Chapter 38
Chapter Thirty-Eight
DREW
Iwas too lost in the gritty cries of Owen beneath me, enjoying the power of removing the one thing that was sacred around here from his bruised flesh.
Maybe I was sicker than even I had come to understand.
Blood poured from him, sweat too, but the thing that made the hairs on the back of my neck rise in victory was those toe-curdling cries of agony. I enjoyed those the most.
Never fuck with The Hounds of Babylon. That’s what I wanted to paint on a banner and hang across every border of our small town, right alongside a picture of this vision lying beneath me.
A reminder to all those who thought we—I—were soft.
A reminder that love didn’t make you weak, it made you motivated.
It gave you purpose. To save those you love, you’d do unimaginable things to those you never thought you’d have to punish.
We’ve got trouble rang through my head again in the distance, the echo of her voice bouncing off the walls of my brain until her urgent call made me blink and focus, my head snapping in her direction.
I stared at her, and I waited.
“Cops and ATF are on their way.” She held up a phone. “Mrs. Walsh was warning her son.”
I turned my attention back to look down at Owen, whose eyes were rolling in the back of his head, sweat dripping from his forehead into his ears and his skin now pale and deathly.
“Fuck,” I hissed.
“We need to get him outta here, Drew,” Slater told me calmly.
“If they see us doing this…” Jedd added, leaning closer, his hands tightening around Owen’s arm in obvious frustration.
I looked up at both of them, feeling like a thirsty fucking vampire, too close to blood to turn away, but too human to be able to ignore what they were saying.
Then I turned to my father, seeing no sign of panic on his face, just the same calm statue of quiet strength that always seemed to be there.
“Any ideas?” I asked Eric.
“None that you’ll like.”
Owen groaned roughly, his lips parting and his head swaying from side to side. “They’ll kill you,” he pushed out desperately, a slow smile tugging on the corner of his mouth. “Big bad Drew Tucker, taken out by—”
I swung hard, smashing his cheek with my fist to shut him the fuck up.
There would be no last-minute words of arrogance falling from his mouth.
He didn’t own the right to say a parting line that would wound me, or any of my brothers.
His days were done. The only sound I wanted to hear from him now was his cries of pain.
Owen fell silent, and in just a few moments of staring down at him, I knew what we had to do.
If the cops showed up here, Sutton would be forced to tie me the fuck down, arrest me, and throw me behind bars because of the people who’d followed him here.
ATF would take Owen and practically masturbate over all the information and secrets he’d spill to keep me down.
Ayda would be alone again, left to work shifts at Rusty’s, raising Tate and maybe even our own kid, while I was locked up, back behind bars.
We had to get out of there.
“Fuck!” I cried out again, quickly jumping off Owen and stepping away from him. “We need to leave here, and we need to do it fast.”
“Where do you want us to go?” Slater asked, pushing himself up to stand over Owen, Jedd following him, too.
I turned to look at Ayda again, knowing wherever I went, she had to come with me.
I couldn’t leave her alone anymore. I’d done too much of that, rode off into the night and told her to wait for me until morning, too lost in my own head to think about how she felt or what went through her mind as she worried about and for me.
My eyes drifted down to her stomach.
The place where my baby could be. Maybe it was growing there already. Maybe she’d got it all wrong, but I knew it would be there one day, and for now, I was going to treat her like she was already carrying the child we’d created together… just in case.
“You’re not going anywhere, Slate,” I said quietly, rolling my head back to him. He frowned hard, folding his arms over his chest. Jedd stayed frozen in place, ever the calm VP.
“What’s going on, Tucker?” Slater asked, and I could tell from the look on his face that he had already decided he wasn’t going to like what I was about to say.
“You, Jedd, and Rubin are staying here.”
“Why?”
“Because if we all leave together, they’ll know we’re fucking running. If my VP and my Sarge are at the club, two of my most important men, they’ll slow down the chase.”
“What about the other men? The ones out on the road?”
“Put a call out. A subtle one. Tell each and every one of them to get back here right the fuck now without actually saying the words. Have them ride in quietly, calmly, not like they’ve got hell on their heels or they’re scared. They roll in like they’ve got nothing to fear or hide.”
“And when ATF or the cops ask where you are?”
Rubbing my lips together, I turned to look back at Ayda once again.
“You tell them me and my girl have gone for a ride. You tell them we’ve just had some pretty special fucking news that I’ll be more than happy to share with them when we get back, and you tell them to mind their own motherfucking business when it comes to what I do in my own time with my fiancée. ”
Ayda gave me a smile, but it didn’t last long. Glancing down at Owen, her eyes narrowed. “How are we getting that pile of shit out without being caught?”
Jedd stepped forward. “There’s a repo truck I pulled in yesterday with Kenny and Deeks.
We haven’t had a chance to file the paperwork properly yet.
It’s not on our records as collected which means it won’t be missing from the yard if they do an inventory.
Put your bike in the back of it, Drew. Throw Owen in, tie him the fuck up.
You and Ayda ride up front. If anyone tries to stop you, floor it and abandon it somewhere, get your bike off the back and you two get the hell out of there. ”
“No,” Eric interrupted.
All of us turned to him, our curiosity showing in our expressions as we waited for him to expand.
“I’ll ride Drew’s bike out of here. Let Drew and Ayda take the truck. They won’t ask where I am.”
