Forever Rockers (41 page)

Bash clenched his jaw, unable to give her the answer I knew she needed. Jet caught my hand and gave it a squeeze, but turned his olive-green gaze on Emmie. “We’re going to try our hardest to make sure that we bring your girl home to you, Emmie.”

Big, green eyes snapped to my fiancé—my old man. She knew who he was to me, just as she knew what he’d already done for her. I knew she respected him for what he’d chanced to make sure she was safe from one monster. I hoped she knew that he was there to take another one away now. “I know. That’s why I called Felicity.” Her chin started to tremble but right before my eyes she stilled herself, forcing herself to remain calm during what was any mother’s worst nightmare.

“Let’s go,” Bash said as he headed toward the building.

“What is this place?” I asked Emmie as we entered the building. The place looked practically deserted but there had obviously been a party, from all the pink balloons and streamers still hanging.

“This was where Shane and Harper got married. We had Harper’s baby shower today. It’s where she was taken.” She stopped just inside what seemed to be a ballroom. “I sent everyone who wasn’t needed home. Peterson and Theo are still conferring with Seller’s other men, but they haven’t got anything new to tell me so they aren’t necessary right now. Seller wants to do this by the book. I just want my baby back.”

“Seller?” Spider’s deep voice spoke up. “Charles Seller?”

Emmie nodded. “That would be him.”

“He’s a stickler for ‘by the book’,” Spider agreed. “But he would do what needed doing if it came down to it.”

She shrugged. “Whether he would or wouldn’t doesn’t matter to me now. That’s why you’re here.” 

The coldness of Emmie’s voice was something I’d never experienced with her before in all the time I’d known her. “We’ll do whatever you need us to, Emmie.”

“Good. Make sure that cunt doesn’t live to see another day. That’s what I need you to do.”

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WO

Harper

I was pretty sure I was in labor.

Not exactly the perfect time to figure that out, that was for sure. Especially when I was miles away from a hospital—as far as I knew, anyway. Truthfully, I had no clue where I was. It had still been raining when Helena had stopped after driving for a good thirty minutes if not longer. I hadn’t been able to see anything through the downpour so couldn’t have picked out any landmarks even if I’d wanted to. She held the gun against my stomach again once I’d gotten out of the trunk—which had only brought on more painful contractions—and forced me into what had looked like an old barn.

I’d thought she was just going to shoot me then and there, but she’d pushed me into an old stall that had dried-up hay on the floor. The door to the stall was probably the only thing that wasn’t old in the barn. The steel bars on the locked door had looked pretty new to me as she’d slammed it closed.

That had been several hours ago, at least three if I’d guessed right. Now the place was almost completely dark. It was nearly night.

Another sharp contraction had my stomach clenching, my back aching. I gritted my teeth against the pain, but couldn’t completely keep quiet as the contraction lasted a little longer than the one I’d had only five minutes before.

“Who’s there?” a little voice called out to me in the dark.

I blinked against the pain, sure that I was hearing things now. I strained my ears, trying to listen again, but several minutes passed.

“Hello?” That little voice finally came again and this time I couldn’t mistake whose it was.

“Mia?” I called back, a new fear filling my heart. “Mia, is that you?”

“I’m here,” she said, quieter now. “Aunt…Harper?”

“Mia, are you okay? Are you hurt?”
Please let her be okay. Please, God. Please
.

“I have a headache,” she said, crying now. “I feel sick—” She broke off and I heard the distinct sounds of retching as she started to vomit.

Damn it. What was wrong with her? Had Helena hurt her or done something to make her sick? I pushed myself to my feet and blindly reached for the bars of my prison. “Mia? Baby, are you okay?”

“I don’t feel good,” she cried.

“M-Mia?”

A new voice called out and I went still as I strained to listen. “Mia?” The voice was stronger now and slightly accented. “Mia, where are you?” Gabriella screamed.

“I’m…here.” I heard Mia vomiting again and I shook at the bars of the door, wanting out so I could go to her and help her.

