Hell Breaks Loose: A Devil's Rock Novel (3 page)

Eleven years had passed since he’d been out, but he expected to find Zane in the usual place. His brother was simple that
way. He liked his routines. Reid would bet that the cabinet was full of the same cereal they ate as kids.

The cabin sat several miles behind the main house on 530 acres located outside Odessa. The land had been in his family for
almost two hundred years, granted to them after the Texas War of Independence.

The authorities didn’t know about the cabin . . . or the hidden dirt road that veered off the county farm road you had to
take to get there. The old Explorer bumped along the unpaved lane. It was so overgrown with shrubs and cacti that it couldn’t
rightly be called a road, which was the point.

After an hour the road suddenly opened up to a clearing. The cabin stood there. Three trucks and a few motorcycles were parked
out front, confirming that the cabin was still in use and far from forgotten.

The front door opened as he emerged from the Explorer. Several men stepped out onto the porch, wielding guns. He spotted Zane
at the center of them. His chest squeezed. His brother had visited him a couple times his first year at the Rock. Nothing
since then.

Time had not been kind to his younger brother. He was stockier, the baby roundness gone from his face. He was shirtless, too,
and Reid marked the dozens of tats covering him that had not been there eleven years ago. Most notable was the eagle sitting
atop a vicious looking skull. Most of the guys staring Reid down had the same symbol inked on their necks or faces. Once upon
a time he would have been the one standing there wearing that eagle and skull. If fate hadn’t intervened . . . if his eyes
hadn’t been opened.

If he hadn’t gone to prison.

He swallowed against the acid rising up in his throat and fixed a smile on his face. “Hey, little brother.”

It was a bitter pill. This was his baby brother. The reason he hadn’t taken off for parts unknown when he graduated from high
school was because of this guy right here. He hadn’t wanted to leave Zane alone with their crackhead mother and a deadbeat
dad who showed up every few months. Fat lot of good sticking around did his brother. He’d ended up in jail, and his brother
was running with a bunch of low-life thugs.
His brother was a low-life thug now
.

“Holy shit,” Zane declared, hopping down from the porch, still holding onto his rifle. “Son of a bitch! What are you doing
here?” He slapped his thigh as if he’d just seen something amazing. Something like his older brother who went away for a life
sentence standing in front of him.

Reid lifted his chin and tried not to stare too hard at the emblems of hate riddling his brother. He nodded at the rifle.
“Is that any way to welcome me home?”

Zane hesitated a moment and then flung his arms wide. As if the past were forgotten. As if bad shit never went down. As if
Reid could still be one of them again. “Welcome home, brother.”

Zane embraced him, clapping him hard with his free hand. Reid pulled back and eyed the other men, meeting their dilated gazes
head-on. Not a single one was sober. They were all high on something. Even so, several looked at him with distrust. Evidently
not everyone had forgotten that before he went to prison not everything had been copasetic. They clearly remembered that he
and Sullivan had grown contentious with each other.

Rowdy, his brother’s second-in-command, wore a grin for him, though. Even if that grin did not quite reach his eyes, Rowdy
reached out and clapped hands with him.

“Good to have you back.” Rowdy looked him over. “Looking fierce, man. Guessing they didn’t release you for good behavior.”

“Nah. Thought I’d just go ahead and let myself out.”

Zane and Rowdy laughed. “Same ol’ Reid.”

“You couldn’t have come back at a better time.” His brother’s eyes glinted with excitement, reminding him of the kid he used
to be, and that only made his chest ache harder.

“That right?” Reid asked.

Zane nodded eagerly, gesturing to the cabin. “Yeah.” He shared a look with Rowdy and the other guys, and Reid got the sense
that he was missing out on some joke. “Let’s go inside and I’ll tell you all about it.”

Reid followed him inside and did a quick scan of the living room, noting how run-down the place had gotten in the eleven years
he’d been gone. It had never been the Four Seasons, but now the house smelled of sweat and stale cigarette smoke. The upholstery
on the arms of the couch had worn off. Dirty white threads tufted up as if trying to escape from the piece of furniture.

“We got something big going down, Bubba.”

The sound of his little brother using his old nickname elicited a pang in his chest. He had a sudden flash of a little boy
missing his front teeth chasing him around the trailer park.
Bubba! Wait for me!

That boy was gone. Zane’s eyes were bloodshot and dilated from God knew what drugs and a patchy beard hugged his cheeks. It
was hard to reconcile him to the soft-faced boy Reid had last seen
. Get over it, Reid. That boy is gone
. Still. Easier said than done. His brother was the only family he had left.

“Yeah?” Reid looked at the men standing around him, a prickling sensation crawling up the back of his neck.

