Chapter 31
Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.
I will my heartbeat to slow, my panic to drain away.
I will myself to channel the kind of person Jimmy always tells me I need to be—the calm, unbothered, fearless badass. A woman who wouldn’t sweat this. Who wouldn’t be fighting back tears. Who wouldn’t be struggling to breathe because terror wouldn’t be wreaking havoc on her nervous system.
With another big breath, I pull at the ropes binding my wrists behind my back. They don’t budge. The more I struggle, the more the rough fibres dig into my skin.
It’s too hot in here. The air stale and thin. The sack over my head makes all these big, panicked breaths a lot harder to bear. A lot more difficult to fully take in. It’s like I’m… I’m suffocating.
Oh god. That’s what’s happening. I can’t breathe. I can’t?—
“Easy, Gracie,” a deep voice says.
Axe.
A heavy load immediately lifts off my chest. He’s alive. Thank god.
“Keep breathing like that, and you’re gonna pass out.”
With a shimmy of my hips, I wiggle across the dirt-covered ground, searching. “Where are you?”
There’s no movement. No response. “Axe?” Still nothing. “ Axe .”
“Yeah?” His voice is strained. Low. Like he’s struggling to talk.
“What’s wrong with you?”
There’s a sigh. A grunt of pain. Shuffling. “I… ah. I don’t…” He clears his throat. “What’d they hit me with?”
“Baseball bat.”
“Right.”
I still, listening for him, and when I pinpoint which direction his breathing is coming from, I inch forward until I bump into what feels like a heavy boot. “Help me out of this thing, will you?”
He takes a deep breath, then another, like he’s working up the energy to move.
Then he lets out another long, pained grunt, and the shuffling starts up again.
He tugs on the sack covering my head, then pulls on the drawstring wrapped around my neck.
Eventually, it loosens, and as the fabric is ripped away, a rush of air hits my face.
“Thanks,” I breathe as I rest my head back against the dirt floor.
Axe is half slumped against one of the aluminum walls surrounding us, his eyes closed. Like me, his hands are tied behind his back.
“You all right?” I ask.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m… I’m good. I just, uh. I need a minute.”
With some difficulty, I push up to sitting, and then I scoot back until I’m next to him. I lean against his shoulder and press against him until he’s sitting fully upright.
It’s hard to see in here, the only light coming from the cracks around the massive sliding door on the other side of the building and the few clusters of smashed-out windows high above us.
But even through all this dark, there’s no mistaking the thick, dried liquid marking the back of his neck. Blood.
“I think you have a concussion,” I say. “You’re bleeding.”
He blinks a few times. “No shit. That’s what happens when you take a fucking bat to the head.”
“Nice to see you’re still your happy self.” I scan the space with a frown. “Know where we are?”
A few more blinks, then he’s studying the room too, the rest of him unmoving as he takes in our surroundings.
It feels like we’re in a big, rusted tin box.
It’s cavernous. Every breath we take, every small shuffle against the ground ricochets off the walls.
The overhead slopes into a low dome, the corroded aluminum panels patchworked into the curved roof held together by big steel trusses.
Most looking like they could collapse with little more than a soft breeze.
Axe straightens a little, gathering himself.
“It, uh… looks like a small aircraft hangar. One just like it out in Eden Hills that backs up to an old airstrip. I used to use it for”—he clears his throat—“ distribution . It’s a junkyard now.
” He winces as he twists his neck from side to side.
“How far was the drive here? Could you tell? Was I out long?”
I close my eyes and think back. A few erratic turns that had me bracing in the back seat, trying to balance against the side panel so I didn’t fly into the man in the seat next to me.
I can’t get it out of my head. How he kept grabbing at me.
How I’d kick away. How he made a game out of snatching me from my seat and then letting me fight my way out of his hold.
I shiver.
Wandering fingers sliding between my legs, a cold laugh when I’d scramble away.
I couldn’t see. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t loosen the restraints binding my limbs. He could have done anything to me, and I’d have been able to do nothing but scream.
I swallow. “I don’t know. Half hour. Maybe less. I think we were on the highway for a while.”
“Then if had to guess, I’d say that’s where we are.”
“Shit,” I mutter.
“Yeah,” he says. “Shit.”
We’re not in South Bay anymore. No Sinners to come to his rescue. No handsome, dreamy-eyed dirty cop coming to mine. We’re on our own.
The panic is setting in again when a shout comes from outside.
Multiple shouts. Laughing. A grunt. Then that big sliding door is screeching open, rusted metal rubbing against rusted metal as light floods in.
