Outlaw's Promise(75)

And of course no one could catch Volos. Of course he was a fucking ghost. He was sitting right there in the FBI office alongside the people trying to catch him.

“Why?” I shook my head. “Why do all this? You could have just rolled into town, shown your badge and taken her into protective custody. I never would have even known.”

Volos leaned forward. Annabelle whimpered and tried to shrink even further into her seat cushion. He looked right into my eyes and that’s when I realized what we were dealing with. People had thrown around words like psycho but I hadn’t known, until that moment, just how broken he really was.

“Why?” Volos asked. “Because I had to destroy you. I wanted to see you tear yourself apart, agonizing over whether to save your fucking club or save your girl. I wanted you to watch your business burn. I wanted to see you grieve for your friends.” He looked at Annabelle. “Because she’s mine. And you stole her.”

Oh Jesus. It all replayed in my mind, everything since we’d made the Blood Spiders back off. The fire at the warehouse: no wonder he’d shown up so fast. He’d burned the place and then offered me a way out. He’d put Ox in the hospital and then called me again. He’d tried to kill Mom and known I’d finally call him to make a deal. All just to torture me, like a kid pulling the legs off a spider.

He was a grade-A fucking psychopath. And I’d brought Annabelle right to him. I growled and managed to rise a few inches before I was slammed back down again.

Volos nodded to the guys in suits. “They’re going to kill you, now. But I want you to know this before you die, since you worked so hard to save your club. The state police are about to get a tip from the FBI that three pounds of coke is hidden in the club’s compound.”

“They won’t find shit,” I said.

Volos smiled politely. “Yes, they will.” He nodded to his men again. “When they set the fire in the old woman’s trailer, do you think that’s all they did?”

Oh, Jesus. The whole club would go down. And the way I left it with Mac, they’d think—

“That’s right,” said Volos. “You’ll have disappeared. No one will find your body. Your friends will go to jail and they’ll think you planted the coke and ratted them out.”

No! Jesus, no! I struggled again and got a gun butt to the back of my head. I slumped forward in the dirt.

The SUV pulled away. The last thing I saw was Annabelle’s terrified face.

Then the cold barrel of a gun pressed into the back of my head.





48





Annabelle





Ever since I was a kid, I’ve needed to touch something. I’ve needed that physical grounding to fight back the monsters when I’m really, really scared. Maybe, if you asked a psychologist, they’d say it’s because I lost my mom and then my dad. Maybe I’m just weird. But I clung onto Perkins and then I clung onto the necklace a biker gave me. And then I had one glorious week when I could cling onto something real, a solid, warm, badass man who I loved, who’d always protect me.

But now he was gone.

And I needed something. I needed it so bad because I knew what I was going to hear. I sat there next to Volos, eyes fixed on the seat in front of me, trying to somehow close my ears, trying to not hear, trying to—

The shot rang out behind us, an explosion that echoed off the trees. I gave a single, agonized cry, as if it had been me that had just been killed.

“And that’s what happens to heroes,” said Volos to himself.#p#分页标题#e#

It all came out, then. I cried: big, hacking sobs that shook my ribs and scalded my throat. I cried for myself, for the nightmare my future had just become. I cried for Carrick, the big Irish biker who’d just tried to do one good thing. I cried because our story was over and everything good that had happened since the auction had been undone.

Once, I’d thought I’d been lucky. A desperate phone call to the twelve year-old number of a near-stranger: it should never have worked. He should never have saved me. Now, I realized I’d gotten it all wrong. That chance in a million had made everything worse. I was right back with Volos, just as if Carrick had never come. Except Carrick was dead, Ox was lying in the hospital and the club was ruined. I’d cursed them all.

Volos took my purse, dug out my cell phone and dropped it out of the window. “Stop crying,” he said absently.

I just turned and looked at him, incredulous. “F—Fuck you,” I sobbed. I wasn’t being brave. I was just broken.

He put his hand on my cheek, just like Carrick had. Then, with his thumb on my other cheek, he squeezed. He squeezed so hard my mouth distorted into a tear-stained pout. He squeezed so hard the inside of my cheeks scraped on my molars. He was terrifyingly strong: one of those men who aren’t physically big but who get scary strong when they’re angry...and his anger seemed to come without any warning. “Do you know where the name Volos comes from?” he asked.