Thirty-One
R eacher stayed with us, having carried in an armload of leather cuts, and that freaked me out even more than Stitch going off on some revenge trip.
“Why did you stay? What’s going on, Reacher?”
The older guy smoothed his hand over his beard, and groaned as he lowered himself onto one of the seats in the front.
“Just keeping you ladies company. Nothing to worry about, love.”
Alicia looked concerned about him, joining him in the front, while Lissa and Tori sat on the bed with me.
“What happened, babe? You were in such a state when Stitch called.” Lissa was holding one of my hands, while I tried to keep my attention on her, instead of letting my mind whirl, wondering what Stitch was doing right now. What he and his brothers were getting into. I felt like something bad was going to happen, and I wouldn’t see him again. What if he doesn’t come back?
“He will, babe, can you try to focus please?” I said that out loud? I was so fucking out of it.
“I’m trying, Lissa. I just feel kind of… I don’t know, not in my body right now.” She nodded, squeezing my hand.
“Tori, can you grab her some water please, babe?” Tori got up and moved, and I stared down at my hand in Lissa’s.
“What if he gets hurt? I’m so scared something bad will happen to Stitch, and we won’t even get this short time together. He was so angry. So… I don’t know, but he didn’t look like him at all.”
Reacher had joined us after all, leaning against the compact kitchen counter.
“He’s looking to avenge his lady, and honestly, I think it’s a good thing. He’s more focused outside of himself and his health stuff than I’ve seen him in ages. That’s because of you, Cammy. You’re giving him a reason to fight this.”
“You mean his revenge is. Jesus, Reacher, will he kill him?”
The air felt thick with tension, as we all stayed silent, waiting for his response. Reacher rubbed at those studs in his eyebrow, his tell. His outward sign of the tension and intensity he held inside.
“What do you want me to say, Cammy? Of course he’ll fucking kill him. He made Ice tell him everything. He knows what you went through, or at least as much as your hospital records showed. You could have had the bastard locked up, but you never went that route. You let him drive you away from your whole life.”
I stood up, my fists clenched.
“I had no fucking life, Reacher. Do any of you even understand what it’s like to be in that situation? He drove everyone out of my life. Distanced me from every friend and family member I had. Put a fucking wall between them and me, so that I had nobody to turn to. No respite. No fucking refuge. That last time… I was in a coma for nearly a week. Someone called the right people, and I had help at last. Help to get out, and start again. It took me so long to get back on my feet again, to start to hope again.”
I was exhausted, because I was saying things I’d never said before. I was sharing things I’d never told a soul. Thank god he’d never raped me as part of his abuse. It had all been threats, and yelling, and manipulation, and breaking me down until I didn’t value myself at all.
He managed to erode every ounce of confidence and self-worth, until all that was left was a shell of a person. Broken, hopeless, and no longer fighting for anything more. The woman from the charity who broke me free, she was fearless and strong, and I wanted that so much. She helped me fake a new identity, same first name, but a new surname, new everything else. I’d always be thankful to her, for everything.
Stitch
T he building they’d found was perfect. Abandoned, remote, unlikely to be happened upon by any unlucky fucker during the torture.
First, Torch threw him on the floor, and we all laid a boot in, kicking the fucker everywhere we could reach. He was trying to protect himself, curling up in a ball, and yelling for help, but none was coming. I couldn’t wait for that realisation to hit, and for him to realise just how fucking hopeless his situation was. How incredibly fucked he was.
“Back off.” The others listened and stepped back, leaving me standing over him.
“Ross, motherfucker, this is your day of reckoning. The day when you pay for what you did to her.”
He stared blearily up at me, blinking against the blood running from a head wound into his eye.
“Who… the fuck… are you people?”
I kicked him again, grinning at his grunt of pain, as my boot connected with his chest.
“I’m her fucking husband, asshole.”
He rubbed his no-longer pristine white shirt sleeve over his eyes, smearing blood everywhere.
“Who? What’s this… about?”
