I track his gaze to the line of men stalking toward us—all heaving muscles, grim expressions, and major firepower. Ryan, Ian, Diesel, Bear, Rink, Dad, Wyatt, Duke, and a few men I don’t know charge forward on Wyatt’s hand signal in the air. It almost looks like something out of a movie, all these dangerous men in full-on warrior mode. Jim stands in his same place he’s been in, his attention focused on Rig. He raises his arm in the air, two fingers above the rest, and he points to Rig, who is now almost past the house and heading for his bike. Duke and Ryan fall back and pause a moment before taking off after him, both have their guns raised and ready to shoot if necessary.
I know what I heard, and I know there’s no mistaking the betrayal. Rig—who I’ve called uncle my entire life—had the nerve to refer to my family as idiots. Anger wells in my heart, spreads through my veins, and ignites a fire in me that I doubt I can control.
“We got this. Stay here, babe,” Jeremy says, and he takes off at full speed, still several hundred yards in front of the angry line of men. I don’t even have my gun on me. It would be suicide to go after him and willingly throw myself into the mix with these men.
Idiots.
The mere reminder of the insult Rig so easily delivered about my family heats my body, propelling me forward. I take off running after Jeremy, through the yard toward the back of the property where Ian lives. Jim and Ruby’s property butts up to two separate roads, but it’s not easy to get to the back road from their house unless your vehicle has four-wheel drive. Ian’s house is more like a cabin, small in nature and made of a fine wood. It sits far enough back from the road and is shrouded in enough redwood trees that it would be hard for a stranger to even know it’s there. It makes an excellent safe house.
So I run, my legs straining and my lungs on fire. Jeremy stumbles up ahead and loses some of his lead. The ground here gets hilly and dips in places you can’t really see. There’s a way to run over it without losing any steam—a lesson I learned from my days under Ryan and Ian’s care—but without knowing to pick your feet up higher and jump from one hill to the next, you’ll risk twisting your ankle thanks to the unpredictable terrain.
I clear the hills in record time, leaving Jeremy in the distance, and dash into the trees without thinking to pause. The thick redwoods make seeing anything or anybody out here difficult at any distance. If I were trying to sneak up on someone, I would hide in the shadows and trunks of the trees, but I’m not.
I’m the distraction.
I just hope the distraction doesn’t get shot at in the process.
The cabin comes into view in the distance. A small lot has been cleared, giving the house maybe a twenty-foot clearance on all sides from the towering redwoods. The cabin sits up about five feet from the dampened earth with a large and inviting front porch and wide steps leading up to the mosaic-glass front door. The roots of the redwoods curve and snake through the dirt under the cabin, which is why it’s raised. These trees are epic in size and have been known to destroy strip malls with their roots sneaking up through the earth, showing us mere humans who’s the more powerful of the two.
I’m so focused on the roots under the cabin and checking their shadows for men who might be hiding that I don’t even see the fallen log before me until my shin’s gotten intimately acquainted with the damn thing. I fall forward into the mix of dirt and moss, the skin of my leg tearing as it drags against the dead tree bark. Instinctively, I cry out but don’t move. If I crawl forward, I’ll lose even more flesh. If I lift it, I’ll spare myself more pain, but it’ll be awkward at best, and I’m not certain I’ll be successful. Giving the lifting method my best shot, I bite down on my bottom lip and fight the pained cries that build in my chest. Pushing up from the earth, I’ve managed to get my good leg bent and prop up my knee in the damp soil when a large, flat, and hard object shoves me back down.
I twist my head just enough to see a man with olive skin, brown hair, and a black suit towering over me with a gold gun pointed at my head. With a sneer, he says, “Don’t fucking move.”
Leaves crunch, branches snap, and heavy breaths sound behind me. A gun cocks from somewhere at a close distance, the noise of the metal sliding somehow sounding so foreign out here surrounded by all this nature. This should be a peaceful place, not a place for war. Jeremy was right behind me. It has to be him. Sure enough, his voice warms my cooling body despite the anger laced within.
“Let her go!”
“You could kill me, boy,” the man with the gold gun says, “but then your bitch dies, too.”
I focus on Jeremy’s voice and his labored breathing, letting his presence bring me comfort. Anything else and I’ll either cry or start cursing. I never wanted to be one of those girls who gets herself in trouble and has to be saved. I wanted to do the saving. It’s why I got myself expelled from school in my last semester. It’s why I put my freedom on the line with Dad by disappearing and lying about it all the time. It’s what I’ve dedicated the last several months of my life to—helping the club—not being some damsel in distress.