“They won’t?” Slater croaked.
Eric just shook his head and closed his eyes before he looked back up at me. “I’m the only one around here not officially bound to the club anymore. If they’ve been following us, investigating each and every one, they’ll know I’m the guy who is never accounted for.”
I hated that he was right—but he was right. In all the time I thought he’d been back here as my father, paying his dues, trying to right all his wrongs, he was still the flighty Eric Tucker of the last decade to all who knew him. Maybe he always would be.
“Misdirection,” I found myself whispering.
Eric stared at me, his gaze unmoving; his eyes unblinking.
“And if they track you down?” I dared myself to ask him.
“You know the answer to that.”
I did. He’d told me enough. He’d promised me in the days of our midnight rides and our hell raising that if he had to prove to me that he was sorry, he’d take the fall to save me this time. He’d take the fall to pay his debt to the club for running out.
If they tracked him down, Eric was going to let them take him in.
And I had no fucking idea how I felt about that.
“Eric can take my bike,” I found myself telling Slater and Jedd suddenly. “Get it out of the yard. Ayda and I will take the repo truck.”
Ayda nodded in agreement before glancing back at me. “Let’s get this done before they roll in those gates. I’m not letting those assholes take anyone else from our family.”
My jaw twitched as I stared at her, but with one look, I knew she was right. “Get him the fuck up,” I ordered, before I turned, found my cut, and slid it over my shoulders.
Jedd and Slater worked quickly, pushing Owen to his feet without any tenderness at all.
He groaned, cried out, hissed, and spat before he staggered and stumbled to the side.
Slater caught him quickly, and Jedd left Slater, moving out of the training room at once without saying a word to any of us.
After a few minutes, Slater had bound Owen’s hands together behind his back with his torn shirt, and Jedd was walking back into the room with a bunch of keys in his hand.
He took one look at me and tossed them in the air, and I caught them swiftly, the skin stretching over my already swollen knuckles, reminding me how good it felt to inflict pain in the name of revenge.
“He’s all yours,” Slater said, pushing him towards me.
I caught him hard, my fingers digging into the flesh of his flabby bicep and my face turning to his drooping eyes and weak body.
I stared down at the keys in my hand, my thumb rubbing over them before I looked up and caught sight of Rubin standing just behind Ayda.
I’d forgotten the kid was there.
“You going to be okay?” I asked him.
He nodded once, his eyes showing more concern than the rest of his face would allow. “Yeah.”
“You stay near Jedd and Slate, okay? They’ll look after you, and if you need somewhere to stay after today… if you don’t feel like you can go home—”
“This is my home now,” Rubin interrupted boldly.
Fuck. That was a hell of a statement to make from a kid his age, but who the fuck was I to argue?
I’d found my family in these men at a much younger age, and there was something about the fire in Rubin’s eyes—a real fire, unlike Tate’s whose was still growing, unsure whether he was a boy or man, good guy or bad—that told me he wasn’t to be argued with.
“I hope it gives you what you need,” was all I added, before I watched Slater and Jedd move over to Rubin and guide him outside, leaving only me, Ayda, and the man I wanted to crush beneath the wheels of my bike. “You ready?” I asked Ayda.
“I’m always ready,” she said, backing toward the door. “I think I have an idea of where we could take him.”
Pushing the traitorous bastard forward, the three of us walked out of the room, Owen stumbling while Ayda and I marched with an urgency that only grew in speed as soon as we hit the air outside and heard the roar of bikes in the distance—bikes that no doubt belonged to my returning brothers.
“Lead us,” I told her sharply, putting every man’s fate in her hands without a flicker of doubt or worry.
She looked at me, then Owen, making a mental calculation before speaking.
“I found what you asked me to look for. Harry said there were files missing. He searched Owen’s room, but there was nothing there.
If you know where he lives…” She glanced at Owen again.
“I bet we’d find enough shit to put some of you away for a long time.
Harry wrote one word where he mentioned the missing files. Leverage. With lots of question marks.”
My frown was deep when I looked at her, pressing the fob on the keys in my hand, waiting to see which car lit up, beeped, or started fucking talking like it was KIT from Knight Rider.
“Harry had all that in his room?” I asked, looking up to see the lights on a white lifted Dodge Ram flashing in front of us. Perfect.
“It wasn’t complete, and he was still piecing shit together, but it looked like he’d only figured out it was Owen just before he was…” She trailed off and looked over at me again. “He left it somewhere only you would think to look for it. He wasn’t hiding it from you, Drew.”
I faced forward, my frown fixed in place as I thought about everything that had happened since I’d gotten out of prison.
All the things Harry had said to me I couldn’t make sense of.
All the subtle truths he’d whispered by my side that I didn’t understand.
All the times I brushed his ramblings off as the talk of an over-concerned old man who needed to give me room to breathe.
All the times I didn’t listen to him… and what I’d give to be able to listen to him now.
Make him pay, Drew, I suddenly heard in the voice of Harry, coming from the dark, dusty recesses of my mind. Make that fucker pay.
Before too long, we’d pushed into the Ram, securing Owen in the back so he couldn’t move an inch, leaving me to climb in the front and take the wheel as Ayda slid into position beside me.
With one last lingering look her way, I released a breath and reversed out of the parking spot, swinging the Ram around before I led us all out of the yard, my brothers behind me, my enemy in my ear, and my woman by my side.