“You need anything?” he finally asked.
I shook my head but realized he might not see it in the shadows. “I’m fine. Just needed some fresh air.”
“Was it too smoky inside?”
I sighed. After two punctured lungs, the doctors expected some breathing issues, but it wasn’t bad. There were nights when the barroom was full of weed clouds and I was suffocating, but the last time that had happened, I was only a year out of the hospital. “No, I’m good.”
“Your mom called three times today.”
“Fuck.” I reached inside my cut and clutched the smokes again, just to feel the pack in my fingers, then forced my hand out. There was no way in hell I was going to let her, of all people, kill me.
“She’s worried. You haven’t talked to her since Easter.” He pursed his lips.
“She’s overbearing,” I grumbled.
“You know what she’s like.” He kept his voice even and patient. He hadn’t been anythingbutsince I’d gotten out of the hospital.
“Yeah.” I squeezed my hand into a fist and watched as a pair of lights wound down the rutted dirt lane through the junkyard that surrounded the clubhouse. As the vehicle got closer, I recognized Undertaker’s van, which he pulled up in front of theline of bikes. Lee, Undertaker’s giant boyfriend, jumped out of the passenger side and rushed around to the back, yanking open the doors.
I stepped forward when Undertaker came around from the other side and hopped up into the back. He was so much slimmer and shorter than Lee that seeing them together always had me smiling.
There was a muffled yell, not loud enough to alert anyone inside with the pumping music and fucking happening. I frowned.
When Undertaker dragged the prisoner out of the back, Lee helped steady the gagged and blindfolded man. I stepped closer, my gaze narrowing on the rope Undertaker had obviously tied around the prisoner’s wrists. No one could quite do it the way he did. I was close enough to see the faint outline of the Demons patch on the back of the man’s jacket as Undertaker hauled him toward the small metal building where the sickest shit we did to our enemies inevitably took place. Every screw had been turned by the hands of a club member. The ramshackle top looked like some sort of storage shed, but we’d dug down and created a space where nightmares went to live.
Curiosity had my feet moving, following Lee and Undertaker toward the pile of rusted metal that covered the entrance to our torture room. PD was right behind me, and I didn’t know if it was because he was feeling nosy, too, or if he wanted to keep an eye on me, but I didn’t care either way.
“Who’s this?” I asked when Undertaker handed Lee the prisoner while he grabbed sheets of metal from the floor, throwing them to the side to reveal stairs.
Undertaker barely gave me a glance, focused on what he was doing. He was the only one in the club who hadn’t asked me how I was, but I hadn’t missed the way his dangerous stare followedme sometimes, watching with a calculation I couldn’t begin to understand.
Lee held a flashlight in his hand and waved it toward me. “Hey, guys.”
When Undertaker had the metal gone, he turned toward us. “Demon, obviously.” The light shone across his profile when Lee flashed it in his direction and the feral grin on his ghostly face made me shiver. “Demon is on the menu tonight, boys. Do you have a preference? I personally prefer the meat well done.”
The Demon whimpered behind a dirty cloth gag.
The stairs that led down were steep, but that didn’t stop Undertaker from grabbing the Demon’s upper arm and pushing him. The prisoner tumbled and landed on his back with a pained groan, and then Undertaker snatched the flashlight and shone it right into the Demon’s eyes as he followed. We went after him. The stark lights in the small room switched on.
“Who is he?” I asked again, blinking at the sudden flood of light.
Stepping closer to the scum on the ground, I frowned at him. He was oddly familiar, his face angular and handsome. His jaw was square and there was a small scar under the right side of his mouth. His forehead was already covered in blood from a gash closer to his hairline, and the red liquid leaked into his dirty blond hair.
Undertaker stepped forward until he was well in my personal space, his breath flittering across my face. His blue eyes gleamed with excitement and his black lipstick was already smeared. He must’ve had fun with Lee. He always got horny around torture, so it was probably right after they caught this loser.
“You don’t recognize him?” Undertaker asked slowly.
PD stepped around me and strode closer, crouching beside the prisoner. His jaw was tight, the veins in his temple popping. “This is one of the fuckers who rammed into us. He wasJamison’s buddy. He kept me busy while Jamison knocked Will off the road.”
Shock was a punch to the gut and my mouth popped open. “Seriously?”
Undertaker teased a knife from his pocket and flipped it open, swinging it around in his fingers like it wasn’t a blade sharp enough to give a good shave. He motioned at Lee, who nodded obediently and grabbed the Demon, pulling him to his feet with little effort. He dragged him over to a stained wooden chair and shoved him down before he went to work tying him up. The prisoner groaned and dropped his head forward.
“Yeah,” Undertaker said with a shrug. “We’ve known who he is for a while.”
“Why didn’t you act earlier?” PD snapped. It was the first passion I’d heard in his voice since this entire thing had happened. “Will deserves revenge oneveryoneinvolved. This guy shouldn’t have been walking around living his fucking life foryears.”
Undertaker’s mouth twisted into a sly smirk. “Because when we were doing recon, we saw this Demon, here, talking to a special someone.”