“Gabriella?” I knew it was her, but I needed to be sure. The day had been surreal and I figured it was only going to get more so.

“Harper?”

“Yes.”

“Fuck!” Gabriella yelled. “Where the hell are we?”

“I don’t know,” I told her honestly. “What happened? How did you get here?”

“Some idiot named Sean,” Gabriella informed me, making my mind reel from it. Sean? Sean had brought them here? I was more shocked that he’d been able to do something so competent than I was at the fact that he was part of whatever the hell this was in the first place. “He used some kind of tranquillizer gun on me. I think he used it on Mia too.”

“I want my momma,” Mia sobbed. “My tummy and my head hurt, Aunt Gabs.”

“Honey, I know. Mine does too,” Gabriella told her. “Be strong,
bella
. We’ll get you back to your mom.”

My hands tightened around the bars as another contraction hit me hard. Damn. That was closer than the five-minute gap I’d had between the last two. I guessed it had only been about three minutes this time as I tried to breathe through the pain.

“Harper?” Gabriella was screaming my name and I realized she must have been calling out to me while I was having my contraction and hadn’t heard her. “What’s going on?”

“Oh, nothing too dramatic,” I called back, trying to keep my voice calm, but it shook a little. “I’m just in labor.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Stop cursing,” I yelled at her. “Emmie is going to kick your butt if you keep swearing like that in front of Mia.”

“Yeah, because that is what I really need to worry about right now,” the little Italian snapped back, and I actually found myself almost smiling.

“True.” I leaned my head against the coolness of the bars. I was freezing, still in my soaked clothes, but my body felt supernova-hot. I hoped it was just from the pain of the contractions and not because I was running a fever.

“The room is spinning,” Mia cried, her voice full of terror. “Make it stop spinning.”

“Fuck, that sonofabitch could have overdosed her,” Gabriella muttered, but I still heard her.

Overdosed.

That word was scarier than any other that had filled my head all day. Mia, overdosed? That meant she could die. Nothing else mattered right then—not me or Gabriella, not the fact that I was in labor, or that Violet could be in trouble if I was running a fever—nothing mattered but getting to Mia and getting her to a doctor.

I shook the bars of the door but there was no budging them. “Mia, I’m coming,” I promised her as I moved around in the growing darkness, trying to find any way possible out of the stall.

It was old, I reminded myself, which meant the wood couldn’t be very strong. I started kicking at the boards along the wall. My entire body felt the jolt of the first kick but I was rewarded with the sound of the wood cracking, if only a little. I kicked it again, putting my full weight behind it this time. The wood gave a little more.

“What are you doing now?” Gabriella demanded.

“This place is old—really old. Can’t you smell the dry rot? Try kicking the walls. We have to get to Mia.”

I kicked the boards again and this time my foot went through. With a triumphant cry, I reached for the splintered wood and pulled it back, offering me a small hole to climb through. But it wasn’t big enough. With my big belly, I’d never fit through it. Biting back a curse, I started kicking again, only to have a contraction hit so hard that it brought me to my knees.

“What’s that smell?”

I was still trying to catch my breath from the contraction when I heard Gabriella. “What smell?” I sniffed the air. All I could smell was dry hay and decaying wood…

Oh, hell.

There was a new smell, this one full of smoke.

Was Helena burning the barn down?

No, no way. It was still raining. I could hear it hitting the roof. There was no way she could burn the barn down.

Right?

But even as I was thinking that, the smell of smoke grew stronger.

“Fuck this shit,” Gabriella yelled. “I’m done.” I heard a board snapping and hoped that it was her finding a way out of her own stall. I listened for another minute, but when I didn’t hear her again I forced myself to my feet and started kicking again.

“I’m gonna kill that bitch,” Gabriella’s voice was right outside my stall now and I turned around, seeing her faint outline on the other side of the bars. “You need some help there, pregos?”

