Chapter 3
CHAPTER 3
PRESENT DAY
G etting out of Washington, D.C., proved more challenging than Scar had hoped. He was so fucking tired. Not enough to fall asleep at the wheel or to pull over and take a nap. He couldn’t have done that even if he’d tried. It was a bone-dead tiredness that made it difficult to move his limbs.
Once he’d managed to get out of the straitjacket, Scar searched his body for any incisions that could indicate a tracker injection site. He’d found three and had to dig them out with the tip of his stolen knife. Borrowing the x-ray machine inside a mobile clinic’s van proved he’d gotten them all, as well as confirmed that there were no bullet fragments left inside him. An x-ray would not show him what had been done to his shoulder, so that would have to wait.
Scar felt no remorse for scaring the tech who’d helped him out under duress. The guy had been idling in the parking lot of a senior living facility using binoculars to look across the street at a kids’ playground. A quick look at his phone showed the man hadn’t acted on any of his fantasies. It was a fine line, because he hadn’t actually done anything yet, but the fact that he was thinking about it, researching, and writing apology letters to the kids he was masturbating to was enough for Scar.
He snapped the man’s neck before leaving the van. At some point, the senior living facility would wonder why the clinic’s van was still in their parking lot and go investigating. Scar would be long gone before the body was discovered.
Unfortunately, the tech was not the right size for Scar to procure any of his clothing. For that, he had to wander some back alleys for a bit until he found a clothing donation box. Being in the city made him uncomfortable, especially one of the most heavily surveilled cities in the world. The metal donation bin had not had a wide selection, but it had been enough to provide him with clothing so he didn’t stand out in a crowd. A baseball cap, hoodie pulled over his head, and sunglasses helped to obscure his face for any cameras. He didn’t care if civilians thought he looked like he was headed to rob a bank. He needed to move without facial recognition software picking up his features and flagging Primis.
The flip flops on his feet would need to be replaced soon, but going barefoot in the city would be a massive red flag.
A valet parking garage provided him with the transportation he needed. The nondescript Civic took him out of the city until he hit Virginia. The nearest Amtrak station allowed him to swap out the Civic for a RAV4.
Scar needed supplies before he did anything else. He had multiple storage facilities set up throughout the entire country, as well as Canada, Mexico, and one in Europe. The closest one from Washington, D.C., would be in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Unfortunately, there was a good chance Primis knew about that one as he’d caught a few of Alpha’s hired guns sniffing around the area a few years ago.
It was going to be a bit of a drive, and backtracking, but he headed to Baltimore instead. Without money, he couldn’t pay for gas or a phone. He’d need to be careful about leaving a trail of stolen cars in his wake, especially after already dropping a body.
Alpha knew about Mount Grove, and that was going to be problematic. The man might be desperate to obtain Scar for his arsenal, but he was not stupid enough to descend on Mount Grove en masse. He would have done his research on the VDMC and known he wouldn’t be facing some street thugs with guns. Additionally, Primis needed to keep up their public persona. They’d lose their government funding in a heartbeat if it was discovered they’d attacked Americans on US soil.
The issue wasn’t him going to Mount Grove with an army to wipe it out, though he certainly had the firepower to do so. No, it was the stealth attack that would prove most fatal. A hit-and-run, a car accident, a needle to the abductor digiti minimi, or a dose of arsenic in a wineglass.
Once Scar got to Mount Grove, he’d be able to assess the situation and make necessary decisions. Alpha had said he’d been unconscious for seventeen days. He needed to figure out what day it even was. The clock on the dashboard told him it was approaching eight at night, but he still didn’t have a date.
Scar didn’t like the disorientation of being forced to sleep for so long. It had been years since he’d slept more than ten or fifteen minutes at a time. If he could take away sleep altogether, he would, but unfortunately his body still required some rest.
He was able to make it to Baltimore with the gas he had in the acquired RAV4. Just for shits and giggles, he left the crossover in the driveway of a known drug dealer—in case Primis happened to catch up to the vehicle. Too bad he couldn’t stick around to watch the fallout.
It was after one in the morning when he reached the storage unit. Running several miles to get from where he’d ditched the car to the storage facility had taken a lot longer than it should have. He was dragging his feet and having trouble regulating his breathing by the time he arrived, but he still knew he wouldn’t sleep.
The storage units Scar kept were the same, regardless of location. There was always a car or a bike inside, a military-grade laptop, clothing, food, water, and weapons. He also rigged the units so they filled with liquid concrete if anyone but him entered. That way he would know if anyone tried to tamper with his food stores.
