“No,” I screamed loudly. “No.”
I felt the blood as he pulled me past the door onto the carpet of the hallway.
“What’s going—” one of my unfortunate neighbors asked.
Reaper shot him.
Another thud.
But I was too preoccupied with the first.
I’d opened my eyes when Reaper dropped me in the door.
I was laying a foot away from him, his sweet brown eyes empty, his tongue hanging out of his mouth, but not in his usual happy way.
Reaper had shot him in the back of his neck.
But facing me like he was, if his eyes hadn’t been open, he almost looked asleep.
“Hero,” I groaned through the sobs spilling endlessly through my mouth. “Hero, no.”
I clutched at his fur, rubbing my fingers through the still warm, utterly familiar strands and tried to memorize everything about him.
“No!” I screamed at the top of my aching lungs when Reaper pushed the neighbor and then leaned over to yank me up, gun at the center of my spine just under the base of my neck.
If he shot me there, I’d die of paralysis.
For one, horrible minute, I didn’t think that would be so bad.
The last piece of my heart had just died on the floor of my cursed apartment.
Was there a reason to fight?
Reaper dug that gun into my back then pulled the door shut so it dislodged Hero’s body, sliding it across the blood-soaked floor carelessly.
Fury ignited in my blood and fight surged back through my body.
Reaper wanted to kill me.
But if I was going to die tonight, I’d do it trying to kill him.
Danner
I was already on the way when I got the call from Renner.
Reaper’d evaded arrest and gotten to her.
Using her fucking mother to do it.
Renner had heard the entire exchange on Harleigh Rose’s cell phone after it dropped from her hand when he busted in.
It had been two weeks since I’d seen my rebel Rose. Two weeks of painful recovery, too many crazy conversations with the crazy-ass, absurdly charming Garro family, and two weeks of living with the knowledge that my Rosie was suffering for what she’d done.
But Garro and I had talked about it just as I’d discussed it with Renner and we’d decided. Harleigh Rose’s safety hinged on that fact that Berserkers MC thought I was dead and she had cut all ties with her father. We couldn’t just go barging in, alpha male-style ready to save the day.
So, we’d waited until Harleigh Rose did in two months what I’d been trying to do for three years. We waited until she took out the club and Renner gave us the all clear.
Only now, it was Harleigh Rose who wasn’t in the clear.
I revved the engine, flipped on the lights and called the man who was trailing behind me on his bike.
“Garro, Reaper’s got her,” I snarled into the phone. “Keep close behind me, I’m breaking the limits.”
“Where the fuck would the fuckin’ fuck take her?” Garro growled.
I drummed my fingers on the wheel, mind turning over the sheaves and sheaves of information I’d amassed on Berserkers MC and their Prez over the last three years.
“He’s got women. Last one used to own a storage facility, name’s Jade Yeller. I’ll call my unit and get them to pull up anything useful.”
“Fuck that, callin’ Curtains. He’ll find the shit ’fore your cops and what you told me ’bout what went down, from what I know of this fuckin’ motherfucker, we don’t got time to mess around here.”
Then he hung up.
I checked in my rearview that he was close then pressed my foot harder on the gas.
If Reaper had her, he’d kill her.
There was no doubt in my mind.
He’d ‘killed’ me, and most recently according to my friends in the force, he’d killed Wrath.
Another biker with a soul I would have liked to have a beer with.
He’d kill her, but the question that haunted me was if he’d rape her.
He was nearly cultish about his obsession with sharing women, and I’d felt his rage when Harleigh Rose had refused to let herself be degraded by multiple Berserker men.
There was no doubt he’d be furious enough to do it himself now.
It should have been another half an hour into the city center, but the glow of blue Vancouver city lights swallowed us up fourteen minutes after I hung up the first call.
“Hold On Storage,” Garro said when I picked up his call. “W Third Avenue and Fir.”
I gunned the engine.
Minutes later, we were there.
I grabbed my gun even though I knew I’d be a lousy shot with my arm, and got out to meet Garro. We checked the perimeter of the building, no lights, no noise, and decided on a game plan.
The warehouse was fuckin’ empty.
Curtains gave us another location a few blocks away.
Nothing.
Ten minutes later.
No Reaper, no Farrah. No Harleigh Rose.
We were arguing about what to do next—I wanted to call the cops and he wanted to wait for The Fallen to descend from the mountain—when Garro’s phone rang again.
“Yo,” he said, then froze.
My gut clenched. If it was news that they’d found Harleigh Rose in any other condition than perfectly fucking healthy, I was going to lose my shit.
Garro flipped his phone into his palm to put it on speaker. “Speak while you can, motherfucker. Soon’s I find you, you’re a fuckin’ dead man.”
“You for the girl,” Reaper’s voice came through the phone, sending rage through me so violently, it felt like I’d touched a live wire. “That’s the deal.”
Garro looked up at me, eyes dark in the dim street lights. “Done.”
Reaper laughed. “Always such a fuckin’ pussy.”
“You got daughters?”
“I got daughters and sons a-fuckin’-plenty. Wouldn’t lay down my life for any goddamn one ‘a ’em.”
“Difference ’tween you an’ me,” Garro said quietly, quiet because he was trying to control the revulsion in his tone.
“Difference ’tween you an’ me is, I got your fuckin’ kid. You get here in ten minutes, she’s alive, after that, make no promises.”
“Where the fuck are you?” he growled.
Reaper laughed again. “The scene of her fuckin’ crime.”
Zeus hung up, an animal noise of frustration in his throat, but I was already moving back to the ’Stang.
“Take it you know where that cryptic asshole meant,” he called out, stalking to his bike.
“Yeah,” I said. “Port of Vancouver.”
Harleigh Rose
I was tied up and gagged.
Farrah had been displeased about it, but then changed her tune when Reaper agreed to use two of her pretty silky scarves to bind my hands and feet, one pressed over a sock stuffed in my mouth. She had me sitting up at the desk, chattering at me as she painted her nails a pink she called “Crushed Hearts.”
Wrath lay in the corner of the room, and I didn’t know if he was breathing. Only that it looked like he’d been there for a while and the carpet all around him was stained with blood.
“Reaper’s gonna kill your daddy,” she went on, pausing in her manicure duties to snort another line of coke off the table beside her nail kit. “And I know you’ll get all righteous about it, but you’ll realize he deserved it. He abandoned you to go to prison for his little slut, and now he’s left you again. Reaper’ll do what he needs to do and then we’ll go somewhere new.”