Page 113 of Ink's Devil

“We don’t know and can’t tell you,” I cry out as two men approach.

“Then Patsy will have to do some investigating. If she doesn’t, you won’t be coming home.”

Dirt, hands bound, still tries to step up, but a hard punch to his head floors him.

I struggle and cry out as one of the men grasps my arm too hard. That’s Mom’s undoing.

“Stop!” she screams out. “I’ll tell you.”

We’re frozen in a bizarre tableau. I stop fighting the men who’ve got hold of me. Phil swings around and stares at Mom. Dirt’s struggled to his knees and his face is filled with horror.

“Who?” snaps Phil when the spell is broken.

“Let her go and I’ll tell you.”

Instead, Phil signals toward one of the men holding me. He yanks on my hair so hard I yell out.

But still I try to stop her. “Mom. No!”

“The Satan’s Devils MC. They’ve got what you’re looking for.”

She’s achieved nothing.

A very unpleasant smile crosses Phil’s face. “Then I’ll keep Bethany until they’ve given them back. Connor said Beth was fucking one of them.” He pauses and gives a hard look at Dirt. “You, I’m only leaving alive so you can take that message back to your club. Get me my drugs, or you won’t see your girlfriend again.”

My hands are yanked together behind my back and tied, then, each man has a hand on my elbow, and I’m marched out and pushed roughly into an SUV.

Chapter Thirty-One

Mace

“How did they take it?” Beef draws me to one side when I return to the clubhouse.

“How you’d expect,” I tell him. “Devastated.” But I’m distracted, and the VP pulls me up on it.

“And?”

Shaking my head, I tell him what’s worrying me, “They told me to leave.”

He looks puzzled. “What the fuck’s wrong with that? Perfectly understandable, they wanted to grieve alone.”

“I’m not sure, VP. I think Beth is suspicious.”

“That you weren’t telling the truth?”

I shrug. “Tried to be as convincing as possible. Don’t know what she could have picked up.”

“Maybe you imagined it. First step to grief is denial. Probably hard to believe she won’t be seeing her brother again.”

I look down at the ground and then back up. “Are we doing the right thing here, Beef?”

His shoulders rise and fall now. “Fuck if I know, but Connor can’t stay around here. They’ll never see him again, so what difference does it make?”

“At least a mother would know her son isn’t dead.”

“And then she’d try to maintain contact with him. You know what Cad found out about Phil Foster. He won’t give up. He’s a man who likes revenge. Connor stole from him and left him well out of pocket. He’s a dead man if Phil comes across him again.”

He’s right, but I still hadn’t liked delivering the news. For some reason, I’d felt I was letting Ink down, when all I’m doing is trying everything I can to fix his situation. I’d hurt Ink’s woman. Do you ever recover from the death of a loved one? I’m not sure you do. I know my great-grandmother still felt the loss of the man who died sixty years before. She was ninety when she went to join him a year or so back, and in the end, he was all she’d wanted to talk about. She’d never forgotten him, or ever got over her loss.

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