Inflamed: A Shadow Riders MC (13 page)

I was in the arms of a handsome biker, one I found myself heavily attracted to yet was heavily disgusted by all at once, from the things he said to me to the way he reacted to my very presence. And he smelled like liquor. And cigarettes. And beer, and rum, and tequila and...
sweat
. Sweet sweat if it was even possible, like the tiny beads of water forming around his nose and above his eyebrows were coated in pure honey.

He was carrying me home in his arms, his very big, very strong, very
muscular
arms, and brought me back into my bedroom. After placing me on the bed, he sat down next to me and I asked him a few questions. He murmured some things I can't remember about his name, and then he left me alone. But right before he did, I remember feeling completely
safe
. Just completely and obliviously safe in his presence. It had been a long time since anyone, let alone a man and especially one like this, had made me feel that way, which is probably what made the dream so much more disturbing for me than it should've been.

Then again, maybe it's because it wasn't a dream for me at all. It was reality, one I was all too desperate to wake up from, yet not all that eager to leave so far behind either.

As I rolled over on my back and tried to focus my eyes on the ceiling, my head started pounding as if I had just been run over by two semis, followed up by a tractor trailer and a three-tier tour bus, twice. "
Ugggg
." I flipped back over on my stomach and smashed my face into the pillow, which wasn't much better since I had gotten a damn good taste and smell of my own, rancid breath. "
Blech
."

Being at the club to ask for help and drinking to my heart's discontent when I was told what the conditions of that help would be, were things I remembered. My tongue tasting like a combination of acid and ashtrays filled with cigarette butts and joints sure as hell wasn't one of them.

“MAMA!" That tiny voice screamed out again, sounding louder and more exuberant but still somewhat faint.

"Avery?"

I slammed my hands into the bed and jumped up from the pillow so fast it felt as if a gust of wind had smacked me straight in the face like a spatula to a pancake. I flipped over on my ass and grabbed my head just as the room started spinning. "
Uggg
." I needed a trashcan and I needed one quick.

"MA-MUH. MA-MUH! MAMA!" she called out again. That high-pitched voice of hers could've shattered glass given the pounding it was giving my eardrums.

"Avery?" Despite my stomach making noises I hadn't heard since giving birth eight years before, I tried like hell not to sound as if I was just about ready to keel over and vomit all over myself and the bed. Or die. "Avery?" I glanced across the room at my dresser and noticed the time on the clock. It was just about to hit six-thirty p.m., which meant that she had gotten out of school six hours before. I reached over on the nightstand and grabbed my cell phone. Normally when one of my parents are forced to pick her up in my absence, they call me right after to let me know she's safe and sound. But when I checked my phone this time, there wasn't a single missed call from them, before or after. In fact, I didn't have a single missed call from anyone all day, not even the school wondering where the hell I was. "Avery?" I called out again, panicked this time. "AVERY!" I dropped my phone to the floor and jumped up from the bed. "AVERY!" I raced for the door, screaming so hard and loud my throat felt as if a lit match had just been tossed inside. "AVERY!" I no longer gave a damn about my stomach or my head anymore. All I gave a damn about was getting to my child.

"Mama!"

"AVERY!"

"MAMA!"

I bolted down the hallway like a maniac, swung my head so hard around the corner that my neck went stiff, and in almost an instant, found my little girl calmly sitting in the middle of the floor surrounded by toys, clothes, shoes, dolls (
none of which belonged to her
) and... nothing else.

"Oh my God." It felt like I was in the Twilight Zone. "Oh. My God." My heart raced as my eyes frantically searched the room. Aside from an empty cabinet or two, the room itself was completely bare. The computer in the corner? Gone. The small television set that only worked if you turned the wires a certain way inside the box? Gone. The small loveseat, chair and tiny couch that aligned each plain white wall, all gone, gone, completely gone. "Oh my God."

I threw a hand over my chest in an attempt to lower my heart rate and stared down at my daughter, who was so wrapped up in dolls and toys that she hadn't even realized I was standing right beside her, let alone that I was currently losing my entire mind in wondering how the hell she had even gotten there in the first place.

"Avery!" I hollered out.

Her head dropped back and her small, brown features crinkled as she stared up at me. "Hi," she said just before returning to her toys. It was as if nothing was out of place for her, everything was the same and the only thing that was different inside that house at the moment was me. "What are you wearing?" she asked me, her voice piquing. “And why are you so out of breath?”

I looked down at myself and glowered.
Great
. "What I’m wearing is something I’ll never pass down to you. And I’m out of breath because you were calling out to me like your freaking hair was on fire. I’m lucky I didn’t break my neck trying to get in here.”

“Mama--”

“What are you doing here? Who brought you home? And where in God's name is all of our furniture?"

"The big bikers took it."

I flinched. "Say what?"

"The big bikers took it," she said again. "They said we had to sell it. And they brought me home from school too."

"In what?!"

"One of those trucks with the big anchors on the back."

"A tow truck.
God
." I grabbed my head as it started pounding again. "How were they able to get you out of school, Avery? The only people I have listed to come and pick you up in my absence are Gran and Pop-pop. Nobody else should be allowed to come in and snatch you out, which brings me to a question I shouldn't even have to ask you, but WHAT have I told you about getting into cars with strange people? Or anyone that you've never seen before?"

