is after you?”
She takes a deep breath. “Rail Wreckers. They were,” she stops and that’s when the sobs begin. “Oh my God. I can’t. They, they, they raped her. Oh god, they raped her,” she spouts off before she begins to hyperventilate.
“Gonna need you to calm down and give us a little more,” North says in a comforting tone that makes me almost want to say, and this is why you’re so dangerous. The man is a stone-cold killer when he needs to be, but something about women and tears and he turns into mister nice guy. North is far from the boy next door. He’s the enforcer for the club after all.
“Look lady, you stole my truck from my fucking front yard. I know who the Rail Wreckers are, what I don’t know is, who the fuck are you?”
She looks around, studying all of us, and with nothing but an empty interstate side road and the dark sky to comfort her, she slouches in defeat.
“Fuck it. If you kill me, you kill me, since no matter what I end up dead. I ride trains. It’s how I live.”
“So, you’re one of them?” I ask, getting angrier by the second.
She shakes her head frantically. “No, I go alone. Only, I met Katie and she’s only fifteen. I wanted to help get her home, but Caleb convinced her to stay with him and the Wreckers. I planned to leave out of Atlanta, but Katie, she’s new to all this. She asked me to stay with her. So, I did, but I kept my distance. I heard her scream. When I found them, they were raping her, saying Caleb gave her up or something. Anyway, Drifter, he had a knife. When they saw me, they chased me. I had been staying in the woods, so I just followed the light. Long story short, when I couldn’t get anyone in the house to wake up and help, I climbed in the truck to protect myself. Only, there were more of them, and they were going to break the windows.”
I’m going to kill every single one of these motherfuckers just for touching my truck. “And stealing a stranger’s truck seems like fun to add to the evening?” I ask, frustrated that I’m in the middle of some Rail Wrecker bullshit that I don’t have time for. Yeah, Katie got raped and possibly killed.
That sucks.
Really it does.
However, there are always twists and sometimes things aren’t what they seem. Does that make me a synical bastard? Sure. I happen to know, from back in Hawaii, there are women who agree to getting raped just to be part of a gang. The desire to belong is a powerful thing. How do I know this woman didn’t just panic and bail?
“I didn’t know what to do. Hell, I don’t even know how to drive. Fight or flight kicked in, and I took off. Then I was trying to find a cop or police station, but I got lost.”
“We’re not goin’ to the cops, babe,” I tell her, looking to Chaos and Bash. “In the back, lift the cover to the bed, roll that back.” They both nod and get started exposing the bed of my truck, just as another motorcycle pulls up beside us.
Bouncer hops off coming to me with a classic Bouncer smirk on his face. “Damn, Jinx, pretty thing stole your truck.”
I nod.
“Whatcha gonna do with her?”
“Punish her,” I state, and she gasps.
And it’s the absolute truth. I want to punish her. I get what I want so I’m going to punish her.
Chaos, Bash, and North, knowing there is a ramp in the back of my truck, begin to set it up. I’ve had to pick Bash’s bike up more than once because he had a headlight that kept going out, making it almost impossible to see at night. I started keeping the ramp in the back of the truck just for him. Tonight, I’m thankful for that short in the wiring that none of us can seem to fix. As my brothers work to load my bike in the back of my truck, I watch the wheels turn in the woman’s eyes. Good, keep thinking, there is no wait out of my wrath, but it will be fun to watch her try.
“Your name?”
She swallows and looks around, no doubt hoping for an escape. “Talia.”
The woman in front of me has long brown hair and eyes like gold, but she doesn’t have a deep tan like