Cutter's Hope (25 page)

The front door had a broad front stoop painted red, with some brick accent columns about knee height at the bottom and two more waist height at the top of the step. It was a bottle neck at the bottom before widening some at the top. Still there was only room for about two men on the front step and the back wasn’t much better.

The back of the house had a thin decorative iron rail around the back stoop. The advantage was the back windows, even though there were a lot of ‘em, were painted over from the inside. So we may not be able to see in, but they couldn’t really see out either. Some of the local boys had some guesses to the layout of the house based on their experience living in some of similar make around these parts all their life.

Hex and La Croix both agreed that the back probably went right into the kitchen, the bank of windows on three sides to the right of the kitchen door was probably what passed as a dining area. No telling if there was a wall or just an archway leading into the living room from there but they cautioned us to look sharp and try not to shoot our own boys if we breached front and back simultaneously which was the plan.

I looked across the expanse of table at Hope who was a study in concentration and tension. She wanted to go and she wanted to go
now
but she was hanging in there. She met my gaze and gave me a cool nod and I gave it to her back.

Before we rode out, we split into teams, I would go in the front with Pyro and Marlin. Hope was taking the back with Radar, Atlas, and Beast while Ruth and his boys secured the outbuilding.

Trike would keep the crash truck running and watch the bikes along with one of the Voodoo Bastard’s prospects and we would try and keep this neat and clean. Like I said, we wanted to get in, get out and get on with it. Nothing was our rear guard, and was on watch to alert us to any incoming trouble from the road, cops included. All of me and mine were retrofitted in body armor from the crash truck. Hope was making due with a vest a size too big but it couldn’t be helped, at least it was black and matched the rest of her.

I adjusted one of the Velcro straps on my tan vest and tightened it up. We were riding out in three vans with the crash truck bringing up the rear and each of us were as strapped as you could make us. There was no riding through town with as armed and ready as we were and not drawing attention so cargo vans rented under assumed names was the way to go on this one.

We loaded up and rode out, Hope and I agreeing that it was in our best interest to divide and conquer in this instance. I wanted so badly to be able to watch her back but I trusted and believed in my guys. They would watch her six as if it were my own and if they didn’t, well then they knew the consequences of that. I wasn’t going to have it any other way…

Chapter 27

Hope

Adrenaline started to surge through me as soon as the door on the van shut. I used every bit of my training to quash it down. Deep, steady breathing, it helped until we turned onto River Road in Saint Rose, then my heart picked up again.

“Okay, their signal is gonna be jammed as soon as you throw back the doors,” Ruth’s security guy, Spec turned around in the passenger seat and smiled, waving a device with a switch on it no bigger than an RC car controller and looking suspiciously like one. I nodded and pulled my Ruger. We rolled to a stop and Spec threw the switch, I looked forward, Radar nodded, I nodded back and he threw open the van door. I was out into the deepening twilight with Atlas and Beast riding my six. I hit the ground and moved swiftly. A man came around the side of the house as we strode down the driveway and I rose, aimed and fired in one fluid movement. The shot hit center mass and he flew back. As I passed him I put one in his forehead just to be sure.

Shouting in the house, Beast passed me and we heard Cutter’s cue. Fast and faster, that was how this needed to be done. Beast let fly with a massive booted foot and the door flew open on its hinges. I followed his breech and put one in each man sitting at the table to my right before they even got up and that’s when shit got real. A bat or stick or something crashed into my arm from above, my nerveless fingers dropped the Ruger and I let muscle memory take over.

I ducked and came at him up and under, my shoulder connecting with his solar plexus, but this was bad. Real bad, I needed to back off. Disengage before he got me. Shouting, screaming, guns going off in the front of the house but I was engaged and in it to win it. His elbow crashed down between my shoulder blades and
fuck
that hurt! I went down and Atlas or Radar, one of them popped him. He jolted back, once, twice a third time before falling to his knees in front of me.

I rose, knife drawn and ran it across his throat for good measure. I moved past him deeper into the house, I kicked the door directly in front of me open and plastered myself to the wall to the side, Radar had his gun raised and at the ready but lowered it. I ducked around the corner and looked into a bathroom done in god awful turquoise. A girl, maybe mid- twenties was crouched in the bathtub hands raised shaking and crying. Not my sister.

