Redemption (3 page)

Lightning flashed, illuminating the beautiful girl’s face.
Storm’s coming.

“From all directions,” Bish agreed.

Chapter Two

What’s your price for flight?

Jessa

In that moment, I changed. Something inside me snapped, the crack deafening inside my own head. The sound like water rushing inside my ears was next. I saw their mouths moving but the hands on me were grabbing, burning me like they were fire.

I fought like I never had. Like I’d never had to. And I was all alone, but honestly, I’d rather die than stay with any of them. Including my husband.

Especially
my husband. I reached out and tore my nails down his cheeks, deep gouges that drew blood and made him scream like a girl. I heard the other men around me laugh. When I turned to the man trying to buy me and kicked him in the balls—since that had obviously been effective when I’d done it earlier—they all stopped laughing.

But I didn’t stop. I didn’t think I ever could, and that’s what I always feared. It’s why I’d never let myself lose control before, because I was sure I’d never come back from it.

The anger and shame and fear from the past two weeks—the past years—flew out of me before I could think to control it. I knew I’d be hurt, but I didn’t care. I punched and kicked and bit and screamed.

And at that moment, I wasn’t sure if I was fighting to stay alive or fighting in the hopes they’d kill me and I wouldn’t have to be sold to any of these disgusting men. And it didn’t matter, because I had to change something. I’d stayed passive, like Charlie wanted me to, not arguing, listening to the leather-clad gang as they bossed us around and leered at me.

I got hit in the head—I don’t know if it was on purpose or if I was caught in the cross fire, but then I realized Charlie was still trying to stop me. His hand gripped my wrist and he yanked me close, hissed, “You’re a crazy whore, Jessa. Know your place.”

For the first time in my nineteen years, I finally did.

I kicked him while simultaneously throwing a sharp elbow into his stomach. He let me go—he was soft. Always had been. And when I moved back I walked into someone. I whirled around, fist flying.

And then it was stopped like I’d hit a brick wall. A man I didn’t recognize held my fist securely in his hand, inches from his throat. Something in his expression, in those deep obsidian eyes, told me he approved.

He stood so still, my tattooed angel. He was tall, wore only shorts and he was watching me like I was a wounded, unpredictable animal.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’d certainly become one. I was sure he was armed, but he didn’t pull any weapons, just let go of my hand and steered me toward the clearing even as he elbowed one of the LoV in the throat.

I listened to him, moved aside while I could and watched the violent brawl. Dusk had fallen but I was still hot from the fight. I kept my eye on the dark-eyed man and realized he wasn’t fighting alone. The other man was tall and blond and I watched the scene unfold in front of me. I almost felt like I was floating out of my body and maybe I’d been hit harder than I thought.

A man landed at my feet. I blinked and saw there was a knife sticking out of his throat. I recognized him as Ocho, the LoV who’d been guarding me all week. I also recognized the knife he’d used daily to threaten me with.

Poetic justice for sure, coupled with the men who were like avenging angels, if avenging angels wore tattoos and leather.

Who’s to say they don’t?

I didn’t know what would happen when this was over, but I had no place to run. I’d be as vulnerable in the dark as I’d be with anyone.

I bent down and took the knife out of Ocho’s neck. And I waited.

Take the long way home

Mathias

Bish hadn’t stopped moving, wouldn’t until he’d cleared the scene. He was still in the zone. I wouldn’t touch him and trying to call him off at this point was worthless. Besides, the men he’d killed deserved to die and it was better there was no one left to identify us from Keller’s or the LoV. Blowback would come, but it would take a while. I surveyed the carnage for a long moment. There were only two survivors out of the original twelve we’d gone up against.

It’d taken every last bit of restraint I had—and trust me, I didn’t have much—to not strangle the man who’d sold her out without so much as a glance in her direction. Her nails had raked his cheeks deep enough to draw blood. He stared up at me and said, “I can pay.”

You will
, I told him. He didn’t understand my signing but that didn’t matter—I knocked him out and signed for Bish to
Tie
,
gag and not kill him.

