Page 14 of Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

Chapter 7

Tango

(2 weeks, 5 days ago)

The prospect I brought with me, Ashton Davidson, hopped a flight back to South Dakota, taking Liza’s belongings with him as his baggage just in case he was tailed to the airport. He never made contact with the girl so the King’s Demons wouldn’t have any reason to suspect she knew him or was headed his way. So far, it seemed to have worked out beautifully.

By the time I got the call from Frankie letting me know that the KDs were back at the Expo, and sniffing around the space I’d occupied the past two days, I knew we made the right decision. I also knew we had a good damn head start since they assumed I’d show up again today. We had left at five this morning, and I was ever thankful the Prospect and I had driven the truck down so I’d have a place for all the equipment I had to tote with me. It would have been too damn cold for Liza on the bike since I didn’t think she was used to riding. Sure, her brother had a bike and did his fair share, but from what he had mentioned, he wasn’t one to take her, and she’d avoided being associated with men with bikes after what happened to her when she was younger.

“So, you never been on a bike?” I don’t know why I felt the need to ask, but it was bothering me that she hated my world so much.

She smirked, and I only just caught it out of the side of my eye as we bumped down a road that wasn’t well cared for. I had chosen to take some back roads, and deviate the route I’d normally take home, because I didn’t want to leave traces of our journey behind where the King’s Demons might find it. The first part of our plan was to lay low with the woman; the second part was to fight if necessary to protect her. Hell, once Charlie overheard the guys talking about Liza’s situation it was all the woman could do to force Rage’s hand and tell her to come help. It hadn’t been too long ago that Charlie herself was on the run from her husband and from Charlie’s own sister who had planted the idea in the man’s head that he wanted his wife dead for the money she would leave behind.

Needless to say, a woman having to go in hiding was something of a trigger for Charlie, and now Liza had a champion on her side, even if she didn’t know it yet.

“I never said I hadn’t been on a bike before, I just said my brother never took me.”

“When did you get to ride?”

Her smirk completely disappeared as a frown marred her otherwise beautiful face with the telling tightness that pulled Liza’s lips in together and furrowed her brow. “When I was nineteen,” she explained. I remembered her saying that she’d been nineteen when the King’s Demons got a hold of her before.

“You don’t have to yet,” I reassured her. She was going to have to tell her story, but I wanted her to feel comfortable with me before she did. I needed her to understand that I would only put her through retelling her horrible ordeal if it was absolutely necessary.

“I do, and we both know it. Might as well be now.” She leaned back in the seat, getting comfortable on the beat up leather seat of the old Chevy Blazer we occupied. “My brother has always had a stupid streak,” she started her story, and I had to refrain from chuckling, having known her brother for quite a few years considering we ran in some of the same circles with the tattoo conventions. Plus, there was the fact that I was originally from Carson City, so heading into Reno and running in some of the same circles, as another artist wasn’t unheard of.

“He was into some even dumber shit back then. I’m pretty sure he had a coke habit he couldn’t afford, but he also liked to gamble.” She scoffed then. “I think the gambling was originally just a means to an end. When it paid off he could get more drugs, when it didn’t he was in need of way more money, and he started playing for higher stakes. Unfortunately, he was playing for those higher stakes in one of the King’s Demon’s establishments. It was there that he lost really big for the first time. You know how these things go. He went somewhere else to try to win bigger in order to pay that debt off. Everything snowballed, and when the KDs came to collect, my brother was flat broke and being evicted from his apartment.”

Shit, now I understood how the sister had gotten involved in the first place. “He came to see you?” I asked the question, but I already knew the answer she was going to drop.

“Yeah, he sure did. I was at the University of Nevada – Reno, living in the dorms and he came there to see me. I don’t know why he thought I’d have any money, but he asked anyway. Then he asked if he could crash for the night.”

She sighed and glanced out the window for a long moment before she managed to continue. “The next day, I guess someone saw us leave the dorm. I hugged him goodbye, he took off one way, I went the other and never made it to class that day or for the rest of the week.”

“So someone threw you on the back of their bike and no one noticed you putting up a fight?”

“No, someone snatched me into a van that was waiting by the curb, and only after they bashed me over the head with something, a bottle I think, and knocked me out long enough to get me out of there without making much of a scene.” She nodded at the wide-eyed look I toss her way briefly as I continued to drive even while I want to pull over and just hold her, because I don’t think she should have to relive her story without someone doing it.

I noticed her move her hand to just behind and above and her left ear. She shivered, as if a cool breeze just blew across her. The memory of her attack and imprisonment was clearly having an affect. “Were you still in the van when you woke?”

I could tell from my peripheral vision that she shook her head indicating, no. “I woke in a dingy room with no furniture outside of a small mattress. You know the kind they put on kids’ bunk beds?”

“Yeah, I know what you mean.”

“Well, I was lying half on, half off of one of those things in this room with peeling paint on the walls and enough dirt on the floor that I almost thought it was actual dirt floor. I figured I was in an old root cellar or something. My head was a jumbled mess of pain and confusion, and I was so thirsty that my mouth was literally sticking together. I didn’t remember being hit, or stuffed into the van at first. I still don’t remember being stuffed into the van, just that it was there.

“When the door opened and more light poured in than what had been seeping through the crack on the floor under the door my whole body locked up. Everything froze for a moment in a time before I took that next breath and scuffed, dirty motorcycle boots came into view. The guy standing there moved forward a little then toed me in the ribs. I moved, inadvertently then, and his laugh skated across my skin like a thousand needles pricking me all at once. It was a thing that let me know I wouldn’t be around much longer if I didn’t play along with whatever he wanted from me.”

“Was it Random?”

“No, it wasn’t. It was his second in command, Vanquish, I think. I just know they mostly called him Van.”

I nodded my head knowing exactly whom she was talking about, and dreading what was to come in her story, because a man like Van didn’t leave young women untouched.

“Once he realized I was alive and awake he reached down and grabbed me,” she flinched as she said that and her arms curled around her body as if she were protecting herself all over again. It didn’t take a genius to figure out he’d grabbed her breast. “When he realized I was still wearing a bra he got angry, and started ripping at my shirt, tearing it off of me, and then my bra was next, but I started fighting back, because honestly I’d rather be dead, or at the very least passed out again if I was going to have to go through what he was about to do.” She shook a little making me wish I could stop her story. The only thing that kept me from doing so was that I knew her brother had said she hadn’t been violated that way. I wondered briefly if he’d just been given a watered down version of events to spare him.

“Since I was fighting he got rougher and slapped me while he continued to try to get my bra off of me. He was laughing the entire time telling me he preferred when they put up a good fight for him. I punched him in the dick then, and he doubled over holding on to himself for a moment. I tried to get passed him to the door he’d come through, but before I could get too far he reached out and grabbed my ankle, yanked me back so that I fell flat on my face and then he kicked me.” Her whole body shook again with the memory. “I ended up with three broken ribs from those kicks. He had my pants down to mid-thigh before I finally found my voice, scratchy and dry as it was I started screaming, and before he could get my pants down to my knees when another man came in and threw him off of me.

“At first, I thought someone was there to save me. Then he started yelling at the Van guy, and telling him they needed me to not look like I’d been through the ring just yet. I honestly thought they meant a boxing ring or something, but I found out later that wasn’t the case.”

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