Page 45 of Rattler's Revelation
“What’s going to happen tonight? I thought they weren’t shipping us out until tomorrow.”
“What?” All the girls inside my cell and in the nearby cells react loudly to my statement. Terrified chatter follows as they pass my announcement to those in the other cages.
“Wade told me that I was the last one. He’s sending us to Texas tomorrow.”
“Then why is he setting an example tonight?” Nadine asks.
“An example? Tonight?” the words, and the agitation spread outwards again.
The jailer, having had enough of our chatter, yells at us to shut up. The murmurs die down, but don’t stop.
“I don’t understand,” I whisper to my cellmates.
“Whenever they bring in a new girl, or want to punish us, they kidnap someone and bring her back here to brutalize in front of us before killing her,” Emily explains.
“Fuckers,” I hiss. The other three nod in agreement. I think about the order Wade gave Billy. He wanted a plaything. Is that what he meant? Nadine’s reaction tells me that this is the case. I close my eyes and take several deep breaths. Randy and Rattler are looking for me. Fuck, the entire Demon Dawg club is looking. Maybe they’ll find us soon.
“Look, the Demon Dawgs are looking for us. They have your notebook, Nadine, and the USB drive. Is there anything on there that will help them find us?” I whisper.
She shrugs as Darcie and Emily snort.
“Why would the Demon Dawgs be looking for us? They’re part of this. They’re the reason we’re here,” Darcie snarls. “You know Max is part of this, right?”
I shake my head as she speaks. “No. We were wrong. The fucker, Max? He isn’t a member of the club.”
Darcie opens her mouth to argue with me, but I shake my head.
“I know he said he was a member. He lied. I thought he was a member, too. That’s what that HR bitch told me. I found out thatshe’s his mother. The leader of this band of assholes is his father. The guy pretending to be Max is really Walt. The real Max is a great guy, and he would never hurt anyone. Hell, Puma had him babysitting the kids until he got patched in.”
“How do you know all this?” Nadine asks.
“Because I met the real Max. He now has the road name Rattler. Viper is his twin sister. Look, it’s a long story, but I can give you the highlights. Wildcard’s woman is the new HR manager at the casino. She asked me why I was leaving, and I told her about Max harassing us. Wildcard brought Max in, and I realized right away that he wasn’t the same guy. Do you remember the Max we saw at the casino every day?” I wait for the girls to nod. “Do you remember his eyes?”
“Fucking cold as ice,” Emily mutters.
“Exactly. The real Max, Rattler, has gorgeous green eyes. Plus, he wears a Demon Dawg kutte, not the casino kutte. I didn’t realize all of the patched-in members wear their club kuttes, not the casino uniform.”
The three women share a look before Emily shrugs. “You’re right. I remember that Chill, Wildcard, and Trouble all wore their club kuttes. That doesn’t mean the club isn’t involved in our disappearances.”
“They aren’t. They didn’t know you guys were missing until just a few days ago when I spoke to Brigit, the new HR manager. These guys may be racist assholes, but they’re smart. They waited to grab their targets until their last shift or next-to-last. No one at the casino knew you were missing; they thought you’d moved on to new jobs,” I explain. The women in the cage next to ours are sitting close so they can hear what I’m saying. One of them is Taylor’s girlfriend.
“Surely someone noticed we were gone,” Christine says. “We all had apartments, some of us had roommates.”
“They took care of that, too,” I tell them. “The assholes went to your apartments and packed up your belongings. If you had a roommate, they would tell the roommate that they were friends who offered to pack up your belongings. If there wasn’t a roommate, they left a note for the building manager saying that you’d left town.”
“How do you know all this?” another woman asks.
“Because I’ve been working with the Demon Dawgs and the police to track you down. We visited your apartment, spoke with the building manager, and met with your neighbors. The night they tried to grab me, we discovered they had been in my apartment and had already started boxing up my stuff.” I consider telling them about how we tracked down their belongings in the storage unit thanks to Taylor putting an AirTag in Christine’s box, but I don’t want to risk our jailor hearing this and calling Tommy to search the boxes for it.
“If you were working with the Demon Dawgs, how did you end up here?” the same woman asks.
“Billy and Tommy followed us. Billy grabbed me from the diner when we stopped to eat. This was after we went to Nadine’s apartment and found the notebook and USB drive.”
“You were in my apartment?” Nadine asks. I nod. “Did you see, Thor?” she asks as the tears well up in her eyes. “Was he dead?”
I reach forward and grab her hand. “Thor is fine. Teddy has him. The assholes left him outside your neighbor’s door. She called Teddy. He’s taking care of him.”
“Sweet Teddy,” Nadine smiles. “He’s been the best building manager I’ve ever had. I hope we get out of here so I can thank him.”
