He glanced over and noticed that I was awake. A dull glaze had taken over his eyes. His jaw hung heavy, mouth wide open, as breath circulated noisily between his fat lips.
I tried to scream, but I realized I had a gag in my mouth. The most I could do was emit a hollow squeak.
"Shush," he said distractedly. "No one can hear you. We're in the middle of nowhere."
I thrashed side to side, but my hands and feet were both bound together with lengths of rope. I was stuck. No one could hear me. No one knew where I was. And the last man to see me wanted nothing to do with me ever again.
I fell still. It was no use struggling. Maybe a different tactic would work. I shifted my eyes to Ricardo and mustered all the most pitiful expression I'd ever pulled together. I willed a tiny tear out of the corner of my eye, feeling it slide down my cheek. Ricardo saw me staring at him and a low, grinding chuckle bubbled up from somewhere deep in his chest.
"You're with me until the end, querida," he growled. "You are the perfect little lamb." He directed his eyes back onto the road and resumed ignoring me.
Lamb? What on earth was he talking about? The drugs were clearly eating away at his brain. He had settled down from the manic state he'd been in when he entered the room. Now, he was languid and calm, bordering on catatonic.
But as the seconds wore by, I noticed signs of life coming back into him. First, his fingers began pattering on the steering wheel. Then he started wriggling in his seat like he couldn't find a comfortable position. Back and forth, back and forth, he writhed around, getting more frantic by the second.
His eyes lit up. I followed his gaze to see what he was looking at. A huge sign loomed on the side of the road. It was the entrance to the state park. This place was famous for a giant plateau that looked out over a big swathe of forest. It was called Devil's Skillet. I swallowed hard. I used to associate that name with picnics and field trips, just innocent, happy memories. Now, I feared it was about to become something much, much worse.
I looked one more time at Ricardo. My face was pleading, begging. I moaned through the rag in my mouth, trying to form the words that would convince him to set me free.
He looked at me and smiled. His teeth were like rotting tombstones. They were yellowed, vile, on the verge of falling out of his mouth or crumbling to dust completely.
"I'm taking you up to the plateau, little girl," he spat. "And I'm going to gut you like a fish. Only your blood will make things right again."
Chapter 11
Croak
I frowned as I approached the clubhouse. It was just after dawn, and yet there were nearly two dozen bikes parked out front. What the hell was everyone doing here so damn early? As far as I knew, there wasn't a party last night, so it couldn't be that all the brothers had just gotten too drunk and rowdy to ride home. After all, a little buzz hadn't stop us from hopping on our motorcycles any other time.
I ran through the possibilities in my head as I parked my bike and headed in, but nothing seemed to make sense. My phone was dead, so I didn't know if someone had sent out a text about an emergency meeting or something like that. But, shit, most of the Angels hadn't seen the sunrise in a long-ass time. It would take a real serious crisis to rattle those numbskulls out of bed.
The clubhouse was packed with Angels. Everyone looked tired as hell, with more yawns and bleary eyes than I could count. But underneath the exhaustion and the hangovers was a palpable sense of worry. I could've cut it with a knife, the tension in the air was so damn thick. In my experience, whispers in a place where men usually boomed and roared was never a good sign.
After a quick scan to confirm that Growler wasn't in the room, I spotted Steezy and Big Tuna in a corner. I lumbered over to them. My body was ringing with twinges and aches from the manic lifting session I'd had, but I ignored it.
"What the fuck is happening?" I demanded as I stomped up to the booth where they were sitting.
Big Tuna's eyes were low and downcast. "It ain't good, Croak." He jerked a thumb at Steezy, telling him to finish the story.
Steezy chose his words carefully as he filled me in. But the second he started talking, my blood ran cold. "He took Corinne." I knew right away what he meant. He didn't have to say much else for me to get the gist of things.
"Ricardo," I said.
He nodded. "A prospect coming back from a quick run to Austin saw him driving like a fucking lunatic down the road. Ricardo's got a pretty conspicuous car, and the kid had done his homework, so he knew right away who it was. The prospect tried to tail them, but his bike blew a tire and he had to pull over. But he was with ‘em long enough to see that the son of a bitch had her."
