Page 66 of The Biker's Second Chance
“Nearly there,” I murmur, and start walking again.
Rounds crack overhead. The noise bounces off steel. The last Burnings Souls still standing scream and run and then stop screaming. I focus on the small things. The rasp of the blanket against my wrists. The sticky line of someone else’s blood drying across my shin. The heat of bodies pressed to my sides. The rhythm of the guys voices behind me, cold and patient.
We load another wave.
“More clothes,” I call to Rumble, who looks like he lost a fight with a brick wall and liked it. He salutes me with a wad of T-shirts and wobbles off bloody and grinning.
I go back for the women on the pallets and cut their bonds. The rope peels off their skin with a rasp. One has grooves sunk so deep into her ankles that I can see where the circulation tried to die. I wrap them with gauze and hate the shaking in my hands. “You are safe,” I say again. It feels like a lie because nothing that happened here will be undone, but safety has to start somewhere, so it starts with my voice. “You are safe.”
“Am I going to prison,” one whispers. Her eyes are ringed in mascara like bruises. “I heard the cops. I was here. I did things.”
“You lived,” I say. “That is what you did. Come on.”
We pass the office again. Spike’s tone changes, silk over steel. “You bring a taste to show good faith. Cash. We bring proof of life.”
“I am learning what will get you to sit down,” Spike says.
I swallow the stone in my throat and keep walking.
A girl no older than fourteen crouches in a corner by a stack of crates. I almost miss her. She is so still she looks like part of the shadows. Her hands are wrapped around her ankles. Her nails are bitten until they bleed. When I kneel, she shrinks, eyes flat and empty.
“Hey,” I say. My voice cracks. I clear it and try again. “Hey, little bird. I am Jayne. You do not have to move yet. I can sit here with you.”
We sit. Around us men drag bodies. Boots scrape. Someone groans and then stops. She watches my hands. When I reach slowly into my kit she flinches. I freeze until her breath evens a little. I pull out a foil packet. Graham crackers. I break one and put half on the floor between us.
She stares. Ten long seconds slide by. She pinches the edge and brings it to her mouth like it might bite her first. She chews. Swallows. Her throat works like it hurts.
“Can I touch your hand,” I ask. “Just your hand. We are going to the truck. That is the whole plan.”
She nods so small I almost miss it. Her fingers slide into mine. She is ice. I cover her hand with both of mine and rise slowly, pulling her with me. I do not let go. Not until Tella reaches down from the truck and lifts her like she weighs nothing and deposits her into a circle of blankets where another woman opens her arms and the girl folds into them like she belongs there.
I wipe my face with the back of my wrist and taste salt and smoke and something bitter. I do not know if it is grief or rage. Maybe both. My cheeks ache and when I touch them I realize my mouth is smiling. It is a cracked, wet, wrecked thing, but it is a smile. Not because any of this is fine. Because she ate a cracker.
“Load them,” Leo calls. “Move.”
We do. Bodies into trucks, then another sweep, then another, until the cages are empty and the mattresses are stripped and the corners hold only dust and a bent paperclip and a clump of blonde hair that I refuse to think about. The hum of the warehouse settles into a low moan of engines and a steady whisper of women breathing the kind of breath you take when you are allowed to again.
I take one last look down the line where the cages stood. There are little squares on the concrete where the pads protected the floor and everywhere else is stained. My chest tightens. It feels like guilt. It feels like a fist closing around something soft.
I could have come sooner. If I had pushed harder. If I had not run at all. If I had never left the club. If I had been smarter. If I had been braver. The ifs pile up like trash.
I press my palms to my thighs until my hands stop shaking. No more ifs. Not tonight.
This is what I am supposed to do. Not run off alone and get myself killed for a headline. Not scream into the void and wait for someone else to answer. I can be the woman at the door with the water. I can be the hands that cut tape and hold broken wrists. I can make the clinic at the shelter an actual clinic. I can set up safe rooms at the clubhouse. I can draft a list with Nisa for trauma supplies and clothes and a damn washing machine that does not quit every three cycles. I can do intake like a nurse and triage like a medic and walk them through the dark into something that looks like a morning.
I climb into the truck and scan the faces that stare back at me from under blankets. Some are blank as stone. Some are wrecked and red. One smiles. A tiny flash of white teeth that feels like someone lit a match in my ribs.
Spike appears at the door and meets my eyes. There is blood on his jaw and a what looks like a book under his arm. His gaze searches my face like he is asking a question he does not want to say out loud.
I nod once and try to smile. I don't know if he believes it or not.
He taps twice on the metal and steps back, shouting orders, pulling us out, turning this blood-soaked place into a caravan heading home.
New question, though, curls in the back of my skull and refuses to budge. How do I make sacrifice worth the risk in a world that just put one of our brothers in the ground.
I do not know yet.
CHAPTER 35