The freeze dried food pouches came in handy on the road because they didn’t necessarily have to be heated or liquified to be consumed.
Scar didn’t eat much, maybe what the average person would consider a serving per day, and only drank water. He’d tried to eat more after he’d been rescued, but his stomach couldn’t take it. After he’d watched a nurse at the VA sneeze on his breakfast plate before trying to serve it to him, Scar had been unable to consume anything that he did not make himself or watch being prepared.
He was aware his idiosyncrasies would never make him normal by any definition. But he’d been deprived of ever being normal the second his Delta team had been ambushed.
At first glance, the storage unit was nothing out of the ordinary. Both the car and the motorcycle were nondescript. A stainless steel red tool box was next to a work table on one side of the vehicles and a tall wardrobe stood on the other side.
Scar went to the toolbox first. He needed food and water or he was going to fall unconscious, whether he wanted to or not. He hadn’t been in this rough of shape in a lot of years. Even when José had found him in that rundown bar in Texas, Scar hadn’t been this bad.
The bottom drawer of the cabinet held multiple liter water bottles. He’d gotten them straight from the bottling factory and yet he still pulled out the test kit to ensure none of it was tampered with before drinking.
He gulped down nearly two liters before he started to feel a semblance of better.
Scar sat at the worktable. Since his stomach was empty, he started out with some oatmeal made with powdered milk. It wasn’t the tastiest of meals, but he wasn’t going for a Michelin Star. The toolbox also held a laptop. He often had to do research on a target, and since Scar’s targets tended to end up dead, it needed to be untraceable.
As he pulled up an encrypted chat box, his eyes fell on the date in the top right corner of the screen.
Alpha had lied. Fuck. That changed a lot of Scar’s mindset about what he was now facing. Scar had been shot at the end of April and it was now the end of May. That meant he’d been in the medically induced coma for longer than seventeen days.
Why would Alpha lie? Moreover, since when did Alpha start lying? Despite their differences, Scar had always had a modicum of respect for Alpha. The man was brutally honest and he didn’t bluff. If he said he was going to do something, he did it. He didn’t care whose feelings he hurt or who got into trouble from that honesty. He was powerful and did not need to lie to get his way.
The face of Primis, George Shepard, lied through his teeth. The public and even parts of the government believed Primis to be honorable and patriotic. They spent a lot of money on that public image and George Shepard always had a plan to make Primis come out on top.
But Alpha?
Scar’s stomach twisted at the unease. What had changed in the eight years since he’d walked out of Primis to suddenly make Alpha a liar?
Scar did not like not knowing.
The significance of the date made Scar pause in typing in José’s phone number. So long as their plans hadn’t changed with what had happened on the bridge, over half of the VDMC was headed to the airport in a few hours to fly to Orlando, Florida.
Scar knew their safety was not worth keeping silent about the Primis threat. They needed to know so they could protect themselves.
But he knew José. Taking the club kids and ol’ ladies anywhere would involve a certain measure of security. Going to somewhere like Disney World would involve even more. Additionally, the parks themselves were one of the safest places to be.
Things might get hairy in the coming weeks. If Scar could find something on Alpha to make him back off, then the VDMC could live on in peace.
Fuck, his head hurt. He was so fucking tired. Was he truly considering not telling José about the threat so he could go to fucking Disney World ? Scar had paid for a good chunk of the trip as a Christmas gift to the club kids, but that was not his priority. He didn’t care about the money because he could always get more. Cash was easily taken and digital funds could be faked.
As soon as he logged into the secure chat, messages started to appear.
[WiseWave620: I’m not giving up. I’m going to keep looking for you.]
[WiseWave620: You can’t be dead, Scar. Goddammit, you can’t be dead. Please don’t be dead.]
[WiseWave620: …]
[WiseWave620: MGPD stopped looking for you today. They say your body washed downriver and is gone. But I don’t believe it. I can’t.]
[WiseWave620: Steel made us stop looking. He says it’s time. I think he did it more for Bulldog than anything else. He doesn’t want to admit you’re gone either, but Bulldog’s been going nuts looking for you.]
[WiseWave620: Abby went down to the river today. She told Bulldog that if he wanted to keep looking for you then she would come help. You should have seen her. Covered in mud, sloshing around in these pink boots. As soon as Abby said she was joining him at the river, though, Bulldog stopped looking.]