“Please,” I breathed. I was pretty sure that all the kicking had made my water break. My pants were even wetter now than they had been and, with each breath I took, more liquid flooded down my legs.

“Stand back so I don’t kick you.” I moved back and she started kicking. It took several minutes, during which I had yet another contraction, before she stuck her head into my stall. “Well, what are you waiting for? Let’s find Mia and get the hell out of here.”

It took some work getting out of the hole Gabriella had made for me. I scratched my stomach on a sharp splinter, but I barely noticed the new pain since I was having to work through yet another contraction.

Damn. Less than two minutes apart now. They were coming faster and faster and each one was more intense than the last. The pain in my lower back was nearly unbearable.

“She’s over here,” Gabriella yelled out, having finally found Mia, and I could hear her already kicking her way in to get her, but I’d found the source of the smoke.

And it was blocking our exit.

C
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Emmie

Nik had been quiet ever since Felicity and the MC guys had shown up. I knew I’d surprised him, but I wasn’t going to apologize for doing it. I didn’t care if he didn’t like it, or if he didn’t approve. I’d done the only thing I could think of to save our child.

To save them all.

I hoped.

The one named Bash had walked into the little room where the others had been, looking to Peterson for guidance, and took immediate charge.

Charles Seller was on the other side of the country, but was supposedly on a plane at that moment. He was directing Peterson and Theo as well as Gabriella’s two remaining guards and Roger. Over the last few hours, we’d found out more than just the roughly estimated location of where Gabriella’s phone was.

Theo had gone with one of Gabriella’s guards to the nail salon she was supposed to have been at. I hadn’t been given the full details, but apparently Stan had been found knocked out in the back seat of a car that had been reported stolen earlier that day. The guard was currently in the hospital where the doctors were trying to figure out what he’d been drugged with. He’d been shot three times with a tranquillizer that had enough drugs in it to put down a horse.

Those tranquillizers were the only reason Sean had been able to ambush Stan. They figured the guy had been out before he even realized what was happening to him.

After Bash had taken charge, Peterson had tried to step in, but I’d told him point blank that his services weren’t needed for this. I wanted Mia back and I wanted her back right that minute. But I was realistic. She might already be dead.

I couldn’t help but tremble at the thought. My baby might already be dead. I may never see her smile, hear her laugh, watch her dance around the house. Jagger would grow up with no memories of what an amazing sister he’d been blessed with. Nik would never get to call her ‘baby doll’ and help me tuck her in at night.

I wanted to cry, but my eyes had gone completely dry. I realized that it was all my fault, that I was the reason Helena had targeted Mia. I’d been the bitch I’d always been when it came to my guys—that I still was—and thrown her out of Shane’s life like I’d done with countless others. Right then that didn’t make much difference, though. I would have to live with that sin haunting me for the rest of my life.

But I was going to make sure the cunt who was doing this paid with her life. Sean too. I hoped the MC guys gutted him, made his death as slow and painful as possible.

“You said that the phone was narrowed down to a fifteen-mile radius,” Bash spoke to the room at large as he studied over the map Peterson had been looking over for the last hour. “What’s in that area?”

“It’s a rural area,” Nik surprised me by telling him. I caught my husband’s ice-blue gaze and realized that he hadn’t been quiet because he didn’t agree with what I’d done, but because he was quietly losing his mind just as I was. “I think there are even a few farms out that way.”

“Okay.” Bash looked at the five other men in MC cuts. “Colt and Spider, take this five-mile area. Raider and Hawk, these five. I’ll go with Jet and check out these five.”

Felicity frowned up at the big man with electric blue eyes. “I think we should take someone that Mia knows with each of us. She’s bound to be scared to death. If she sees any of you, you’re going to frighten her even more. I’ll go with Hawk.”

“I’m going,” Nik bit out. “I don’t care who I go with, but I’m going. She’s my little girl.” His voice broke and he clenched his jaw so hard I knew he was cracking some teeth. His gaze found mine and held it. “I’m going.”