Page 4 of Rogue
I’m a stupid motherfucker.
I’m normally so much smarter than this, but the fury over Ryan and Leah’s deaths has had me taking temporary leave of my wits. Cade nudges me with his elbow, grunting softly. “We’re here, man. You wanna do this now, we’ll do it. But maybe—”
“Yeah, I know.” I sigh heavily. Angrily. I want to pound my fists into the dirt in frustration, but where the fuck would that get me.
“You might be wrong,” Carnie whispers. “I get bad feelings all the time. Your brain plays some epic tricks on you sometimes.”
“He’s not wrong, asshole. He’s never been wrong.” The dull thump of Cade punching Carnie in the arm is quiet, but Carnie’s yelp of pain isn’t. “Jesus, man. Shut your fucking mouth. You wanna get us killed?”
“I don’t think he’s seen us,” I whisper, ignoring them. “But I can’t be sure. Time to leave.” Leaving is the very last thing I want to do. I want to storm into that building and shoot some motherfuckers. I want to dig the point of my blade into Hector Ramirez’s chest and watch the light go out in his eyes as the steel bites deeper. But Ramirez is a smart guy. He knows I’m coming. There’s no way there’s only six people in that building. He will have an army of men hidden out of sight, ready to end our lives before we even step foot on the fucking farmhouse porch.
“Come on, man. We’ll get the fucker, don’t you worry. But this ain’t how it goes down,” Cade says. I let him pull me back, let his words deaden the boiling adrenalin storming my veins, calling for revenge. I suddenly feel exhausted.
“All right. All right,” I take a deep breath, uncurling my hands, not realizing they were clenched into fists. As I retreat from the farmhouse with my boys, ducking low to remain out of sight, I feel sick to my stomach. We’re leaving with our lives, but somehow it feels like a defeat. I’m chanting the same words over and over as the farmhouse shrinks and disappears behind us.
This isn’t over, motherfucker. It’s only just begun.
TWO
SOPHIA
I’ve given up screaming. It didn’t get me anywhere for two days so I figured why waste the energy. I haven’t seen Rebel in ten days. Ten days couped up in his cabin while he’s out there doing god knows what and I’ve been going bat shit crazy. I thought we were past this. I thought this part was over. I should have known by his silent, brooding mood on the way back from Alabama that things were right back to where we were in the beginning. More fool me for assuming that me agreeing to help him, me turning down the opportunity to flee back to my family, mefuckinghimfor fuck’s sake, would change things between us. Now, I just feel foolish. For all of it.
Therewasa brief moment where I did get to step outside. Seventy two hours after Rebel put the Humvee in park and bundled me into his house on the hill, locking the door behind me, the prospect, Carnie, showed up and drove me out into the desert, kicking and screaming. He wouldn’t tell me why at first, but after an hour of me chewing his ear off, threatening to scream blue murder the whole time we were sitting in his shitty, beaten up Firebird, the guy caved.
“The cops are tearing the compound apart, looking for evidence to link the club to that shooting in Los Angeles.”
I’m horrified when it takes me a beat to remember what he’s talking about—the shooting at Trader Joes, where all those civilians were killed by men wearing Widow Makers cuts.
“Yeah, one of Rebel’s uncle’s friends called and gave him a heads up. Told Rebel the police caught the guys who did it in Irvine, still wearing the fake cuts, drunk as all hell. The fat one who was supposed to be the club president confessed that they’d been hired for the job. Gave up Maria Rosa in a heart beat, in exchange for a lesser sentence.”
“Is she still going to cause problems then? This Maria Rosa?”
Carnie gets a far away look in his eye that looks almost romantic. “From what I’ve been told, the Bitch of Columbia causes problems wherever she is in the world. I wouldn’t be surprised.”
He drove me back to the compound at nightfall and took me straight back to the cabin, ignoring my colorful language and my threats to take him out at the knees.
That was last Wednesday. Now it’s Wednesday again. Tomorrow morning I should be getting up at seven and going for a run before heading to my Human Sciences class. Instead, Carnie, with his busted up glasses and his hipster side-parting will bring me my breakfast and refuse to tell me anything, and I’ll swear at him or completely blank him depending on my mood. The cycle repeats itself endlessly, over and over.
Tonight, however, Carnie’s already dropped off my evening meal. I called him a soulless bastard and threw the plate of meatloaf at his head, but the thing missed him entirely and impacted with the wall. I need to do some serious work on my aim. The meatloaf has sat on the floor since then, getting colder and staler by the second, in amongst the shattered shards of the chinaware.
If Sloane were here she would have figured out how to free herself from this fucked up situation. I can guarantee it. She’s resourceful, independent and stubborn, and she wouldn’t give up until she found a way to get what she wanted. That makes me even madder as I sit and watch The Hangover for the eighteenth time. The TV in Rebel’s cabin has no reception, just a handful of DVDs, all of which are the same kind of stupid, mindless humor I would never normally watch. Now, I’ve seen every single last one of them. I’m beginning to know them line for line.
Alan is just confessing that he drugged the other guys in the movie when the door to the cabin flies open and Rebel stalks in, larger than life. It’s the last thing I’m expecting, given that I’ve been asking to see him for the past week and a half and he hasn’t graced me with his presence. A part of me got to thinking that maybe he was hurt or something. Injured, to the point where he was laid up and incapable of walking. Standing in the doorway now, I can see that he’s walking just fine. He glances down at his feet and scowls at the debris from my evening meal on the floorboards.
“What the fuck?” He looks at me like I’m a naughty child, caught misbehaving, and I automatically shrink back into the sofa. I catch myself, almost screaming out loud at how ridiculous my reaction is. I shouldn’t be shrinking from him. I’m a fucking prisoner. I’m allowed to revolt if I damn well want to. “Got a problem?” I snap, sitting up straighter.
“Yeah. There’s fucking food all over my damn floor. I hand-sanded these floorboards,” he growls.
“Then you should have thrown me in the basement or something and had done with it, shouldn’t you?”
“Don’t fucking tempt me.” Rebel steps over the mess and slams the door behind him, locking it before he storms into the room. I try not to flinch as he comes to a stop in front of me. “Stand up, Soph.”
I take a deep breath. “No.” My skin feels tingly, the same way it used to when I would defy my father. Not that I’m comparing the man standing in front of me with the mild mannered preacher left worrying about me back in Seattle, but this situation feels…it feels very much like I’m about to get punished.
Tilting his head to one side, Rebel drops into a crouch so that our eyes are at the same level. His are ice-blue, cold. Intense. So fierce I can hardly meet them. I’m proud of the fact that I don’t look away, though. “What seems to be the problem?” He asks this slowly, as though he’s wrestling with his temper.
Had a bad night, buddy? Well guess what? So have I.Leaning forward so my face is closer to his, I breathe deep and even down my nose, trying to tame my own anger. “You’re fucking kidding me, right?”