[WiseWave620: Please don’t be dead.]
[WiseWave620: I learned your name was Julian today. I kinda feel like I cheated, finally finding you, but we never did agree to any rules on the bet. Julian Ragna.]
[WiseWave620: It’s kinda fitting for you, you know. Ragna. It’s Italian, derived from Norse mythology. Did you know the origin meaning is ‘warrior’ or ‘warrior goddess’?]
[WiseWave620: Not that I’m saying you’re a girl. Just, you know, the ‘warrior’ bit fits with your personality. That’s all.]
[WiseWave620: We had your funeral today. Steel said it was time. Bulldog fought it, saying that it wasn’t fair to bury you without a body. I think he just didn’t want it to be real. None of us did. Harper’s been a mess and Sissy comes to the clubhouse almost every day asking if there’s news.]
[WiseWave620: Please don’t be dead, Julian.]
[WiseWave620: Jumper and Jasmine are leaving on their honeymoon. Well, I guess it’s not their honeymoon anymore. I forgot to tell you they decided not to get married. I mean, they’re still getting married, just not right away. It’s been a long few weeks and no one was in any mood to party or celebrate without you. Anyway, they still kept their cross country idea, just moved it a few weeks. They’re leaving in the morning and everyone’s planning on gathering to wish them a safe trip.]
[WiseWave620: Oh shit! I realized that I forgot to tell you about Pumpkin. Hell, I don’t even know what you know or don’t know. The night of the bridge, Pumpkin was hit by a cage. It was driven by Fletcher’s buddies. They’re the ones who were shooting at Pirate too. Fuck, do you even know who Fletcher is? We didn’t even know you were in town, you ass! How am I supposed to know what you know or don’t know?]
[WiseWave620: Sorry for calling you an ass.]
[WiseWave620: Fletcher Montague is Sophia’s ex-boyfriend. Sophia and Pirate are officially together now, which is good because I’d been keeping a secret about them since FEbrUARY and it was killing me! Anyway, Fletcher was causing problems for Sophia and he had these 2 henchmen/buddies helping him out. That night, on the bridge, Fletcher is the one who shot you. He was trying to kill Sophia, but also claims he WASN’T trying to kill her.]
[WiseWave620: Bulldog’s had him you-know-where since the night you went into the river. He doesn’t want anything from him. I think it’s just an outlet to… Yeah.]
[WiseWave620: Now that I know your name, I’ve been looking into you. Fuck, man. I know I don’t curse a lot, but it seemed appropriate after decrypting your MSR. I didn’t know. I’m so sorry.]
[WiseWave620: The others are headed to Disney the day after tomorrow. I know it was you who bought all those tickets at Christmas. What I don’t understand is how? Julian Ragna doesn’t seem to exist anymore. You aren’t paying taxes, collecting your pension, or anything. It’s like you didn’t exist. So where did you get that money from? I don’t like mysteries, Scar!]
[WiseWave620: Ivy came by the clubhouse today. She didn’t know about the bridge. Can you believe she’s a redhead now? I swear, every time I see her, her hair’s a different color. Anyway, she was understandably upset. Were you two ever a thing? She says ‘no’ but you didn’t see her when Steel told her you were gone and that she’d missed the funeral. I don’t think she’s going to go off the grid like that again for a while.]
[WiseWave620: The more I read about your time overseas, the more I seem to understand you. How the hell could you just go and die on us!? If you’d just opened up more, if you’d let us in… Christ, man, we could have been your family.]
Scar stared at the dark screen and green lettering for a long moment. Keys was the VDMC’s tech everything . The twenty-three year old was a fucking genius. Former Navy Intelligence, he was recruited as a teenager after hacking into the Pentagon on a dare. The only reason Keys had been caught was because the friend who’d done the daring had posted a video on social media outing his “best friend Myles” as the hacker. Rather than arrest him, they decided to use him.
But at nineteen, the Navy had asked him to do something he wasn’t comfortable doing. Scar only knew that, if he had, civilian lives would have been lost too. Keys had refused and received an OTH discharge, or Other Than Honorable.
Ghost, the VDMC’s Enforcer, had vouched for Keys and brought him on as a prospect, even though the bylaws stated that prospects needed to have an honorable discharge.
The kid was beyond smart. It was crazy how fast his brain worked. He ran a security business but wanted to do more than cyber work. But it was hard to be taken seriously in the security world when you looked young enough to still be living at home with your parents.
