? She rounded a corner of a building and then tripped.
She screamed as she fell, hit the ground hard, and rolled down a slight decline.
I thundered after her. When she came to a halt at the bottom, she curled into the fetal position and wrapped her hands over her head.
I dropped to my knees next to her. My hands touched her frantically, though gently.
She shook and flinched away from me. She was sobbing.
“Lakelyn, bébé, baby, where are you hurt?” I asked her. Shit, why didn’t I bring Cardiac with us? What if she were seriously injured?
“Please, leave me. Don’t give me to them. I won’t go. I’ll die first,” she ranted between sobs.
“What’s she talking about?” Howler asked. I hadn’t heard him come up behind me. Before I could say I had no clue, I heard River shouting.
“Get away from my sister! What did you do to her?”
He was trying to run to us, but Cobra and Blood had a hold of him. We needed to get them out of here. It was true that the homeless wouldn’t call the cops, but that didn’t mean others wouldn’t if they came by.
“Lakelyn, I need to know if you’re hurt anywhere before I move you. Tell me,” I demanded.
She refused to answer. She only cried and mumbled repeatedly, “I won’t go.”
Her distress was making me sick. Not seeing another way, I slid my hands under her body.
She whimpered, tearing at my heart. She was like a wounded animal.
I brought her close, then lifted her into my arms. She tried to wiggle loose, but I held her tight enough without crushing her so she couldn’t get away. I stood.
“Where’s the van?” I asked no one in particular.
“It’s about a hundred feet this way,” Jury said. He pointed the way.
“Let me see her,” River demanded.
“You’ll see her when we get her to the van,” I snapped.
“They’ll never keep her. She’ll kill herself first,” he snarled.
“Who won’t keep her? What’re you talking about?” Cobra asked.
I glanced over to find River glaring at Cobra, then me. “Like you don’t know. We know why you’re here. Well, you can all fuck yourselves. We won’t go. I love you, Lake,” River stated.
It was as if I saw it in slow motion. He yanked a gun out of his waistband.
His loose shirt hid it. At the same time, Lakelyn tried to throw herself out of my arms. As I struggled with her, she produced a gun, too, from her waistband.
Only they didn’t point them at us. Instead, they put them to their heads. Absolute terror flooded my body.
“Whoa, whoa, stop! What the fuck?” Cobra shouted.
He stared at River. I knew he and the boy had gotten close and seemed to be friends.
Fear was written on his face, too. I was mute with shock.
I saw all that in the moment I glanced over, and then it was back to the woman in my arms, the one with the gun to her head and absolute determination written all over her.
Her eyes might be wet with tears, but she wasn’t playing.
She would kill herself. I couldn’t allow that to happen.
Not knowing what else to do to ease the tension and the sense of threat we clearly projected, I slowly sat her on her feet.
She backed away, but we surrounded them.
“No one move,” I ordered my guys. They were all frozen. Even Dunk was there and not moving.
“Lakelyn, put down the gun. There’s no need to do this. We’re not here to harm you,” I said softly. I prayed she heard the plea and sincerity in my voice.
Cobra was essentially telling River the same things.
The siblings were about fifteen feet apart.
Neither answered, but they slowly backed up until they were back-to-back.
Would they try to fight their way out? Or with the odds stacked against them, nine to two with Dunk in the count, they’d assume defeat and just shoot themselves?
I was fighting not to puke. I couldn’t watch them die, especially her.
“Mon doux bébé, my sweet baby, please move that away from your head. You’re scaring me,” I told her.
She shook her head. The gun was barely shaking in her hand. At least neither at that moment had their fingers on the triggers. They held Glocks. Those guns had no secondary safety. If you pressed the trigger hard enough, it would fire. I hadn’t checked, but I was sure those were two of mine.
“Don’t make us do it. You can just pretend you never found us. We’re leaving as soon as we find a way out of town. Once we do, we’ll disappear. You can say you never saw us,” she said. The pleading tone was unmistakable.