Zane chuckled lightly and scrubbed at the back of his neck under hair that fell long and greasy. He needed a shower. “Why
don’t I show you?”

Turning, Zane headed down the dark hall to the back bedrooms. The carpet was flat and matted beneath Reid’s shoes as he followed
his brother. He felt the other men behind him, crowding close like anxious dogs. Something was definitely in the air. Feral
and testosterone-laced. He recognized it from prison. Right before a fight broke out. Blood was in the water and the sharks
were hungry.

Zane opened the door to the master bedroom and stepped inside. Reid followed. He sucked in a breath as his gaze landed on
the bed and the woman restrained there. His stomach pitched and a fresh wave of acid surged up inside him.

Her hands were bound together with a cord that extended to the brass headboard. She sat board-straight on the edge of the
bed, her knees locked tightly together. Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy. She had been crying, but now her eyes were bone-dry
above the gag. She didn’t blink as her wide brown stare flitted over him, assessing him before flicking to the men at his
back. Her nostrils flared as if scenting danger. She would be right about that. They were the wolves and she their next meal.
Of that he was certain.

She tossed her head and said something against the muffled rag stuffed in her mouth. Her dark hair was loose and tangled around
her shoulders, trailing long over her cream-colored blouse. The shiny fabric was dirt-smudged and stained, but still looked
expensive. Probably the most expensive thing in this cabin. A bruise marred the flesh of her cheek above the gag where someone
had hit her, and something clenched in his gut.

Even in her condition, Reid had no problem recognizing her.

Fuck.

“Surprise!” Zane waved at her.

They’d done it. They’d abducted the President’s daughter.

She’d stopped crying some time ago, but the urge returned in full force with the arrival of the new guy. He was bigger than
the rest of them. He looked more ruthless. Something in his eyes, in the hard set to his mouth . . . there was no softness
there. She wouldn’t be able to appeal to any part of him.

He also seemed somehow more alert, more aware, more ready to snap than the rest of them. The rest of her abductors reminded
her of children, anxious on their feet, unable to hold still. Their eyes, however, were dull and slow-moving. It was a strange
contrast.

The sharpness of New Guy’s hazel gaze could cut glass. She felt it slice through her as he stood there staring down at her
with an empty expression on his coldly handsome face. She registered this with a swift sweep of her gaze. There was no denying
he was sexy in a rough and ruthless kind of way. Even with a faint shadow of beard hugging his square jaw he was model-hot.
Charles had nothing on this guy. Even Holly’s hot boyfriend was somehow
less
.

Watching New Guy watch her, she lifted her bound wrists to her chest and attempted to twist her hands free. It pulled the
cord tighter but she had to try. One of her abductors walked over and placed a hand on the top of her head, petting her like
she was some kept animal. “We got fucking royalty here.”

She yanked her head away and knocked at his hand with her bound hands.

He abruptly crouched down in front of her, propping his hands on the thighs of his ratted-out jeans, and she recognized him
as the one who had hit her in the van. His eyes were dark, all pupils, as he gazed at her. “I like that you still have some
fire in you.”

“C’mon, Rowdy.” Greasy Hair called him away. “Let’s go talk.”

Relief warred with the constant fear inside her as they filed out of the room. All except New Guy. The big one. He lingered,
staring at her with that unreadable gaze. Maybe Greasy Hair wasn’t in charge anymore. New Guy seemed so in control, so powerful,
it was hard to imagine him taking orders from anyone else.

She held his gaze, hoping that maybe she was right. Maybe he wasn’t like the rest of them. It was a flimsy hope, but she clung
to it like a frayed ribbon in her hands. He hadn’t been there when they took her. He didn’t look happy to see her here. Maybe
he could help her.
Maybe.
He was strong, well over six feet, his body hard and muscled beneath his shirt. He held some influence if they had thought
to show her to him, after all.

She tried to speak into the rag, leaning forward in supplication. They locked eyes and for a breath she thought she saw something
flicker in the depths of his gaze. Some kind of emotion. Then it was gone—if it had ever existed at all.

With a single shake of his head, he clasped the doorknob and shut the door, sealing her once again inside her prison.

Reid’s head was spinning as he made his way down the hallway and into the main room of the house.

The president’s daughter.

They had abducted the fucking president’s daughter.

The litany ran through his head like a bullet train. He could hardly think of anything else, which was bad considering he
came here for one thing and one thing only and it had nothing to do with Grace Reeves.

“Shit, man, I can’t believe you busted out.” Zane clapped him on the back again. At this point he would have bruises tomorrow.

The rest of the guys dropped off in various spots in the living room. No one was concerned with the presence of the gagged
woman in the back room. He wondered if she had eaten. Or used the restroom. They’d had her since yesterday. Had they seen
to any of her needs?

