“Think me and Em are gonna head out this afternoon,” he said.
“What, not enough to move her four hundred miles away from me, now I don’t even get to see her for the weekend?”
He frowned and shook his head.
“Not like that—she’s got cramps, feelin’ sick. It’s been smooth sailing so far, but I want her home and in bed.”
I felt something tighten in my chest.
“Let’s take her in to the ER,” I said. “Better not to fuck around with this shit.”
Hunter snorted.
“Yeah, that’s not gonna happen. I already suggested it and she laughed at me. She says she’s fine, she went off to get a pedicure with the rest of the girls, but I think she needs to rest, maybe go see her midwife on Monday. We stay here, she’ll wear herself out tryin’ to do everything with everyone.”
“I hear you,” I said, although I hated him for it. “Better be safe. Keep me posted, okay?”
“You got it.”
“Thanks.”
He started down the stairs, the Devil’s Jacks colors on his back taunting me. Asshole.
Asshole who takes care of our little girl, Heather reminded me.
I had to give her that one.
Still didn’t like him.
CHAPTER TWELVE
LONDON
“Admit it,” Em said, narrowing her eyes at me. “I was right about the color.”
I looked down at my feet and wiggled my toes, which were now painted hot pink. I wasn’t a hot-pink kind of person, and the toe bling was almost beyond my comprehension … but I had to give her credit.
“You were right,” I admitted. “It looks fantastic. I always go for the traditional look. Never would’ve tried it if you hadn’t bullied me into it.”
She grinned and I laughed, taking a drink of my iced coffee. Me, Darcy, Em, Dancer, Marie, and Sophie had all taken off for the mall after breakfast in search of the perfect pedicure. Surprisingly, Maggs Dwyer had met us there—apparently she’d been Bolt’s old lady for years but had dumped his ass recently. I got the distinct impression he’d done something horrible to her. The women were all clearly pissed at him, but they didn’t offer any details and I didn’t ask. Ignorance is bliss and all that, because I still had to work for the guy at Pawns.
I wasn’t totally comfortable with my brightly painted nails, but if nothing else they were fun and playful. My toes looked like they’d been dipped in a vat of flamingos. Make that flamingos on fire, with bright red accents and brilliant sparklies.
Shiny.
“Ladies, this has been fantastic, but I’d better get going because I have to work this afternoon,” I said reluctantly, standing up from the table we’d taken over in the food court. “I just hope I don’t gack my nails while I’m at it.”
“Pisser,” Em said, pouting prettily. “I was hoping we could go shopping until the men finish their Top Secret Important Biker Business.”
“Maybe tomorrow?” I asked, flattered that she’d invite me along. Em sighed.
“It’ll have to be another time,” she said. “I think we’re headed home this afternoon. I’ve been cramping a little—no big deal—but Hunter’s all worked up about it. He’s terrified I’m going to break or something.”
She rolled her eyes and we all laughed. Then I waved good-bye and headed out to my van.
The first hint something was wrong was the open driver’s-side window. I never left my van open. (Not that I had anything valuable in it, but I carried enough equipment and cleaning chemicals in the back that I worried some little kid might get in there and get hurt. My insurance agent had spent forty-five minutes three years ago explaining the concept of business liability to me, and I’d been irrationally nervous ever since. The man was a sadist. He should’ve worked as a high school guidance counselor, because not one of those kids would’ve been brave enough to have sex after a sit-down with him.)
The second red flag was a business-size manila envelope sitting on the seat. A white mailing label had been stuck to the front, but instead of an address, one word had been printed in large, black letters.
“Open.”
In a movie, this is where the bomb squad gets called out. But it didn’t look big enough for a bomb, and I lived in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. We’d already used up our entire town’s annual drama quotient on my house. I reached down, my fingers trembling, and picked it up. A black smart phone slid out.
It came to life—a Skype request for videoconferencing.
I fumbled for a minute, then managed to press the accept button. Jessica’s face appeared on the phone, her eyes swollen with tears. A purple bruise darkened her cheek. Oh shit oh shit oh shit …
“Loni?” she asked, her voice tight and strained. I leaned heavily against the van, my legs turning to Jell-O.
“Jessie, what’s going on?”
“I’m in some trouble,” she whispered. “Mom’s friends are here with me and they want to talk to you. Please listen to them. I think they’re going to hurt me more if you don’t.”
With that, someone grabbed the phone out of her hand and jerked it away. The image swayed, giving me glimpses of concrete and men wearing dark masks. Then it stilled, focusing on Jessica’s arm. A man’s gloved hand held it down, spreading out her fingers across what had to be a butcher block. Then a giant knife came into view—no, that thing was more like a machete. It flashed down and then Jessica’s screams came pouring through the phone’s tiny speakers.
A terrible fist clutched my chest, cutting off my breath and stopping my heart.
They’d sliced off her little finger.
I could see it sitting right there on the block, and it wasn’t attached to her body anymore!
Blood was gushing and Jess was screaming and somewhere in the background a man laughed, but my eyes would only focus on that little pink hunk of flesh, complete with sparkling gel nails that had recently been filled. I had a sudden, discordant vision of Jess and Amber getting manicures together. Laughing. Maybe grabbing something to eat before they came home and Amber handed over her beautiful daughter to a fucking psychopathic madman! I had no fucking doubt this was Amber’s work.
What kind of animal cuts off a child’s finger?
The picture abruptly disappeared, switching to audio. I put the phone to my ear, wondering if I’d imagined the whole thing. My body felt distant and shaky. Shock? I needed to breathe. I managed to climb into the van’s seat and drop my head down over my knees as a man started speaking.
“Next time it’ll be her hand,” he said, the heavily accented words laced with menace. “Then maybe I’ll cut that tube right out of her head, see what it looks like. Always wondered how they wire up retards to make them look normal. She’s cute, so I’ll probably fuck her before I kill her.”
