Page 69 of Avenging Devil: Part 1

“Right.” Snatcher comes back on the line. “I’ve got Stormy with me.”

“Your end clean?” Stormy asks without preamble.

“As a fuckin’ whistle,” Token growls. “What about yours?”

For an answer, there’s a chuckle, followed with, “I was impressed with the searches you set off, Token. Just a shame you didn’t close them all down.”

Shrugging off the patronising compliment, Token responds, “Clearly, I didn’t find anything of importance.”

“Thank fuck you didn’t. If you had, Snatcher would be offering you my job.” There’s more than a touch of arrogance in Stormy’s voice.

Lost snarls, “Fuckin’ get on with it, Stormy.”

There’s a murmuring of voices in the background, then Stormy’s voice comes back on. “Swift and Bolt tell me San Diego’s solid. I, well, I kind of have trust issues, but I’m working on that. But under the circumstances, I need to know why you’re looking for info on Saffie Jones. You asking for you, or for someone else?”

“Lack of trust goes both ways, Stormy,” Lost coolly states. “But this might help. You’re not the only party interested. Token’s searches were picked up by someone else. Interestingly, they breezed over the name we were seeking, and asked about a Sapphire Marshall instead. They want to know any info we have, and there are dollars attached.”

“Fuck.” The other end of the phone goes quiet for a moment. “Okay.” When he comes back on, Stormy’s voice is firmer. “She’s not your problem. Leave it with us, and we’ll move her on.”

“Uh-uh. No can do…” I can’t say the wordbrother, it doesn’t slip off my tongue. “She’s in no state to move on as you’d have it.” And I’m not ready to have her disappear from my life.

“She’s hurt?” There’s an urgent note of concern in his voice.

“Nah,” I reassure him, but don’t want to say more.

“What is she now, six months? Has she had the baby prematurely?”

He knows she was pregnant?Lost sees me bristling, and waves me down. “How about you tell us how you know so much about her? We’re fencing around here, Brother, without anyone getting in any strikes. Ain’t no one going to get anywhere until one of us comes clean. I think you owe it to us to go first.”

There’s another brief period where no one speaks, then Snatcher takes over. “We’re Satan’s Devils, Lost. All of us wear the same patch. None of us tolerate violence toward women. But Stormy here, he’s seen some shit, and his lack of trust isn’t always unwarranted. He needs your reassurance that you’ve got Saffie’s best interests at heart and won’t put her in danger.”

“I can give that assurance,” I answer for my prez. Personally, if the club doesn’t want to get involved.

Lost’s mouth quirks, and then adds his reinforcement, “This club doesn’t make money from spilling info on a bitch who’s better off staying lost. You should know that more than anyone, Stormy.”

At his obvious reference to Patsy, Stormy exhales a breath, his sigh of capitulation audible over the line. “Okay. Here it is. Are you aware that we’re part of a pipeline, a network that helps abused women escape their abusers? Well, we are. Saffie was brought to the attention of the Freedom Trail by a nurse in a hospital in Nevada.” He pauses, before continuing. “If this is news to you, then it’s going to be hard hearing.” He lets that sink in before proceeding again. I take the opportunity to steel myself. It turns out, I need to. “Saffie was in bad shape. She’d been kept by an MC for five years, and there was evidence of multiple previous injuries, but no medical records, suggesting they treated her in house. This time, they’d gone too far, and the damage they’d inflicted was too much for them to handle. Not wanting her dead, reluctantly they had to get her help, and thank fuck for that. A nurse treating her recognised the signs of abuse, got in contact with the Freedom Trail, and Saffie, having just learned she was pregnant, jumped at the chance to escape.”

Fuck!

For a moment I forget to breathe. I’d known it had to have been bad, but this? As my head fills with sorrow at the horrors Saffie’s suffered—so much more than I could ever imagine—a quick glance around shows Dart, Lost and Token are also letting the dreadful facts sink in, Stormy continues, “Saffie’s a pet name, one by which her family called her. Once she became a teenager, she’d ditched it as being too childish. But it’s familiar, and one she has no problem answering to, so we resurrected it for her fake identity.”

“She was kept as a club whore?” I ask, re-evaluating what I’d thought I’d seen in her, and comparing her to Pearl, Tits and Cindy. She hadn’t seemed like a person who’d flaunt her sex, so probably wouldn’t have gone willingly. Stormy had said kept, which implies she was imprisoned and forced.Fuck.

“She wasn’t a whore.” Stormy contradicts what I’ve just been thinking. “The MC might not have worried so much if she was. At the time of her disappearance, she was Sapphire Marshall, that was the name she was known by to the club—her surname courtesy of the VP, Duke—real, not road name—to whom she was, and still technically is, married.”

What the actual fuck?She’d never given any inkling of that.

At first, I bristle that I’d almost entered a relationship with a woman who was taken, then abruptly come to my senses. Duke is the asshole she’s terrified of and was probably responsible for almost killing her. Marriage licence or not, she owes him nothing, and certainly not her fidelity.

She wasn’t a club whore but a wife.Duke’s wife.Whatever claim he had, legal or not, doesn’t apply now. He’s going to become separated from his wife voluntarily or not if I have anything to do with it.

“The VP’s property,” Lost states, his jaw locked, making me glance up. He’s right. A fucking abuser who’d put his wife in the hospital would see her exactly as that—something he owned, and not as the Satan’s Devils do, property to be loved and cherished.

“Got it in one, Brother.” Stormy growls, adding coldly, “He wants her back, if only to save face, but seeing the lengths he’s going to trying to find her, it could well be other reasons.” There’s a pause, then he adds, so chillingly I almost shiver, “If he finds her, I doubt she’ll stay long breathing, or if he keeps her alive, that her life will be a living hell. He’ll make an example of her. Duke doesn’t have a good reputation.”

“He know about the baby?” I ask, still not saying it doesn’t exist anymore. No one likes putting all their cards on the table.

I can hear Stormy’s deep intake of breath over the phone. “The nurse who helped her escape was found dead a few months ago, not long after Sapphire left. She was tortured, so it seems likely.”

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