2. Hayden
2
HAYDEN
“ S he’s not fucking there, Chaos!”
I stared at Hawk, the smug grin falling from my face.
Kara was supposed to have met me at the back gate to the Slayers’ compound. The plan had been rushed, no thought given to the details or what came next when all I’d been able to think about was that she was here, and five years had done nothing to dull the connection between us.
It had reignited, hot and hard, a bond not just born of physical attraction but of shared trauma. My heart had always been linked to hers in a way I’d never been able to find with anyone else. In a way that couldn’t be forgotten, no matter how much I might have tried.
I’d thought nothing of following her into that cinema bathroom. Locking her in a stall with me. Showing her I was alive and I wanted her.
I’d always fucking wanted her.
But she was with Hawk, and Hawk hated me with every fiber of his body. Slayers vs. Sinners. That’s how it had always been in Saint View. Him on one side, me on the other.
He was never going to let her go without a fight. But I’d asked her anyway. I’d asked her to meet me. Run away with me.
And that’s where I’d been when Hawk found me and dropped the goddamn bomb that Kara had a cult leader husband and a club full of Louisiana bikers trying to take her home to him.
Against her will.
Over my dead body was I losing her again. I didn’t care if it was me against fifty. They weren’t taking her anywhere.
She didn’t know it yet, but she was mine.
She’d always been mine.
“Then where the hell is she?” I stared at Hawk, praying he had the answer.
He dropped the gun to his side and shook his head. “I don’t know.”
That wasn’t fucking good enough.
I strode to the van Luca had left on the side of the road. It had the logo of an Italian restaurant printed on the side, but not ten minutes earlier, the back of it had been filled with women. Women I’d freed because fuck Luca. He might have been my boss, and this might have been my way inside the Slayers’ compound to meet Kara, but I wasn’t helping Luca traffic women. Not anymore.
I’d been young and stupid and desperate enough to fall into that trap once. It had led me to Kara, but I wasn’t doing it again.
I’d ram the fucking Slayers’ gates down if I had to.
Something inside me delighted in the thought, after what they’d put me through the last time I’d been inside their compound.
I gunned the engine as Hawk jerked open the passenger side door and glared at me. “Where the hell are you going?”
“I’ve been watching the road ever since I left the theater and haven’t seen anyone leave. Unless someone managed to get her out on foot, she’s still in there somewhere.”
Hawk glared at me. “They could have taken her out on bikes. Cut through the woods in any fucking direction.”
He was right, but I had to hope that wasn’t the case. It would take hours to send a search party out that far. “Well, we ain’t going to know by standing here, are we? So get in or get out. I don’t care. But I’m going to find my girl.”
Hawk let out a string of expletives as I damn near ran him over, but he gripped the doorframe and, through sheer willpower, dragged himself inside the moving vehicle. “Not your girl. My fucking girl. And God, I hate you. You could have at least let me get in. I probably just ripped something in my shoulder.”
“Decide faster next time then,” I growled back, attention firmly on the road, tires kicking up dust. “Or work out more so you aren’t so precious.”
Hawk flipped me the bird. “I work out plenty.”
I was aware. I’d seen him naked not all that long ago, when we’d both had the unpleasant experience of being strip-searched at the local police station. Hawk was all tanned skin and rippling muscle that had been hard not to look at.
Shame his mouth and shitty attitude ruined everything else.
“Then quit your whining.” I pushed my foot harder on the accelerator, the van eating up the miles of what felt like the world’s longest driveway to get to the Slayers’ gates.
Hawk gripped the “holy shit bar,” his ass bouncing up and down on the seat with the force of the van traveling at pace over the uneven road. “You know you’re a dead man if you step foot inside those gates, right?”
I gritted my teeth, staring down the imposing gates as they rose in front of us. “Then I guess I’m a dead man.”
Hawk braced himself on the dashboard. “Stubborn prick. Slow the fuck down. You’re going to kill us both.”
“Need speed to get through those gates. You said yourself, your brothers aren’t going to unlock them and roll out the red carpet for me.”
Hawk’s knuckles were white. “Jesus fuck.” The van lurched over a pothole. “Who knew your driving was so bad? Stop, you idiot! Trying to ram your way through ain’t going to get us anywhere except in a mangled wreck or airlifted to the hospital.”
“You should probably put your seat belt on then. Because I’m not stopping.” I meant every word. Screw Hawk and his club and their stupid rules. “My woman is in there.”
“She ain’t your fucking woman!”
