Chapter 17
At the sound of an irritated sigh behind me, I glare over my shoulder at Triss.
“I said I was sorry,” I tell her as I turn back to my bike. “And I sent a text. What’s the big deal?”
She skirts around me so I’m forced to look at her, her lips pursed, an icy scowl set on her face, high-heeled boot tapping against the concrete shop floor. “The big deal is that we didn’t know where you were. You said you were on your way back, and then you show up eight hours later.”
“I told you. I ran into a friend, and they offered me a place to stay. I texted. You said yourself, you and my brother were… busy.” I toss a dirty shop rag over my shoulder. “I didn’t really feel like listening to that all night.”
Exhaling, I focus back on my motorcycle.
I’ve been working on it for the last hour, and now I’ve started a completely unnecessary oil change.
Maybe it’s the time I was without it, or maybe I’m just looking for the distraction I was gunning for last night.
Either way, I’ve welcomed the last sixty minutes of relative peace.
“And this friend is… who, exactly?” She crosses her arms. “I didn’t think you had any of those left in South Bay.”
The friend being the cop who spent an obscene amount of time between my legs this morning. God, that man is good with his mouth. I think it’s one of my new favourite things. The part I don’t like is when he opens it and sound starts coming out.
“I spent almost seventeen years of my life here. It shouldn’t be surprising to you that I still have a few acquaintances in my hometown.”
“Okay.” She presses her lips together. “How about you just give me her name? It is a her , isn’t it?”
Snorting, I slide an oil pan under my machine. “That what this is about? You want to make sure I wasn’t with a dude? Sounds more like Jack’s asking these questions, not you.”
Triss narrows her eyes. “He’s just… worried about you.”
“He hasn’t been worried about me in ten years. He doesn’t get to play protective big brother whenever it suits him. You tell him if he’s got questions for me, he can ask me himself. Though I’m not sure why he’d be so eager for the details of my sex life.”
She bites down on a smile. “I’ll be sure to relay that message. You gonna be much longer? Kat’s freaking out about wedding cakes.” She sighs. “She’s got like twenty samples in Axe’s apartment. Bex brought wine.”
I grin. “I need a half hour or so, then I’m there.”
With a relatively warm smile, she takes her leave. I finish the oil change quickly, thankful to have something to do tonight other than tinker with my bike. Like I said. Distraction. From the man hunting me. And the stupidly hot cop with the talented tongue who I kind of want to punch in the face.
Twenty minutes later, I wander across the dark parking lot, avoiding the boisterous Saturday night bikers loitering at the front door of the clubhouse by skirting around to the back entrance, the quickest way to get to Axe and Kat’s apartment.
I’ve just wrapped my fingers around the knob when a hand slaps down on my mouth and I’m jerked back.
Scream catching in my throat, I claw at the meaty paw covering the bottom half of my face.
My attacker presses down harder, cutting off my oxygen.
Then he yanks me from my feet and hauls me away from the Sinner clubhouse, away from those laughing voices and clouds of smoke.
Away from safety. Towards the barely lit street bordering the back of the lot.
“Hello, Gracie girl,” a gruff voice says in my ear, thick with an Irish brogue.
My blood turns to ice. Keegan Bannon. The enforcer that’s been on my tail since I stopped his brother’s heart with an eight-inch kitchen knife.
God no. Please no.
I scratch. I kick. I try to scream, but the hand pressed down on my mouth is firm, the man holding me strong and unyielding as he drags me towards a white van.
No. No, no, no.
“Easy does it.” He chuckles, his cold voice sending an unwelcome tremor down my spine. “You’ll be passed out soon enough. Just let it happen, darlin’.”
Another muffled scream.
“Shh. You and I are gonna be spendin’ a lot of time together. Don’t be using up all that energy now.”
My movements slow and my vision goes spotty.
I fight for breath, grating my nails deep into the arm holding me.
But I’m losing steam. There’s no way out.
I know how this ends. It’s not so much the death that scares me, but what’ll happen before.
The man holding me, suffocating me, is as brutal as they come.
What he’s got in store for me will be slow and the kind of painful I wouldn’t wish on anyone.
As I fight to stay conscious, my eyes flutter shut. I have to… to do something… I—I need… I need…
A knife.
With all the strength I still have, I reach to my thigh and unsheathe the blade strapped under my skirt. Then I plunge it back. I make contact. There’s a loud grunt. The hold on me releases, and I fall hard to the ground.