"But I've seen them before."

"What?"

"I've seen them before, at least one of them, I think. And they weren't strange to me," she said, keeping her eyes on her doll and braiding its hair. "They told me they were your friends and that we were going to live with them now so that we could be safe."

"
My. God
." I pressed my fingers as hard as I could against my temples without completely damaging them. "Where have you seen these men before, Avery?"

"Just around," she told me.

"Around where?"

She shrugged. "I don't know."

"
Jeez
." I took in a deep breath and let it out as slowly as I could to keep from screaming. "What exactly did these '
bikers
' look like when they came to get you from school this afternoon?"

"There were only two that came to the school," she said. "One of them was as big as a giant. He was bald with a check mark on the side of his head, like the Nike sign, and scars all over his hands, like he got into a fight with a knife."

"A check mark and scars. Wonderful, and the other one?"

"The other one had a long beard like Santa Claus, except the beard was black like pepper, just like his bushy eyebrows. And he had a patch over his eye. He let me look underneath it and told me somebody dug his eyeball out with a knife and tried to make him eat it."

"
My God -- GOD.
" I grit my teeth to keep from saying something in front of her that I knew I couldn't take back later. "And these are the men who brought you home?" I asked. She nodded again. "Were they also the ones who got rid of the furniture, or was it gone by the time you got home?"

"No, they moved it out with some other bikers while I was here."

I crossed my arms to keep from reaching out and shaking something. "And where are they right now? Do you know?"

"They're all outside."

"What?"

"They said they were going to wait for you to wake up and if you didn't, they'd come back in and get you."

"How long ago was that?"

She shrugged again. "I don't know."

"Damn it." I furiously stepped around her and moved over to the window leading to the front of the complex. When I split the blinds and peeked out, I saw a total of seven bikers sitting out in the front parking lot near their bikes, drinking beers, slapping each other on the back and head-butting each other as if they were on a football field and had just scored a final touchdown. "
Good Lord,
" I muttered. I dropped my hand and turned back to Avery. "Why didn't you come and wake me up the minute you got home?"

"I tried to but you wouldn't move."

I momentarily shut my eyes. "
Damn
." Reasons like this are why I stopped drinking altogether in the first place.

"And then the bikers told me to leave you alone so that you could rest, and so I did."

"
Them
you listen to, but when it comes to doing what
I
ask it's like trying to pull teeth from a newborn." I sighed. "What made you decide to call me now?"

"You were starting to stink and I thought you might be dead in there or something."

And that's what I get for allowing her 24-hour access to the Discovery Channel.

"Avery, what did these men say to you when they came to pick you up from school?"

"I told you," she droned, "that they were your friends and that we were--"

"Moving in with them, okay, but what did they tell your teacher, Mrs. Rhoades? I can't imagine that any sane person at that school would just let you walk out of there with a bunch of burly men covered in tattoos and piercings that they don't even know and have never seen before!"

"I don't know what they told her," she said. "One of them whispered something into her ear. And then her eyes got really big when she looked at me, and she sat back down. And then the principal came in the room and the other biker said something to him. And then
he
got really scared and said it was okay for me to leave with them."

I rolled my eyes back into my head and moaned. "
Uhh, God
."

They had been threatened by these men, hence the reason I hadn't received a single phone call about her being snatched from class in the first place. I knew in that moment that I would more than likely never be able to show my face around another parent-teacher meeting again, because of course, neither I nor my child would be invited back within even a five mile radius of that school. Then again, if they were too scared to even contact me about any of it when it happened, her getting out when she did was probably for the best.

I turned back to the window in search of a familiar face amongst that rowdy crowd of growls and leather, mainly the faces of Blue and River, the latter of which I immediately planned to chew up and spit out once I got him alone for even allowing all of this to go down in the way that it had. But each member wearing a cut (
including the one wearing the eye patch
), which upon closer inspection looked much thinner than the others as if it wasn't even real leather, had something written on a piece of white cloth sewn just above the pockets on the right side of the vest.

I squint to get a better look at one of them, then furrowed my brows when I had. "
Prospect
. Shit." None of them had any real authority because not a single one was an official member of the club. "
Shit, shit, shit.
"

"Mama--" she scolded.

"Sorry. When we get to our new place, I'll put a dollar in the swear jar."

"So we're really going?" she asked, her brown eyes sparkling with delight as her voice elevated in surprise and eagerness. She looked and sounded a hell of a lot more excited than she should've about living inside a clubhouse belonging to an outlaw motorcycle club. Then again, she had no clue as to what the hell we were actually in for in being there, not in the same way that I did.

I sighed. "Unfortunately baby girl, we don't have much of a choice." I spun back around and noticed her fiddling with another doll, ready to fix its hair next. I glanced back at the window and rattled my head. "I need to take care of something with these men out here. You stay inside and I'll be right back, okay?"

"Okay, mama."

"Get the phone and keep it nearby." She grabbed the phone from the couch and placed it in her lap. "I'll be right outside, but just in case, you know exactly who to call," I said. She nodded.

After straightening my clothes and checking my breath (
it was still awful, but I wasn't looking to impress a single man out there
), I headed out of the apartment and cautiously made my way downstairs to the men, where they continued to drink, belch, fart and laugh with each other as if they were nothing more than a pile of pigs waiting around for left over slop to line their troths.