Bish was glazed but he got the message. This wasn’t to say we wouldn’t take care of him later, but for now, the son of the president of what was left of the United States wasn’t someone we could murder and walk away from.

The fact that we’d killed Victor would bring enough of a shit storm our way. When Bish finished, we’d find out how she and Charlie ended up with the LoV in the first place.

The fact that the president’s son had been taken by MCs told me how fucked up our world had become since the Chaos. I half expected to see Secret Service come out of the trees, but Bish and I both knew from our time in the military that nothing was the same, that post-Chaos security was nothing more than thugs with guns.

Civility was long gone.

I turned to see the girl Charlie had called Jessa in the same place I’d left her, against the backdrop of dying trees, outlined in the dusk. I held up my hands to show her I wasn’t armed and then took a few steps toward her. Surprisingly, she took a few steps in my direction too. She got close enough for me to almost touch her, and then pain seared through my biceps. I’d had worse injuries, but this was unexpected and I howled silently, angry that I’d let her get the best of me.

“
Can’t let your guard down just because she’s a woman
,” Bish would tell me later, and goddammit, I hated it when he was right. In a flash, I had the knife she’d used on me in my hand—the knife I’d stabbed an LoV with, no less.

I didn’t waste time worrying about it. Instead, I turned the knife’s blade in her direction and let it fly.

She opened her mouth to yell when I threw the knife, but she was too scared to move. She’d also closed her eyes and, after a long moment, she opened them and stared at me. And then she followed my gaze as it traveled from her face to the dead snake on the ground next to her feet.

By the time she’d started to look back at me, I had her in my arms.

And she was fighting again, tooth and nail, the way she’d been earlier. I couldn’t talk her down, but my hands weren’t anyplace threatening as I subdued her and carried her away from the madness, since Bish was in the gasoline phase of his massacre. She’d be traumatized for life by his plan to make all these men hard to identify. The smell of burning bodies wasn’t something you forgot the scent of, ever.

She had a lot to learn, but I wouldn’t want to be in a fight with her when she did.

“Let me go—put me down.”

When we got close enough to the van, I did just that, kept her back to Bish and the fire and waited to see what she’d do.

She starting coughing almost immediately and I pointed to myself, then the van, then back to me. She stared at me, like she was waiting for me to talk. She’d be waiting forever and we just didn’t have that kind of time.

I pointed again and moved my hand in the move-it-along, fast-rolling motion and she didn’t do a thing. I don’t think she even blinked or breathed. I put my hands up and took a step closer to her, then extended my hands out to her. I rarely fought completely bare-handed, but this time things had happened too fast to grab my gloves to ward off the damage. My knuckles were bruised, my hands had blood on them and she was half frozen, half ready to run. I never took my eyes from hers. It was oddly silent. I knew she was fucking terrified of everyone and everything at that moment and I sure as shit couldn’t blame her.

Finally, she reached her hands out and put them in mine. I jerked my head to indicate that we were going into the van and she panicked again. But I took her by the wrists before she could slide away and my thumbs rubbed the vertical scars there.

They were deep. It had been a serious suicide attempt. I stared at her and Bish came up from behind her and said, “We’re not going to hurt you. I’m sure the LoV didn’t promise that.”

“They didn’t,” she agreed, her voice a raw tremble. “Who are you?”

“The guys who saved you.”

I tugged her along persistently. She was so damned pale and shaky and I let go of her only long enough to scoop her up into my arms. I stared at Bish and he knew what I wanted to ask. Instead, he told her, “There’s a doctor where we’re taking you.”

“They didn’t rape me,” she bit out. “But they would’ve.”

That last part was more question than anything and I nodded before settling her into the backseat behind us. Bish went back to the scene and I shut the door behind him and turned on a battery-powered fan to get the air moving.

“What’s going on?” she asked me.

Where to start? I grabbed a bottle of water and handed it to her, letting her break the seal so she wouldn’t think I was trying to drug her. She drank greedily and then said, “You don’t talk.”

I nodded.

“Can you hear at all or are you reading lips?”

