Hard Roads (20 page)

I was hurried down the halls and I closed my eyes to the other crying women who were chained to walls or laid out on the floor, their will to escape suppressed most likely by the same drug that currently rushed through my veins. Another door swung open and cool air collided with my skin, my breath hitching to feel it. Breathing deeply, I tried to make sense of where they were taking me, but I couldn’t make out the blur of images that moved around me.

After a slam of metal against metal, I found myself locked inside darkness, the floor beneath me vibrating with movement.

I’m not sure if it was because there was nothing to look at to keep my mind occupied or what, but I started humming a song in the darkness. It was a lullaby my mom used to sing to me when I was young and it put a smile on my face to remember it. Reaching back in my memories, I thought of bright, sunny days when both of my parents were around and everybody seemed to be smiling. Eventually, and like life, shadows rolled over those memories like a sticky film. Images of the past few days flooded my mind and terror overtook me as I remembered the man without a face and what it had looked like to see another man’s arms and legs torn away from his body. I wasn’t sure if it was the images I saw or the memory I had of the inhuman screams that tore from their lungs that terrified me the most. Tears burst from my eyes and I kept humming that song, louder and louder, until the words that my momma had sung fell from my lips. With each passing memory, I sang louder, not giving a shit if anybody could hear me or what they thought if they could.

I kept singing that song until two doors flew open and I was dragged back out into the cool night air. Well, it wasn’t really night as the sun was just starting to set over the horizon, but the wind felt cold against my skin after the amount of time I’d spent in that hot, white room.

Carried by two men, my feet dragged over dirt and gravel and I was able to hold my head up enough to see a run down house with one truck parked outside. I had no idea where we were or where I was being dragged, but I did recognize one of the three men that were standing a distance away from us. Just like earlier, his hair was pulled back into a ponytail, but he wore a cut over his shoulders with the old version of the Hell’s Rebellion patch.

As we approached the men, I noticed that the man carried a large duffle bag on his shoulder, but he dropped it to the ground when we got closer.

“What the fuck have you got that girl dressed in? I need to carry her discreetly and you fuckers dress her up like a two-cent fucking whore? This is not going to work.”

The men who were carrying me stopped in their tracks, a third man coming up from behind us to talk to the black and grey haired biker.

“This is what we were told her to put her in. It isn’t our problem if you don’t like it. Just give us the fucking money and we’ll leave her with you. That was the deal and those were the instructions we were given by Hector.”

The biker looked me up and down again, disgust evident in his expression. “Tell you what…” He motioned to one of the men standing to his side. “Why don’t you go inside and fetch me a shirt and some sweatpants or something that we can put this girl in. If we get pulled over with her dressed the way she is and all drugged up like that, she’ll be pulled from the car in no time while the cops aim their guns at our fucking heads.”

Hector’s man quickly objected. “We don’t have fucking time to play dress up, asshole. Just give us the money.”

The biker smiled. “Sure, we have time. The money’s right here, so my buddy is just going to go inside and get the clothes. When he gets back we’ll make the exchange.”

Thick tension filled the air as the biker’s friend ran into the house. Within seconds, I heard the sound of tires crunching over gravel and brakes squealing loudly behind us. The men who held me turned their heads, but I kept my eyes trained on the biker in front. He smiled at me quickly before pulling a gun from his side and aiming it on whoever was coming up from behind me.

There was mass confusion almost immediately amongst the men. I was dropped to the ground, my elbow hitting sharply against a rock, the skin splitting open so that when I turned my head, all I saw was the crimson red of my blood against my skin. I didn’t feel any pain as I laid there helpless and unable to move because of the drugs in my system.

The sun had finally set behind the horizon, but the sky appeared to still be lit by the gun blasts that sounded above me. I wanted to move away, scurry beneath a rock or bush to escape the loud booms and screams of the men. It sounded like there were hundreds, but I knew it was impossible. Rolling to my back, I moved my head to the side, my eyes locked to the biker with the friendly eyes.

