Saving Axe (Motorcycle Club Romance, Cowboy, Military) (Inferno Motorcycle Club) (28 page)

Axe

Fear clung to me, a vise grip on my heart so tight I could barely breathe.  Jed raced along the back country roads, hugging the turns and driving like his life depended on it, his knuckles white on the steering wheel.  He tried to say something to me, but I couldn't hear him.  All I could think about was them.

June, my dad, April.

If anything happened to them...

Jed pulled in the driveway, two police cruisers and an ambulance blocking the front of the
entry.  The barn was consumed by fire, and the local volunteer firefighters were trying to contain it.

I couldn't see
behind the vehicles to the house.

I heard Jed call to me, but everything was on mute, soundless as I squeezed through the handful of medical personnel and cops near the vehicles.  The air smelled acrid, smoke from the barn still bi
llowing up behind the house, but I could barely hear the crackle of the flames and the rushing sound of the fire.

Someone put a hand on my chest, tried to push me back from the house.  "You can't go in there, sir."

"It's my father's fucking house."  I pried his hand off my chest.  "Move out of my fucking way."

Jed's hand was on my
back.  "Cade, don't," he said.

"Don't fucking touch me," I said.  Then, yelled.  "Get the fuck off me."

And suddenly, June was there, in the doorway, running toward me.

Covered in blood.

Blood on her hands, splotched on her tee-shirt like some macabre design, stark against the white fabric.  She stood in front of me, inches away, her eyes red.

"June."  I touched my hand to her hair, and pulled it
back.

Blood on my fingertips.

I don't understand.

"Cade,
" she said, her voice choking.

"Are you hurt?
  You're hurt.  What happened?"

"Cade."  She put her hand to
my chest, and shook her head.  "Not me."

I looked behind her, at the EMTs, who weren't rushing to take anyone to the emergency room.  A
t the medical personnel seemed to have stopped in their tracks, looking at me, then down at the ground.

No.

This is not happening.

"No," I said.

"Cade."  June shook her head, tears beginning to stream down her cheeks.  "I tried.  I tried to save them, but I couldn't.  There was nothing I could do."

No.

I couldn't hear anything except the blood rushing in my ears.  It drowned out everything, leaving my head swimming.  I stepped around June, and felt her catch my arm.

"Don't go in th
ere, Cade," she said.  "Don't."

I yanked my hand away, and heard her scream at Jed
.  "Stop him.  For fuck's sake, don't let him go in there."

I had to go inside.

I needed to see it for myself.

Inside the doorway, I stopped short.  April was in the kitchen, her body still, eyes open.  Her face looked calm, peaceful even.  Not like the rest of her body. 

I heard one of the medics beside me.  "Gunshot wound to the chest," he said.  "She would have died quickly."

I couldn't look in the other room.  I knew what was waiting for me there.  I didn't want to face it.  "Did she-" I swallowed hard.  I couldn't look below her waist
.  I didn't want to know what those animals had done to her.  "Was she -?"

"We don't know anything yet."  One of the medical personnel - or was it crime scene
investigation?  Someone in a jumpsuit, with lettering that blurred in my eyes, stood beside me.  "It's best if you wait outside."

"Where - " My voice faltered.  "No.  I'm n
ot leaving.  Where's my Dad's - "  I couldn't bring myself to say the word.

"Cade," June said.  "It's not good
."  She put her hand on my arm.

"I need to see him."

I felt like I was walking through quicksand as I made my way to the living room, like my limbs were made of lead, weighing me down as I tried to move.  And then I entered the living room, and everything was still.  Silent.

There he was.

My father.

Tied to a chair in the middle of the room, his h
ead hanging down on his chest.

Beaten.

Covered in blood.

Nothing else mattered, not June trying to stop me as I ran toward him.  Not w
hichever cop tried to hold me back, keep me away from the body.  I dropped to my knees in front of his body, clawed wildly at the rope holding his feet to the chair.

He couldn't be like this, tied to a chair, beaten beyond recognition.

I felt a dam burst inside me, a cry of anguish that rose up from my soul, loud enough to startle anyone within earshot.  It sounded like it came from someone else, not from me.  And I collapsed there, my head against his legs, racked with heaving sobs I couldn't control.  There was so much I had left to tell his man, so much more I needed to apologize for.  He couldn't be gone.

Not now.

I reached out to touch his battered face where it was cut open, the wound still oozing freely.  Tears stung my eyes, but I wanted to remember his face.  The face of the man who raised me, the man I secretly aspired to be.  I wanted to tell him I loved him.

I felt someone's hand on my shoulder, pulling me back.

"Cade," June said, her voice soft.  "You have to stand up.  You can't be here."

I nodded, numb and ros
e to stand there, beside June.