“Stay down,” I told her.

Radar passed me up and lined up to breach the next door, I could see Cutter just past him waiting for Marlin to breach the last door up the hall. I nodded and Radar and Marlin let fly simultaneously.

These doors were padlocked from the outside. I went in low since I didn’t have a gun, Atlas right on my ass, aiming for corners, he fired at the dude in the center of the room and I felt wet rain down on me as my knife buried deep in his groin. Blood, hot, slick and wet ran down over my hands and he fell back, crashing like a felled tree. There were two girls to either side on dirty twin mattresses. The dude in here with them was obviously sampling the merchandise which made my gorge rise and stab him a few times out of pure fury and hatred.

The two girls in this room were crying the one on the right trying to cover her naked lower half with her hands. I looked at their faces, really looked and finally the one on the left looked back. We froze for an instant…

Faith…

My sister’s aquamarine eyes stared out at me from the days old cruddy makeup smeared around her eyes. I sheathed my knife and held out my hands to her and realizing they were bloody, did my best to wipe them on my pants.

“Faith…” I tried and she stared at me with confusion. Her pupils dilated to where there was barely any color.

“Faith?” I tried again and went to her and she started to cry again. Big wracking sobs that hitched her too thin shoulders in her dirty skin tight dress.

“Hope, is it really you?” she asked and I nodded emphatically.

“It’s okay Bubbles, I got you. I got you now, I always got you, Sis,” she collapsed into my arms and I dragged the dirty, dark wig off her hair. Her blonde tresses fell free, equally dirty and brittle like straw and I felt tears burn the backs of my own eyes.

I stood up and dragged my sister with me, her arm over my shoulders. She was so
light,
painfully thin and malnourished and I wanted to kill some more motherfuckers. I wanted to scream and to shout my rage into the sky but
Faith…
I had my sister in my arms again.

“It’s okay, I got you, Bubbles; these men are here to help, easy…” I helped her out into the darkened living room, the only light source the busted in front door.

“Awe fuck,” I heard and looked up into Cutter’s face, which was equally devastated by the horrors we were taking in.

“
Marlin!
” he boomed and Faith jolted in my grasp and started to cry harder.

“Easy, it’s okay!” I soothed.

Marlin came around the corner from the kitchen, “Yeah, Captain?”

“Tend to the girl, you’re the only one with the experience for this,” he said and I followed my man’s gaze to the inside of my sisters arm, to the black and blue scabbed over track marks and the infection taking hold there.

My vision flashed on and off and the blood roared in my ears, “Awe shit,” I heard Marlin exclaim and the slight weight that was my sister, her easy burden disappeared from my shoulders. Marlin had scooped her up, arm under her knees and around her back and had lifted her easily as if she were light as air, he strode for the front door, Pyro right behind him and Cutter caught me as I went to go after them. I blinked, overcome, bent at the waist over Cutter’s arm and vomited.

“It’s okay. Come on Babe, let’s get your shit together. We ain’t done yet,” he said and he was right. We weren’t.

“How many?” I inquired and wiped the back of my hand over my lips. Beast was there and handed me a bandana I wiped my mouth and looked up at Cutter.

“How many?” I repeated.

“Seven girls, five guards. You took out all five almost all by yourself,” he sounded proud and I barked a bitter broken laugh.

“Died too quick,” I said and straightened.

“Don’t disagree, Sweetheart,”

A feminine bleat of fear and a shot rang out, we all jumped. Ruth came out of one of the rooms behind us I stared at him, he looked regretful and heaved a sigh so big there just were none bigger.

“Too far gone, I know the look. Never would have made it through detox. Sometimes death is the kinder mercy, Darlin’,” I blinked, long and slow.

“What about the other girls?” I asked.

“We’ll get ‘em cleaned up,” La Croix shouldered past us with another in his arms and soon it was a steady stream of victims being carried out to the vans outside.

Shaking, I stood there and blinked when Pyro ducked back in, “You find the junk?” he asked.

“What?” I asked.