A large weight fell on top of me and I felt liquid, thick and hot, fall on my face. I couldn’t move to wipe it away so I just kept staring at the biker, watching as he fired shot after shot. I don’t know why but I hoped he would win. Maybe it was my past growing up in a club or maybe it was the fact that I remembered the look in his eyes.

When his body jerked back suddenly and he fell backwards to the ground, his feet lifting up in the air, I heard a heartbreaking scream that was so loud, tears burst from my eyes.

The weight above me was lifted away and I was pulled into the air, a strong set of arms wrapped beneath my legs and back. The scream wouldn’t stop and finally, as I watched the biker being pulled away from the yard by two other men, I realized that the scream was coming from me.

“Get her in the car! Now! Back seat!”

The voice was familiar but I couldn’t place it. Time stood still even though everything around me seemed to be moving in fast forward. Heavy breathing sounded above me and my body was jostled as a large man carried me, running from where the other men now laid in puddles of blood that soaked into the water starved earth.

Nightmares flashed through my memory. Crimson puddles that my hands and face had been shoved against as two men raped me in front of a laughing crowd. I closed my eyes in an attempt to escape, but it didn’t matter. Opened or closed the bodies still haunted me, those in Diablo’s yard and the ones that now littered the ground over which I was being carried.

So much blood.

So much violence.

It seemed like I was stuck in a never-ending cycle of terror and pain.

I tried to turn my head, desperate to find the biker who I’d seen dragged away by his two friends, but before I could locate him, I was shoved inside the backseat of a car. My body flopped helplessly over the leather interior and when the door shut, I was once again delivered to darkness.

It wasn’t long until another door opened and the car shook when a large man sat in the driver’s seat, immediately starting the engine and peeling out so fast that I could hear the rocks kicking up against the undercarriage as we fled. Turning my head, I noticed his head was bald, the scant light of street lamps shining against his hairless skin.

I should have been afraid, but I wasn’t. Closing my eyes, I started to hum my mother’s lullaby again because it soothed me. It took me away to a place where the monsters couldn’t hurt me, where the nightmares were extinguished by a light so brilliant that nothing could exist in the shadows.

Even though my body was being thrown around by the erratic movement of the car, I kept humming. I felt my lips pull up into a smile and a tear drip from my eye.

Maybe this was the end, finally.

Maybe this was where I’d be granted freedom.

Opening my eyes once more, I looked at the head of the man who’d taken me. I wasn’t afraid anymore. I didn’t care about who he was or what he would do to me.

The worst had already been done.

I’d witnessed death. I’d been raped. I’d been beaten. What more could there be?

My eyes closed one last time and I let my body slip into the hazy oblivion the drugs created within me. Slipping into a darkness that was comforting and safe, I had no other choice but to let go.

It felt good when the fighter inside me surrendered because, for once, there was nothing left to fear.

Chapter Twenty-One

~ JD ~

She slept the entire drive. Silently and so fucking still I was scared that she was dying, but she only slept. Every once in a while, I would reach behind me to touch her. She’d flinch away at the contact, but it was all I needed to know that she was still with me.

I drove straight through, not stopping for water, food or gas. I had to use the bathroom for the last 50 miles of the trip, but I didn’t dare stop that car. The only time I even slowed down was when I finally approached a thin hidden driveway that led deep into a wooded lot where a small house was surrounded by trees a hundred times its size.

By the time we reached the house, the sun had started to cast light over the ground from where it sat at the horizon. The forest around us looked magical, the colors of the different plants perfectly contrasted against the black earth beneath. My breath was stolen from my lungs by the sight, but I refused to get lost in its magical beauty because the only thing I cared about was sleeping inside the car.

I had her back. She was safe. I could still save her.

Those were the only thoughts that I had as I drove down dark roads, racing to a place where I could hide her from the world.