I stood there, before his lifeless body, my fists clenched so tightly I could barely feel my hands.
  The only thing left now, the only thing I felt, was rage, pulsing through my veins.  The Inferno Motorcycle Club had taken everything from me- my soul, my honor...

And now the life of the man who meant everything to me
.

Mad
Dog had done this.

This eclipsed everything else.

They would pay. 
He
would pay.

I would burn the club to the ground.

I would kill them all.

VENGEANCE

I entered on the deep and savage way.

~ Dante's
Inferno,
Canto I (Longfellow's translation)

And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.

~ Revelations 6: 8

June

"I can't bring you into this, June," Cade said.  He sat, in
my bedroom, his head in his hands, his voice tired.  The murders had only happened yesterday, but Cade's face looked like he had aged twenty years.  His skin was grey, and the circles under his eyes were nearly black in color.  He spoke in hushed tones, glancing toward the doorway.  "We should go out there.  I don't know if Crunch is okay out there watching Mac.  I've never seen him like that."

"I put
on a cartoon," I said.  "He's on the sofa with her.  I tried to tell him he should get some rest, but he wasn't about to let go of her.  They'll be okay for a few minutes."

"We need to leave, get
back to California," Cade said.

"What will happen to MacKenzie?"

"Crunch's mother-in-law," Cade said.  "She's flying in from Puerto Rico.  She'll meet us in Los Angeles.  You should stay here.  It won't be good, what needs to happen.  You can't get involved in this."

"I'm already involved in this," I said, the words coming out before I even had a chance to think about the implications.  But I knew what the implications were, didn't I?  I kne
w what Cade was talking about.

Revenge.

He was talking about murder.

"I want to kill them, too,
" I said.  I meant every word.

Cade shook his head.  "That's what people say," he said.  "You say you do, but you don't.  People like you, they might say they want revenge, but when it comes to it, they don't really.  It'll destroy you, June."

"I've already killed."  It came out a whisper, like saying it that way would make it not quite true.  As if it would make it not
really
real.  "I've already killed someone.  On the operating table."

"I'm sure y
ou killed lots of people, June.  Having people die in surgery doesn't count.  It's not the same as murdering someone."

I shook my head.  "No, not like that. 
I didn't just lose someone in surgery," I said.  "I was operating on this gangbanger, back in Chicago.  Came in after shooting at a witness to something the gang had done, I don't know what.  The witness was a mom, walking back home from the corner store with her toddler.  I couldn't get it out of my head, that they would just shoot at her, no regard for the kid.  The kid died at the hospital, and I had this guy, right there, on my table.  I'm supposed to save, you know? 
Heal.
  The Hippocratic Oath and all that.  But my hands shook, and I nicked an artery.  He was already close to being gone, and my supervisor stepped in, tried to save him."

"That's not killing someone, June."

"He described it as accidental, the hospital ended up settling with the family, and my supervisor chalked it up to nerves, from the deployment.  But it wasn't nerves," I said.  I looked up at Cade.  I wanted him to understand what I understood about myself.  "I nicked that artery on purpose.  I did it because he didn't deserve to live."

"June," Cade said.  "This isn't the same thing."

"It's a difference of degrees," I said.  "I don't give a shit what you say.  I'll follow you to California if I have to.  But I'm coming out there.  Your dad meant something to me.  So did April.  And you mean something to me.  It's not a question - it's a fact.  I don't care where it leads, and I don't care if it means I have to kill someone myself."

"You're going to throw everything away, just to follow me out to Californi
a," he said, shaking his head.  "No."

"No," I said.  I'm not throwing anything a
way.  You're my family.  And I'll do anything to protect my family."

Maybe it was shock.  Or maybe there was just something fundamentally wrong with me.  But I knew what Cade was going to do when I saw Stan and Apr
il.

I knew what he had to do.

And I knew what I would do.

The image of Stan and April, there in the house, would never leave my head.  It was burned on my brain.  I kept replaying the scene in my head, like some kind of horror movie on a loop.   I'd arrived there first, could hear the sirens wailing in the distance as they approach
ed.  I knew they were both dead when I saw them, they couldn't be alive, not with those injuries.  But I'd still gone to the bodies, felt for a pulse, choked back the bile that rose in my throat, looking at them.

I slipped, fell, in April
's blood that pooled on the floor, and then everything after that was a blur.  Someone in a uniform picked me up off the ground, took me outside, asked me questions.  I think he thought I'd killed them.  Then I saw Cade, running toward me, Jed behind him.

The look on Cade's face....

I'd seen death before, been in the thick of it.  But to have someone bring it to my front door, kill the people I cared about... that deserved an equivalent response.

Eye for an eye.