Ice returned, after taking the guy’s phone out to the prospect, who was going off to dump it in the sea, making tracking of this fucker damn near impossible. His stop here would show as nothing more than a brief pause, unlikely to lead any search teams to anything of any value.
“Camille.” Ross’ eyes widened, and he looked at each of us in turn.
“Whatever that cunt told you, it’s bullshit, man. She’s unhinged.” I crouched down, my hand grabbing his throat, and squeezing.
“Did you miss the part where I said I’m her fucking husband? I know everything you did to her, asshole. How much of it do you want to feel before you die?”
There was the true fear I wanted to see. That realisation that he was going to die right here.
“Come on… I… she’s lying…” His words being choked out like that didn’t do anything to appease me. I was ready to make this fucker scream, but Ice grabbed my arm, and whispered something to me. Something that I really didn’t want to fucking consider.
“I can’t, man. I… Jesus.” I backed away from the fucker, and Ice nodded at Torch. They dragged him over to the wall, and hauled him to his feet. The first crunch of the nail gun led to an agonised scream, and by the time they’d finished nailing him to the wall, he was sobbing, begging, trying his best to stay on his feet, so he didn’t pull at the multiple nails holding his hands against the wall.
“Just answer the question, asshole, and we can make this stop. By the way, this is my friend, Torch. You wanna know why we call him that? Road names have meaning, man… Oh, yeah we’re bikers, but you didn’t know that because we didn’t want your worthless blood on our cuts.”
Ryder and Micro were letting Ice lead things, but I was done with letting him run the show. He’d answer the question, and he’d fucking tell me to my face. I strode forward again, shoving Ice aside, my hand closing around the asshole’s throat again.
“Answer. The. Fucking. Question, or we’ll let Torch flame-grill your fucking nads while you scream for help.” Ross shuddered, shooting a horrified look in Torch’s direction. Now Torch was starting to look pissed, because he’d left his fire tools behind and now he really wanted to do exactly what I’d suggested.
“Ross, you stupid fuck, this is your last chance, or you’re gonna know what your nuts smell like when they’re being cooked.” Ryder cursed, and backed away from us, and Ice looked like he was on the verge of it himself. He didn’t normally attend shit like this, but he was fully on board with avenging his old lady’s friend.
“Guys, we’ve got this.” Ice nodded, and backed up, slapping Micro on the shoulder, encouraging him to turn and follow, even as he complained.
“I coulda helped.”
I ignored him, and nodded at Torch, who didn’t let on that he wasn’t in a position to actually burn the guy .
“Okay! Okay, Jesus, you people are insane. It wasn’t rape though, see, because she was my girlfriend, and she wasn’t even conscious. She never knew. She doesn’t know. It was just the one time, man!”
I closed my eyes as the murderous rage inside me reached that boiling point it had been hovering just below.
“Get my kit.”
Torch backed off, and I squeezed on the guy’s throat to shut him up, only now? Now he was singing like a fucking canary, trying to justify every sick, violent thing he’d done to the woman I was in love with. Trying to explain away the fact that he brutalised her badly enough that just the sight of him nearly made her catatonic with terror.
“I suggest you shut up now, mate,” Torch advised as he pressed a tin into my free hand. I backed up and popped the lid, staring down at the tools of my trade. The tools that gave me my name. Removing the suture kit, I tossed the tin on the ground, and nodded at Torch. I felt a calmness settling deep inside me as I prepared myself for what he deserved.
“Hold him still. Time to shut this fucker up for good .”
Cammy
T hey were gone for hours. Long agonising hours. Finally Reacher had a text, and nodded as he read it.
“They’re on their way back.” He pushed away from the counter, and pulled open the door on the tiny bathroom, checking the facilities.
“What are you doing?”
He turned on the shower, testing the water pressure, turning it off almost immediately.
“Ally, find the nearest hotel, and get us some rooms.” She didn’t even question it, just started tapping away on her phone, as she drifted away from us.
