Page 18 of Ember
“My day is wide open,” she sassed, taking the bag of food that he handed to her. “How about you tell me why I’m here, Keith?” she asked.
“And ruin the end of the story?” he asked. “I bet you like to read the last page of the book first.” She wasn’t about to tellhim that he was correct. She hated surprises, and knowing the ending kept her from accidentally running into them.
“How about a hint?” she asked. “I mean, I’ve figured out that you forced Marco to come after me.” Ember knew that if she could get him talking, he’d tell her everything. Keith was always a blabbermouth, and when it came to him feeling superior, he’d do just about anything to have that happen.
“Yeah, he wasn’t too keen on chasing you down. Marco, may he rest in peace, wasn’t as in love with you as I thought he was. But a little bit of prodding, and he was stalking you like a pro.”
“And why would you want him to stalk me, Keith? Is it because you didn’t have your own woman to stalk?” she taunted. His face gave away the fact that she had hit a nerve, and she knew that pushing him further would either get her the answers she was looking for or she’d end up with another bruise. He seemed to like to smack her around as much as her ex had.
“Marco was a pussy. You broke up with him, and he didn’t want to play anymore. We weren’t writing new music, and the band even dropped some gigs,” he admitted.
“So much for him not being in love with me, huh?” she asked. “Sounds to me like he took our breakup pretty hard.”
“You rejected him, and he practically quit the band. I needed the old Marco back. I needed the fire that pushed him to make great songs and play with all his heart. You stole that from him—from all of us. The band suffered, and I lost everything. They repossessed my car because I wasn’t making money to pay for it. I had to give up my apartment lease and even spent a few nights on the street until I came up with the plan to have Marco stalk you. I moved in with him, and that’s when things really took shape. The old Marco started to reappear, and we started writing again. He seemed to be his old self again—well, until he went and got himself killed. Now, I have nothing. The band is gone, and I have nothing more to lose. Making you pay for what you did tome is my only solace.” Yeah, knowing Keith’s plan didn’t make her feel any better. In fact, she was worried that he might just pull off making her suffer for what he felt was an injustice done to him.
“I had no idea that he stopped performing once I left, but I couldn’t stay with Marco. You saw what he did to me.” Keith had a front row seat to all the abuse she suffered at Marco’s hands.
“You treated him like shit,” he shouted. “You deserved everything that you got, and more,” Keith insisted. It looked like rationalizing with him wasn’t going to work. The longer Keith talked about Marco, the angrier he got.
“Please, just let me go home, and I won’t tell anyone about this. You can just go back to Florida and start another band. You were really the talent behind everything,” she lied.
“I’m going to make sure that you get what’s coming to you, Ember. You won’t be going home again, so stop asking,” he spat. Keith turned to leave, and she wasn’t sure if she should beg him to stay or be glad that he was leaving. She sat silently on the old chair in the corner of the room watching him go, and when he shut the door, she broke down. For the first time since Keith took her, she let the tears flow, and Ember wasn’t sure if they would ever stop. The thought of never seeing Jack again kept playing through her mind, and that was the part that hurt the most. Ember had felt hopeless before, but this despair was almost too much for her to handle. This hopelessness broke her damn heart.
Spark Plug
“That asshole has my woman, and I want her the fuck back,” Jack shouted at Hurricane.
“I get it,” his Prez said, but there was no way that he understood what Jack was going through without Ember.
He knew that he shouldn’t have let his guard down, but he had. He took a nap instead of guarding Ember, and that allowed Keith to take her. He was able to watch the entire thing on his security cameras, and the way Keith shoved Ember into his truck and took off with her made him sick. She didn’t put up a fight, and that wasn’t like her. His Ember would have scratched the asshole’s eyes out, but she didn’t. That told him that he was holding something over her to get her to go with him so calmly.
As soon as he realized what had happened, he reported the kidnapping and headed over to Hurricane’s House to get the Bastards involved. He just never imagined all the guys and Harlots who had showed up to help get Ember back.
“I speak for the Harlots when I say that we are willing to help get her back—whatever it takes,” Tina said. He nodded his thanks as his cell rang. Jack pulled it from his pocket and sawthat he had a ping on the location of his truck. When that asshole took his truck and his woman, he disabled the tracking system. He had been trying for days to find his truck, because he knew that it would probably lead him to Ember. That was all he wanted.
“I know where my truck is,” he said, holding up his phone triumphantly in the air. “Who wants to go with me?” Hurricane and Yonkers stepped forward, and their wives stepped in front of them. She’s a Harlot, so we go,” Tina insisted. “They can tag along if they want to.” She nodded over to her husband and the other men who stepped forward.
“I’ll call this in, so it’s all legal, but then, we’ll go find my truck and hopefully get my woman back.” He loved that they all wanted to help rescue Ember, but he knew that if Keith was with her, he’d have to do things by the book.
After talking to the station, he got everyone loaded into two trucks. “You worried about the women?” he asked Hurricane. He drove the first truck with the guys, and his wife, Tina, drove the second truck with the Harlots. If Jack was being honest, he was worried about the women joining along. If finding the truck led to Keith, he worried that they’d get in the way of him running this thing by the book.
“Nope, my girl can take care of herself. What you should be worrying about is the women killing the asshole who took Ember. They consider her one of their own already. I never imagined that the Harlots would take off so quickly, but I have to admit I like that they did. It gives our Ol’ladies something to belong to—you know, besides being bikers’ wives.”
“I’m worried that I won’t be able to take Keith in if the Harlots have their way with him,” Jack admitted.
“They know that the endgame is for you to arrest the asshole. Just let them have some fun first,” Hurricane said. Jack couldn’thelp but laugh at the ways the Harlots would have fun with Keith, and most of them ended up with the guy in a body bag.
Jack spotted his truck in the driveway of an abandoned home. He knew from experience that this side of town was trouble, and why he didn’t think to look for Ember over here was beyond him. A part of him worried that Keith would take her back to Florida, and he’d never get her back.
“Up there,” he almost shouted, pointing at the truck. “That’s my truck.”
“It looks to be in one piece,” Yonkers said from the backseat. He didn’t give a fuck about his truck. All he wanted to do was find Ember and make sure that she was safe.
Hurricane pulled in behind the truck, effectively trapping it from leaving. “I’m going in first. You’re with me, Hurricane,” Jack ordered. The rest of you and the Harlots need to cover the exits. If he has a weapon, do not engage him. When the cops get here, tell them that I’m inside and give them my badge number.” He handed Yonkers his badge, knowing that it would keep the guys and the Harlots out of harm’s way if the cops knew that he was one of them.
He scaled the side of the home, noting that there was no movement that he could see inside. No lights were on, and if he had to guess, the house had no running water or electricity. He looked in the side window for any sign of action and found none. He wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad sign, but he knew that his next move needed to be him entering the home. “I’m going in the front,” he whispered to Hurricane. “There’s a side door over there. Go in through that door and we’ll meet in the middle.” Hurricane nodded and made his way to the side of the building. Jack waited for him to disappear before he entered the front door, not surprised to find the door unlocked. The graffiti on the walls inside told him that the house had been left unsecured for a long time.
The stench was awful, and he found himself trying to hold his breath as he cleared the small house, meeting Hurricane in the kitchen. “Nothing,” Hurricane whispered.