“Bitch,” he growls.
Still disoriented, I push up and scramble, searching for footing, but I trip over my feet, still dizzy, my vision blurry. I crawl forward, willing my limbs to cooperate, my heart a jackhammer thrumming against my ribcage as my body buzzes from the adrenaline surging through my veins.
I can do this. I can get away. I can?—
Fingers weave into my hair, yanking at my scalp and pulling me to my feet.
“You’ll pay for that one, girl. I can’t wait to take my feckin’ time with you.
Cut up all this pretty skin.” He leans closer, face twisted in vile anger.
“I brought it, you know. The blade you used to end him. That’ll be the one I fuck you with.
You’ll be beggin’ for death when I’m through with you, bitch.
But I won’t give it until you’re a bloody, sobbing mess. ”
“Your brother begged too,” I grit as I jerk my knee up.
As it makes contact with his groin, he grunts and throws me hard into the side of the van, the move knocking the air from my lungs. I make to run, but he slaps the back of his hand across my face. Stars speckle my vision, copper-laced saliva flooding my mouth.
I spit at him and suck in a harsh breath. “Fuck you, Raider scum.”
With a punch to the stomach, he throws me to the ground. When he advances again, fists clenched, my chest tightens with panic. This is it. This is the end.
Suddenly, he stops and jolts back, his eyes widening. His hands quickly move to his throat, clawing at his skin, his face reddening like he can’t breathe.
I push up, and as he falls to his knees, another figure comes into view. A tall man in a black hoodie and black jeans, fisted hands holding what looks to be a thin rope across the neck of my attacker. He angles his face up, and when his identity hits me, my lungs seize up.
Lincoln Decker.
The sleeves of his sweatshirt are rolled up, his corded forearms flexing as he pulls the rope tighter around the neck of the man at his feet, teeth gritted, chest heaving.
Pulse pounding hard in my ears, I pick my knife up and grip it tight.
It’s heavier than it was when it was strapped to my thigh, clean and safely tucked away.
Now it’s like a weight in my hand, laden with the understanding of what I could do with it, the life I could take, like the blood already staining it has somehow made it harder to hold.
Keegan grunts, chokes, arms swinging and slapping at Decker’s face as he tries to free himself.
It’s a strange thing, watching someone die. When it’s like this—chaotic and violent—it doesn’t matter how big and bad you are, how many lives you’ve taken, how much pain you’ve caused. It’s always the same. Frantic, messy, the instinctual need to fight and flail, to claw and scratch your way out.
It was like that for his brother. The shock, the sudden panic as he looked down at the blade I’d plunged into his chest. He didn’t actually beg.
He wasn’t capable of stringing words together.
But his face said it all. Panic. Dread. Fear.
One of the most heinous men I’d ever known, reduced to something almost human.
Experiencing a basic primal emotion, maybe for the first time in his life.
This is the same. A life being ripped away, a big, scary, strong man full of panic as he fights to live. Decker doesn’t look like he has any intention of stopping, so maybe it’s me who makes the choice tonight.
Do I let this man live, or is another body about to drop at my feet?
“You’re killing him,” I say quietly.
Decker doesn’t hear me. He’s focused on me, but it’s like he doesn’t really see me. His body is tense as he pulls and pulls, forcing that rope to dig deeper into Keegan’s throat, breaking through the thin skin, ripping it, drawing blood.
“Linc,” I say, louder this time. “You have to stop.”
The man at his feet starts to slump. Decker only pulls tighter. Keegan’s eyes close, his hands drop. He stops resisting.
“Linc!” I shout.
Decker blinks. Then, robotically, he releases his hold.
Keegan coughs and sputters as he falls to the pavement and rolls to his back. Breath after raspy, wheezing breath, he pulls oxygen back into his lungs, blood back into his brain.
Once he’s mostly regained his composure, he pushes to his knees.
Decker moves forward a pace, pulling a gun from the back of his jeans. He presses it to Keegan’s face, his expression stony.
“You pull that trigger, boy,” Keegan says, voice a low croak, “and you’re feckin’ dead. You get me? You got no idea who you’re threatenin’.”
Decker uses the gun to push Keegan’s head to the side and examines the ink etched into his neck. The skull and crossbones that marks him as a Raider, as the enemy.
“Got a pretty good idea.” He presses the gun into his cheek.
Keegan freezes, eyes darting to the barrel.