Reaper's Stand (Reapers Motorcycle Club Book 4)(81)

“Maybe tomorrow?” I asked, flattered that she’d invite me along. Em sighed.

“It’ll have to be another time,” she said. “I think we’re headed home this afternoon. I’ve been cramping a little—no big deal—but Hunter’s all worked up about it. He’s terrified I’m going to break or something.”

She rolled her eyes and we all laughed. Then I waved good-bye and headed out to my van.

The first hint something was wrong was the open driver’s-side window. I never left my van open. (Not that I had anything valuable in it, but I carried enough equipment and cleaning chemicals in the back that I worried some little kid might get in there and get hurt. My insurance agent had spent forty-five minutes three years ago explaining the concept of business liability to me, and I’d been irrationally nervous ever since. The man was a sadist. He should’ve worked as a high school guidance counselor, because not one of those kids would’ve been brave enough to have sex after a sit-down with him.)

The second red flag was a business-size manila envelope sitting on the seat. A white mailing label had been stuck to the front, but instead of an address, one word had been printed in large, black letters.

“Open.”

In a movie, this is where the bomb squad gets called out. But it didn’t look big enough for a bomb, and I lived in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. We’d already used up our entire town’s annual drama quotient on my house. I reached down, my fingers trembling, and picked it up. A black smart phone slid out.

It came to life—a Skype request for videoconferencing.

I fumbled for a minute, then managed to press the accept button. Jessica’s face appeared on the phone, her eyes swollen with tears. A purple bruise darkened her cheek. Oh shit oh shit oh shit . . .

“Loni?” she asked, her voice tight and strained. I leaned heavily against the van, my legs turning to Jell-O.

“Jessie, what’s going on?”

“I’m in some trouble,” she whispered. “Mom’s friends are here with me and they want to talk to you. Please listen to them. I think they’re going to hurt me more if you don’t.”

With that, someone grabbed the phone out of her hand and jerked it away. The image swayed, giving me glimpses of concrete and men wearing dark masks. Then it stilled, focusing on Jessica’s arm. A man’s gloved hand held it down, spreading out her fingers across what had to be a butcher block. Then a giant knife came into view—no, that thing was more like a machete. It flashed down and then Jessica’s screams came pouring through the phone’s tiny speakers.

A terrible fist clutched my chest, cutting off my breath and stopping my heart.

They’d sliced off her little finger.

I could see it sitting right there on the block, and it wasn’t attached to her body anymore!

Blood was gushing and Jess was screaming and somewhere in the background a man laughed, but my eyes would only focus on that little pink hunk of flesh, complete with sparkling gel nails that had recently been filled. I had a sudden, discordant vision of Jess and Amber getting manicures together. Laughing. Maybe grabbing something to eat before they came home and Amber handed over her beautiful daughter to a f*cking psychopathic madman! I had no f*cking doubt this was Amber’s work.

What kind of animal cuts off a child’s finger?

The picture abruptly disappeared, switching to audio. I put the phone to my ear, wondering if I’d imagined the whole thing. My body felt distant and shaky. Shock? I needed to breathe. I managed to climb into the van’s seat and drop my head down over my knees as a man started speaking.

“Next time it’ll be her hand,” he said, the heavily accented words laced with menace. “Then maybe I’ll cut that tube right out of her head, see what it looks like. Always wondered how they wire up retards to make them look normal. She’s cute, so I’ll probably f*ck her before I kill her.”

“What do you want?” I whispered. “Please, she’s just a girl—let her go. We won’t tell anyone about this.”

“If you want to keep her alive, you’ll do exactly what I say, because I own you now,” he said, his voice dark and low and radiating so much evil I could cry. Wait. I was crying. “I want you to go through Picnic Hayes’s house and find papers for me. Anything you can that looks like it might be business related. Lists of names. Schedules. Take pictures with this phone and I’ll access them. You’ll do the same at Pawns and The Line. You’ve got until Tuesday to get it done, but I want to see progress along the way. If I don’t get something from you every day, her hand’s back on the block. We can cut off a lot of pieces before she dies—it’s all on you.”