3. Orion
Orion
Icut the bike’s engine when I’m still two blocks away from the address in the text and leave it parked up against what passes for a curb in this part of town.
I’m not really even in town anymore, honestly, but on the outskirts, where Main Street shoots up the mountain, still paved, and all other roads turn to dirt and meander off on their own.
The train tracks run alongside the town for a moment here, surrounded by warning signs to keep people off them, but aside from that the area is largely deserted.
No shops here, no houses, and even the trees are sparse.
Right now, though, in the dark of a moonless night, the terrain looks dark and forbidding.
But for three lights on in a compound that used to be deserted and is now very much occupied.
I slip onto the property and stop behind the first tree I come across, then stare at the main house and start collecting as much information as I can.
This property used to belong to someone who was only in town during the summer months.
They built a full complex, complete with a main house and several outbuildings, and brought their entire family up in June, then stayed until August or September.
They were here when Mars first brought me up the mountain, and I remember being absolutely fascinated with someone having enough money to own an entire house that they only used for a couple of months a year.
I’d been born to parents who were both lawyers, but public defenders in New York don’t make much money, and we’d had only a small apartment in a building that didn’t cater to nice people. I didn’t understand rich people yet.
Hell, I still don’t. But I’ve seen enough vacation homes at this point that I do understand that some people spend money like it’s fucking water, without thinking that they could do better things with it.
This compound was deserted for years, though, when that family decided they no longer liked the mountain, and everyone in town had thought it would fall into disrepair and destroy itself over time.
Instead, several months ago, a new MC moved into town and invited themselves right into the compound.
I have no idea whether they paid anyone for it, but they certainly didn’t ask the residents of Wood what they thought of having a second MC within their jurisdiction.
If they had, they would have been told we didn’t want them.
The Black Oaks were our MC and there’s not room for another gang in such a small town.
Especially one that likes to make as much trouble as the Iron Saints do.
They’ve been interfering with town business ever since, and were called out two months ago for stalking one of our own and then taking a contract to hit our sheriff.
Bear Hawke.
I scan the main house as I sift through those memories, my eyes sharp on the lights in the windows.
It’s midnight and there’s not a lot of movement in there, but I can see shadows crossing the windows every so often.
Ten or so bikes are sitting in front of the house, so a good number of their people are home, and given their history I’d expect a party, but I don’t hear any music.
Just the creepy sort of stillness that accompanies people holding their breath like they’re waiting for something.
Or like they’re doing something they shouldn’t be doing.
I narrow my eyes and creep forward, ducked low over the ground and moving quickly enough to get to the next tree. I go to another, and then another, until I can see the figures in the house more clearly. They’re definitely not having a party. And there are definitely only a couple of guys in there.
That’s strange. I haven’t kept a firm count but I know they have at least twenty guys in their organization, and they somehow manage to pack them all into that house most nights.
Where the fuck are the rest of the guys?
And where’s this girl the text was talking about? Is she in there with them?
Something moves in my peripheral vision and I swing around, already defensive, but see that it’s not close to me.
Instead, it’s at one of the outbuildings.
A tiny cottage that sits several hundred yards from the main house.
The place looks like it belongs in a storybook, with its wraparound porch and gingerbread-house-style roof, and I’ve always wondered why the fuck the owners of the place built a second house and made it so tiny.
Right now, there’s a man standing on the porch lighting a cigarette.
A moment later, he turns and shouts something at the house, and I see a twitch of the curtain in the window. A face, eyes large and hair puffed out around it as she looks out into the night.
A girl.
She doesn’t look like she can be more than twenty, maybe twenty-one, and I’m close enough to see that she’s absolutely beautiful.
Wide cheekbones and large eyes. A rosebud mouth pursed into an expression that tells me she’s intentionally biting her tongue rather than answering whatever the man just said.
She looks other worldly, the light from the room behind her highlighting chestnut-colored hair and pale, freckled skin.
But something about her face looks fragile. Delicate, like her bones are pushing too hard against her skin and she’s about to break. She looks like she’s made of glass rather than truly human.
I guess the stress of having been kidnapped will probably do that to you.
Because there’s no doubt in my mind that this is the girl I’m searching for. Young, beautiful, and with that expensive cast to her skin that tell me she’s probably worth a lot of money to someone.
So why the fuck is she in Wood?
And why haven’t her people paid whatever the syndicate is asking, to take her home and keep her safe with them rather than holed up in some tiny cottage up on a mountain?