So maybe it was shock, what I was feeling right now.  What I'd been feeling since it happened.  Like I was operating on auto-pilot, emotionally detached from everything.  Just like what Cade was doing.

But I had no anxiety, felt no panic thinking about what I was willing to help Cade and Crunch do.  I wa
nted to dole out revenge.

Los Angeles, California

Three days later

"Are you sure I'm supposed to be here?" I whispered to Axe as we stood on the steps of Benicio's home. 
Home
wasn't the right word for it. 
Home
was for places like mine.  Not places like this.  Buildings like this were outrageous.  Estates.  "I could have stayed with MacKenzie and Maria."

"
No, you're staying with me.  And Dani will be there, anyway - she's Benicio's daughter," Axe said.  "I think Maria wanted some grandmother time with her, especially after all that's happened."  Maria had swept in yesterday, surprisingly in control and composed for a woman whose daughter had been murdered, and busied MacKenzie with a flurry of activities.  Crunch had told MacKenzie that her mother was sick, and it was only when Mac asked Maria when April was coming back, that I saw Maria's brave front begin to falter.

The bodyguard opened the door, and Crunch, Axe, and I followed him silently down the foyer and the hallway, then through a doorway to an offic
e, flanked by two men in suits, their holstered weapons visible under their jackets.

"Come in."  The m
an who spoke was well-dressed.

Scratch that.

Impeccably
dressed, in a tailored suit that had to have cost thousands.  But his face, etched with lines, gave him a hard look that said he was definitely not some pampered millionaire.  Axe had said he was a crime boss, and that's exactly what he looked like.  Like he wouldn't think twice about ordering a hit on your family before he calmly finished dessert.

What the hell have I gotten myself into here?

~ ~ ~

"Do you trust Benicio?" I
asked Axe, when he said we'd go back to California, go to their employer.  After he'd explained what had been going on with the club.  "If your club president was stealing from him, wouldn't he want to kill you, too?"

"Blaze trusts him," Axe said.  "His Old Lady is Benicio's daughter."

"What about Blaze?" I'd asked.  "Can he be trusted?"

"I've always been able
to trust Blaze," Axe said.  "I'll stake my life on it."

That's what we were about to do.

~ ~ ~

Then a guy wearing an Inferno Motorcycle Club emblem on his - leather jacket or whatever it was they called it - turned toward us.  "Axe.  Crunch." 

"Blaze," Axe said.

I stood by, awkwardly, while Blaze hugged Cade and Crunch, offered his condolences.

Blaze shook his head.  "I'm so sorry," he said.  "They'll pay.  They will."  Behind his eyes was
the kind of fire, the same intensity that I had seen in Axe's eyes, and I felt my heart race.  I had no doubt that they were going to destroy the men who were responsible for this.

I just hoped that Axe didn't destroy himself in the process.

Or us.

Benicio stepped forward.  "
I'm sorry that we meet under these tragic circumstances.  And for the loss of your father.  Your wife."

Cade
shook his head and clenched his jaw.  Neither he or Crunch said anything.  Crunch just kept staring forward, barely blinking.  He was the one I was worried about.  Cade at least was talking; Crunch had barely said anything, at least to us.  I thought that his grip on sanity seemed tenuous at best.

Benicio gestured to chairs, and I sat, beside t
he only other woman in the room, Dani.

She smiled at me, her mouth tight, and leaned over.  "I'm so sorry to meet you like this," she said.  "Are you okay?"

I nodded, too numb to say much of anything else.

"Blaze said you brought documentation
of Mad Dog's theft," Benicio said.

"I have
copies of the paperwork.  It's been going on for a while," Crunch said.

Benicio nodded.  "Unfortunately,
Mad Dog's duplicity was not a surprise.  Blaze, you know that you've been like a son to me, and I trust that you are uninvolved in any of this."

"Of course not," Blaze said.

"Mad Dog has never sat well with me," Benicio said.

Before we had left Colorado, Cade
had explained the scenario with the club to me, trying to get me to change my mind about coming with him, or at least trying to make me understand the mess I was about to get myself involved in if I decided to join them.  If what had happened to April and Stan had not happened, I would have considered staying in Colorado.  The outlaw biker world did not sound like the place for me, no matter how much I cared about Cade.

But April and Stan's deaths changed that.  I had made a promise to Stan
that I would take care of Cade, and I would keep it.  And I didn't care anymore if my hands got dirty.  I didn't care if my hands had blood on them.

My mind drifted
for a while when Benicio and the men talked business, until I heard Benicio say, "Blaze asked us to keep tabs on you, Axe."

Blaze held his hands up.  "Not because I thought any of this was going down," he said.  "Hell.  I had no idea Mad Dog was involved in anything like this.  I asked because I thought you were in a bad place, is all."