Rogue (Dead Man's Ink #2) (16 page)

 
Yeah, I can get this done.
 

I know he won’t agree to leaving me here with her, though. Even if he did think I was capable of making her talk all by myself, his conscience wouldn’t let him. He’d never ask me to do something he wasn’t prepared to do himself. That’s how we’ve ended up in this situation so many times.
Together
.

Maria Rosa stirs again. She makes a delirious, gurgling kind of sound at the back of her throat, and then her head lolls back, eyes finally shuttering open. Rebel clenches his jaw, readying himself. This is not going to be fun for anyone involved, but he’s angry enough right now that it won’t trouble him as much as usual.
 

“Good sleep, Mother?” he growls. Slowly, he begins to pace around her in a circle, wrapping the torn piece of rag around his fingers over and over again. “You’re planning on gracing us with your presence, I see.”

Maria Rosa’s pupils dilate, desperately trying to focus on her surroundings. She’s very clearly having problems, though. She’s lost a lot of blood. And she was hysterical before that anyway. God knows where they were before they came burning out of the desert, but something serious obviously went down. Serious enough to end Rico, anyway. Rebel told me about the last time he saw Maria Rosa in Vegas—that she and Rico put on quite a show for Carnie. She fucked Rico right in front of them. Even back in Colombia, it was fairly plain that Rico was in love with her. It was only a matter of time. The woman can never resist a man who fawns over her, no matter if she’s attracted to him or not. She’ll fuck a guy just to make him purr. From the show she put on as Rico was dying, however, I wouldn’t be surprised if she actually had some form of feelings for the guy. Not real feelings, of course. She’s not capable. But some sort of…
tolerance
for him. More than she ever felt for me, that’s for sure. She repeatedly said she was in love with me, but you don’t attempt to stab someone you’re in love with to death. At least not in my limited experience.

She blinks drunkenly up at Rebel, and everything seems to hit her all at once—Rico dying, threatening Sophia…she probably remembers Trader Joe’s and the heat we pulled from the DEA last, because an ashen, gray color sweeps across her face, turning her into a ghost.
 

“Oh, my, my,” she whispers. Her words are slurred but still audible. “I suppose this is quite ironic, no?”

“Not really,” Rebel replies. “I’d say it was more…
karmic retribution
. Do you believe in karma, Mother?”

“Only the bad kind.” She leans forward and spits on the floor—blood and saliva mixed together. “I’m guessing you’re very angry with me, my love.”

Rebel laughs. He tips his head back and howls so loud I’m sure people in town can hear him. “You could say that. Yes, I’m just a
little
bit mad with you. Can you blame me, though? I mean, you sent men in to a grocery store wearing Widow Makers’ cuts and you had them kill a whole bunch of innocent people. That wasn’t very nice, was it?”

Maria Rosa rolls her eyes. “It was a warning. Nothing more. The cops were never going to charge you. That’s why I had that fat one wear the president’s cut. The police would do a little digging and pull up the club’s details, see your handsome face and know it was the wrong guy, and they would figure it out. That’s why I chose Los Angeles not New Mexico, you spoiled little shit.”

“
I’m
the spoiled little shit?” Rebel grinds his teeth. I just stand there, leaning against the wall, waiting. At some point one of them is going to drag me into this, but until then I’m quite content sitting it out on the sidelines. Rebel shakes his head, scowling at Maria Rosa.
 

“You’re petulant, and you have the stones to call
me
spoiled? I came to you for help in good faith, and now look at where we are.”

“We are here because you have no fucking sense of humor, Rebel. We’re here because I messed up your pretty girlfriend’s hair. Kind of pathetic, don’t you think? She’s still pretty. She still has all of her hair. Even though she killed Rico.”

It was plain to see that Rico was on borrowed time when they pulled up in those cars, but trust Maria Rosa to see it that way—Sophia didn’t save him, therefore she killed him. “There will be…consequences for that,” she wheezes.
 

“Oh? Consequences? You really think you’re getting out of here alive?”

“I do. I don’t think you’re a cold-blooded killer, Rebel. More’s the pity. I would respect you more if you were, I think.”