Scar had mixed feelings about the messages on the secure message board. Like Keys, Scar didn’t do well in social situations. He tended to draw attention because of his looks as well as his silence, and that attention wasn’t always a good thing. People thought they could get him to talk or shout if they snuck up on him. When Scar had worked as the bouncer at Demon on the Rocks , the club’s bar in town, drunks would finally have the courage to come up to him and try to get a reaction out of him.
It was rarely the reaction they wanted or had thought up. Ghost and Ranger used to keep an empty closet to put the people Scar had rendered unconscious in until they woke or sobered up.
Scar’s eyes fell on the kid’s pleas for Scar to not be dead.
He wasn’t sure why he was surprised they’d had a funeral for him. It made the most sense. Hell, he thought he’d been dead when he hit the water. It was completely reasonable that Pirate had too. He’d witnessed not only Scar’s fall but also where he’d been shot.
Scar touched his chest. He hadn’t even seen himself bare yet to know what additional scars had been added to him.
Reading about José’s reaction to his supposed death twisted something inside Scar. He couldn’t return to the VDMC. Not like José wanted. Keys’ last message said that the VDMC could have been Scar’s family.
He didn’t understand that they already were .
Scar might not have been social, might not have joined in on the festivities, but he’d found a calm with the motorcycle club that had been lost to him for many years. If Scar could be happy, it had been those seven years with the VDMC.
But the moment he’d seen José and Abby… Everything had changed. For all the secrets Scar kept from José, he thought he knew everything about his brother. When they’d met at eighteen, there’d been an immediate comradeship. Hell, Scar had been at the bar with José when the man had finally lost his virginity to a barrack bunny. He’d known about José growing up in Mount Grove, about his mom’s cancer and his dad abandoning the family, and about his little brother, Carlos. They’d shared their desires for military careers, and even when those paths had taken them in two different directions, they’d still been there for each other.
Scar had thought he’d known it all.
And then Abigail Knight had returned to Mount Grove.
Abby and José had met in kindergarten. The way José told it, he’d fallen in love with her when he was only six years old. They’d had plans of going to college and getting married someday, but as a teenager, Abby’s parents had taken her away from Mount Grove. Unknown to José, they’d joined a religious cult with extremely twisted views on how women should be treated.
Sixteen years later, Abby finally escaped and reunited with José.
Scar wasn’t pissed that José had kept Abby a secret from him. He understood that the heartache of Abby’s absence in his life was too much for José and there was no getting over that for him. Scar didn’t blame José for wanting to keep his memories of Abby to himself.
But he could see what the knowledge of where Abby had been and what she’d endured during her sixteen years of captivity was doing to José. The guilt that he hadn’t known on a spiritual level that Abby was in trouble and needed him was driving José crazy.
He wanted revenge and would do anything to get it.
Scar knew the price of revenge in a way José never would. José wanted to unleash a bloody vengeance upon the cult that had taken his Abby from him, but he hadn’t considered what that vengeance would cost him in the end. It would change him on such a visceral level that Scar knew from experience that it might cost José his future with Abby.
And the two of them had been separated long enough.
So Scar had done it for him. He’d taken the choice out of José’s hands and delivered the vengeance José longed for without having to pay the price of his soul. Scar didn’t need to worry about his soul being tainted because there was no color darker than black.
There was only more blackness. More void. More emptiness.
But Scar hadn’t realized that there would still be a price, even if it wasn’t his soul. It had cost him his family .
Right now his family was headed to Disney World , completely oblivious to the guillotine hanging over their heads.
Well, fuck that. Scar was not going to take their happiness away from them too. He’d take down Primis and Alpha on his own. His family would be safe. They would live on and never know that Scar had come out of that river.
It might seem cruel, to let them continue thinking he was dead. But Scar’s world was about to become very, very dark. His family deserved to continue living in the light, to have that happiness that was denied to Scar.
Exiting out of the chat, Scar went into his secure files. He had enough on Primis to stall Alpha. It wouldn’t be enough to stop him, but Scar just needed to buy some time. José and the others would be headed to Disney in the morning. That at least gave him a week to figure some things out.
As he searched through his files on Alpha, looking for the most incriminating ones, he spotted a note he’d made when he’d first learned Alpha’s identity.
Henry Meacham had a daughter, Tallulah.
A plan started to form in Scar’s head. Alpha had threatened to go after his family, so Scar would go after Alpha’s.
An eye for an eye. Then when he saw his chance, Scar would actually take Alpha’s eye before he ended him entirely.