Total pages in book: 154
Estimated words: 148220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 741(@200wpm)___ 593(@250wpm)___ 494(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 148220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 741(@200wpm)___ 593(@250wpm)___ 494(@300wpm)
Blowback vaults over the tailgate just as the truck starts pulling out. So almost everyone who makes decisions in this club is here. Thorne’s not, but I figure the VP is holding down the fort at home, ready to bail us out if shit goes south.
But that means we’re still missing one. “Where’s the prez?”
I assumed Saxon would be one of the first through that barn door.
“With Jenny,” Zoomie says quietly.
With his woman. But he wouldn’t have stayed away for some small reason. Something in Zoomie’s voice tells me this isn’t a reason I want to hear, though.
And I realize there’s someone else missing. “Red?”
Jenny’s father. And a man who is like an uncle to Anna and me. A man who’s been fighting lung cancer for months.
His face grim, Gunner nods. “He took his final ride.”
Not going out the way the cancer would have gotten him. Going out on his own terms.
My throat closes up. “Who was with him?”
“Thorne and Saxon, and all of the old timers.”
I should have been there. I should have fucking been there for him. Should have said goodbye.
But the Cage took that from me, too. “When do we hit the Iron Blood?”
Blowback says, “Soon.”
It can’t be enough. “We’ll have to keep a few alive so we can get to Papa. Fuckers who will talk. Maybe pick up some of the Eighty-Eight, too. Too bad there’s too many of those Nazis to put them all down.” The sound of a sharp indrawn breath has me glancing over at Cherry. I tug her gag from between her lips. “Who’s Papa?”
Her throat works before she replies with a rasping, “I don’t know.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not. I only ever heard them call him Papa.”
“Handlebar said he had professional security. Who were they?”
“I don’t know. I kept my head down and tried not to look at any of them.”
“But you know what Papa looks like?”
She bites her lip, her gaze searching mine. Then she shakes her head.
A lie for goddamn sure. And since what she’s saying is useless to me, I shove her gag back into place. She’s still saving her own skin. Right now, she’s more scared of Papa than she is of me.
That’ll change.
She glances at Gunner again—just a swift, wary glance before averting her gaze. Ah, fuck. I bark out a laugh.
I know why she keeps looking at him like that. “Cherry thinks you’re Strawman.”
“My brother?” He frowns at her. “Why?”
“She saw him with the Iron Blood. Then saw you later—and never realized there’s more than one asshole with such a girly mouth.”
Cherry makes a sound, an explosion of breath through her gag. Wide-eyed, she looks from Gunner to me, then back again. Then her face crumples like she’s about to sob, but it’s choking laughter that comes out instead.
She buries her face against her bent knees, shoulders shaking. And continues laughing, a hysterical edge rolling through it.
Shit. I’ve heard laughter like that before. That’s someone at the end of their rope. Months in this damn place—then in one night, witnessed guards being shot though the head, was attacked by Tusk and got her panties ripped off, then was gagged and thrown into a truck.
And some of that shaking seems more like shivering.
I grit my teeth, the urge to pull her into my arms and provide her with my own warmth a physical fucking need. But I won’t. She’s nothing to me.
A rolled-up sleeping bag and an insulated cooler tell me Gunner spent a day or two surveilling the compound before riding to the rescue. I drape the sleeping bag over Cherry’s legs and front, and as her shivers begins to ease, that hysterical laughter starts quieting into small hiccuping breaths.
As if she’s silently crying.
Fuck. Fuck.
I haul her sweet little ass into my lap. Her slender body stiffens against me, until I tell her gruffly, “We’ve got one blanket, and as soon as we hit the road and pick up speed, it’ll be freezing back here. So just settle down.”
She settles, laying her head against my chest, her warm breaths trembling across my bare skin. I tuck the sleeping bag in around her. This won’t be for long. We’re not riding to Oregon in the back of a pickup. Most likely we’ll rendezvous with rest of the club at a staging area somewhere within a fifty-mile radius of the barns.
Only fifty miles of holding her like this. Too damn long to be sitting here with all of her softness seeping into me. And not nearly enough time.
But we’ve got time enough for something else. A little storytime.
I look over to Gunner. “So what the fuck took so damn long?”
20
I wake up when everything seems to sway to the left and strong arms tighten around me. I’m warm. So warm. I can’t remember the last time I was. Disoriented, I don’t move.