It wasn’t until I saw those men holding her in the yard that my heart started to sting. I thought I didn’t care, I thought I was only looking to right a wrong that I’d committed before leaving it all behind as I forged a new path. But seeing her there, dressed like a hooker and held up by two men, the rage that I didn’t realize had been simmering inside me for days sparked to life, catching fire to my blood, my breath, my skin.

I was absolutely seething by the time the trucks pulled up and I was the first man out of that truck, the first one to pull his gun and I shot the first of Hector’s men directly between the eyes. I wasn’t playing around. Not when it came to her, not anymore. She was my single focus. With my gun drawn, I watched as they dropped her, how her small body slumped to the ground, blood spraying out over her arm from where she’d been injured.

And then… I. Saw. Fucking. Red.

Nothing mattered except getting to her. Nothing could stop me from reaching the girl that somehow had weaseled her way into my thoughts in so short a period of time. I’ve worked for years to pay back my debts and crawl out from beneath the weight of Hell’s Rebellion and for what? To meet a grey eyed girl, a little imp that clawed at me like a spitting cat, who would turn my entire world on its head.

It wasn’t love. Not yet. But it could be and that thought wasn’t far from my mind as I carried her sleeping body inside the house, finding a bedroom with a king sized bed and tucking her under the warmth of the down comforter, just to clean her up and then sit there for hours to watch her sleep.

I was her guardian.

A loyal and violent dog that wouldn’t leave her side.

I sat by her side all day, my tired eyes refusing to close despite the burning pain of my exhaustion.

She was so beautiful, lying there within the crisp white of the sheets, her dark brown hair flowing over the cotton pillows. She was my responsibility, my chain. I couldn’t survive unless she survived. I could never be sane unless she regained the light I’d seen inside her before I threw her to the wolves.

I would never, in however many years I had left to walk this earth, forgive myself for what I’d done to her.

By the time the sun was setting again and as shadows fell over her face, I slumped back in my chair, finally closing my eyes and giving in to the exhaustion of my mind and body.

. . .

WHACK!

Jumping to my feet, my hands were balled into fists and I was swinging out at an unknown assailant who’d just pounded me hard in the side of the head. My arms only caught air and by the time I cracked open my eyes, I found that no person was standing in front of me with the Louisville Slugger I’d assumed they used to beat me down.

My skull throbbed and I looked down at the chair where I’d fallen asleep, suddenly remembering where I was and why I was here. I must have fallen to the floor because there was no explanation for what had happened, except…

“Fuck.”

Holly wasn’t in the bed and instead of finding the small, sleeping girl, I found empty sheets, bunched and damp from sticky sweat. The room was still dark and a green flashing alarm clock on the side table revealed to me that it was only three in the fucking morning. Panic set in as I felt around the room, desperate to find a light. Once my hand landed on the plastic switch in the wall, I flipped it up, my eyes searching the room until finally landing on the scared girl balled up in the corner of the room.

Her knees were pulled to her chest and she stared out at me with blank eyes as she rocked back and forth.

“Holly?”

I took a step to approach her, but she balled against herself tighter, absolute terror written into her expression. I stopped, not wanting to frighten her anymore than she already was.

“Hey, Holly. It’s me, babe. JD.”

There was no recognition, no softening of her terrified expression. She just kept rocking with her unblinking eyes locked to mine.

Christ, what the fuck was I going to do? I’d never dealt with someone in this condition before and I wasn’t sure if I should approach her or leave her be. This wasn’t the fighter I’d met in the middle of the road. This was something else entirely. A woman so scared that I felt scared myself just looking at her. She resembled a small child; lost to a cruel and unforgiving world where nobody loved her or cared if she was okay.

Moving as slowly as possible, I approached her like I would a stray and injured animal. With each step I took, she scrunched further against the wall, attempting to make herself as small as possible. I couldn’t keep moving forward, knowing full well that with each approaching step, I only intensified her fear.

Keeping my voice as calm and soothing as possible, I tried talking to her. “I know you’re frightened, Holly, but I’m not going to hurt you. You’re safe now. Nobody can or will touch you if you don’t want them to. Understand?”