Devil May Care: Boxed Set (91 page)

None at all.

“Damnit!” I said, slamming my hand down on the table and spilling some of my beer.

Specter started to say something, but before he could get it out a fit of coughing overtook him. I gave him a minute to compose himself, but realized quickly that he was in a bad way. He used a napkin to cover his mouth, but after a moment, he pulled it away to reveal that the napkin was covered in blood.

“What’s going on?” I asked him, and this time I wasn’t talking about Stitches.

With a heavy sigh he said, “I’ve got cancer, Johnny. I’m…I’m dying. The doctor gave me three months.”

I told him that we would deal with that later, as friends, but there was something inside me that told me there wouldn’t be anything to deal with. I had a feeling that Specter was dead, no matter what I did.

Charlotte

Johnny was gone for a week and I spent all of it stressing out about him. Would he come back? Would he be alive? Would someone hurt him? He hadn’t told me what he was doing, but I knew it was business related, which meant it could be dangerous and it could be illegal.

I couldn’t spend my week worrying about it though; that would eat me up. So instead I spent it with Emma and with my mom.

My mom wasn’t doing so well these days. Her health was deteriorating quickly, no matter what we seemed to do. Her leg was worse, but that wasn’t all of it. There were other things going on—something with her breathing, something with her aches and pains, something going on inside that we just couldn’t see—so we went to the doctor again.

He saw a lot of her these days.

Ultimately, he gave me a little hope in a couple of different ways.
Get her some fresh air. Move her out of the city; it’s eating her up.

Those words were my salvation, not just because they might save my mom, but because they might save me, too. I could get her out of the city and, by extension, have a damn good reason to take myself out of it, too.

After all, she couldn’t go alone, right?

There was only one problem with the brilliant plan: my mom. She wouldn’t do it.

“I
like
it here,” she told me firmly for the millionth time that week. Johnny would be home tomorrow and if I wanted to ask him for the cabin—because what was the point of living out in the woods if you didn’t have a cabin?—then I’d need to have a solid reason to be convincing.

I rolled my eyes at her. “You’re being ridiculous,” I told her again. “You heard what the doctor said.”

She waved me off. “Nonsense. I’ve lived in this city my whole damn life! I’m not giving it up now over some stupid doctor.”

“Right. Don’t listen to the PhD.”

She only glared at me and didn’t answer.

I sighed. “What if
I
moved out there?” I asked suddenly, a plan forming in my mind. “Then you could keep your place in the city, but you could come up on weekends. The fresh air would be good for you, but you wouldn’t have to give anything up.”

My mother studied me suspiciously. She knew there was something going on, but couldn’t quite figure out what. Which was good; I didn’t want her to know the thoughts I’d been having about leaving lately. I knew that she didn’t want to go; this was her home.

“What’s your angle?” she demanded with narrowed eyes.

I rolled my eyes again. “No angle. I get a vacation from all…
this
,” I gestured to the house, “and you get a little taste of good health.”

She frowned at me, not entirely convinced, but ultimately she agreed to it. She couldn’t think of why she shouldn’t.

When Johnny got home the next day, I asked him.

“Sure. I’ve got the money.”

I didn’t ask how much or where the money had come from, because I needed this to work. It had to.

Johnny

If I’d known how eager Charlotte was for a cabin, I’d have bought her one years ago. We had the money. Maybe it had been tighter than usual lately, but my money wasn’t all tied up in the club. I had my own set aside and I’d been saving it for a rainy day.

The haunted look in Charlotte’s eyes seemed pretty damn rainy to me.

She had the place picked out within days of asking me for it. She’d probably been looking for longer than that, waiting to ask me until she had a good argument. I never mentioned to her that she didn’t need a good argument. It would have been my pleasure to give it to her no matter what.

I was headed there now, going to meet her as she finished up the paperwork with the place, and as I drove towards the cabin, I decided that I liked the idea. Not just because it was something Charlotte really wanted, but because it was a good idea. A place in the hills, away from the streets and the city and the crime. A place where I could step away from the club for a minute and just be the guy Charlotte needed.

Sounded damn near perfect.

As I drove, I considered the other things an isolated cabin might be good for. I thought of Charlotte standing in the kitchen naked, unconcerned with who might be looking through the window, because there
was
no one. Just trees and forest. I thought of how I could come up behind her and fondle her breasts, pinching her nipples and weighing the heavy orbs in my palms. I could slide my hands lower, too, slipping over her slim waist and belly until I found her clean shaven mound. My hands could dip lower and slide between her thighs to find that sweet spot between her nether lips.

And not just that. I could sit her on the porch without a care and let her sunbathe naked. I could fondle her until I was so damn hard that it hurt.

I could fuck her on the porch if I wanted. I could drive my aching member inside her over and over again, each time receiving a piercing scream of pleasure that echoed through the trees, because dammit no one would hear it.

Our lovemaking had always resulted in the kind of animalistic sounds that made our neighbors call in noise complaints and scared people into thinking that I was murdering her.

But she loved every minute of it, and I did, too.

Out here, we could do that and no one would question or complain about it. I could have as much of her as I wanted.

