30. Dallas
DALLAS
“Everyone, get out of the way! Let’s move, move, move, move, move!” Deac bellowed.
Another explosion burst up from the dwindling flames, tossing Gauge clear off his fucking feet.
“We have to get out of here!” Gauge bellowed as he soared through the air. “We have to get back to Char!”
I cupped my hands over my mouth and let out a whistle Gauge taught me many years ago.
“Come on, assholes! Everyone back to the clubhouse!”
I tore toward Gauge as that power pole teetered. Flames grew around us as I dove for one arm while Deac reached for his other one. We yanked him up from the ground, taking stock of his bleeding nose and the gash he had along the nape of his neck.
“Come on, we gotta get you back,” I said as I tossed his arm over my shoulder. “This way, Deac!”
The pole twisted and cracked before the guys started yelling.
They revved their engines and beeped their horns as that pole came crashing to the ground.
Deac and I hightailed it out of there, dragging what was easily our biggest member between us.
And as the pole collided with the ground, it rumbled the dirt beneath our feet like a motherfucking earthquake.
“Clubhouse! Now!” Deac roared.
I didn’t like the idea of Gauge riding back by himself, but he seemed steady enough. Shaken. Maybe a bit unfocused. But steady on his feet.
“Gauge, you with me?” I asked as I patted his chest.
He coughed up a bit of dust before spitting it on the ground. “We have to find Char.”
I nodded. “I know. You good?”
“Yeah,” he murmured as he turned toward his bike, “let’s get out of here. We’ve missed something.”
Yeah, we missed something, all right. And how the fuck did Plug miss it? My heart sank into my toes as I sprinted toward my motorcycle. Something was very wrong. Not only had we miscalculated, but we were so deep in celebrating our victories that we didn’t even think to check our fucking backs.
Or undercarriages for that matter.
But we missed something, and it made me wonder how in the absolute fuck that tracking device got from her car to Gauge’s bike without any of us noticing.
Especially Plug.
Our motorcycles blazed a trail down the highway as rising smoke and continued explosions rocked the world around us.
The forty-five-minute drive didn’t seem terrible at first. But with Char not in our sights and no clue as to the whereabouts of that federal agent, I cursed the ride for being so fucking long.
Deac sped as quickly as he could go. All of us pushed triple digits, soaring down back alleys and cutting through the desert just to shave off a bit of time.
A wall of sand and dust kicked up behind us, following us like a looming dark cloud.
However, when we got to the town’s city limits, there were a couple of vehicles with their lights on, blockading the road.
Sheriff Nielson stood there with his thumbs hooked into his belt loops.
“Move,” Deac said as we all rode up to him in a line.
His face looked pale, and it stopped my heart in my chest. “Nielson.”
Deputy Carlyle stood there, shaking his head. The female deputy at his other side, the other deputy who kept a look out for us, couldn’t even look us in the eyes. She kept her hands jammed into her pockets while she watched her uniform boots trace faceless designs against the sand-coated asphalt.
Nielson uttered a set of words that drained the blood from my face, too.
“Char’s been arrested and charged,” Sheriff Nielson said.
“She’s been what?” Gauge glowered.
“And before you ask,” Nielson said as he looked over at me, “she’s already lawyered up.”
Our worst nightmare, realized.
Marcie had officially turned her sights away from us…
…and toward my sweet, precious little Char.
Char
The van smelled like gasoline and something older underneath it. Something that had soaked into the metal and dried there and been driven over for miles without anyone cleaning it out.
I knew what blood smelled like. I grew up knowing.
I sat with my wrists cuffed behind my back and my nose streaming from where my face met the floor, and I stared at the dark stain spreading out across the metal beneath me.
It wasn’t fresh. Whatever happened in this van happened a while ago, and the person it happened to wasn’t here anymore to say anything about it.
Bait.
The word landed in my chest like something thrown.
I closed my eyes. Opened them again. The little overhead light was doing its best, which wasn’t much, and the van rocked as it turned onto what felt like an uneven road, and my shoulder hit the side wall hard enough to make me hiss.
I thought about the guys. About where they were right now.
About Deac on his bike and Gauge somewhere in the dark and Dallas, who would lose his mind when he found out.
I thought about how none of them knew yet.
How I was the only one who knew exactly which van I was in and what had already happened inside it.
I thought about Bait, who sat exactly where I was sitting.
“You’re not going to break me,” I said out loud, to no one. To the dark. To the dried blood and the metal walls and the woman behind the wheel who thought she had me.
My voice didn’t shake. I was proud of that.
The van hit another rough patch and I braced myself with my knees, kept myself upright, and breathed through my mouth so I didn’t have to smell it anymore.
I was scared. I was genuinely, bone-deep scared in a way I hadn’t been since I was a little girl on a dead-grass lawn watching my father get pressed face-down into the dirt.
But I’d survived that.
I was still here.
They’re coming, I told myself. They will come.
I just had to make sure I was still in one piece when they did.