Gravel (MC Biker Romance) (9 page)

“What are you going to do with Ash?” I
asked.

“After he turns himself in, that’s for a
judge and jury to decide,” he said with his hands in the air.

“Aren’t you worried about him turning you
in for murdering my father?” I countered.

“Oh, he’ll never turn us in,”
LeRoy
snickered. “If he wants to keep his little family
safe that is…”

His eyes traveled from me to Tuck and
back. We were always going to be pawns in their manipulative schemes to get
what they wanted. It wouldn’t end here. It wouldn’t end ever.

“Do you have to kill my father?” I asked
as I fought back tears. All the man had ever done was protect his family and
his club. He was a good man with a good heart who sometimes had to do bad
things.

“You don’t know the half of what your
father has done,”
LeRoy
huffed. “If you only knew
what kind of monster he is.”

“He’s not a monster,” I yelled. “
Tripp
was a monster.”

LeRoy
flew at me like a bat out of hell and
slapped my cheek with an open palm. My skin burned red as pain radiated from
the site. “Don’t you ever talk bad about Tripp!”

LeRoy
was so mad he was spitting and his eyes
were wiggling like some crazy, rabid animal.

“Tripp was a damn angel!”
LeRoy
continued. “A freaking saint!”

They hadn’t the slightest clue about the
kind of person Tripp was, and from
LeRoy’s
reaction,
it was clear that they’d glorified him into something he wasn’t since his
passing.

My hand covered the red spot on my cheek
in an attempt to sooth the pain.

“You apologize now!”
LeRoy
yelled.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, staring at my feet.

“You say that Tripp Cotton was a
Goddamned saint! He was a good boy!”
LeRoy
kept
yelling. “Say it!”

“Tripp Cotton was…a good…person.” I could
barely spit the words out. They tasted bitter and his name on my tongue took me
back to that night by the bonfire. I’d tried to forget that night a million
times, but it was always in the back of my mind. In many ways it felt like
yesterday.

LeRoy
stood in front of me, trying to regain
his composure, with his hands on his hips. His eyes burned with a scary sort of
intensity.

Tuck began to whimper. He couldn’t speak
much, but he knew that the big bad man freaking out and yelling in front of us
was scary.

“Put a muzzle on your kid,”
LeRoy
said.

“He needs diapers,” I said, trying to
change the subject. “My bag is in Mary Jane’s car. Please. He’s been sitting in
the same dirty diaper since last night.”

LeRoy
huffed and rolled his eyes as he turned
and left, slamming the door behind him and clinking the lock.

I settled back into the flat cushion of
the mattress with Tuck in my arms. The smell of soggy diapers filled the air,
and a painful silence served as a hopeless reminder of how powerless I was.

I shut my eyes and leaned back against
the hard wall. The vrooming sound of motorcycles and the rumbling of loud
trucks seeped in through the barred window, and I stood up on my toes to look
out of it. I prayed, hoped and crossed my fingers that it was the Black Dogs
coming to save me, but I knew it was impossible. They were six hours away.

I squinted to try to see the men, but
none of them looked familiar. They were all Cottonmouths. I sunk back down and
took my place on the mattress. Nothing but despair filled my mind.

I had to have faith, I reminded myself.
My daddy wouldn’t let them win. I knew he wouldn’t. He wasn’t going to let them
take his family or take him away from his family. He wouldn’t let them
blackmail Ash into turning himself in.

The metal door flung open and hit against
the wall behind it. A man whom I’d never seen before with thick, curly black
hair up and down his arms and a shaved head walked towards me. Clenched in his
hands were zip ties.

“Get up,” he said with a growl in his
tone. Without saying another word, he reached out and grabbed my wrists,
squeezing them hard before wrapping the zip ties around them and pulling them
tight. “Come with me.”

I followed behind him, purposely taking
my time, as Tuck toddled behind me. “Where are we going?”

He turned his gnarled face towards me and
sneered, as if to say I was an imbecile for even asking. It was none of my
business, I knew. We marched down the hall before ending up at a heavy, metal
door leading back out towards the alley. The door flung open by another member
and a rusty, purple cargo van with the side door wide open awaited us.

Soggy tears stained my cheeks as I tried,
and failed, to stay strong for Tuck. I kept my face turned to the side and
prayed he wouldn’t notice. I didn’t want him to see the fear in my eyes or the
helplessness on my face.

“Get in,” the man commanded. His patience
for me was wearing thin.

There were no seats in the back of the
van. Only open space. A few unmarked cardboard boxes lined the back area, but
that was it. Nothing else. The man climbed in the van and started it up. A loud
rumble vibrated the floor space, slightly startling tuck into my lap. The van
shifted hard into drive and we plunged forward, out of the alley.

Sitting on the floor of the van, I could
hardly see out the windows, but if I sat up just enough, I was able to catch
glimpses of street signs and buildings around us. I tried to remember each
turn. Left, left, right, left, right, straight…

When we approached a busy intersection
and got caught up at the red light, the man took the opportunity to fish around
in his pockets for his cigarette.

