Total pages in book: 37
Estimated words: 34939 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 175(@200wpm)___ 140(@250wpm)___ 116(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 34939 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 175(@200wpm)___ 140(@250wpm)___ 116(@300wpm)
“He tell you to hurt her?”
Caleb’s lips tried to turn up into a smile, but he was too scared to pull it off. “Just said to convince her to keep her mouth shut or she’d get more of whatever we did to her. Said as long as she was alive, he didn’t care.”
I glanced at Blaze. His expression was hard. Angry. “Right.”
“We wasn’t gonna hurt her, man!”
“Uh-huh. That’s why she’s runnin’ as hard as she could go, barefoot and naked, begging two fuckin’ scary, big-ass bikers like us to help her.” Blaze snorted. “You believe that shit, right Eagle?”
“Sure. Happens to me all the fuckin’ time.” I glanced at the girl. She was huddled as small as she could get, her knees under the T-shirt and her arms clasped around them. “She’s scratched up and has a bruise on the side of her face.” I looked back at the guys. “She gonna have bruises anywhere else on her body?”
“How’m I s’posed t’ know!” Mick yelled at me, struggling against Blaze now. “She probably got a bunch of bruises before we got her. We never done nuttin’ to her.”
The girl still stared wide-eyed at us, not moving a muscle other than to breathe. Didn’t take a rocket scientist to know she was terrified.
“Right.” Blaze brought his fist back, then connected with Mick’s nose. Blood splattered out both sides of his fist and the guy screamed.
“What’s the matter, Mick?” Blaze asked, getting right up in the guy’s face. He still held Mick by the throat. “Can dish it out but can’t take it?”
“I didn’t do anything!” he screamed.
I looked back at the girl still huddling in the grass by the chain link fence. “He hit your face, darlin’?” Her eyes got wide, and she looked back and forth between Mick and Caleb, obviously not sure what to say. “Look at me.” My voice was hard, brooking no argument. She obeyed the instant the words were out of my mouth, but her gaze immediately went back to the two men she’d been running from. “Nope. Eyes on me, honey.” Surprisingly, she obeyed. “That’s good. Keep your eyes on me. You good?”
She didn’t move for several seconds, then she nodded her head almost imperceptibly.
“Good. Now, tell me. Did they hit your face? Put that bruise and scratch there?”
One tear streaked from her eye down her cheek. She ignored it but nodded her head again. Stronger this time.
“What happened?” Brick approached the gate with Atlas in tow.
I shoved Caleb away from me, scowling at him. He knew better than to try and take off. Kid was starting to cry now. The other one looked disgruntled but wasn’t fighting. For now. Personally, I was hoping that’d change.
I pointed to the girl. “She was runnin’ from these two twits. Says they’re the ones who hit her.”
Brick glanced at the girl, then back at the twits in question. “What’s their story?”
“Claim the girl’s dad paid them to hold onto her a while. Instructions were not to kill her, and to convince her to keep her mouth shut about something. Ain’t sure if it was this incident or somethin’ else.” I was so angry I was barely holding on to my control. The only thing that kept me from unleashing hell on these two punks was the girl huddled by the fence. I was afraid more violence would break her.
“Yeah, but I think they’d’ve done it just for the thrill of it.” Blaze shook his head. “They ain’t exactly what I’d call wholesome young men.”
“They got more women other than you, girl?” Brick’s voice was gruff and angry. It was easy to see he was out for blood with this. Iron Tzars tried to keep a low profile, but we also protected the people in our territory as best we could. Which meant predators in the community didn’t live long, their bodies never found.
Again, she shifted her gaze to the two men who’d been chasing her. When she looked back at me this time, her gaze clung to mine. “Yes,” she breathed out. “There were two others. Mistakes.”
“Were?” Atlas barked out the question and she flinched, shrinking in on herself before nodding. “They get away?”
“No.” She touched her lips with her fingertips, like she was trying to keep her mouth shut but seemed helpless to not answer our questions. “They…” She swallowed, shaking her head slightly, a sob escaping her. “They’re dead.”
“Mistakes?” Brick was trying to rein it in, but he was as furious as the rest of us. His barked question not only made the girl flinch but shrink in on herself.
“Hey,” I said, softening my tone. “Remember? Eyes on me.” I approached her and crouched down so I wasn’t towering over her. “What do you mean ‘mistakes,’ Brick?”
“Did they kill the women accidentally or did they mean to kill them?”