There’s only so much of this baiting Rebel will take before he eventually does snap. I’ve only seen it once before, and it was messy and brutal, and it took three weeks to get him to calm down afterward. If we can avoid that outcome, that would be great, but Mother loves to wind a guy up. She teased and tormented me for hours and hours at a time. Difference is, I handled it. Rebel will wrench her head off before he puts up with this much longer.
 

He slides his hands into the pockets of his jeans, looking around the room like he’s never been in here before and all of this is new to him. Like we haven’t had these kinds of conversations plenty of times before, with plenty of different people. This is the first time we’ve had a ‘chat’ with a woman, but then again Maria Rosa hardly counts. She loves to skin people, for fuck’s sake. She’s wielded the blade herself more times than any of us can count.
 

Rebel walks over to the container filled with water and plunges the rag he’s holding into it, so that his hand comes up running water everywhere. There’s no showmanship, no bravado. No drawn out production over it. He knows it’s pointless trying to scare Maria Rosa, just like I do. This won’t be about terrifying her into telling us everything she knows about Hector. This will be us bending her to our will, and then when bending doesn’t work, breaking her. And
then
she’ll tell us.
 

That undoubtedly makes us evil people, but this is a very unique situation. Maria Rosa really fucked up with that stunt she pulled. She should have gone back to Colombia and continued trafficking her blow. Threatening Rebel and then framing the club? Yeah, that was never going to end well.
 

“Open wide,” he tells her.
 

“I’m not normally so eager to please, but…whatever you say, my love.” Maria Rosa opens up, unflinching, unwilling to show that she’s even slightly afraid. Sophia reminds me of her a little, in a way. While Soph is admittedly a little more intimidated by our fucked up world, she wears this look of defiance wherever she goes, like she’s ready to throw down should the need arise. I respect that about her.

Rebel jams the rag into Maria Rosa’s mouth. He then gestures for another one from me. I wet it in the container and hand it over. That goes into her mouth, too. And then another. And another. He’s hitting her with this hardcore. She really won’t be able to breathe in between rounds of water being poured into her mouth, but it doesn’t look like Rebel cares. He kicks out Maria Rosa’s feet from underneath the chair and grabs her by the ankles, pulling her down so that her head is tipped back. The position looks sexual, especially with Rebel standing with one leg either side of hers, but it’s not. He stands like that in order to lift up the heavy water container without tearing open his stitches anymore. Maria gives Rebel a dead-eyed smile around all of the material he’s forcing into her mouth.
 

He smiles back, holding her face in both of his hands. “What happened to you, Mother?” he asks. He genuinely looks like he wants to know, though there’s a touch of madness to him. “Something fucking
terrible
must have happened to you.” She looks up at him, not even attempting to speak, not even attempting to answer his question.
 

He tilts the water canister, and we begin our adventure.
 

No matter who you are, no matter how strong your will, if someone pours a gallon of water into your mouth when it’s stuffed full of rags, you’re going to choke. You’re going to splutter. You’re going to half drown. Maria Rosa does all of these things as Rebel pours and breaks, pours and breaks with a grim efficiency.

Predictably, she doesn’t tell him a fucking thing. Eventually she loses consciousness. Rebel straightens, glaring down at her limp, soaked body, and shrugs his shoulders. “Well. I guess that was a pointless exercise.”
 

He sounds way too calm. Frankly, it’s a miracle that he’s functioning on any rational level at all. “You’re not gonna wake her up?”

Rebel grunts, tips his head back, closes his eyes, and then draws in a deep breath. “No. No point. If I carry on with this shit, I won’t be able to stop until she’s fucking dead.”
 

At least he knows this. That in itself means he’s keeping his shit together. Kind of. “Can you stay with her?” he asks. “When you leave, have Carnie come sit down here and watch both rooms. Make sure Mother and Dela Vega are behaving themselves. In the meantime, do what you have to. Find out what she’s doing in New Mexico, and why the hell she thought it was a good idea to come here.”

“Has to have something to do with Ramirez, right?”

Rebel slowly shakes his head. “Maybe not. Remember that DEA agent she wanted me to sort out for her?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, it took me a while to put the pieces together, but the DEA agent that picked me up yesterday…?”

