Chapter 27
Pyre
“There’s Rae’s car!” Ainsley made a move like she was going to open the door and bail out of the moving vehicle.
Warrant wrapped his arms around her to keep her from doing just that. I was still driving too damn fast for her to jump. Besides there were men everywhere and none of them were friendlies.
“Iron Circle’s here,” Jury said from the back seat of the cage.
“They must’ve gone around to get here,” I replied. “Shane didn’t mention anyone getting past them on the road.”
“Let me go, Warrant,” Ainsley snapped as I skidded the vehicle to a halt.
People were scrambling like ants away from a magnifying glass. They weren’t waiting to see if we were one of them, which meant they knew we weren’t.
Picking up the rifle sitting beside me, I was out the door and shooting before the others could move. My scope magnified one of the men trying to hide behind Rae’s car. The round ripped through his leg and he went sprawling into the dirt. My next bullet ended him where he lay.
More gunfire rang through the night as the Iron Circle returned fire while we charged forward. A blur from the corner of my eye had me cursing as Torque went running straight up to the van Owen used for removing dead bodies.
I shot a guy to his left as he aimed his gun Torque’s way, then swept the area, looking for anyone else who was going to take a shot at our prospect.
Kid was almost as crazy as I was and it wasn’t even his old lady out there.
Jury and Cynic met up with him on the other side of the van and they began systematically surrounding the Iron Circle Crew.
Leaving them to it, I saw Warrant and Ainsley heading toward the woods.
That left the river. I skidded down the embankment and saw two guys running away from the fight.
Neither was wearing a cut, a LEO uniform, or was a woman, so I lined up my rifle and shot one in the back.
He fell like a sack of potatoes. The second, I aimed lower and hit him in the thigh.
I stalked over to him, knowing that my brothers and Ainsley were handling things up over the berm.
When I reached him, I flipped him over, grabbing his gun before he could use it.
I tossed it out into the river and then quickly patted him down, taking away a knife and another small pistol. “Where’s the woman?”
He shook his head, staring up at me with wide eyes. “S-she’s not here.”
“What’d you mean not here?” I barked.
“They took her about ten minutes ago.”
I’d somehow just missed her. “Took her where?”
“Back to Dolan.” This guy didn’t need to be told who we were. He knew.
“Where?” I growled.
“I don’t know.”
“I bet you do.” Grabbing him by the injured leg, I listened to his screams as I dragged him up over the bank.
My brothers were already piling dead bodies off to the side. Ainsley came over. “I tried calling for Rae. No answer.”
“Owen either,” Warrant said, a grim look on his face.
“Where’s the cop?” I asked the guy I was dragging.
“I don’t know! I don’t know! We didn’t find him before you showed up!”
“He must still be here somewhere,” Warrant said. He didn’t wait, he just took off into the darkness again, looking for Owen.
“Tie him up,” I told Jury as he came over with some rope from our cage.
“What about Rae?” Ainsley asked.
“This fucker said they took her about ten minutes ago.”
“Where?” she asked me.
“That’s what I’m going to find out.” I went over to the cage and grabbed a bag out of the back. Jury wasn’t the only one who kept extra supplies in the different rides, just in case.
Warrant, Torque, and Cynic were looking around, calling out Owen’s name. I’d help find him later. After I figured out where they’d taken Rae. Going back over to the Iron Circle shitbag, I squatted and began rifling around through the bag.
“What’s in there?” he asked, sounding nervous. “I told you what I know.”
“People always seem to know more than they realize,” I said, pulling out a bone saw. “Sometimes you just have to jog their memory, or give them the right motivation before they’ll talk.” My eyes met his. “Know what this is?”
His throat bobbed as he swallowed. He shook his head.
“It’s a bone saw. It’ll let me cut through pretty much any bone in your body that I want to.” I pulled out a tourniquet. “But since I don’t want you to die just yet, I’ll make sure you don’t bleed out right away.”
He was breathing faster. If I was taking his pulse it would be elevated past a dangerous level.
After slicing his jeans to the knee, I placed the tourniquet around his calf.
Headlights flashed over us as more vehicles pulled in around us.
I glanced up and saw Cypher heading my way.
“Rae’s gone. They took her to Dolan. The others are looking for Owen. This guy claims they never found him.”
Cypher nodded. “We’ll find Owen. You do whatever you need to do to find Rae’s location.”
Focusing back on my work, I checked the tourniquet.
He was ready. Giving him a toothy smile, I took his boot and sock off while the man watched in horror.
I placed the bone saw at his ankle, right above where his foot met his leg.
“You should know this blade is very sharp. You might think that’s a mercy, compared to cutting with a dull saw, but a dull saw just doesn’t make those pristine cuts that I like.
This will cut like butter, have that ankle off in a matter of seconds.
“Please! Don’t. Jesus this is crazy. You’re insane.” The rest of his words came out as screams as I started sawing.
I held his leg at the knee, leaning on it to hold him still as I worked.
He was flailing as much as he could while being bound and having his foot cut off.
Blood sprayed as I hit an artery, but that was the whole point of the tourniquet.
I’d keep him alive long enough to tell me what I needed to know.
“I’ll talk! Oh God! I’ll talk!” His screams were piercing. “They took her to that old saw mill!”
Pausing, I looked up at him. There was blood spattered all down my front, but that didn’t bother me. “I thought you didn’t know?” My eyes narrowed. “You’re just lying to save your ass.”