I held up a finger to indicate the first and she looked at my throat like she was expecting to see a scar. Didn’t know if I was pulling her chain and I liked that she was suspicious.

At that moment, the back doors of the van opened and Bish dragged Charlie into the back of the van, already tied, gagged and unconscious, put him in a partition in the back where Jessa wouldn’t see him.

But she knew we hadn’t killed him. I wondered if she was grateful or angry.

She kept looking back toward where Bish had put Charlie.

“He’s alive,” Bish told her. “We didn’t hurt him. Much.”

“I wouldn’t care if you did.” She was so tightly wound, didn’t know if she was out of the frying pan and into the fire or not.

I told her,
We won’t do what they threatened you with.

Bish took a moment before he translated, probably because he thought a constant state of fear was the best weapon. Fuck, Bish would’ve gone far in the pre-Chaos military or CIA. I didn’t even know if the latter existed to protect anymore or if spies were only out for themselves.

Kian would know. The new head of the Kill Devils was former CIA—he’d been kicked out pre-Chaos. But he was tight-mouthed. And although he and Caspar were on good terms, trusting another MC wasn’t the best idea.

Finally, Bish told her she’d be safe with us—she’d kept her eyes on mine the whole time she was waiting for Bish to translate. But even after he did, she wouldn’t relax, because she’d seen what we could do.

I’d seen what she could do too, and I should’ve handcuffed her to the door. But Bish and I were faster, so I let her sit there, her legs curled up to her chest, as Bish got into the passenger’s side and I drove away from the scene of the crime.

“What a fucking mess,” Bish muttered.

Yeah
,
and it’s going to get traced back to Defiance soon enough
, I signed. Because even though there weren’t witnesses left—or anyone who’d seen us at the lake—Keller and the LoV knew we were in the area and that Defiance was more than capable of that level of violence.

Granted, Bish and I could save the club the problems this was going to bring them because we didn’t wear the Defiance cuts yet. It wouldn’t blow back on the MC. That was the only thing we had going for us at the moment. Whether we retained that advantage remained to be seen.

Since we hadn’t done this on behalf of Defiance, it meant that Caspar could easily hand us right over to Keller or the LoV to escape the inevitable retribution.

“He won’t do that,” Bish said. I’d been thinking out loud again, my hand flying as the other gripped the wheel.

Never know what someone will do to save their entire livelihood and the people who need him
, I answered back. There wasn’t any anger in what I said—hell, Caspar’s MC fed and housed a lot of people, and to put that in jeopardy for two random hotheads who hadn’t bothered to agree to wear the club’s cuts yet...

Bish’s question to Jessa ripped me away from my worries.

“Why are you so important?” he asked her bluntly. But he knew—we both knew. The president’s son wasn’t easy to forget. Charlie Taylor had always been in the news—he dated movie stars and ran with a wild crowd. He was also being groomed for a life in politics and before the Chaos, any trouble he’d gotten into had been easily smoothed over, thanks to his family’s position and money. Since the Chaos, I hadn’t heard shit about him.

Jessa shrugged at Bish’s question but the fact that she was with the president’s son meant something.

Maybe she’s just a hanger-on
, I signed.
Maybe he picked her up before he got kidnapped.
Then again
,
she was too pissed at him to have just met him.
That kind of anger only comes after someone you’ve known for a long time betrays you.

“Love it when you argue with yourself,” Bish drawled, then signed to me,
She’s the vice president’s daughter
, when Jessa remained silent.

Shit. I didn’t glance back at her, clutched the wheel more firmly as the rain pounded the van. I didn’t know how Bish figured that one out, but it made sense. But how had the LoV gotten to them in their underground bunkers in D.C.? No matter how bad things were, the fact was they were supposed to be in bunkers, and more heavily guarded by military forces than anyone else. And not by just any military—Bish and I would never have been considered to go there.

Maybe we should just keep driving.
Can’t lay this shit on Defiance’s doorstep
,
can we?

“Not sure we have another choice that’s as good.”

We had choices. You always did. It was just a matter of picking the best one in the moment.

In that moment, I chose the road that led to Defiance.