One guy immediately lit up a joint, while another one sat in front of the beat-up coffee table and started shaking cocaine
out of a sack. Some things never changed. They were all still a bunch of drug dealing burnouts. That’s what Otis Sullivan
wanted them to be—what he had always wanted them to be. Mindless drones subject to him.

Reid glanced around, taking in the sagging mouths and dilated eyes of every guy present, including his own brother. They didn’t
have a care in the world or a thought in their heads. Not a single one sober and yet they were the most hunted men in America
right now.

And he had just joined their ranks.

“What you gonna do with the girl?” he asked, trying to sound casual, as though it didn’t matter one way or another to him.
As though he couldn’t still see her face, her eyes, in his mind.

“I don’t know. We’ll figure something out.” His brother shifted on his feet and shot a cagey look at Rowdy. Instantly, Reid
knew he was lying. They had a plan. For whatever reason, his brother wasn’t partial to sharing that information with him.
Apparently, some things had changed after all. Zane didn’t fully trust him anymore.

“You got no plan? So you just grabbed her for the hell of it?” He moved to the rusted fridge in the kitchen and pulled it
open, peering inside as though the question didn’t weigh on him like a ton of bricks. Any minute this place could be swarming
with FBI, and he was pretending the biggest concern on his mind was what he could feed his stomach.

Zane spoke up, an edge of defensiveness in his tone. “We gotta wait for word from Sullivan.”

Of course. Sullivan. He still pulled all the strings.

“Yeah?” He took a breath, trying to play it cool even though what he really wanted to do was shake his brother for letting
Sullivan call the shots. “Why’d Sullivan want you to grab her anyway?”

Zane considered him as he sank down on the couch and accepted a joint from the guy next to him. He lifted a bottle of beer
and took a long swig, still staring at Reid.

Rowdy bent over the coffee table and snorted a line of coke, tossing his head back with a deep gasp. The guy’s nose was so
red it looked ready to fall off.

“Don’t know if Sullivan would want me to talk to you about this,” Zane finally said. “You two didn’t part on good terms.”

That would be because Sullivan was the reason he went to jail. Guess Zane had forgotten that. Or he just didn’t care. Hell,
maybe all the drugs and booze had fried his brains.

Reid opened up a tube of tinfoil and sniffed at the burrito inside. “Come on, man,” he coaxed, peeling back the tortilla and
taking a peek inside at the questionable contents. “I’m your brother. Just busted out of jail and I came straight here. If
I had any hard feelings, would I be here? Hell, no. I would have gone straight to Mexico.”

Sniffing, Rowdy pinched at his nose as if his sinuses troubled him. “Got a point there.”

Zane and Reid stared at each other for a long moment, unspoken words passing between them. Finally his brother shrugged and
took another hit off his joint. “We’re not going to kill her. At least not yet. Waiting for Sullivan to tell us what to do
with her.”

Reid put the burrito back in the refrigerator. “This is going to bring a lot of heat. Hope he comes up with something good.
And quick.”

“Sullivan’s not a fan of the president,” Zane explained slowly, as if still unsure how much to say.

Rowdy snorted. “Understatement. After donating a shit ton of money to his campaign, Reeves screwed him over,” Rowdy offered,
chafing his hands hard over his thighs, full of anxious energy and mind-altering chemicals.

“Yeah?” Reid asked. “How so?

“Remember Sullivan’s nephew Jeremy?” At Reid’s nod, he continued, “Well, he got sent to prison on racketeering charges.”

“He talk?” Reid asked, because he knew the kid had been working for Sullivan. Any racketeering had been on Sullivan’s behalf.

“Nah, he weren’t no rat. Sullivan expected a favor from the president, or leniency at least, but Reeves wasn’t having it.
No favors from him. They gave the kid twenty years.”

Reid whistled. He’d been in for eleven and that had felt like a lifetime. He remembered Jeremy. Sullivan had sent him away
to some fancy college to get a degree in business or accounting. Something he could use to help manage Sullivan’s empire.
The kid was smart, but soft. And maybe not that smart if he got caught. Prison couldn’t have been an easy transition for the
likes of him.

“Gets worse,” Rowdy chimed.

“He killed himself,” Zane said with a shake of his head.

Reid blinked. Guys had killed themselves at the Rock. Of course. It happened. It was prison. You could almost mark the ones
that weren’t going to make it the moment they arrived. They stuck to themselves. They didn’t make allies. A bad thing on the
inside. You needed friends. They had a look. A desperate, shell-shocked expression that gradually faded to vacancy. They weren’t
even present anymore by the time they ended it.

In his second year at the Rock there had been a guy in the cell next to him who hanged himself. The morning after he’d watched
through the bars, glimpsing the waxy gray face as the guy was rolled out on a gurney.

