Chapter 8 #4
Before Toni got to finish her sentence, Ranger grabbed her by her hair and pulled her back up. She didn’t fight the movement, and he’d never pull hard enough to actually hurt her. But feel the bite of it? Absolutely, because he wanted her to never forget his words.
“Don’t you fucking ever say that about yourself,” he growled into her face.
“Not as a joke and certainly not sincerely. I won’t stand for it.
You are beautiful, and I can’t keep my fucking hands off you, Antonia.
I am in awe of you. No one, not even you, has the right to call you that.
And if anyone dares, I will end them. Do you understand me? ”
Toni’s breath was short and choppy. “I just meant that they’ll know we’ve had sex, and I don’t know how they’ll take that. It’ll be embarrassing to face them.”
“Only if you feel ashamed by what we’ve done. Do you?” He held her gaze, waiting for her answer.
“No,” she whispered.
“Then hold your head high, Antonia, and know that you are beyond incredible.” He tipped his head towards the door to his left. “Let’s get going. I’ll stall if given the chance, and I respect you too much to do so.”
* * *
Toni sat upright on the back of Ranger’s bike as he stopped next to the sidewalk. Her skirt was slit up the side by his knife so it wasn’t so tight against her legs. He promised to buy her a new one, but Toni wasn’t going to hold him to it. Men said things all the time that they didn’t mean.
“I don’t understand,” she said as he helped her dismount. Once again, she was wearing his helmet while he went without. “Why are we here?”
Ranger removed his helmet from her head, put it in the saddlebag, and offered her his hand. “I need you to see, to understand.”
Still incredibly confused, Toni accepted his hand.
Her heart might be pounding out of her chest, but she trusted him.
He had no reason to harm her, and he’d even shown her the message he’d sent to Ghost to inform him they were on their way back to Mount Grove.
Based on the way the text was phrased, Ranger had a tracker on him that Ghost had access to.
Why? Did all the club have them or just Ranger?
Ranger pulled down the yellow police tape, like it was a cobweb in their path and not another misdemeanor added to her growing list. The door, though, was unlocked, which surprised her.
Toni had been inside the old sheriff’s station numerous times, but not in years and never at night like this.
Ranger flipped on the light switches as they went without having to hunt for them, which begged the question when and why he’d been here enough to become familiar with the layout of the old sheriff’s station that hadn’t been in use in years.
He led her down the hall to a set of concrete stairs. There was a smell in the air, an odor. More than musk and dust. Almost sulfuric. It made her eyes water and left a sour taste on her tongue when she opened her mouth to breathe.
She’d been down these stairs before, too. She knew what this building was; she just didn’t understand why they were here.
“There was a break-in here,” she said, needing to say something as she obediently followed Ranger. “The town decided it was not secure and is no longer using it for storage. I think Carlos even said they are looking to get it condemned or knocked down.”
Ranger nodded stiffly in front of her. “That’s the public story. The reality is…much darker.”
They reached the landing, and Toni’s eyes went to the jail cells as Ranger hit the light switch for the lower floor. Yellow police tape created a giant X over each cell door.
“What is this, Liam? Why are we here?”
Ranger stared ahead at the first cell, the one closest to them.
His hand squeezed almost painfully around hers.
“The night the bar exploded, my sister, Becks, and I were taken prisoner by my girlfriend and Becks’ ex-fiancé.
They held us captive here for four days.
They starved me, tortured me, and sexually assaulted me.
All while Becks watched from that cell,” he pointed to the second one.
His voice was dead, almost monotone. “They wanted the inheritance our grandmother had left us, an inheritance we didn’t even know existed.
And to keep me compliant and unable to escape, they repeatedly injected me with heroin. ”
Horrified, Toni stared at the jail cell across from them. In the dust coating the floor and the brick wall, she could make out dark specs and puddles. It was all centered around the stainless steel toilet in the corner by the bars that separated the two cells.
“Becks negotiated my release. Even knowing that it might mean her death, she talked them into letting me go. They dumped me outside of town, on the side of a road into a drainage ditch. High, broken, and naked, I managed to crawl my way up onto the road, where Scar and Tally eventually found me. From there I was taken to a hospital, but I was less than useless in helping the club locate my sister. My head was too jumbled between pain and the drug. But eventually they found her—almost two days later.”
Abruptly, Ranger turned and started back up the stairs.
“Wait!” Toni called after him. He still had a tight grip on her hand, but she was able to keep up with his sudden speed up the steps. “I have so many questions. Liam, you can’t just?—”
At the top of the steps, he stopped and looked down at her. She expected to see his eyes icy or angry, but instead, it was like they were devoid of feelings. The same as his face. “There’s more,” he told her flatly. “I’ll answer your questions later.”
He continued walking, pulling her after him.
“Wait!” she repeated. He stopped, but he did not look at her.
For all his hurry, he took great care not to jerk her around or walk too fast. “Liam, can you just give me a second to process everything you just told me? You just dropped this huge bomb of information on me, and I haven’t even had a chance to say that I’m sorry for what happened to you yet. ”
“I don’t want your apology or your pity,” he said, still not looking back at her. “I want your understanding, and for you to understand fully, you need to keep seeing. Are you coming with me?”
Toni glanced behind her. They’d left all the lights on, but if Carlos had covered up what happened here already, she wasn’t sure he was going to care all that much that they’d trespassed, too.
But why would Carlos cover this up? A serious crime had happened here.
Ranger’s girlfriend and Becks’ ex-fiancé should be in jail.
Unlike what had happened at her house the night before, what had happened here wasn’t controversial.
Or at least, from the story Ranger told, it wasn’t.
So, why would Carlos cover up their crimes?
Toni thought back to when the bombing had occurred, and she didn’t remember a single mention of a kidnapping, too. Why the secrecy?
“Toni?”
Jumping at his voice, Toni looked forward again. “You swear you’ll answer my questions later?”
“I swear, and if you don’t want to ask me them, then I’ll give Ghost permission to answer for me.”
While she was grateful for the promise, she was not satisfied with the answer. “I’ll go with you, but stop trying to bring other people into this conversation. What is said tonight stays between you and me.”
“Then let’s get going. The dead don’t like to wait.”