Page 71 of Absinthe Dreams
“Ain’t no help for him, now,” Eyepatch man said coldly. A moment later, he boomed out, “Quiet!” One of his men scurried forward to grab my arm and drag me back over to the other women.
I fell several times as he dragged me along, and I tried to get my legs to work. They felt boneless, and I just couldn’t get them under me properly. I was unceremoniously dropped amid the knot of other girls, and I gripped my pendanthardin my hand, feeling the stone depress and click. I tried not to hyperventilate and wrestled my adrenaline under control.
It wasn’t a moment later that my phone screen, on the ground, lit up withRiver.
Alina saw it, and her eyes immediately went to mine. I gave a slight shake of my head. She knew River was my brother who had drowned.
“Who’s that?” Eyepatch man toed my phone a half inch across the cement floor.
“My sibling,” I said, thinking fast and assigning a gender-neutral term. I didn’t know if it would be a man or a woman calling from the call center, and if they answered it, I didn’t want them to be suspicious.
“Take care of it,” Eyepatch man demanded. One of his men came forward and smashed his boot heel onto the face of the phone over and over, causing all of us ladies to jump and flinch. All except for Jessie, who was still staring in the direction of her brother’s body in shock, all color drained from her face. She was tough, and I honestly didn’t know how long that would last before the rage set in.
“They gonna kill every last one of you for this,” she said and she dragged her eyes from Cy’s body up to Eyepatch Man’s. She spat at him, and he kicked her in the face. I jumped and lunged to her, but she was out cold.
“Get ‘em in the van,” Eyepatch man ordered.
“Not again,” Sandy said, and Velina turned to her.
“What do you meanagain?”she demanded.
“Not my first time being kidnapped,” Sandy said hollowly.
“Later,” I snapped.
Corliss had Jessie draped in her lap, and men surged forward, hauling each of us up by the arms. They came prepared with zip ties and duct tape. They zip-tied our wrists behind us and put tape over our mouths. Each and every one of usfoughtand fought hardnotto be dragged to that van.
Eyepatch man got onto one of the bikes and hollered out to another man, saying, “You get shotgun. Let’s get these bitches to the Russians and leave ‘em rot. You know what to do.”
I didn’t know what that meant, but I certainly didn’t like the sound of it. I strained my ears, hoping and praying for the sound of a siren.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Chainsaw…
We were riding out to Baton Rouge to handle business for the Marchesis when I saw Hex up front check his watch and throw the signal for an emergency pull over. We all drifted off the side of the highway onto the shoulder and cut engines. He leaped off his bike, conferred with LaCroix, and showed him the thing that’d alerted him. We all went up, huddling in a knot and demanded, “What’s up?”
“Got an alert from the security system. Garage door opened up.” It was a closed-circuit system that our buddy Radar, who was with The Kraken MC out of Florida, had helped us install. Pretty much unhackable from the outside, but still let us keep tabs on shit with live feeds.
We watched without a sound as Sandy bounded back from the garage door, and a van with what looked like a battering ram welded to the front rolled right on in, followed by a bunch of bikes.
Cypress came in from the front of the club, likely from the pisser, just in time to catch a shot from a shotgun in the gut.
I watched my woman throw herself into action as we all stood in silent shock and horror, as she went to Cy’s aide and Ruthlesswalked up and blew his head apart in front of her. She was so close, she could have taken a bullet. For sure, she was covered in what was left of our brother’s head.
“Son of a bitch!” Collier cried.
“We’re going back. This was a ploy.” LaCroix was calm. Too calm, and I flicked my vision back to the screen. Ruth was making one of his unhinged speeches to the girls, and the rest of the Bayou Brethren surged forward.
“They’re taking ‘em somewhere,” I said, and we watched as the girls were dragged to the van, kicking and fighting against being tied and gagged.
I was relieved to see that Genesis was clutching at the pendant around her neck.
“Let’s roll,” Saint grumbled, and we went back to our bikes, took off up the shoulder, and merged back onto the highway, using the first state patrol and emergency vehicle turnaround we came up on to get going back the other way.
The Marchesi family would pay, but first to get our women…
When we rolled up on the club, it was already swarming with cops. They stopped us outside the gate. I went to LaCroix and Hex and gave them the fastest rundown possible on how the cops could and were tracking Genesis and that I would explain in-depth later, but first to get the pigs to cooperate and point us in a direction.