The thought made my member harden and my balls ache. It caused the rest of the ride there to be a little uncomfortable, but I didn’t really care. I’d ride as hard and as far as I had to with thoughts of Charlotte in my head to reach her.

I pulled up the long driveway to the place not too much later. It was quiet and peaceful, I supposed, but there was something off about the whole thing. Not the cabin itself, but the way the air felt around it. I couldn’t say what it was until I stepped up to the porch and saw the man leaning there against the frame.

“What took you so long?”

I did a quick inventory of him, but I didn’t need to. I knew who he was. He wore the jacket marked by the Berserkers’ logo, and I recognized him already as one of the men Stitches had brought to the negotiations the other day. One of Stitches’ lieutenants.

Frowning, I said, “What are you doing here?” My hand had already begun to move around my back. I didn’t have to ask to know that something was wrong. I desperately wanted to look around to find Charlotte, but I didn’t dare take my eyes from the immediate threat right in front of me. Getting myself killed wouldn’t do her any good.

The man grinned broadly, and for a second I thought he might be related to Stitches with that same expression on his face. “I’m just here to give you a friendly message. You’d better start running girls, Rykers, if you ever want to see your pretty little girlfriend again.” He took a step off the porch, closer to me. “Oh, and if you say no, I should tell you that you
might
see her after all. In a movie. The first little porn shoot Stitches decides to film, staring none other than the Reverend’s Daughter. I’d watch that, wouldn’t you?”

He was still grinning when I pulled the gun and put a bullet in his head.

Charlotte

My head hurt. It throbbed and pulsed, the headache I was feeling worse than any hangover I’d had before in my life. I brought my hand up to the side of my head, pressing against it as though I might be able to ease some of the throbbing, but it was useless. It went on silently, pressure building in my ears and my sinuses.

I swallowed heavily, then forced myself to sit up. The throbbing got worse, but I did my best to push it aside and ignore it.

Taking a steadying breath, I looked around.

Where am I?

I didn’t recognize the place. It was dark and small, and with a quickening of my breath I realized that there were bars surrounding me. I tried not to panic, but it was near to impossible. A quick search revealed that the bars definitely had me completely caged in and the only door to them I spotted was closed.

How did I get here?

The thought was followed by memories of the cabin. It had been perfect, so beautiful that my heart almost hurt. Everything that I could have asked for and so much more. It was bigger than our place in the city, but not by much. There was what the realtor called a mud room, which added to the square footage, but it was mostly just this room in the back with tiling, a drain, and a haphazard shower. There wasn’t a garage, which I knew would irk Johnny, but he’d get used to it. Or maybe he’d get creative and build his own.

I knew that my mother would love it. She was so reluctant to leave the city, but once she saw the place, I just knew she’d want to spend all her time there. The prospect of it elated me.

Of course, it wasn’t officially mine yet, but that was why I was there. The realtor had agreed for us to meet there to sign the remaining papers so that we could get it taken care of and I could get a moment to look around. I hadn’t seen it in person before, having found it online.

I was so eager to find a place since Johnny had said yes that I didn’t want to risk him changing his mind, so I did it the fastest way I knew how.

The plan had been a means to an end at the time, but I couldn’t have imagined that I would fall in love with the place, too. But I had. It was so perfect. I waited a long time to meet the realtor, but they never showed. Finally, I had to call her on my cell. I tried her twice before I got a hold of her.

“Where are you?” I asked her, still smiling as I walked through the house for the thousandth time now. “Am I just really early?”

My question seemed to have confused her. “Ms. Canders? I’m not quite sure what you mean. I wasn’t aware we had an appointment?”

I had frowned as I answered, “Of course we do. I called you yesterday to finish the paperwork…”

She apologized and told me that she must not have gotten the message and promptly blamed her new and inept secretary. She explained that she couldn’t meet me then, but would make room sometime next week.

I agreed and we hung up, but I was disappointed that we couldn’t finish things right then. I was just about to head back out when I felt a hand clamp over my mouth. I didn’t even have the time to think about it, much less scream, before I grew dizzy. The room went black, and I remembered falling, but never hitting the ground.

And then I woke up here.

If I hadn’t been panicked before, I definitely was now. It took everything I had to keep from hyperventilating. Where was I? What happened? Whose hand had that been, and why did they do it?

Questions I didn’t have answers for. I got up from the cot I had been lying on and went hurriedly to the door. I tried it, but I knew before my hands wrapped around it that it was a lost cause. It didn’t budge; locked.

Doing my best to stay calm, I looked around, debating whether or not I should cry out for help. The thought disintegrated when I saw a figure in the corner on the other side of the bars. He was tall with a wicked, mad-looking smile. Scars crisscrossed his face, marring his features and making him look like Frankenstein’s monster.

He was terrifying, and it was all the worse because I knew who he was and what that meant.

I wasn’t getting out of there, not on my own. My only hope was Johnny, but there wasn’t a lot of hope in that because I realized that the only way Johnny was going to get me out was to break me out—or to give this man whatever he wanted.

I tried not to think what Stitches, leader of the Berserkers, wanted.