“The drugs, did anybody find the drugs?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Hex held up a plastic sandwich bag, smaller little glassine bags filled with off-white powder coming a third of the way up.

“Gonna need some of that, Man,” Pyro said.

“What? What for?” I asked, numb.

“Tell you later,” Cutter said and gave Ruth a raised eyebrow.

“They gonna need it to wean your Sis off it,” Ruth said and told Hex, “Hand it over Man, there’s plenty more green to be had other ways. Let’s get this mess cleaned up.” Hex tossed the bag to Pyro who passed it off to Atlas who ran it out the front door.

“Cleanup is my area,” Pyro said and he pushed back further into the house.

“Come on, Sweetheart.”

I let Cutter lead me outside, my arm beginning to throb and fucking ache fiercely now that the adrenaline was wearing off. I sucked it up and moved out. Halfway up the drive there was a shout, we all froze and turned. A neighbor, a fucking neighbor the next house over, a pond separating the properties.

“Go, on… we got this,” Ruth declared and Cutter hauled me back to the vans. We got in, the door rolled shut and the van lumbered into an awkward three point turn, the road too narrow to pull a full U-turn.

I sat on the metal floor of the van in the circle of Cutter’s arms, bracketed by his strong thighs and shook like a new born calf, my gaze fixed on my sister who was trying to push out of Marlin’s hold.

“Bubbles, it’s okay! It’s okay! He’s trying to help!” She started screaming and crying until Marlin finally let her go where she wedged herself into the back corner of the van, legs curled to her chest, shivering despite the heat. My gaze fixed on her ankle, to the raw skin there, flat and shiny and pink with scar tissue. Those fuckers… those fuckers had kept her chained, like a goddamn animal. I shook harder, this time with anger as I wanted to kill them all over again.

Someone was making soothing noises and a woman was crying, it took me a minute to realize that Faith was out of it and mumbling to herself and the woman crying was me. Those soothing sounds were meant for me too, uttered repeatedly by the man who held me fast. God wasn’t this some seriously fucked up shit?

Chapter 28

Cutter

I waved my boys off the highway. I don’t think she realized she was doing it but Hope wasn’t even using both hands on her handlebars anymore. Her right she kept coiled against her chest. Had she been hurt and I hadn’t realized it? I swore six ways to Sunday and led us off the interstate. We’d left Louisiana behind an hour or more ago but that didn’t even put us close to home.

I pulled into the lot at a run of the mill roadside motel and shut off my bike, swinging a leg over. Hope was working the catch on her helmet with her non-dominant hand and wasn’t doing awesome at it. I helped her get it off and double cursed my own ass. Her face was pale, a sheen of sweat coating her skin and her expression was drawn tight with pain.

“What hurts, Sweetheart?” I asked and she shook her head, shrouded in determination.

“What’s up, Captain?” Marlin called from the crash truck, Hope’s sister was curled up on the passenger side floorboard, Marlin’s jacket and cut wrapped around her. Trike was riding Marlin’s bike so Marlin could stay with the girl and monitor.

“Hope’s hurt!” I called back and my VP swore.

Nothing pushed through the guys and bikes around us, he’d been a medic by trade once upon a time, before tossing in the towel after his wife and kid died. Now he just painted houses for a living. Waste of talent you ask me, but he didn’t so I kept my mouth shut. He took Hope’s hand gently and tried to extend her arm towards him. She grimaced and a tear snuck free but she didn’t make a sound.

“Fuck this,” I snarled and called out, “Pyro! Get us some rooms, I want Nothing to check this out.”

“Can you remember what happened?” Nothing asked.

Hope licked her lips, “Must have happened at the raid,” she said and shook her head defeated, “I don’t remember when or what,” she said and frowned, squeezing her eyes shut.

“A lot of heinous shit in that house, girl. Doesn’t surprise me none,” Beast said. Hope sniffed and nodded, wiping sweat off her upper lip with her good hand.

“Gotta wait until Pyro gets us a room so I can have a real good look at this, get her coat off, but I can already say this is going to need an x-ray, Captain.” Nothing looked worried and if Nothing looked worried then it was definitely something to worry about. We stood around with our thumbs up our asses while we waited on Pyro, who finally came jogging back across the lot.