“I’m not! I swear. That was where we were supposed to meet up with the rest of the crew as soon as we found the shipment! And the cop!”
“What shipment?” Cypher asked from behind me.
Looking over my shoulder, I saw him standing there, arms crossed. Warrant, Scythe, and Demo were all but dragging Owen out from underneath the bridge. I was relieved they’d found him. I needed to get over there to look him over. He was on his feet, though he looked unsteady as hell.
“Has to be the Ecstasy,” Rotor said, pulling my attention back to the conversation.
The guy’s glassy eyes fixed on Rotor. “H-how do you know about the Ecstasy?” he asked with a sob. The pain was really setting in for him now.
Cypher cut Rotor a look that had our brother shutting his mouth in a hurry. “What about the Ecstasy?”
The guy swallowed, giving me a nervous look. He motioned to a vehicle with a dead guy inside it. “Dan there was supposed to take it to Idaho. Get it into the hands of the distributor. Dolan needed the funds to…” He broke off his eyes darting around to each of us.
“To come after us,” Jury answered.
“Too late now,” Cypher said with a malicious smile. “We’re finishing this tonight. You don’t take one of our own and get away with it. How many men does Dolan have with him?”
“T-twenty, maybe. You guys have taken out a lot of the forces. That’s why he needed the money.” He started to shake.
I grabbed a needle and a bottle from my bag, loaded the syringe, and jabbed him before depressing the plunger.
“Pain meds?” Jury asked.
“Adrenaline.” I looked over at Cypher. “You have about eight minutes to get your information before his heart explodes.”
“Shit, Pyre. You could’ve given me more time,” Cypher replied with a scowl.
“His body’s wearing out faster than I expected.
” I shrugged. “He must be hyped up on amphetamines of some sort.” Stuffing his foot in my bag, I shoved to my feet and went over to check on Owen.
If this guy was giving us all this information, then he probably hadn’t lied about the old mill after all.
Cypher would find out either way. No one was better at dragging information out of people.
Half the time you didn’t even know you were spilling your guts to him until it was over and you were left wondering what the hell had just happened. He was that good.
“He seems mostly okay,” Warrant said as I walked up. “He’s been awake for a bit, but said he couldn’t get up. Tried a couple of times and ended up on his ass. He wanted to go look for Rae.”
I knelt down and shone my small pen light back and forth in front of his eyes. “He’s got a pretty severe concussion. Quit moving around,” I told him as he shifted as though he was going to stand. “Pretty sure that bullet fractured your temporal bone.”
He looked at me with shock. “What the hell does that mean?”
“That you’re one lucky motherfucker. The fact that you’re alive is nothing short of a miracle…
and bad aim.” I probed gently at the gash on the side of his head.
The graze was deep enough to have hit bone, but must have rebounded off rather than digging in, resulting in his confusion and disorientation.
“I don’t even know how I ended up under that bridge,” he admitted. “I woke up under a pile of branches and leaves.”
“Rae,” Scythe said, looking over at me. “She must’ve been trying to hide him.”
“Is she okay?” Owen asked, sitting up straighter, then swaying as the motion caught up to him.
“Sit back,” I said, shoving him until he was supported by the tire of the cage once more. “Last thing we need is you falling and hitting your head with a fucking fracture already in that thick skull of yours.” Speaking to the others, I said, “He needs to go to the hospital.”
The men were quiet so I looked over my shoulder. They were all staring at Ainsley. She sighed. “Fine. I’ll take him.” She met my gaze. “You’ll find Rae?”
I nodded. “I won’t let anything happen to her.” It was one thing to say the words, but I was just hoping I wasn’t too fucking late.
“Cynic, Torque, go with Ainsley and Owen,” Cypher said from somewhere off to the side.
“Where are the deputies?” Jury asked.
“Still dealing with all the dead bodies we left up the road. They’re going to be here any minute though to look for Owen,” Scythe responded. “We should get going.”
“Take it slow on the road,” I told Ainsley. “He doesn’t need to be jostled a lot right now. Could make shit worse.”
She nodded as Cynic and Torque helped Owen into the vehicle. “Let me know once you find her. Please.”
It wasn’t hard to see that she loved Rae.
I was glad my woman had a group of great friends.
I frowned thinking of the rest of their group.
If they knew Rae was out here I’d never hear the end of it.
Hell, they’d show up at the old mill to try to rescue her themselves.
“Don’t tell anyone where we’re going,” I warned her.
She rolled her eyes. “I know better than to tell the deputies that you’re about to go kill a bunch more people. Although after you just plowed through a horde of people they might be able to piece that together on their own.”
Yeah. We’d have to get creative this time around since we’d killed people in front of the cops. But hopefully self-defense would work in our favor. Right now, I was more concerned about the rest of the women that they hung around with. Harlow and crew were too nosey for their own good.
We watched as she got into the cage and slowly drove away.
“We have to go around the back way,” Cypher told the group.
“If those deputies see us we’re going to get wrangled into giving statements while they fill out their damn reports all night.
Or end up in their jail cells. Either is a possibility.
” His eyes flashed in the headlights. “Let’s go get Pyre’s old lady back. ”
Everyone piled into rigs, though this time Jury took the wheel, refusing to let me drive.
I reloaded my rifle magazine as we drove, steeling myself for the fight ahead.
Those motherfuckers better hope they hadn’t hurt my girl.
If they had, they were going to have an even worse night than the one that was already ahead of them.
I’d make each and every death slow and painful.