Devil May Care: Boxed Set (92 page)

I shoved down the panic burning inside of me and tried to think. I had a dead man on the porch, one of Stitches’ Berserker boys, a missing girlfriend, and a lieutenant who swore up and down that the Berserkers were running girls.

Things added up, but not in the way I wanted them to.

Anger swelled within my chest and I grit my teeth so hard that I was willing to bet an ounce of pressure more, and I’d start breaking a few of them.

I sucked in a harsh breath, forced it out, and made myself be calm. I had to be calm.

I reached for my cell phone and started dialing as I turned away from the little cabin that Charlotte had been so in love with. It rang twice before there was a click as someone picked up.

“Yeah, boss?” It was Specter. A week ago, I would have called him my biggest liability. I would have thought that calling him was the biggest mistake I could have made in this situation and it probably would have cost me my life. Now, I knew better. He was one of the few men I
knew
I could trust.

“I need you to take care of something for me.”

The body had to go. I didn’t have any problems killing the sorry sack of shit. He threatened my girl and that was a line no one got to cross. But fact of the matter was, he was a body. And if the police started snooping around and finding dead men in connection with me, it didn’t matter what I said or did, I’d get my ass in a sling. Prison was a very real option.

I didn’t need to give the police any reason to start looking at me.

“You name it.”

“You know that cabin, the one Charlotte was looking at?” I asked Specter as I walked towards my bike. Even as I spoke, my mind was whirling through necessities. What did I need to do? I needed to take care of the body. That was the first step, because me being in prison wasn’t going to do Charlotte any good. The second step was a little less clear. I needed to get Charlotte back, but going direct to the Berserkers wasn’t a wise choice. They would be expecting me, but they probably had some clue that I wouldn’t take all of this lying down.

Start running girls.

I gripped the phone tightly in my hand, on the verge of breaking the hard plastic and all the electronic pieces within it.

Specter hesitated, but ultimately said, “Yeah, I know about it.”

“You got an address?” I asked him.

Suddenly, he sounded nervous. “Look, boss, I know I came clean about working in with the Berserkers, but I didn’t give them anything. I swear it. I’d
never
do anything that might hurt Charlotte.”

I stopped walking. For a long moment, I didn’t say anything. I hadn’t even jumped to that conclusion, that maybe Specter had been the one to give the Berserkers the location of the cabin. Now that I thought about it, though, it would make sense. For a split second, I could even see it. Specter meeting with those asshole Berserkers, talking, laughing, because what else could he do? And then he would keep talking, only now he’d be telling them important things. Essential things.

I shook my head. It did make sense, but I knew in my heart that it wasn’t right. Specter would do a lot of things, and there was even a chance that when it came right down to it, he’d hand me over to the Berserkers to save himself. I knew how loyal he’d been to the Reverend, but the Reverend was dead, and now his loyalties were a bit muddled.

But there was one thing I did know for certain: he’d never hurt Charlotte.

Letting out a slow breath, I answered, “I know. I’m not asking because I think you ratted.”

I heard Specter release a relieved breath. His voice sounded less strained as he said, “What did you need?”

“I got a body on my hands here at the cabin,” I said, quickly telling him it was a Berserker. “I need it taken care of.”

Specter swore. “The hell, boss? What happened?”

I shook my head, though he couldn’t see me, and answered, “No time for the details. Just get it taken care of. And I want everyone—and I mean
everyone
—meeting in two hours. No exceptions. Once you’re done with the body, you catch up to us.”

“Done,” Specter answered.

I hung up the phone and got to my bike. I put on my helmet, revved up the motorcycle, and took the road at a fast pace until I hit the major streets, determined to get to the city as quickly as possible.

Start running girls.

That wasn’t an option. I would do it to save Charlotte, but I knew it would mean that I’d lose her. Even more than that, it was no guarantee that it would keep her safe in the end. I knew guys like Stitches. They’d make demands and then, when you met those demands, the stakes would get higher. Suddenly they’d want more.

And they wouldn’t let Charlotte go until they had everything that they wanted, which would never happen. She was the only thing they could hold on to that would keep me doing whatever they wanted and it meant they couldn’t ever afford to let her go.

Which meant
I
couldn’t afford to get in.

When I pulled up outside the shop, people were already starting to show up. The shop had been closed down, despite the protests of several potential customers, and the Unholys were gathering inside. I saw six at least already.

Counting their bikes parked outside made me start considering numbers. Numbers like how many Unholys there actually were versus how many Berserkers. I knew already which number was smaller. It was the whole reason I’d been willing to break bread with the Berserkers in the first place.

We didn’t have the numbers to win a war against them.

I dug into my pocket for my cell phone again. As I walked in and the phone rang, I motioned for several of the guys to make sure everyone got in and was accounted for. I knew we were still missing people, but I wanted them to keep their eyes open for who was coming up next.

The phone clicked after a moment and a deep, gruff voice answered. “The hell do you want, Johnny boy? Hell, I only just talked to you, didn’t I?”

