Fourteen
I sat waiting at the train station, having had more than an hour to wait for my chosen destination. I was aiming for the Midlands, so that I could go further up the country from there. If I headed into the North of England, I probably had a good chance of losing any connection with anyone back home, and I could start afresh. I could send money to the care centre from anywhere, and although she allowed me to pay for her care, she’d never agreed to me visiting her, so what the hell was I sticking around for?
I had switched on my phone when I sat down to wait for my train, but there were still no messages from Reacher, which felt like a final stab in the chest, so I switched it off again, and tucked it into my bag.
Why wouldn’t he contact me? How could he just write me off like that?
More people had started to fill up the waiting area, so I moved my bag from the bench beside me, just as a man in a suit approached. He sat down beside me, nodding his thanks, and then he leaned back. I felt like he was looking right at me, and he was sitting too close for my liking.
“Alicia Hart?” I frowned, turning to look at him. He looked too well dressed to be anyone I’d know. What if they’d sent some assassin after me? Was that something bikers would do? I had no idea, but they’d kidnapped me and interrogated me, so what did I know? Was it the others I was running from? Had they found me now? I looked away from the guy’s unnerving stare, and focused on the other people milling around us. Could I call for help?
“Sorry, pal. Wrong person.”
He laughed quietly. “It wasn’t really a question, lady. I know exactly who you are, and I’d like you to come with me please.”
I shifted to the very edge of the bench.
“I can’t. I have a train to catch.”
He moved faster than I would have imagined, plucking the ticket from my hand, and tearing it in two.
“Not now, you don’t.”
“How dare you! You prick!” I stood up, looking for security, or for any damn person who could help me. Someone, anyone, please!
“Ms Hart, you need to come with me now.”
My god. I was about to be snatched from a busy train station, and nobody even gave a shit. I opened my mouth to scream, and was silenced in an instant, when someone else stepped up on my other side, and jammed something into my back. It had to be a gun. It wasn’t stabbing me, so it clearly wasn’t a knife.
“My god, who are you people?”
The first guy just grinned at me.
“We’re your ride home, love. Just do as we say, and everything will be fine.” I doubted that very much. I moved with them, like I was planning to obey, and the second we moved in among the crowd, I made my move. I ducked down low, moving the gun from my back, and thrust my elbow back, aiming for the guy’s nuts.
I’m not sure if I hit him or not, but he grunted, and staggered back a little. I made a run for it, trying to fight my way through the crowd, but a fist grabbed my hair, and dragged me back.
“Will you settle the fuck down, bitch?” Again, everyone around us was either oblivious, or pretending to be so. What a fucked up world we live in.
I let them lead me to a car park, heading for, I assumed, the dark vehicle with tinted windows up ahead, and then I made a last attempt for freedom. I had no idea who they were, or where they were taking me, but it wouldn’t be good. There was something threatening about them, even before they’d taken me captive, and I didn’t want to stay under their control.
I turned and slammed my bag into the face of the guy holding my arm, and knocked him back, and then I turned to run. I made it about four steps, before someone else caught hold of me, and I took a firm backhand to the face.
“One more fucking try, and I’ll knock you out. Got it, bitch? They never said you had to be in good condition.”
I held a hand over my throbbing cheek, spitting out blood on my way back to the car.
“You pathetic piece of shit. Does it make you feel tough, beating up on women? Probably just trying to cover for the fact you have a tiny dick, I bet.”
“I’ll fucking shut you up, if you say one more word. Boss, did they say she had to be conscious?”
The guy who’d taken my bag to the face was sporting a cut lip, and a severely pissed off expression.
“ Alive was all I heard, Rico.”
His response, apart from a nasty grin, was to slam my head against the car as he reached it.
Reacher
I paced my office, waiting for some sign of things improving. Some sign of hope. If they could just find Alicia for me, I wouldn’t let her out of my damn sight again. If I had to tie her down until she agreed to stay, that was what I’d fucking do.
“Anything?” I blurted the word as soon as Stitch let himself into the room, but he shook his head.
