Loving Nicole (Savage Brothers MC #3)(33)

I feel a new hand on my shoulder and the ones around my chest lose some of their rigidness. I could get away now, go to the cars. I could, but Bull’s voice and the pain in it stops me.

“Nic girl,” he says and his words are quiet, but they reach the haze I’m in, and I am in a haze. I don’t even know half of what I’m feeling, I have no idea of anything around me. I am in shock. I look up at him, and the pain in his eyes pierce my heart. Standing beside him is Dancer, his face black, cuts scattered across his face. There are bandages seeped with blood on his hands, but it’s his eyes that pull me in. Dancer has these brown eyes that have always caught my attention, but now there is something else in them. Something I don’t want to see. So, I turn from them. Looking at Bull, praying for something different from him. I shake my head back and forth in denial of words not spoken aloud, but that are heavy in the smoke filled air.

“Nic, girl…,” he repeats again. With just those two words, Bull pulls me in. His gruff, quiet voice sinks deep into my heart, and the dam breaks. The tears that were streaming down my face are nothing compared to the sobs that rock through me as I collapse against him.

“No!” I scream out in anguish. “No,” I moan against his chest. The single word extending out as if it was the longest word in the English language. Bull tightens his hold and keeps me from falling to my knees. “Dragon…” I cry out again.

“I’m sorry, Nic. I’m so f*cking sorry.”

I don’t know who said that. I don’t even care. I’m too lost in misery.

I’m too…lost.





Chapter 20




Crusher


There is a limit to what the human spirit and body can bear. I watched it accumulate for years with my mom. She was broken. She was dead inside way before her old man dealt the final death blow. So seeing Dani now curled in a corner, her face unrecognizable. Her body so beaten, so bruised and bloody that she looks as if she has been hit by a semi-truck—my heart stops.

I wasn’t honest with Dragon. Maybe, I should have been. If I had told him how far I went to get the smallest glimmer of information from the rat he was planning on letting loose, what would he have done?

Would he have congratulated me, patted me on the back? Would he have told me I did a good job? Somehow I highly doubted it. So? I kept shit to myself, buried the body out in the forest away from hiking trails and set about finding Dani.

This Kavanagh’s patsy we captured, did indeed know next to nothing. He let something slip though, as I was branding off anything that might be used for identification purposes. Whoever hired him, it wasn’t Kavanagh himself. It was someone different and in one of their conversations the man had mentioned an old Tobacco Barn on Route 11. That small morsel of information allowed me to finally give him what he had been begging me for. Death. I thought about waiting to see if it panned out, but truly he didn’t know anything else and I was running out of things to torture him with.

Part of my stomach twisted at the shit I did to him. Then I would shrug it off and picture Dani and what I knew was happening to her. I don’t know how I knew she hadn’t got away, I just did. Sometimes her face in my thoughts would be overshadowed by that of another—a woman from my past I couldn’t help. So, I know I’m not acting rationally. I can’t stop it, and most of me just doesn’t give a f*ck by this point.

I did take the time to bury the body, even though a huge part of me didn’t want to. Then I hightailed it out to the old barn to see if there were any signs of life. Now, I’m standing outside of the barn peeking through a large crack. Dani, and to be honest I can only tell it is Dani by the mass of thick brunette hair, is curled in a half ball. She is so beaten, swollen and bruised it doesn’t even look like it could be her. Her thick half-curly, brunette hair says it is though, even if it’s caked in dirt and blood. Off from her are three men in suits standing and talking back and forth like they don’t have a care in the world. I start to go in immediately and take them all out at once. It doesn’t matter that there are three of them and only one of me. I have surprise on my side. I even start to do it, when I hear one of the men talking…

“I planted the bomb in Dragon’s vehicle. It’ll go off when he takes it out of park.”

One man hits the guy who just spoke up on the back of the head.

“It didn’t go off earlier today.”

“Ow,” he says grabbing his head. “It wasn’t supposed to. I set the system up, it’ll go off now, when the gearshift is moved from park. You said you wanted them both to pay, Boss.”

Fuck. I need to get a call out to Dragon and warn him. I can’t take the time to do it now though. Doing so, would risk being found and not being able to help Dani. I pray I get through before it’s too late. It twists in my gut that I’m choosing Dani over my brothers, but it doesn’t stop me.

“It better go off. You f*ck this up and it will be the last thing you do. I’m leaving you here to watch over our prisoner, while Donald and I go see if we can catch the aftermath of it all. There better be aftermath, too.”

“There will be, boss.”

I push up against the barn as they go out the front entrance. I peek around the corner to see them get in a sleek black car that screams money. When they drive off, I take a breath of relief. While I’m waiting for them to be gone long enough so I know they won’t try and circle back and catch me, I try and call Dragon.