Dogwood was being ornery, but it was mostly just an act. Secretly, I suspected that he was feeling a little lonely these days, missing the comradery that had made being part of the motorcycle club so appealing to him in the first place. I hoped that he’d kept in touch with his old club, even if he didn’t ride with them anymore.

“I need a favor,” I said and something must have showed through in my tone, because I could almost hear him straighten up through the phone.

“What do you need?” he asked. He must have known how much it took me to ask what I was about to ask.

“I need a meeting with the D’Rangers, and I need it today.”

***

Dogwood got me my meeting, right after I finished with my own group. I told them that officially we were at war with the Berserkers. I told them that there was now a price on Stitches' head and it wasn’t contingent on whether he was dead or alive. I didn’t tell them about Charlotte, though the club as a whole liked her enough that it would probably have been like pouring gasoline onto a fire, causing it to burn so hot that the whole city would crumble in its wake.

But I didn’t want anyone to know about Charlotte. If I didn’t get there in time...

I shook my head forcefully. I promised myself I would, but if I didn’t, then I didn’t want her to have to deal with the looks she might get from a bunch of guys who wouldn’t understand what had happened. Who wouldn’t forgive her, even though it hadn’t been her fault.

No, I didn’t want that. I didn’t want any of this, in fact. “I’ll get there in time,” I muttered.

Most of the guys had left at this point. I’d told them to actively search out the Berserkers wherever they might find them. They needed to go to town and do whatever they felt they had to, even though I knew it meant there would be casualties, not to mention a hell of a lot of attention directed our way.

It was probably deplorable, but I didn’t care. I’d go to hell happily if it meant I could take Stitches with me.

I was waiting in the office in the back—the one Charlotte spent most of her time in, so much so that it smelled like her—until Dogwood and the D’Rangers would show up. I knew getting them mobilized and down in the area this quickly was quite the feat, so I didn’t begrudge them too much time. Even so, I was impatient.

This needed to get taken care of immediately.

When Jonesy Carmichael, leader of the D’Rangers, showed up finally, six guys in tow—“The rest are on their way,” he promised me when he saw the scowl on my face—I felt something close to relief begin to settle. Maybe, just maybe, we could pull this off.

Dogwood walked off to the side of the D’Rangers men, but still slightly behind Jonesy, like he still respected the man who had once led them. He probably did, in all fairness. That was the kind of man Dogwood was.

We wasted precious seconds on pleasantries, before I dove into the fray. “The Berserkers have been edging in to my territory as of late, and there have been a few resulting scuffles,” I began, needing to explain the situation.

Jonesy held up his hand to stop me just after I’d started. He was shaking his head already. “It ain’t my business or the business of my club to deal with a territorial dispute. This ain’t my neighborhood and it sure as hell ain’t my problem.”

I clenched my jaw tightly for a moment, forcing myself to remain calm. “This isn’t a territorial dispute,” I corrected him. “I made a deal with the Berserkers and they’re actively breaking it. And maybe no one here gives a shit about that, because you’re right, this isn’t your problem. But I want you to know why I hate the fucking Berserkers. I want you to know why this isn’t about territory.”

Jonesy frowned, but said nothing, so I took that as the okay to go ahead.

“They’ve always lived a little farther on the other side of the line than the Unholys ever have,” I told Jonesy, my eyes flickering to Dogwood momentarily to see that he was tense and frowning. He didn’t know the story, not yet, but he knew something was seriously wrong in a way that Jonesy didn’t. I returned my focus to the leader of the D’Rangers. “They’ve run hard drugs; they’ve run arms. They’ve killed people without need or cause. They have no code, but I could live with that, I could work with it. But I can’t live with human trafficking.”

Jonesy sucked in a harsh breath, and he wasn’t the only one. Running girls—prostitution and pornography—weren’t necessarily off limits to clubs like ours. Every club made its own rules, and some of those were more lenient than others. The Unholys made a point of keeping our business pretty damn close to legal and our illegal activities pretty mild. Those who went too far off those tracks didn’t stay in the club for long.

The D’Rangers were similar in that respect, which was why I’d called them. Jonesy wasn’t a daddy like the Reverend had been, but he had sisters and nieces and a mother. He had enough women in his life that the idea of abusing them the way the Berserkers did didn’t sit well with him.

In fact, it made him angry. More than angry. He was livid.

I could see it in his features. The blotchy redness of his pockmarked cheeks. The tightness of his jaw and the sharp lines of his eyebrows, pulled low over his eyes. Eyes that were sharp as knives.

“You sure?” he asked, simple and direct.

I nodded once. “Yeah, I am.” My eyes flickered to Dogwood, then back to Jonesy. I didn’t want to say what I was about to say next, but I had to put it out there. Not agreeing with a club’s practice wasn’t enough to get involved, not even with something as disgusting as human trafficking. I needed more and it just so happened that I, unfortunately, had just that. Before Jonesy could answer one way or the other, I dropped the bomb that had to come eventually. “And they took Charlotte.”

“What?” This was Dogwood, his eyes wide and full of the same panic I remembered feeling. “Charlie?”