“Still waiting. You eaten anything?”
I shrugged at him. My stomach didn’t want food. I was too on edge, and too queasy after a night of heavy drinking and very little sleep. Did I sleep at all? No idea.
He cursed. “I’m getting Tommy to send something in. Please, Reacher. We need you at your best.”
Fuck. I nodded tiredly, dropping my head into my hands.
“I need her back.”
He tapped a message into his phone and sent it.
“I know. I also know it’s not just because of what she might be able to tell us. You need her, and the sooner you admit to that, and take her as your old lady, the sooner we’ll all be able to move on.”
“It’s not like I don’t understand that. I want her. I want her so fucking much, but she betrayed me. She betrayed my trust. How am I supposed to trust her? How can I be with her without trust?”
He groaned, dropping into a seat opposite my desk.
“Brother, I don’t know. It’s not like we’re all used to this shit. Many of us are new to club life, and most of us haven’t seen much of members taking old ladies. Most of us have been too busy introducing our dicks to as many girls as possible, that it never even occurred to us, but I know this much… until things fell apart, you were happy. You were fulfilled. You were still a cranky bastard, but underneath that, you seemed settled. She gave you that, and a settled, happy President makes a settled, happy club. Shit has been up in the air since Ryder’s old lady first came on the scene, and we’re still riding the waves that she caused.”
It was pretty rare for Stitch to speak for so long, or utter a whole damn speech like that. At least in my presence.
“I didn’t know you even knew that many words, brother.”
He was smirking back at me. “I’m watching this shit from outside, Reacher, and I think I’m seeing things more clearly than you right now. You’re suffering through this shit by feeling it. I’m detached from that side of things. I can see that she loves you, and I can see that you feel the same. I could see how much it was killing you to be without her, since you pussied out and threw her away.”
“Listen, asshole-”
“I’m not saying that to be a prick… okay, the last part, yeah, but you know I’m right. You just need to get your head out of your ass, man.”
“Don’t think I won’t wipe that smug grin off your face, VP. It’s not like I don’t have the right. You’re pushing your luck, and you know it.”
He pointed at my chair, which I’d apparently hopped out of.
“At least sit back down, and rest a while. Until we find Alicia, we’re no closer to knowing anything, and letting yourself get worn out or drained, because you’re not taking care of yourself, isn’t going to help us. Or Ice.”
Ice . Yeah. The priority had to be our fallen brother. I should have gone to sit with him today, but everything had changed with the capture of the bastard in the hospital, and now nearly fifteen hours had passed, and I should have slept, but I couldn’t. I don’t think I’d ever slept as well as I did when Alicia was beside me.
“Apparently they’re managing any visible signs of detox, but god only knows what the poor bastard is going through, while he’s unconscious. They finished transfusing him at least.” My update had come from the current watch on him, being carried out by Rocket and Nick.
“Any idea when they’re waking him up?”
I shook my head, wondering when the fuck something would change, that would give us answers.
Ten minutes later, as I was tucking into a burger that Stitch had threatened to force-feed me with, my phone rang. I hit the speaker button.
“This is Reacher.”
“Yeah, we have a team enroute to you. They have the package.”
I frowned at Stitch, wondering what the fuck they were on about.
“Package… oh … you mean the human being we asked you to track down. Charming.”
The guy laughed. “ETA five minutes. Mr Rossi sends his regards.”
The call ended, and I stared at Stitch.
“The package? What is this? A fucking mafia movie? I didn’t know people actually talked like that.”
He was laughing at me, or maybe the situation, because both were fucked up right now.
“Wait until she finds out that’s what they called her. She’ll go nuts.”
He wasn’t wrong, she’d go fucking nuts. We had the heads up from the prospects on the gate a few minutes later, when they let the mafia guys through with my old lady.
We met them downstairs, and I was horrified to see her over a guy’s shoulder as he carried her inside, and she was silent. Why wasn’t she yelling, kicking, and fighting him? My woman was all about sass, and being a pain in everyone’s ass.