“Well, she sure as hell isn’t yours either.” We were driving too fast, but I couldn’t take my foot off the accelerator. Not when everything inside me demanded I get to Kara. “Now, you gonna get your boys to open that gate, or do I have to kill us both?”
He glared at me. “Ain’t no way I’m going to Hell holding your hand. It would be just my goddamn luck to get stuck with you for the rest of eternity because we died on the same day.” He stuck his head out the window, waving his arms and hollering at whoever was on the gate. “Get them open! Get them open!”
I flashed my lights and slammed my fist down on the horn. My heart pounded. All I could think about was getting to her. I didn’t care about anything else. Not the Slayers’ gate or the van or me or Hawk. All that mattered was her.
Everything else was just collateral damage.
I’d seen the video of men surrounding her while she danced. Touching themselves while they watched her. It wasn’t much of a leap to assume that right now, they were doing a whole lot more than just looking.
Bile rose in my throat.
Hawk’s attempts at drawing attention our way failed. The gates didn’t open. No guard wearing a Slayers’ jacket stepped from the shadows to stop us.
I braced myself for the hit. For the spray of shattering glass and the scream of twisting metal. Waited for the pain I knew would come.
It would be worth it.
Hawk jerked the wheel, sending the van into a spin on the dirt road.
It had the desired effect of stopping me from ramming down the gate, but the g-force of the spin and the fact Hawk hadn’t listened when I told him to put his seat belt on, sent him flying into me.
His head collided with mine and we both groaned, the van coming to a stop with Hawk practically on top of me.
“Have I mentioned today how much I hate you?” he moaned.
Pain radiated through my skull, centering behind my eyes as the world stopped spinning and came back into focus. “Get off me and open the gates, and maybe I’ll spare you the details on how much the feeling is mutual. Why the hell did you do that?”
With some shoving from me, Hawk peeled himself off me, but it wasn’t without a glare of indignation. “Are you seriously giving me shit right now? I probably just saved your life.”
“We would have been fine.”
“Those gates are reinforced, dickhead! You would have killed me. And fuck, even if you’d only killed yourself, I don’t want to be the one who has to tell Kara that.”
He was such a hypocrite. “You were willing to kill me for stepping through the gates a minute ago, and now you’re worried for my safety?”
Hawk grimaced, rolling the shoulder that had slammed into me when he’d slid. “Yeah, well, it’s a confusing feeling to hate someone and yet also apparently need to keep them alive because…”
He clamped his lips together.
“Because Kara loves me.”
He said nothing.
But I knew I’d hit the nail on the head. “And you love her, and you don’t want to see her hurt. That about sum it up?”
“Her taste in men sucks if that’s true.” He got out of the van and moved to the entrance. Still rubbing at his shoulder, he reached for the control panel that would presumably require a pin code. Then stopped and leaned hard on one of the gates.
It swung open.
It hadn’t been locked at all.
I rolled my eyes and called out the open window, “Seriously? It wasn’t even locked? We could have been down there by now!”
Hawk turned around. “The gates are never unlocked. Never unmanned.” He poked at the panel and shook his head. “It’s completely dead. The entire security system is down.”
I twisted my fingers around the steering wheel at the tone in his voice. “What does that mean?”
He shook his head and got back into the van. “Not only could anyone have gotten out, anyone could have gotten in.” He swallowed thickly. “The cops think there’s a serial killer. One who goes after sisters.”
I shook my head, trying to make sense of that. “What has that got to do with anything?”
“Kara’s sister was murdered a couple weeks ago.”
My blood ran cold. “So not only are we up against an entire chapter of bikers who apparently want to drag her back to her abusive husband and his whack-job cult, we also have to worry about some serial killer potentially inside the gates?”
Hawk looked over at me. “As well as none of the Slayers killing you on sight.”
“Or you stabbing me in the back. Which we all know is more likely.”
Hawk sighed and then held out his hand. “Twenty-four-hour truce. I fucked up with Kara in letting her think you were dead. And you’re right. I love her and I want her back. Killing you will only make her hate me more. The last thing I want to do is cause her pain.”
I wasn’t an idiot. Hawk was the way I got inside without being shot on sight. He’d grown up on this land and he knew it, even in the dark. I didn’t. He was my best bet at finding Kara, as well as staying alive long enough to take her home with me.
I took his hand, shaking it. “Did we just become best friends?”
It would have almost been funny if shots hadn’t interrupted, the cracking boom of a gun piercing the night air.