“Lowell? She’s the same agent?
No way
.”

“Way.”

“What are the chances?”

“Pretty high, actually.” Rebel rolls his neck, opening his eyes. He looks at me, the cold blue of his irises almost the color of ice. “She’s in town because of Ramirez. He and Maria Rosa are the two biggest drug importers into the United States. It’s normal that the same unit would be investigating them both. She must be the big, swinging dick, this Lowell. She’s a viper for sure. Find out what you can about her from Maria Rosa when she wakes up. In the meantime, perhaps you could dig the bullet out of her, please? I don’t feel like finding her dead tomorrow.” He cocks his head to one side, surprise chasing across his face. “Weird. I actually mean that.”

TWELVE

SOPHIA

I don’t go to Bron’s funeral.
 

I didn’t know her, and besides…if I were to look at her oddly shaped figure, wrapped up in layer upon layer of white sheets, I’d know it looked odd because the poor woman is without her head, hands and one of her feet. I’m doing my best not to recall the image of her hanging by her one remaining foot as it is. And the club still doesn’t know or trust me. A funeral is a deeply personal event. I don’t want to intrude.
 

I spend my time reading in the cabin instead. Pretending to read. Really, I’m trying not to be hyper aware of the fact that Raphael is so close. It does not feel safe with him no more than a hundred feet away. Rebel assured me he was tied to a freaking chair, that there’s no way for him to get to me, but the hairs on the back of my neck keep standing on end every time I hear the cabin settle.
 

Later, when Rebel returns from mourning with his club, he tells me to grab a coat and follow him. For the first time since he came and collected me from Julio’s compound, he tells me to climb on the back of his Ducati and hold onto him tight.

When I was a kid, maybe about seven or eight, Dad took me to see Santa Claus at Christmas. He took me to an expensive department store, the kind that hire genuine white-haired old men with real beards—men who didn’t feature on any sex registers. My father sat me on Genuine Santa’s knee, and he told me to tell the old man everything.
 

Santa had gentle brown eyes, the eyes of a Labrador or a Golden Retriever. When he asked me what I wanted more than anything in the world, I told him I wanted to be just like my big sister. My parents loved her more. She got all the best presents. She was really smart, so she understood what our father was talking about half the time. I wanted to be just like Sloane.

I felt that way for a long time. I was about sixteen before I realized that the eternal quest to Be Like Sloane was a futile one, and it was just as well being Alexis as it was being anyone else. Better, in fact, because being myself required very little effort, and being Sloane took so much concentration that I couldn’t concentrate on anything else.
 

I think about what Sloane would or wouldn’t do a lot, though. I’m think about what she would do now, as Rebel places his hands over my mine, wrapping his fingers around the trigger of the gun I’m holding. The gun he told me to take hold of back in the storage room in the bar.
 

In the distance, somewhere out toward the highway and civilization beyond, all that remains of the daylight is a hazy pink band, burned orange where it meets the horizon. The sky overhead is darkening with every passing minute, revealing a deep, rich blue, scattered with the pinprick of stars.
 

“Hold it like this. Make sure you keep your finger straight along the length of the gun up here. Don’t curve it around the trigger just yet,” Rebel tells me.
 

“This what they teach you in Motorcycle Gang 101?” I’m full of snark, since he dragged me out of his cabin in the dusky night air and refused to tell me where we were going or why. I shouldn’t have been surprised that he would lead me out into the middle of nowhere and want to teach me how to shoot a gun.
 

Little does he know I can already fire a gun perfectly well. Dad taught me when I was a teenager, the same way he taught Sloane. I keep this information to myself. Having Rebel’s chest pressed up against my back, feeling his warm breathing in my ear, is too nice to pass up. It feels wonderful, actually. I lean back into him, feeling him tense and then ease at the contact.
 

“No,” he tells me. “Not motorcycle gang 101. Military School. Very different organization, I assure you, sweetheart.”

It slips my mind from time to time that Rebel even went to Military School. And then I remember the dozens and dozens of pictures on his father’s wall, and it seems entirely normal that the man standing at my back fought for his country and defended his people. Being a protector is second nature to him.