Reinventing Mel: A Hellion MC Novel (27 page)

The big man breathed deep before continuing.  "At the moment, we have no clue what went down.  Carly's on her way to Lulu's place.  I'd run a check on her finances to see if maybe she took Jules out for breakfast or some such but with her car still there that's just singing in the wind, bro'."

"Twenty-one Ghost cuts," Donny said.  "So that's just around, like, half, right?"

Bishop nodded but Mel could tell his mind wasn't on counting coup of the Ghosts, it was on what happened at his place and where his girls might be.

"Fuck!" Mel yelled as loud, as hard and for as long as he could.  It was a bellow of such magnitude it brought him to his feet and had him tensing every muscle. 

He couldn't breathe but his panting was so damn deep. 

He couldn't think but his brain was whirling with thoughts that went by too fast to capture.

"I fucking gotta go home," he said finally shrugging in to his heavy coat and pulling on his cut.  He slung the saddlebags over his shoulder and without a backward glance, stormed out of the room and to his bike.  "I gotta go home," he repeated, strapping the bags to the bike and pulling on his gloves before wiping off the seat and sitting down.

The words came out just one more time before he tightened his jaw to prevent them from escaping out of his mouth again. 

It was when his boys, his Hellion brothers, caught up to him about five miles north of where Mel'd been when he learned his world had been blown apart.

Chapter Twenty Seven

I woke up to a tiny little voice tearfully repeating, "please wake up.  Please,
please
wake up."  

"Julie?" I tried to ask but my voice was a weak whisper whereas the eyes I tried to open were almost too heavy to obey my mental command.

"Lulu?  Are you okay?"  She was close enough I could feel her warm breath on my face which was in direct contrast with how cold the rest of me was.  But her hands were cold too as I felt them bracketing my forehead.

"I hope so," I replied trying to smile but the action caused my jaw to scream in agony at the move.  "What happened?"

"You don't remember?"  Even though I was having a hard time seeing her, I could tell she was crying.  The hiccups that went between her sobs told me she'd been weeping a while.  "The men came into the house…"

The memories came rushing back with just her small reminder.  The men, her going limp and me getting hit which explained my shrieking jaw pain.  I tried to sit up but found my neck was injured as well, feeling as if it had been wrenched.  Levering myself slowly up on an elbow, I tried to push up but there was something heavy on my right wrist.

I slowly twisted my head trying not to squeal at the anguish the move caused and saw a large metal bracelet surrounded it.  And the bracelet was attached to a thick chain.

"You don't look so good," Julie said and I tried turning her way but ended up having to turn my shoulders along with my head in order to prevent the glass shards of pain from digging in.

"I think they hurt my face," I mumbled and found my lips were so chapped it felt like if I used them too much they'd crack.  Julie's face came into my field of vision and I saw her look me over.

"Yeah, they did.  Your face is all swolled up on this side," I heard her little voice say as her cold hand met my hot face.

"Are you okay, kiddo?"  That was enough about me.  My role was to take care of her and as the cobwebs of being knocked out cleared one strand at a time, I tried to rally myself. 

"I have a bad headache and my back hurts," she said as she snuggled into my side.  I raised my arm, gritting my teeth at the pain the movement in my left arm caused my neck.  But the teeth clench tightened my jaw so I settled for a tiny, little squeak instead.  Eventually I got her settled against me, my arm around her back and was able to take stock of where we were.

We seemed to be in some kind of cellar or basement that had one bare bulb burning over the only door. 

Each of us were chained to eyehooks set up high in the wall.  Too high for me to reach. 

Lastly, we were on some kind of plastic kiddies air mattress which meant it was short and not very wide.

Not much to go on and I couldn't see a way out except through the door.

"Have you seen anyone or has somebody checked on us yet?"  I asked trying to keep the panic I was feeling to myself.

"Nuh-uh.  I tried listening too to see if, you know, there was anybody upstairs but I can't hear anything," she said, turning her face up to me. I couldn't see her and I sure as shooting wasn't going to use my neck to look at her but I felt her movement.

"You are so
smart
, pretty girl!  Good thinking about listening for other people."  I didn't want to go overboard but I also didn't want Julie to suffer from the stress of our situation the rest of her life, either.  So I tried to keep things light.  

I attempted to cuddle her closer without using of my upper body and felt her burrow against me tightly.  "I'm cold, Lulu."

For our 'Special Sewing Sunday' as I'd named it, we'd both dressed 'cazh' as Julie had called our attire.  Sweatshirts and jeans, only mine were heavily covered in rhinestones and studs.  Nice, thick clothes that had been perfect and cozy at the house.  But in our underground, unheated chamber, we were both very cold. 

My only consolation was that I'd insisted we both wear heavy socks which I'd had to borrow from one of Mel's drawers.

"How long do you think we've been here, baby?" I asked hoping she'd have a feel for how much time we'd been unconscious.

"I don't know.  I just woke up a few minutes before you.  My stomach is growling so I'm guess it's been a while," she said in a small voice.  "Do you think anybody knows we're gone?  Do you think they called Mel so he can come and rescue us?"

Her question broke my heart and I just didn't have it in me to give the 'I don't know' answer.  Because with everything going on at the club, I didn't know that anyone knew we'd been taken or that we were even missing. 

The last I'd heard from Mel, the club's business in Idaho was done and they were hoping to leave Monday morning to come home. 

I didn't know what time or even what day it was. 

But the questions that I was avoiding, that I was studiously ignoring as they marched in big letters through my head were…who had taken us and why.

*.*.*.*.*

"We've got another round of ten coming in," Silo advised and caught Trey's nod.