“You planning on telling me what you’re doing?’
The voice is so close, so loud, that I nearly yelp in surprise.
I jump and hit my head on a low-lying branch, then whirl in the next move, my fists up and ready to punch whoever is right behind me.
And then I see Mars, standing there looking at me like he’s just caught me doing something I shouldn’t be doing.
Which I am.
Because I already know that girl in the cabin needs a hero, and I’ve never been that sort of man.
“What did you do, follow me?” I snap.
“Of course I followed you. You got a phone call and took off like the devil himself was after you,” he snaps back.
“And now I find you in the middle of the forest acting like you’re some sort of action hero.
What the fuck are you doing out here, Orion?
Because if you’re planning on starting trouble with the Saints, I have thoughts. ”
Of course he has thoughts.
Mars always has thoughts.
And he’s been very clear about the Saints themselves. The Oaks have been tousling with the new MC for months, and we have several fights under our belts, but Mars has forbidden us from starting trouble with them on purpose.
Still, I scoff.
“What the fuck do you think I’m doing, riding out here in the middle of the night so I can attack them? In the dark? By myself?”
He eyes me narrowly. “I wouldn’t put it past you if you thought you had a reason.”
Well, shit.
Even I’m not stupid enough to do that, and he knows it. But this leaves me with a conundrum. Because I didn’t come here to attack the Saints on my own, in the middle of the night.
But I don’t want to tell him the reason I did come out here. On my own. In the middle of the night.
Mars knows about my background, and that I was living in that junkyard when he found me. He knows I started living on the streets when I was twelve, but there are a lot of things he doesn’t know–like that I wasn’t actually orphaned. For all I know, my mom and dad are still alive.
But my dad had a very high opinion of himself, and very little was good enough for him.
Not my mother, and not me. When I told him I didn’t want to be a lawyer, but wanted to do something different with my life, he decided to talk me out of it using his fists, and that went on from when I was about six to the day I turned twelve and decided I didn’t want to be stuck in that apartment with him anymore.
I left the next day, and I’ve never looked back.
Though the next three years of my life had been harrowing enough to make me think that a steady roof over my head might have been worth the monster who lived in the next room.
That’s the kind of thing I’ve never told Mars, though, because the thought of telling him what sort of kid I’d been, and the things I did when I was trying to make my own way in the world...
It’s too heavy to bear.
He can’t know that I was running from the syndicate when he found me, having saved a kid I was meant to pass to the smugglers.
I was in trouble and in need of an ally, and suddenly there was Mars, a hero in real life and the big brother I’d never had.
He’s been saving me for ten years, now, and the thought of telling him who I really was...
No.
I won’t do it.
So how the fuck am I going to explain how I happened to get out here in the middle of the night, and why I know there’s a girl in that little house in need of saving?
My mind races through as much fiction as it can come up with, and hands me a quick and almost believable answer: I was riding through the night, trying to get my brain to calm down, when I happened to pass this compound.
Happened to see that the other MC was active.
And that there was a girl in the cabin. A girl who looked kidnapped.
Christ on a cracker, that’s not even a good story.
But then the man on the porch behind me shouts again, and Mars looks over my shoulder at him, then frowns.
His eyes turn from the man to something to the side, and he cocks his head, the lines in his forehead growing even deeper.
He grabs my arm and pulls me roughly toward the cabin and I stumble after him, trying to get my head around what’s going on.
There’s a man we don’t know on that porch shouting at a house, and Mars is just running right toward him?
He stops abruptly behind a tree and leans around it, his eyes intent on the cabin. I look toward the building, trying to figure out what he’s seeing, and see the girl in the window again, her eyes on the town behind us as she shoves something into her mouth.
Great. He’s seen the girl, and I don’t even have a good lie thought up yet.
But then he breathes one word, and I realize he’s stopped wondering what I’m doing, because he’s too engrossed with the girl in the window.
“Arden?” he mutters.
I freeze, trying to figure out what the fuck ‘arden’ means. Then I realize it’s a name.
It’s a girl’s name.
“What?” I hiss.
He doesn’t pause. Doesn’t even hesitate.
“That’s Arden Rossi,” he says quietly. “What the fuck is she doing out here in the middle of nowhere?”
Well that’s the fucking question, isn’t it?
But he doesn’t ask again.
He’s already running for the cabin.