When his gaze drops, I realize where my bound hands have drifted. The same place they’ve been drifting a lot lately, particularly when I’m anxious. He stares at my hands resting flat against my stomach, silently protecting the innocent baby growing there. After a long moment, his eyes lift to mine. “It doesn’t matter who plants the seed, only who nurtures it.”
My blood runs cold when he steps back and every pair of eyes in the room is drilling into me. They know the thing I wanted to keep secret. I stand there struggling to keep from having a panic attack. It seems as though nothing will keep Stripe from wanting me, claiming me, and forcing me to be his.
My father sounds disgusted when he speaks. “Brave, take her upstairs to get some rest. Cut the zip ties and make sure the doors and windows are locked down tight. We don’t have time to go chasing after her again.”
Brave nudges me along from behind. “You heard him. Get a move on.”
He takes me to a room upstairs. When he opens the door, I realize that it’s not a bedroom. It’s more like a big empty room with a long sofa and a table with snacks and water on it. He gives me a hard push over the threshold before taking out his pocketknife and cutting the zip ties.
“Sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up. You’ve caused us enough trouble.”
Rubbing the red skin of one wrist, I know exactly how to get even with my cruel brother. “The Hyenas did well tonight,” I tell him casually. “The plan was great. Spark’s plan, I mean. The fire, the smoke, and the timing were pure genius. Dad must be proud of him.”
Brave goes still. “What do you mean by saying it was Spark’s plan?”
“Wasn’t it? It was complicated and well-coordinated, just like all Spark’s plans. His intelligence is why dad refers to him as a bright spark, right?” I say innocently, pretending to be the dumb little sister who just doesn’t understand the biker world. I continue twisting the knife. “You were the muscle, Brave. You’re always just the muscle.”
“Time to shut that pretty little mouth of yours, sis. You don’t know what in ever-loving fuck you’re talking about.”
“Whatever you say,” I respond in a polite tone.
He slams the door closed and stomps back downstairs. Within seconds I hear him and Spark arguing loudly. A nice person would feel guilty about triggering a fight between the two of them. Unfortunately, my family has rubbed the niceness right off me over the years. In my mind, they fall squarely in the category of enemies at this point.
I go over and sit on the sofa, drawing my legs up underneath me. That’s when I start to spiral. I wrap both arms protectively around my waist and sit there shaking with anxietyand fear for I don’t know how long. I feel naked without Jinx’s property cut, like I’m missing the protection it extended to me.
Chapter 17
Jinx
We’re on the road, but it’s no leisurely ride, more like hunting at sixty miles an hour under the cover of darkness. We’re one long column, riding in pairs down county roads. It’s nearly four in the morning, and no other vehicles are in sight. It’s just us, the early morning mist hanging low to the ground and a crescent moon fading into morning. Sunrise will be in a little over an hour.
The only thing I care about is getting to my old lady as soon as fuckin’ possible. We got out the door pretty damn quick after the Hyenas left and are makin’ good time.
Striker normally stays back at the clubhouse during missions. He’s more valuable in his rig where he can support us using all his electronic equipment. He keeps an eye on everything and feeds us information through our earpieces in real time. His voice crackles through mine with an update. “The blue dot’s been static at the transport yard for nine minutes. I’ve got a drone in the air. There aren’t many brothers at the transport yard, at least not many that I see from the air. The building is pretty fuckin’ big though, so there’s no way to tell for sure. They’ve got brothers patrolling the grounds though.”
The Hyenas think everything is golden because we don’t know their location. We need to make use of our element of surprise because once they know we’re there, they’ll pull out all the stops to keep what they took.
“Talk us through the layout,” I say into my mic.
“I pulled the satellite map and the county plat while you were gearing up.” His voice turns pensive and I can see him looking over one of the maps as he talks. “I’m only seeing one large two-story building. Your old lady is likely on the second floor, since there’s no basement or outbuildings. The drone is picking up two guards on the gate, and who knows how many more are inside. There’s a service road behind the property, behind a tree line. There don’t seem to be any eyes on the back of the building.”
Slate states over the com, “Nobody watches the back of a place that they think is hidden from the world.”
Jasper enters the conversation. I can see him lifting his hand to press against his earpiece to hear better over the roar of his engine. We all do that.
“Then the back’s where we go in,” he says.
We increase our speed for the last few miles, riding hard and fast, with no headlamps. Then, a half mile out, Jasper’s hand comes up and we cut the noise entirely, rolling the final stretch on the service road quiet as a held breath. It’s the kind of approach that only works once on people who believe they can’t be found. I mean to make it count.
We gather in the tree line behind the building, rolling in one at a time to keep from drawing attention to ourselves in case anyone’s watching. We move forward and gaze through the chain-link, getting our first look at their setup. The yard is the messiest shit I’ve ever seen in my life. It looks neat at first, until you realize there’s no rhyme or reason to the vehicle placements. They have a couple of good floodlights, but they are pointed towards the stolen car stock, rather than at the building. Theyhave an overhead light on the front porch and another at the back dock.
After checking the perimeter, I’m pleased to see the fuckers haven’t alarmed or electrified their fence, so I cut it one link at a time as my club brothers stand by waiting patiently. They have the hearts of protectors and are fucking eager to get inside and help me look for my old lady. Once I’ve cut a brother-sized hole, we peel the loose fencing back and slip through one-by-one. Inside the lot, it’s easy to get lost in the maze of stolen cars. We use them for cover, moving steadily towards the building.
The rest fan out the way we always do. It’s a maneuver that’s worked well for us in the past and every brother knows it by heart. We take out the four brothers patrolling the grounds first and then jump the two at the gate just as they are noticing us on the property. We zip tie them and leave them where they dropped. None of them are seriously injured because finding Nora is a bigger priority than punishing their crew. We can kick their asses all over California anytime, and we probably will at some point.
At the building’s back door, I put my hand flat on the steel and feel the hum of a generator somewhere within. One power source. Nora told me that, weeks ago, about their other site. Their security runs off a generator, I find it.
“Striker. Their power’s running off a gennie, like the cannery we hit was.”