"Do we need to keep fucking including their recruits in the sweep?" the president asked as he looked around the table at his council which was only missing Bishop. 

"They are the easiest to get info from without having to go to extremes," Brand countered.

"Yeah, but they're so low on the fuckin' totem pole they don't know shit," Dare said with an eye roll.

"Perhaps we are not asking the right questions to the Ghost recruits."  Brand paused and the table went silent.  The big Croatian had been with the ATF and had training in these kind of a situations.  "I believe we should point blank ask them about a woman and a child.  If they have or have not heard of them or know of their whereabouts."

"Yeah, that makes sense.  I don't need to know how the fucking Ghosts do their shit.  Don't fuckin' give a care.  But going in straight up?  That works for me," Silo concurred.

The rest of the table agreed.

"And since they're already pissing themselves just being on Hellion land with their fuckin' eyes taped shut, the fuckers are almost shittin' to tell us anything we want to know," Dare said with a small chuckle.  "Good idea, Brand."

"Anybody have Bishop's twenty?" Huff asked. 

"Fifteen minutes ago they were just getting close to Deer Lodge," Trey rumbled, rubbing his eyes.  "Just a warning, goddamn Hardwood's gonna be a wreck.  He gets fucking disrespectful, let him.  But let's see if we can get some fucking news before they land, yeah?"

Every man rapped his knuckles on the tabletop before standing and peeling away to interrogate the next round of Ghosts or to ask new questions of the assholes they were already holding.

*.*.*.*.*

Julie wasn't getting whiny or even complaining but I knew I needed to distract her from our surroundings.  And I could use a little distraction myself because I had no idea how I was going to get us out of our situation.

So I told her stories.  Ones I remembered from my childhood and some tales that were cleaned up and given new treatments that I'd read as an adult.  At one point I think I even recapped a couple of episodes of Grey's Anatomy.

Then we started singing softly together.  Songs from some of our favorite artists which I found for her were Taylor Swift and, of course, Katy Perry.  Of my choices, little Jules loved Sarah McLachlan's 'Chocolate', probably because it was so easy to sing and learn the lyrics to.

After exhausting our playlist, I found out there was a boy in her class that she liked named Gary and who she thought liked her back.  "But we're not boyfriend and girlfriend because we're too young," she confided.  I thought it was sweet that Julie knew she was too young although I couldn't figure out at ten what would constitute a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship.  Sitting together at lunch?  Spending time together at recess?

"Are you Mel's girlfriend?"  In the sequence of the how the conversation flowed, I should've anticipated the question.  And I was surprised that she asked it so nonchalantly.

"I don't know.  We've never talked about it," I admitted.  But made a mental reminder to get some sort of definition for whatever it was that Mel and I had between us.

"But you kiss, right?"

I took a deep breath and wondered how far I should go in my explanation.  Thinking it would be better to error on the side of innocent, I said, "yes but not every boy you kiss will be your boyfriend.  It doesn't work like that."  I didn't add the 'thank god' out loud to the end of my sentence but I thought it.

She went quiet and I wondered if she was thinking about what I'd said or if she was zeroing on her next topic.

"I'm so hungry, Lulu."

"I know, pretty girl.  So am I."

She had already fallen asleep and I trying to in spite of being in so much pain when I heard a door thud upstairs.  I jiggled my little friend awake and held a finger in front of my mouth asking her to be quiet as the boots thundered over our heads.  I heard another door creak open before the heavy steps seemed to be coming down a set of stairs and our door was thrown open.

I saw the silhouette of a fat man outlined in the doorway but the light of the bulb over the door never revealed his face above the mangy beard that went halfway down his chest. 

He threw a fast food bag that hit the air mattress and then a bottle of water which bounced off my chest before he closed the door and banged out of whatever building we were in.

In the entire time, Julie and I didn't say a word and neither had the man.

She opened the bag and took out two regular hamburgers and one large carton of fries.  "It's food but it's cold," she advised, raising her eyes to mine.

I sighed and picked up one of the burgers.  "At least its food."

My golden-haired companion nodded as she bit into her burger.  I, however, wasn't able to open my mouth wide enough to get the hamburger inside.  Grabbing a fry instead I found even chewing was torture.  Every time I put my teeth together I felt a horribly painful grinding in my the bone of my jaw.  Leaving me to surmise it was either broken or had been cracked when I was hit.

I needed food, needed the energy it could give me.  But how was I going to eat? 

Obviously, Julie had been watching my efforts because I saw her take one of my buns and tear it in half and then in half again.  Using the water bottle, she wet the bun just enough so it was mushy.  Mushy enough so she could poke a small lump between my teeth without me having to open my lips too far or to have to chew in order to swallow.

"When my grandma was so sick, this was the only way my mom could feed her," she explained, poking another lump between my lips.  When she'd helped me eat a quarter of the bun, I sent her back to her own meal as I tried to do it myself.  Although it hurt like aytch-ee-double-hockey sticks to use my left arm because it pulled on my neck.  And my right wrist was weighted by the manacle and chain.  But still I muddled through and got enough inside my stomach so that it no longer hurt.

When we were done and had put our trash in the small bag, I curled myself around her warm sweetness and soon both of us found sleep.  Even though we both did it with tears pouring and the quietest of sobs.

*.*.*.*.*

"…said we need more money.  Ain't turning the females over until he gets what we was first offered," a voice said, jerking me from my sleep and causing my neck and jaw to scream.  There were lots of scuffling coming from above us as well as the loud voice.

"What if the fucker won't pay it, huh?  Then what the fuck are we supposed to do?"  This speaker's voice was higher than the first, more in the tenor range.