“Who do you think we’ll tell this to?” Cobra asked.
Finally, we were about to discover why they were on the street.
I’d been dying to know. However, this wasn’t the way to find out.
Why would they think we’d have any contact with whomever they were running from?
We were bastards, but I doubted they did anything to deserve whatever they were afraid of.
We did everything in our power to avoid directly harming the innocent.
River snorted. “You know. We’re not stupid. And before you say you don’t know, you were seen.”
“Kid, I don’t have a fucking clue what you’re talking about.
Things have been going great. We thought you and your sister liked the compound and considered staying.
Then boom, we find you had run in the middle of the night.
What’s up with that, River?” Cobra asked him.
I could tell my VP was trying to temper his anger and impatience.
“We were stupid. You sure lulled us into a false sense of safety. Our eyes are no longer blinded. There’s no way I’ll let them do what they plan to do to her. I’m expendable anyway, so going out this way, at least it’s on our terms,” River said.
“Who plans to do what? Talk to us. Come back to the compound, and we’ll iron this out,” Howler unexpectedly said. This command required the siblings to twist a bit to see him.
“Yeah, come home. It can’t be as bad as you think,” Satyr stated next.
“You can’t want your sister to die,” Blood added.
“And, Lakelyn, you don’t want River to die. I know that,” Jury said.
As they fired off their comments one after the other, and with the way they were standing, River and his sister had to keep twisting and adjusting their stances.
But in doing so, they were distracted, and the guns were still raised, but no longer pressed against their temples.
In addition, as one person grabbed their attention, the rest of us inched forward, barely a step.
I slipped in, “We can help you if you tell us who you’re so scared of. I need to know why you think we’d give you to them.”
Suddenly, Dunk spoke. “Hey, my work is done. I’ll leave you to it, Tyrant. I don’t know why these two are hightailing it away from your club, but they’re stupid to do it. If Tyrant says you’re safe, he means it.”
Dunk turned and walked off as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
This action caused Lakelyn and her brother to twist further.
This shift was our chance. I was closest to her, and Cobra to River.
I lunged at the same time I swung my arm, knocking the gun down away from her head.
She screamed, but by then, I had torn the weapon out of her hand.
I held it behind me, and one of my guys took it.
She went crazy. She screamed and fought like a wild animal.
River had also been disarmed, and he was fighting Cobra and Blood.
I wrapped Lakelyn in my arms. Knowing we were attracting too much attention and needed to talk in private, I made the choice.
“In the van. Search and secure them,” I ordered.
I carried a thrashing, swearing, and screaming Lakelyn to the nearby van.
Knife had the back door open. I took her inside.
Working quickly, I secured her arms and legs together and placed a gag over her mouth.
I refused to use duct tape. Instead, I pulled out the clean bandanna I had in my cut.
I used it for a do-rag sometimes. I was gentle as I placed it on her.
The dread mixed with hatred in her eyes gutted me.
Cobra and Blood had gotten River inside and were subduing and securing him.
“Lakelyn, I’m sorry, but you gave me no choice. We’re not going to hurt you. We need to talk at home. I’ve got to make sure you’re not armed,” I warned a moment before I ran my hands over her body.
I tried to be detached and professional about it.
I didn’t paw her, but the feel of her body under my hands caused my cock to react.
I fought to prevent my erection from growing.
If she saw I was hard, she’d be even more terrified.
I didn’t find anything else by the time I was done.
Cobra finished his search of River. The boy was brave, but he also had fear in his eyes. What the hell was this all about?
“Let’s get out of here. Take them to the clubhouse, Knife.”
I detested leaving her in the van while I rode my bike.
I wanted her with me, but the way she was acting, she’d jump off the fucking thing.
Within a few minutes, we took off on our bikes and in the van.
The entire ride back, I kept trying to figure out what had spooked them and why they were convinced we were involved.