“What do you want?” I whispered. “Please, she’s just a girl—let her go. We won’t tell anyone about this.”
“If you want to keep her alive, you’ll do exactly what I say, because I own you now,” he said, his voice dark and low and radiating so much evil I could cry. Wait. I was crying. “I want you to go through Picnic Hayes’s house and find papers for me. Anything you can that looks like it might be business related. Lists of names. Schedules. Take pictures with this phone and I’ll access them. You’ll do the same at Pawns and The Line. You’ve got until Tuesday to get it done, but I want to see progress along the way. If I don’t get something from you every day, her hand’s back on the block. We can cut off a lot of pieces before she dies—it’s all on you.”
I swallowed, wishing I could afford to play dumb, do something to buy time, change it somehow because this couldn’t actually be happening, could it?
“She’s more susceptible to infection than other kids,” I said desperately. “That shunt keeps her alive, and if it gets blocked or infected, it’s very serious. It could even kill her. Please—if she spikes a fever, get her to a doctor. She might need surgery if things go wrong. I saw a bruise on her cheek, which means someone hit her. Jessica can’t take trauma like that. She’s not a normal kid, it could kill her.”
“You should worry about me killing her. But if you do a good job following my directions we won’t have to hurt her any more. Start going through the house. Text me if you find something and I’ll download it. Be careful, because if he catches you, he’ll shoot you and then Jessica will die, too.”
“What about Amber?” I asked quietly, wondering if I really wanted the answer. “Does she know what you’re doing to her daughter?”
He snorted.
“That cunt’s dead. Unfortunate accident, couldn’t be helped. Let’s hope we don’t have any more of those, sound good?”
“Sounds good,” I whispered, closing my eyes as he ended the call.
Wow. Just … wow … How was this happening?
Amber. It always came back to Amber. I wanted to strangle her, but then a wave of guilt hit me because she was already dead. God, I’d hated her so much over the years, but I loved her, too, and the thought of her bloodied body being dumped somewhere filled me with agonized sorrow.
Detach. DETACH. You can do this. You have to do this. Doesn’t matter how much you like Reese, he’s just a man and your girl needs you. Life is about choices.
I knew what my choice had to be—the same one I’d made six years ago.
Jessica was a child of my family.
Saving her had to come first.
Things got weird after that.
There’s an understatement for you.
I considered calling Nate. I considered telling Reese. I considered driving to California with a gun and shooting people until they gave me back my little girl.
In the end, I decided to do what he told me, because Jessica’s life was at stake. End of story. There wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do to save her. I’d beg, borrow, steal, kill … I’d give every one of those men the best blow job they’d ever had, if I thought it would make a difference.
But they didn’t want me—they wanted Reese’s papers, and I’d find them if it killed me.
I’d do it because I was Jessica’s mother. The only real one she’d ever had. Fuck you, Amber. Fuck you all the way to hell. I’d become Jessie’s mother the hard way, cradling her tiny body in my arms in the NICU, holding her as she cried after her first boyfriend dumped her.
Dragging her out of the Reapers clubhouse in the middle of the night.
Jessica was a pain in my ass and she’d screwed up plenty, but this? This was all on Amber. Beyond that first burst of involuntary pain, I refused to let myself grieve for her. That bitch was lucky she was already dead, and that’s the fucking truth.
Because life is surreal, I still had to work that afternoon or people would’ve gotten suspicious. This turned out to be a good thing. There’s nothing like hard, physical labor to clear your mind. One of my crew leads had the day off, so I found myself cleaning a local attorney’s office downtown. Unfortunately, he wasn’t the assassin who worked for the club. I’d bet there were all sorts of interesting papers in that guy’s office, ones that might buy Jessica some time.
We also cleaned Pawns that night.
Usually Bolt was in the back room—so far as I could tell he slept on a cot in the storeroom half the time. I’d assumed he was just crashing there out of convenience, but based on our conversation at the mall, Maggs had thrown him out.
He wasn’t actually at the store that night, but I decided it would be stupid to break into his office and search for papers. The whole place was probably wired up with cameras—it was a pawn shop, for God’s sake, which meant it was full of valuable, portable merchandise. The real question wasn’t whether the cameras were there, but whether they would still work if the power was cut.
Something to think about, because if I fucked up, they’d chop off another piece of Jessica.
Reese had asked me to come back out to the Armory that evening after I finished my jobs, but conveniently I didn’t get done until after ten. That meant I wasn’t lying when I told him I was too exhausted. I drove out to his house instead, fingering the black smart phone thoughtfully. If I got lucky, I’d have most of the night to search. I couldn’t imagine he’d be home any time soon—maybe he’d even crash at the Armory. God, I hoped so. I wasn’t sure I could look him in the face without giving anything away.
We’d slept on the couch last night, the same couch where—
Shit. If he slept at the Armory, who would he be sleeping with? Could I really trust him not to cheat on me with so many willing, available women running around all the time? A wave of jealousy hit me, but I squashed it because that was fucking crazy. I was doing my best to betray him and the people he loved most to an evil stranger who liked to cut fingers off young women.
So far as I could tell, that sort of trumped the jealous-girlfriend bit.
God, I would miss him …
If we both lived through this, I’d be lucky if he didn’t kill me himself. Not an idle concern, either. I’d heard the rumors—I knew what the Reapers were capable of. But I’d also heard that they didn’t take out anyone who didn’t deserve it.
Unfortunately, from their perspective I’d probably deserve it. They wouldn’t be entirely wrong about that, either.
Shitty to be me.
The Hayes house blazed with light when I pulled in the driveway, and two bikes were parked out front. One looked familiar. The other I’d never seen before. Neither belonged to Reese.