Zane continued. “Sullivan wants payback.”

Now Reid understood. It was personal. He grimaced. Jeremy wasn’t just some lackey. He’d been blood. Sullivan wanted the president
to suffer, and he would make him suffer by hurting his daughter.

As if to underscore this, Rowdy suddenly stood, his movements jerky and erratic. “Man, I need to fuck something. She ain’t
much to look at, but she’ll do.” He chuckled. “Maybe she’ll thank me. The chubby ones are always grateful for it.”

Reid froze for a fraction of a second, absorbing what was happening . . . what was about to happen. Grace Reeve’s suffering
was about to begin in earnest. He stepped into Rowdy’s path, flattening a hand on his chest.

Rowdy glanced down at his hand and then knocked it aside, all friendliness lost. “You gonna get out of my way, man?”

Rowdy had always been a bastard when he was stoned. That much hadn’t changed. “You can’t have her,” Reid said softly. He had
seen a lot of people abused. Even before prison, but especially in there, where he’d seen grown men broken and reduced to
tears. He thought about that terrified looking girl in the back room and how fragile she appeared.

He knew how Rowdy was with women. Even women that chose to be with him. He wasn’t kind. He used ugly words and his fists flew
with little provocation. Reid doubted that had changed while he was away. Grace Reeves wouldn’t hold up well. After him, the
others would take turns. An awful lump rose up in his throat. She might not survive it at all—she might not want to.

“Yeah, Reid?” Rowdy demanded. “Why not? I stuck my neck out there to take her. You weren’t around, buddy. I earned it.” He
stabbed a finger down the hall. “She’s the only chick here, and I want to fuck something.”

“Not her.”

“Why? You wanna bang her?” he demanded.

The question hung heavy on the air. Reid didn’t shift his gaze even a fraction of an inch from Rowdy’s face. Never break eye
contact. Never show weakness. He felt everyone in the house watching him, waiting. Whether a roomful of men raped Grace Reeves
was entirely up to him and what he did in the next few moments.

“Yeah,” he finally said, accepting that it was the only thing these guys understood. As primitive as it sounded, it was about
claiming. Possession. The rights of the conqueror. “Yeah, I do.”

Rowdy’s eyebrows arched high. “Then get in line. I go first.” He moved to go around him.

Reid flattened his hand on Rowdy’s chest, wondering how he ever considered this guy a friend.

Reid had been a different person all those years ago. Lost and broken himself. “I’m not taking turns,” he ground out, his
voice lethally soft, the same tone he used in prison, when he’d staked his claim on something and wanted everyone to know
there would be no backing down. It was a warning. “She’s mine.”

A tight silence descended.

Rowdy inhaled, shaking his shoulders out and lifting his chest on a swell of breath. Reid recognized the move. He’d done that
when they were kids, right before he was about to throw down. Reid always knew shit was about to get real when Rowdy took
that breath.

He tensed, squaring himself, grounding his heels into the cracking linoleum, ready to stop him from heading down that hall.

He told himself he was doing this because he didn’t want to add to his trouble. Because he didn’t want to be an accessory
to the rape of the president’s daughter. But what was the point in lying to himself? He was already in for a life sentence.
He knew, inevitably, he would end up behind bars again. He hadn’t escaped Devil’s Rock to stay out of prison.

He escaped to take care of some long overdue shit. No, it wasn’t fear of reprisal that had him standing in Rowdy’s way and
stopping him from going in that bedroom. It was the simple
wrongness
of it.

He’d seen the girl. He’d read the terror in her eyes . . .
felt
it. He couldn’t let any of them go back there and break her. He wasn’t that indifferent. He wasn’t that sadistic. And it
bothered the shit out of him that his brother was. Zane didn’t use to be like these guys. He had failed, Reid thought. He’d
let his kid brother become this.

He glanced over at Zane, still sitting on the couch, nursing his joint like it was any other day. Like girls got raped around
him all the time.

“You really want to go to the mat over this?” Rowdy challenged. “You just got back. Pretty early to already be pissing me
off, ain’t it?”

Reid faced him again and cocked his head. “Pissing you off has never been a big concern of mine.”

He and Rowdy had been in the same grade. They’d scrapped as much as they got along. Growing up with parents that didn’t give
a shit about either one of them, there hadn’t been much for them to do except raise hell. Especially after his grandfather
died. Fight and get into trouble. That had been his life. Unfortunately, that existence was what led him to Sullivan.

Rowdy snorted. “Some things don’t change, then.”

He jerked his chin up. “So we gonna do this or what?”

Rowdy smiled. “C’mon, man, not like we never shared a girl before.”

He suppressed a wince at the reminder and shook his head. “Not sharing.”