At some point, I’ll process the fact I’ve found myself connected to the very life I tried to escape. But I read a book once, one of those super literary things that sell a bazillion copies. This kid starts as a miserable shepherd boy and goes off on all these fabulous adventures, but ends up as a shepherd boy again. Only this time, he feels free and happy instead of trapped and miserable. Maybe that’s me. Coming back to this dangerous life I never wanted any part of, only this time it’s by choice instead of being born into it.
Perhaps I should check out that book from the library and read it again.
I’ve been home for five minutes when there’s a knock at the door, and I wonder if Spark wrapped up early.
I jog down the stairs and fling the door open wide. “Hey—”
But it’s not Spark.
My heart doubles in speed, and a wave of nausea grips me. Faces in masks and a hand with a crystal-clear swastika tattoo tell me everything I need to know. I try to slam the door shut, forcing my entire body weight against it, but it’s no use—there are more of them than me, and each one is bigger.
They shove the door open wide before I have the chance to get out of the way. The force slams me back into the wall, my head hitting the mirror that hangs in my entry.
Stars dance in my peripheral vision, but I have to fight. I fumble for my jacket on the hook.
A raw scream leaves my throat as hands grab me. I’m dragged from my house, my hands still seeking what I need in my pocket.
They don’t say a word.
Nothing. Just the occasional grunt as I struggle and scream in their hold. I see two club prospects out on the lawn. Unconscious? Dead? I don’t know.
I find what I’m looking for. The little alarm Spark had given me the day I went to see Cillian. I press the button and pray that the distance and battery and connection all work.
My arm is wrenched back in its socket, the pain so sharp it hurts like a red-hot poker has been shoved into it. The jacket slips out of my braced hand.
I kick and thrash as I’m thrown into the back of the van.
Tape is placed over my mouth. It makes it hard to breathe. My nose is running from crying and screaming.
“Shut her up, for fuck’s sake,” someone says. A rag is dragged roughly across my nose as someone ties my hands behind my back. It smells strange. The world begins to tilt, and my last thought is hoping Spark knows where to start looking for me.
34
SPARK
“You sure about this?” Vex says as we get in the van at the clubhouse. “You don’t need to move in with the woman to look after her.”
I can’t help but laugh. “Six months ago, I would have said the same. Hell, even last month I thought Clutch was batshit crazy for hooking up with Gwen. But now, I get where he’s coming from. Iris gets me, and I get her.”
King and some of the others are sitting out in the early evening sunshine while they smoke and have a beer. And I feel lighter than I have in days.
Vex looks down at his watch.
“Fuck,” he curses, then opens his phone. “We got a possible problem,” he says.
“What’s up?” I ask.
“Irish’s alarm just went off. It could just be an accident. Like she forgot it was in there.”
My hearts races, even as I open my phone and look at the security footage. I go back five minutes, and see the van pull up. See them overpower the prospects. “Fuck. They got her.” I see her fight. I see her scream. I see the moment she screams my name. I can barely breathe. “Those neo-Confederate Klan fuckers have her.”
My world goes black for a moment. I can’t think, can’t speak, sure as fuck can’t formulate what to do next beyond keeping my heart beating.
Vex yells something. King and Clutch come running over.
“We gotta go,” Vex says.
And somehow those words shake me from stasis with a whoosh. The world comes flooding back in. “I need to get to Iris.”
“Wait,” Clutch says. “We’ll go with you.”
King is on the phone. I hear him bark Niro’s name, but I’m already on the way to my bike. Switch runs out of the clubhouse with a medical bag and throws it into the back of his truck. We leave at the same time, but I speed ahead of him.
In my rearview mirror, I see more bikes pour out of the lot.
“FUCK!” I yell into the air.
Stay strong, Iris. I’m coming for you.
I’m not like Saint, I don’t believe in God, but I find myself pleading with the universe, to anything cosmic that might hear, to keep her safe.
It feels like I’m swimming through tar. Every turn. Every light. Every car in front of me. Minutes take forever to pass, until I pull up in front of her house.
I notice Iris’s shoe on the lawn. And the footprints in the grass on either side of the path. Lots of them. “Fuck.”
Two prospects are slumped on the lawn. I press two fingers to the pulses at their neck. Both alive. One stirs at my action.
He panics for a moment, coiling away from me, before he comes around enough to realize where he is and who I am. “Fuck, Spark. They took her. We tried to stop them, but there were too many.”
Switch abandons his truck halfway on the curb. He runs up the steps. “How bad is it?”
“Both alive. Get details while I look inside.”
I dial her number.
“Hey, this is Iris. Sorry I can’t accept your call right now, but if you leave a—” I hang up. Her voice, there’s a joy and laughter to it. It’s as though someone is stomping on my fucking heart.
The mirror behind the door is shattered, and I almost puke when I realize it’s exactly at her head height. Strands of her hair are caught in the glass.
“Where the fuck is she?”
I close my eyes. That morning in Kabul, I picked myself up out of the dirt and did what had to be done. I didn’t grieve my friends, didn’t even let myself think about them being gone for days. Just dealt with what I had to. I try to find that place. The one where I don’t allow myself to process, just bottle it up.
I breathe. Deep. Box breathing like I was taught. Four-second inhale. Hold for four. Four-second exhale. Hold for four.
With every breath, I tell myself I’m going to kill those fuckers. With each exhale, I visualize Iris and me, sitting on the porch at the cottage, alive and uninjured when this is all over.
“We should go back to the club,” King says.
I open my eyes. “I’m not going to the fucking club. I’m looking for Iris.”
Clutch grips my shoulder, then tips his chin out toward the garden. I see Niro and Halo and Saint, and there is the roar of more bikes coming down the street. “We’re all with you. But we’re better when we’re organized.”
“You holding up okay, brother?” King asks.
“Those fucking supremacist trafficker scumbags have her, so no.”
King nods. “I get it. Felt the same when you told me Los Reyes had followed Clutch and Gwen last month.”
She may be Clutch’s old lady, but she was King’s twin first. I nod.
“They took her to get back at me for killing one of those guys. This is my fault. She doesn’t even have a patch, not an official old lady yet.”