“Damn it,” he muttered when he dropped
his lighter. He reached one burly arm down on the ground, fingers searching,
and eyes focused on the stoplight. He was paying no attention to us whatsoever.

I sat up, slightly, on my knees, praying
I’d go unnoticed, and took a look around. My heart fluttered when I saw it. Our
trusty
Ford was
two cars behind us
with my beloved Ash behind the wheel
.

A relieved smile washed over me for a
second…until I realized that they were still winning. They wanted Ash to come
rescue us. They wanted to get their revenge on him, not us.

I rested my face on the top of Tuck’s
soft, brown hair and took comfort in his familiar, little boy scent. I’d do
anything to protect him, and I knew Ash would too. I couldn’t blame him for
risking his life to save us.

Five short minutes later the van pulled
into the gravel driveway of an old house. Tall, shady oak trees and lush green
bushes lined the drive and provided the cover he needed to get us into the
house unseen.

The man hopped out of the van, slamming
the door behind him, and yanked open the side door.

“Get inside,” he barked at us. “Hurry.”

I nudged Tuck out of my lap and the man
reached out and grabbed him, plopping him on the hard cement floor, feet first.
I scooted across the floor of the van until I was able to get out, which was a
challenge with tied hands.

“Go, go,” he said as he placed his solid
hand on my back and pushed me towards a door where another man was waiting.

“Downstairs,” the other man said, his
beady eyes focusing on Tuck and me. Our driver stayed on the main floor while
the new guy followed us down to the basement.

A few faint lights provided just enough
light for us to see the outline of our figures, and Tuck clung close to my
side. Dampness filled my lungs and a musty odor that must have been decades old
lingered in the air.

“Sit down,” the man ordered. He pointed
to an empty space on the cold, cement floor by a cinder block wall.

I sat down and leaned my back against the
cool wall, which instantly sent shivers down my spine, and Tuck curled up in my
lap.

We waited, in silence, with our guard’s
eyes upon us at all times. He never flinched. Never blinked. Just stared. I
assumed he was given orders not to let us out of his sight and not to let us
move a muscle. Things were getting very real, very quickly.

The shade of the late evening sun swept
through and took out the last of the remaining daylight that trickled in
through a tiny, rectangular window on the far side of the basement.

The echo of footsteps coming down the
stairs,
jolted all of our heads in that direction. They
weren’t heavy stomps, like those of a man in big, leather boots. They were
lighter steps.

“MJ,” the guard said as she came out from
the stairway. “What are you doing down here?”

“There’s a situation upstairs,” she said.
She spoke to him, but her eyes were on mine. A mix of hopelessness and fear
glinted through her stare.

“Here,” the guard said as he headed
towards the stairs. “Take this. Don’t let them move an inch.”

He shoved a
Glock
42 into her arms as he stomped up the stairs. I hadn’t even noticed he was
carrying a gun, and now I was sure he had others on him. That one was must have
been reserved especially for us.

MJ gripped her fingers around the gun and
then dropped it to her side, keeping her gaze honed in on us.

The faint murmur of scuffles, stomps, and
growls on the floor above us echoed throughout the basement. Something was
happening upstairs, and I knew it could only mean one thing: Ash was there.

One man against ten, or however many
others
were
up there, could never end well. I hung my
head as hot tears rolled down my cheeks and landed on the top of Tuck’s head. My
eyes traced over to where MJ was sitting. She had cocked her gun and had it
pointed at the base of the stairs. If Ash came down, she would shoot him for
sure.

The scuffles above abruptly stopped, and
heavy footsteps stomped down the creaky basement steps.

“Ash! She has a gun!” I yelled out to
warn him before he came bursting out from the bottom of the steps.

MJ’s hands quivered just a little, and I
knew deep down she wasn’t a horrible person. She didn’t want to hurt anyone.
She was just loyal to her club. Just doing what she was told to do.

Ash ducked out from around the bottom of
the steps and revealed himself under the faint glimmer of the fading light bulb
above. As the light cast shadows on his face, he looked scary, intimidating,
and determined. There was no stopping
him
now.

“Drop the gun,” he said, his eyes locked
tight into MJ’s indomitable glare.

“MJ, please!” I yelled with high-pitched
desperation in my voice. “Don’t do this!”

Ash took slow steps towards MJ, who had
popped her gun out towards him by then. “You don’t have to do this. It doesn’t
have to be this way.”

MJ’s lips quivered. “Yes it does. This is
how it has to be.”

“You can get out now,” Ash said. “We
won’t tell a soul you were here.”

“Right, like I’m supposed to believe
that,” she said with an eye roll. Her gun was still pointed straight at Ash’s
chest.

“This is your chance to redeem yourself,”
he said. For someone with a gun pointed straight at him, Ash was eerily cool
and collected. But he was doing it for us.