“What the fuck did you do to her?”
I forcibly removed her from his shoulder, and held her against me. She was out cold. Motherfuckers .
Stitch called ahead to warn the doc that we were on our way, and I carried her up to his infirmary, laying her carefully on the bed he pointed to. Now that I could focus on her, I could see she had the beginnings of a bruise on her face, a cut lip, and a bad cut on the side of her head.
As the doc started tending to her, I turned to the two mafia bastards who’d followed us up here.
“Which one of you did that to her?” My voice was low, cold, and dangerous as fuck. They’d hurt my old lady, and I’d kill the culprit with my bare hands.
The first guy, who had a matching cut on his own lip, held his hands up.
“We tried to take her peacefully, but the bitch kept fighting us.”
My fist hit his face before I even realised what was happening, and he crashed back against the wall, half landing on one of the chairs, before he fell sideways onto the floor. The other guy made a move at me, and I raised my fist again.
“Wait! Wait. Look, we’re sorry. She wasn’t afraid of the gun, so we had to subdue her. We were just doing what we were asked; bring the bitch in. We did our job.”
I lunged forward, gripping his throat in my hands, as I forcibly guided him back against the door.
“Call my old lady a bitch one more fucking time, and I’ll show the doc my surgery skills by removing your fucking lungs for you. You hear me?”
He cursed, grabbing at my hands, and trying to peel my fingers from his throat.
“Jesus. You’re a psycho, man. She was attacking us, and we had to stop her, or she’d have got away. Our instructions were to bring her in. By any means possible .”
Jesus. Surely that wasn’t what Stitch had said to Massimo fucking Rossi, and as a result of his ‘interpretation’ of that request, Ally was now beaten and unconscious.
“Which one of you fucking punched her?”
The guy in my hands paled. “It was just a backhand, that’s all.” I slammed him back against the door.
“It’s acceptable in your world to harm women? To aim guns at them?”
The guy stared at me, not even trying to fight back.
“Listen, man, she was savage. She was out of control, and I did what I had to do to keep her contained.”
“The bruise on her head suggests you struck her more than once, asshole.”
He glanced at his friend, who was still dabbing at his cut lip, the new damage that I’d caused on top of what my old lady did to him.
“Tell him, boss.”
The guy he called ‘boss’ shrugged. “We were sent to extract her, and we did. She got testy, and we had to subdue her. You have her back. Again, we did our fucking job .”
“Your job was never to harm my fucking old lady.”
“Pres, maybe we should just let them get the hell out of here, so you can look after Alicia.”
Stitch tried his best to calm me, but my blood was boiling in my veins. These two bastards had put their hands on my old lady, and they’d die for it. They’d suffer for every single mark on her skin.
“Come on, man. We did what we were sent to do.”
“And her bruises?”
“Will heal.”
I grinned at him, slamming my fist into his face, before I dropped him.
“So will yours, asshole, now leave before I decide to break some bones too.”
“You’re a fucking psycho,” the guy I’d just punched muttered, as he grabbed the door, and staggered through it.
The first guy stared at me. “This isn’t the best way to build relationships, Reacher. We’re here to do you a favour, at the request of Massimo Rossi, and he’ll expect a full report when we return.”
I folded my arms, completely un-fucking-concerned by his warning.
“And by the time you do that, I’ll have ascertained the damage to my old lady, and will be briefing him accordingly.”
Stitch cursed, and took it upon himself to lead the guy out of the room, while I went back to Ally’s side.
“How’s she doing, doc?”
He snorted, jerking his head toward the door.
“Better than those two assholes. Glad you didn’t let them get away with this. She’ll be fine though. She’ll come around any time soon, and have a hell of a headache, but she’ll be okay.”
I stroked her hair back from her forehead, feeling another surge of anger at the bruising forming on her pale skin. It hadn’t been enough, not to avenge her. But my desire for vengeance was warring with my desperate need to protect her and look after her, and I couldn’t bring myself to leave her side.