He refused to give up and I wasn’t going to tell him to.
Not by a long shot.
The warehouse was swarming with rats when we pulled in. JD and Sean had two trucks pulled in and they were going through the cargo. Under normal circumstances, one of us should be over there supervising. This wasn’t normal circumstances. I knew where they would be questioning the pair, so that was where we went.
I still had their ID and phones. Though I had turned both phones off. I didn’t want them tracked. Jasper wasn’t actually the one running the interrogation. Nor was Kel.
Milo, however, was working one of the guys over with a steady kind of rhythm that had left the target sweating and bleeding. If he wasn’t pissing blood before this was over, I’d be surprised.
“Freddie,” Jasper said as soon as we walked in. “Don’t.”
I cut a glance to my right. Instead of his phone, he had his knife in his hand. “Do they know where Boo-Boo is?”
Doc moved to stand between Freddie and the targets. “We’re working on it. Put it away.” The command in his voice was steady. With Jasper and Doc focused on Freddie, I circled them and moved to where Kellan stood.
“Anything?”
He gave a shake of his head. “You have their phones?”
I handed them over before I pulled out the wallets. I eyed the guy and then the interior of the wallet as I flipped through the first one. “They’re running spare. Identification—Nate Marcus. Sounds fake.” The man’s retreating hairline and faint layer of fat over his muscle made him seem a soft target, but he had meat hooks for hands, and even as Milo worked him over, he fought against his groans or revealing his pain.
His companion was unconscious, dangling from his arms. At least one of his shoulders was dislocated. I passed Marcus’ wallet to Kellan then flipped open the second guy’s. Jordan Levi.
Nate Marcus and Jordan Levi.
They just didn’t sound real. I studied the license and it took me a minute, but I probably wouldn’t have noticed it without being on the look for something. It was a fake. A damn good one, but a fake.
They had cash, about five hundred between them. A couple of credit cards, also in their names. A pair of blank electronic keys for a hotel room. The car itself had been pretty bare of anything we could use, except for the trash in the back. Neither man had been particular in their habits where that was concerned.
Milo walked away from “Marcus.” He jerked his head toward the door and as one, all of us moved out to the office, with Jasper and Doc herding Freddie ahead of them. The last time I’d seen Freddie this agitated, he’d been strung out and desperate for a fix. He’d probably have sold his testicles if someone had offered him a hit.
No matter how far down the dark he plunged, Jasper would go in after him. So would the rest of us. That was what made us Vandals. In the office, with the door to the fridge sealed, Milo swept his gaze over us.
“These guys don’t know shit.” He walked over to grab a bottle of water off the desk, ignoring the blood on his hands and chest as he took a long drink. After, he said, “Where the fuck is Liam?”
“On his way,” Kellan said steadily, like he’d just spoken to him. He was flipping through the wallets. “We have their phones. I can go get them cracked.”
Milo nodded once, but then he focused on Freddie. “Why are you so convinced she didn’t want to go back?”
Not flinching under the weight of that heavy stare, Freddie lifted his chin. “Because I heard it in her voice. She’s a really good performer. Maybe the best. But she doesn’t want to go back to those people. Her home is here.”
The words landed like pebbles plinking into still water. Every single ripple shifted the mood in the room. Jasper’s expression was pure fury. Kellan’s had turned to stone. Doc’s had gone almost flat fucking unreadable. Freddie’s palpable agitation scraped against my already irritated nerves.
Why the hell had Dove not just called all of us? Or waited?
Because she knew we’d stop her. The soft voice in the back of my mind splashed icy reality onto the scorching heat of my anger. She didn’t want us to stop her.
Milo asked something else, but I wasn’t listening to him anymore. I was thinking back to the show. Sorting every single interaction I had with her, before she came to the clubhouse, and every single one after.
In the alley behind the theatre, there had been fear in her eyes when I caught up to them and relief when I got between them. I should have just snapped the guy’s neck then and there. Jasper wanted his pound of flesh for Dove. I respected that, but she would have been safer. Maybe she wouldn’t have gotten another concussion.
We wouldn’t have had to take her.
Then what…? She would have left with the show while we dealt with the body? Even if she reported us to the cops, she wouldn’t have known who we were and…and we wouldn’t have had her here. Wouldn’t have gotten to know her. Wouldn’t have been able to look after her while she healed.
While I should have moved faster and dealt with the son of a bitch right there and right then, Dove needed to come back here with us. She needed the time. Freddie was right, she was a hell of a performer though. Even after seeing how badly battered and bruised she was, it was almost impossible to reconcile her injuries with the performances she’d done. The liquid flow of her movements were in complete opposition to the damage she’d taken.
That said…there was no escaping her trauma. I’d seen it more than once. At Liam’s, here at the clubhouse, even in the bathroom when I’d asked her direct questions. She would evade those answers, even if she couldn’t evade the clenched fist of fear that would take her captive.
Eric abused her. Hurt her. Raped her. We knew that. The cocksucker admitted it before we finished cutting his dick off and shoving it down his throat. The vicious amount of pleasure I took from how we took him apart couldn’t replace the gut wrenching worry about how much she had suffered before and how talented she had been at hiding it.
Masking our real feelings, burying our pain, and pushing through the fear—that was something we’d all mastered early. Some of the guys were far better at it than I was, but how much had Dove endured to be so skilled? It was my third or fourth pass through the guy’s wallet when I found the second seam that opened. Inside was a slip of paper with a list of names.
Our names.
Doc’s was circled, but the rest of us were on here. Flipping the page over, I checked the back, but there was nothing there. Names only.
So, they were watching us.
“I think they know more than they’re saying,” I said abruptly, interrupting whatever conversation had begun to crackle between Doc, Jasper, and Milo. When I held up the paper, Doc’s eyes narrowed.
“That doesn’t tie them to Little Bit,” he said, almost grudging as he took the slip. “Just that they have a list of all of us.”
“Liam’s name is on there. He’s not a Vandal. Nor are you. At least—you haven’t been for a long time.” I wasn’t going to mince words. “Liam made his choices. You made yours. The only thing that binds all those names together is Dove.”
“And our past,” Milo corrected. “Don’t mistake Liam’s work for betrayal. Mickey had a right to make his choices, just like all of us do. That never changed who either was to the rest of us.”