Beyond the threshold, large spotlights shine down on heaps of scrap metal, wooden pallets, and several rusted-out cars.
As Axe predicted, we seem to be in the middle of a massive junkyard.
Three leather-clad men stand before us. Here to end this. To kill Axe, to take me back. But that’s not what makes my stomach jump into my throat. It’s the fourth man. The one being dragged forward, doubled over, hands tied, blood dripping from his face.
My heart stops.
“Decker?”
His head snaps up. His eyes lock with mine. Then his face goes pale, shoulders slumping.
“Gracie…” he rasps.
They toss him into the hangar, and he lands with a thud at our feet. More laughing, and then the door slides shut.
“Oh my god.” I scoot towards him.
He’s lying on his back, that gash of his reopened and bleeding, his cheeks bruised and swollen. Like they used his face as a punching bag. Coughing, he curls onto his side.
I want to hold him, pull him onto my lap and wipe away all that blood. Fix this. Fix him. Fix us.
I fight against my restraints, desperate to take his face in my hands, to kiss him. To share one of those moments where the world around us stops. Ignore all the danger, the violence, the target on our backs.
He peers up at me. “You were supposed to be gone, Gracie. What the f”—he coughs again, spits blood, and then sighs—“what the fuck are you still doing here?”
“Doing what I said I was gonna do. I needed to make him listen. I had to try.”
“You were with Axe?” When I nod, he curses and lets out a deep sigh. “You weren’t supposed to be there.”
“What do you mean? Be where?”
“Think I can answer that,” Axe says, voice weak. “This was you, wasn’t it? You sent them to my fucking door. Called me, arranged a meeting, and then sent the enemy to take me out.”
Both men wear expressions of pure hostility, a lifelong hatred binding them. I wait for Linc to deny it. To swear he didn’t make a deal with the men who are here to hurt me, to drag me back across territory lines and make me live out my worst nightmare over and over again.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Decker says to me.
I glare at him. “How am I looking at you?”
“Like you want to punch me in the face.”
“Can’t help it. You look extra punchable right now.”
“I wouldn’t have set this up if I’d known you were gonna be there. It was only supposed to be him.”
“And you think that makes this better? You sent a pack of Raider dirtbags to kill my fucking brother. How is that okay?” That last part comes out as a yell.
“If it’s any consolation, they weren’t actually gonna kill him.”
Axe chuckles. “Yeah. That honour was gonna be yours, wasn’t it, Deck? You still a knife man? Or would you have chosen the clean way out and shot another bullet through me?”
Decker pushes to sitting, his bloody face splitting into a deep grin. “Nah, Donovan. There won’t be any blades or bullets when you and I go head-to-head. It’ll be just you and me. When I kill you, I’ll do it with my bare fucking hands.”
Axe barks out a laugh. “I’d love to see you try.”
“You better hope they keep me tied up. I lose the ropes, you lose your life.” Decker shifts his focus back to me, and his smile falls. “I told you I was ending this, Grace. What did you think I was gonna do?”
My stomach lurches. “I don’t know. Maybe not be an asshole?”
He sighs. “You know who I am. The shit I’m capable of. Don’t act so shocked when I follow through. He pushed me too far. He took too much. He took”—his throat bobs; the massive room shrinks—“he took you . So I’m done. I’m done losing.”
I shake my head. “This isn’t about losing. It’s about you not being able to let go of whatever this shit is between you two. I told you to come with me. To leave this behind. Instead, you chose to fight until the bitter fucking end.”
“And at the end we are,” Axe says. “You started this, Decker. Guess it makes sense you’d want to finish it too.”
Decker’s face twists into an angry scowl. “ You started this, Donovan. You handed me the fucking knife.”
Axe scoffs. “I may have given you the knife, but you’re the one who used it. Stop blaming all your problems on me and take some fucking responsibility.”
I huff, frustration taking over for the fear that’s plagued me all day. “What knife? What the hell are you two talking about?”
“Emily,” Linc snarls. Her name sounds bitter on his tongue. “The man who killed her. The man I killed. Axe set it up, then set me up. He found me drunk off my ass, stewing in my grief, and offered me revenge. He used my anger. Leveraged it to get me under his thumb.”
Decker releases a long breath, his chest caving in.
“You want to know why I’m like this, Gracie? Why that boy scout you love so much is dead and gone? Him. He turned me into this. Made me what I am. I fucking trusted him, and look where that got me . ”