Page 68 of Harper's Song

“We’re not letting him near a computer,” Cross says. “He could lead them straight to us. He’s their man. We can’t trust him.”

“Actually, he’s only been with them for the last couple of weeks,” Hawk says. “He’s Jax’s friend from prison. He—”

“We’re not just trusting them this blindly, are we?” I snap. “What the fuck is this? Amateur hour? Let me go see him. I’ll get him to tell us where the Grove is and who’s waiting for us there. No computer needed.”

“Stop it, Scar,” Chance of all people says. “Jax wants what we all want. To save Harper. Probably more than we do. So if this guy he brought with him can find her, we have to use that.”

“It’s too early for trust,” Cross tells him before I can say anything.

“We’re late as it is,” Chance protests, taking the words straight out of my mouth.

He’s not wrong. We reached that cabin Harper and Jax rented in the woods eight hours after she’d sent the text.

Cross is also right to be careful.

I don’t see a way out of this, and the clock is ticking.

“We’re two hundred and if what Gene is saying is true, they have over four hundred men all told,” Hawk says. “We have to play it safe.”

As if anyone fucking asked him.

“Oh, fuck this. Fuck all this fucking talking and waiting. Jax is telling the truth. I believe him and I’ll vouch for him,” Chance says.

All that earns him is a hard, dark look from Cross, another from Tank and one more from me. So he just jostles past the guys around him and storms out of the room.

I want to do the same. Just go. Do anything and everything I have to and find my little girl.

“Find out where the Grove is,” Cross tells Hawk. “Give him a computer but make sure he doesn’t send any kind of message to anyone.”

Hawk nods and leaves, and Cross turns to me. “Chance is right. We can’t waste any more time. But I can’t send us riding into the unknown either. I know you understand that.”

I don’t and I do and it’s just one big fucking mess. And all my fault. Because my brother could be dead if I wasn’t such a sentimental coward. And then my daughter would be safe.

Now she may never be again. Even if we find her alive, she will never be the same. Just like her mother wasn’t after my brother was done with her.

I don’t want to think about that.

But I can’t stop thinking about it.

* * *

Harper

The roar of bikes started up again soon after the news that Jax escaped, the cloud of dust floating into my room twice as large now and thick enough to make me cough.

For a moment, I thought I was safe, that whatever was to happen to me wouldn’t. At least not yet.

Then I heard men’s voices, one of them Reggie’s, the other the hissing man’s. I didn’t hear what they were saying at first, because they were speaking quietly and I was too far away from the window. And then I didn’t hear what they were saying because the thudding of their boots on the floorboards overshadowed it. As did the whooshing sound of blood that my racing heart was sending through my body with insane speed.

But for all that, I was surprisingly calm as the door opened and Reggie entered, followed by the other guy, a black-haired man with a snake-like flat nose. Snake, someone called him, and it fits.

“You’ve been talking to Cherry,” Reggie says, then adds, “The whore I had bring you food,” when I just look at him stupidly.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” he continues. “Now she’ll have to be punished. And it’ll all be your fault.”

“No,” I say as I cross my arms over my chest, making the chain rattle, and look him straight in his dark forest eyes. “It’ll be your fault, because you’re an insane man who enjoys hurting women and children.”

“And everyone else who doesn’t know how to behave and show due respect,” he says and something sharp and very dangerous flashes in his eyes, like a very poisonous snake slithering across the forest floor in the dead of night. But a Snake, that’s this other guy, is already with him and they seem to be very close. Or at least on the same page about raping me then cutting me up.

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