Vandal Unbound (Iron Outlaws MC: Florida #2)
Prologue
VANDAL
It’s the kind of Florida night when the air sticks to your skin and the roads still radiate heat from the day. My bike, perfectly tuned, growls beneath me as I cut through the dark, one hand loose on the bars while I think about nothing except what a perfect night it is.
The sky is clear, an inky blue. The stars are bright.
As I ride, I hum an old Scorpions classic. I was raised by a lover of eighties hair bands, what can I say. My mom and I would ride in her beat-up old car and sing on the way to anywhere. She used to say the best thing you could do with three minutes of your life was listen to your favorite song.
Better than meditation, she used to say.
Even while we ate her contradictory sweet and tart Key lime pie tonight after dinner, Cinderella’s Night Songs album played in the background. She jokes she was born in the perfect era of music and doesn’t feel the need to explore other options.
I pass Annie’s bar, still half lit but quiet for a weeknight, and roll onto the long stretch that leads me to the Iron Outlaws’ motorcycle club compound. Cypress trees crowd the road out here, interspersed with the odd property that fronts onto the Everglades’ marshland beyond.
But I barely have time to acknowledge the headlights that flare in my mirrors before the vehicle slams into the back of my bike hard enough to launch me forward.
“Fuck—”
The rear wheel fishtails violently, and the metal beneath me protests.
The handlebars rip out of my hands, and suddenly I’m airborne.
A weird weightlessness sends me flipping and spinning before the road explodes beneath me.
My shoulder lands first, then my hip. Thoughts about fate flash through my skull.
Any other day or time, I wouldn’t be wearing a half helmet for such a low-risk ride, but Mom hates seeing me ride without one, same with leathers, so I always wear both when I go to see her and when I ride away.
It’s the only reason my skull and skin remain attached to the rest of my body. My bike cartwheels ahead of me in a shower of sparks.
Pain tears through me so violently that I can barely breathe through it.
I roll maybe six times more before finally slamming to a stop on my back, staring up at the sky, while my body screams.
For a second, all I hear is ringing. Then a groan drags out of me as I try to move. But every time I go to push up onto my elbow, agony races through my body fiercely enough to make my vision blur.
Headlights wash over me as whoever knocked me off my bike comes to a stop beside me. At least they didn’t hit and run.
For a moment I’m relieved. Someone blocking the road is a good thing, because there’s no hope I could get out of the way fast enough if a car came chasing around that bend.
But when the black van’s doors open, three men, all big bastards, dressed head to toe in military-grade black uniforms step out. My heart stops.
“They weren’t joking about the size of this fucker,” one of them mutters as he nudges me with the toe of his boot.
Fuck.
They aren’t friendly. This wasn’t an accident.
I try to get my hand on the knife at my belt, but my right arm barely responds.
One of them, a man with a snake tattoo that winds up and around his throat, grabs me by the cut and hauls me halfway to upright. Stars spin as pain detonates through my shoulder. Then his first punch lands. Straight into ribs I swear are already broken.
I puke on his boots as breathing starts to feel optional.
“Motherfucker—” His boot catches me a second time hard in the hip as he kicks me and tries to wipe my vomit off his boots using my denim.
I want to scream at them, tell them to fuck off, but right now what few breaths I manage to take are only to preserve my life.
White-hot heat flashes through my skull as one of them kicks the helmet, the impact rattling my teeth. The grunt of pain the asshole makes when he realizes helmets are hard is little consolation.
My vision bursts apart. Warm blood pours down over my eye.
“Hold him,” a man says. His voice is new. Calm. Well-spoken. I hear the passenger door slam.
The men who were beating me force me to stand, but they can’t hold me because my feet won’t hold me either, and I end up slightly collapsed against them.
I force my one good eye open. I’ve never seen the man standing in front of me: black suit, polished shoes, and a slick haircut. He looks at me like I’m dirt.
“So, you’re Vandal, yes?”
I scoff at him, blood flowing in my mouth. “Go fuck yourself.”
The smile he gives me is almost pleasant, until he holds out his hand toward his left. Someone puts a long thing into it and—
The scream rips out before I can stop it. It’s not just having something jammed into my ribs again—it’s the sharp electric crack that tears through me so violently, my entire body locks up like it’s been hit by lightning. Every muscle seizes.
The smell of burning skin hits a second before the current cuts off. I realize the men holding me have dropped me, and I’m now twitching on the asphalt again.
“A cattle prod?” I rasp. “You kinky…fuck.”
One of the men laughs, and it earns him a glare from whoever this sicko is. “Jonathan Paltrow,” he says smoothly. “Where is he?”
The man we used to call Sidekick.
The man we know is dead.
I spit blood onto the man’s shoes, which is obviously the wrong answer as it leads to the cattle prod being jabbed against my neck. I black out for a second, maybe longer. Because when awareness slams back into me, I’m on my side, choking on air while my muscles convulse uncontrollably.
Jesus fucking Christ.
The man crouches close. So close, I should be able to reach for his throat and claw it out with my fingers. Except I’d need to be able to move my arms to do that. My teeth chatter uncontrollably, and it sinks in, the kind of shit I’m in.
Because no one is coming to save me, and I don’t think this guy is here to mess around. I try to force myself to think. What weapons do I have? How can I win against so many?
“Do you know who I am?” the smooth guy asks, as if he’s some kind of long-lost school friend I should remember.
I drag air into my lungs to reply. “Don’t…give a fuck.”
The prod cracks against my shoulder, and tears spring to my eyes instantly. It’s not from fear but because my body can’t seem to handle this kind of agony gracefully.
“I’m Mateo Alvarez. And Jonathan Paltrow stole from me.”
Despite the snowball of dread forming in my gut, I force myself to laugh. “That sounds like a…you problem…not a me…problem.”
One of his men drives a boot into my groin so hard, I swear I see stars, and a broken sound escapes me before I can stop it.
“Where is he?” Alvarez asks. “Because I’m more than happy to take you somewhere so we can continue this all night.”
“I don’t know where he is,” I say, and even I catch the agony in my voice.
“Drag him to his feet,” Alvarez says.
When I left Mom’s, I had a fully functioning skeleton, happily encased inside a sealed sack of skin. Now I feel like all the bones have fallen out of place. There is nothing solid in my frame, and I immediately sag as I try to swallow the yell gurgling at the back of my throat.
Alvarez holds out his hand, and the cattle prod is replaced with a baseball bat.
Swing one, I try to avoid with a fumbled attempt to lie flat on the ground. The tears that threatened earlier silently fall.
I think of my mom, how she’ll never be told what happened to her son. Because these fuckers are gonna make sure there’s no trace of me after this.
I think of Havoc—my best friend and the sergeant at arms for the club—spending the rest of his life trying to find out for both their sakes.
And I think of Knox…wondering what words he’ll say at my funeral when they have to accept I’m gone forever.
“Let’s take him and question him when he comes around,” I hear a voice say.
I’m gonna be a footnote in history that will be erased over time, like I never existed at all.
“Comes around?” I ask, wondering why he’s saying that given I’m conscious.
Then Alvarez raises the bat again.
The second blow is a direct hit, my neck snapping backwards as every part of me mentally screams at me to run, but my physical system is incapable of responding.
And the third makes the world go black.