I tried to keep a cool head, but fireworks of anger were popping off inside of me like the Fourth of July. I would have murdered the bastard with my bare hands right then and there if I could've just laid a finger on him. This was more than anger. This was bloodlust. This was rage. This was ‘don't-touch-my-girl' anger. Funny how quickly I'd shifted from running mode to hunting.
Just then, I heard a deep voice call for attention. All eyes shifted towards the bar. Growler settled into a stool with his head in his hands, rubbing the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb. He didn't look up as he started to speak to all the men assembled.
"I'm sure y'all know what's happened by now. If not, well, here's the basics: some low-life son of a motherfucking cunt took my daughter. From what I've gathered, he thinks we've been cutting him a raw deal in terms of the tribute we demand. Between that and the drugs he's been snortin' or injectin' or whatever his vice of choice is, he made a very bad mistake. Well, he ain't seen a damn thing yet. We're about to show him what the fury of the Inked Angels really feels like."
Heads nodded and fists slammed into the table as the men around the room gave voice to their support. Damn, I'd never seen the prez looking so downtrodden. He was talking like he was full of fire, but I could tell this had struck too close to home. He felt vulnerable. All of the sudden, the man looked old as hell.
The funny thing was, I knew how he felt. I didn't even have to look him in the eyes to know that he and I were going through the same thing right now. Someone had touched the thing we cared about. Maybe I was even worse off than Growler was. He'd had his whole life to realize how much he cared about Corinne. I was just now coming to terms with it.
Well, no time like the present.
"I want a team of our best to load up and follow that slimy fucker to get my daughter back. We leave in ten minutes. That's all." He stood up, wincing with a hand on his lower back. I tasted blood and realized for the first time that I'd chewed a hole in the side of my cheek.
I whirled around and looked at Steezy. "Where'd you say Ricardo was headed?" I growled.
He looked at me curiously. "The only thing out that way was Devil's Skillet. Otherwise, it's bushes and flat land all the way to Brownsville, more or less."
The state park. If I rode hard and fast, I'd be there in less than an hour. I couldn't sit around and wait for the rest of the Angels to wake their asses up and get ready for battle. I was ready now.
I turned to leave. "Where are you going?" Steezy asked me.
I didn't look back at him as I answered, "I'm gonna go kill him."
Chapter 12
Corinne
Ricardo was dragging me up a long, winding hill. I was kicking and screaming but my voice echoed throughout the empty park. No one was around to hear me, so my screams went unnoticed.
The rocky dirt was tearing my back and legs raw. Where Ricardo had a fistful of my hair, my scalp was burning, bringing stinging tears to the corners of my eyes.
"Please, let me go," I begged. I hated that I'd resorted to pleading for my life, but the way things were going, it didn't seem like I had much time left.
The last traces of the withdrawn phase he'd gone through were completely vanished by now. He was a roiling, spitting blur, twitching and spasming in every direction. He swung his knife and lopped branches from trees as he muttered and cursed to himself. He didn't seem to show any signs of getting tired, despite the several hundred uphill yards he'd dragged me since we parked the car at the bottom of the plateau.
He ignored my pleas, not even so much as glancing back. Instead, he stepped inexorably upwards and forwards, higher and higher, until we emerged from the trees that clung to the upward-sloping part of the hill and onto the flat top.
It was a clearing maybe twenty yards in diameter, roughly circular, with thick, closely-set trees forming a half-circle border. The other edge looked out over a steep, hundred-yard drop to the rocks below. From here, I could see for miles and miles, until the horizon became nothing but a blue haze in the distance.
Directly in front of us was a box-shaped rock. The sides and surface were smooth, almost polished, from years of erosion and human touch. It rose from the dirt at nearly perfect right angles, as if it were meant to be there.
Ricardo lurched towards it, still muttering to himself. His stream of consciousness rambling had taken a bizarre twist. I noticed his skin was feverish and red as he talked. "If they're Angels, then yes, yes, I will do what they want, I will give them blood, yes, blood of a girl, bring the demons upon them, yes, yes … " He trailed off and I couldn't hear him anymore. Nothing he said made sense to me, but he kept going on and on about angels and demons and sacrifices. It didn't matter that I didn't understand. It was still enough to horrify me. His intent was clear: I was about to die.