“Hotel? Why a hotel? Oh god, what’s happened? Is Stitch okay? My god, is he okay?”
Ally returned, and showed Reacher something on his phone.
“Perfect, woman. Go for it.”
She walked off again, and fussed with her phone some more.
“Reacher, is he okay?”
He finally stopped ignoring me, grabbing both of my arms to halt my frantic pacing.
“They’re just a bit uh… they need somewhere to clean themselves up, yeah? Ally’s found a set of holiday homes nearby, and she’s booking a couple of them for a night.”
“Clean themselves up. Like they’re covered in blood, you mean? More than this little shower can handle?”
He nodded. “Glad you get it, love. Now, you can drive this thing, right?”
Ten minutes later, Reacher was on his bike, with his old lady wrapped around him from behind, and I was driving the mobile home, with Tori and Lissa sitting beside me.
“What about the bikes?”
Lissa shrugged. “They’ll come get them when they’re not all bloody, babe. It’s fine.”
“Oh god, they killed him, didn’t they?”
Tori grimaced, and muttered something.
“What? What was that?”
Lissa turned to poke her.
“What was that about Stitch?”
She groaned. “Ryder told me why he’s called Stitch, that’s all. You don’t want to know.”
I really wanted to fucking know. Who the hell had I married? What caused him to have that as a name? We’d joked about it before, and oh hell… he’d hinted that it was something violent, hadn’t he?
“He stitches people? How? What does he do to them?”
Tori groaned, drawing her fingers through her short hair.
“He earned the name when he went after the guys who raped his cousin. She doesn’t know, but the club found them. He made them admit what they did, and then… ugh… he sewed their mouths shut, while they were still alive. ”
WHAT? Stitch did that? Stitch literally sewed people’s mouths shut? I felt sick. I felt more than sick, I felt horrified. And yet… who did he do it to? Rapists. Didn’t they deserve that and more?
We arrived at the little holiday place, and I finally found somewhere to park the mobile home, even though we had to pay extra to park it.
Alicia and Tori went in to sort out keys, while Reacher waited with Lissa and me.
“When they get back, they’re gonna want to get straight inside, and get clean. You’ll wait in here with us, okay?”
“Why? I should be wherever Stitch will be.”
“Babe, let him wash clean of everything that just happened. He won’t want you near him until he has his shit together.”
“I should be there to clean him up, to look after him.”
Reacher cursed, as he watched the grey van pull into the car park, as far from us as it could.
“He needs time to get his head straight, Cammy. He had to go dark to do what he had to do, and he doesn’t want you seeing him like that. Can you respect that, and wait for him?”
“Ohhhh my mistake, so you’re going to use guilt to try and control me? Screw that. He needs me and I need him, dammit. Do you really think I married him as some kind of fucking game or something? I want to spend every fucking minute with him. The bucket list thing… hell, it was an excuse, to spend time with him, to get him to open up. I just wanted him to talk to me, to be with me, and now you’re doing your best to keep us apart.”
Reacher cursed, throwing his hands up.
“I swear, you women are so fucking stubborn. I’m not doing this to fucking ‘keep you apart’, or hurt you in some way. I’m trying to protect my brother, and right now what he needs is a few fucking minutes to compose himself. Doesn’t he deserve that?”
Ugh. I hated being manipulated by people who were actually right.
“Whatever.” I stepped into the small bathroom and locked the door. I didn’t need the damn loo, but I needed to get away from Reacher, with his fucking bossy asshole ways, and Lissa with her caring eyes, and the way she quietly observed me, rather than fucking helping .
I needed to be with Stitch. It was a desperate, agonising need. A burning urge inside me. If his time was limited, I didn’t want him to spend a single damn minute away from me. Why waste any of them by being apart?
I leaned on the tiny sink and rested my head against the permanently slightly-opaque mirror. How long would I have to wait for him? How long would he stay away to put his demons back in their cages. How long would he be somewhere other than by my fucking side?