I know something’s up as soon the compound gates peel back and I see Danny sitting on the steps to the clubhouse, waiting for us. He looks just as tired as we do, which is worrying since things here should have been quiet compared to what just went down on the other side of Freemantle. There’s blood in the dirt. Blood on the ground by the barn.
Cade sees it, too. He’s tensed, his hands gripped into tight fists at his sides as he jumps off his bike and hurries over to Danny. “What’s wrong? What happened?” he demands.
Danny cracks his knuckles, shaking his head. “Shay,” he says. “Shay went crazy after you left. She said…”
“She said what?” Cade
“She said she was going to show you what a mistake you made tonight. She was so angry. No one could stop her.”
Carnie’s off his bike and standing in front of Danny now, his arms wrapped tightly around his body. “What did she do, man? What did she do?”
“She shot Fatty in the fucking head, man. She went down into the barn, and she…” Dread passes over Danny’s face. “She let her out,” he whispers. “She set Maria Rosa free.”
EPILOGUE
REBEL
We should have killed Maria Rosa a long time ago. Cade told me over and over again how sure she was that she was going to get out of the basement, so fucking sure, and I didn’t listen. I mean, why the fuck would I? The door to her cell was an inch thick. She was injured for a long time. How could she escape? I should have known better. I should have seen Shay’s betrayal coming a mile off as well. She’s been simmering for months, quietly and sometimes not so quietly mad over Sophia’s presence in the compound. There are steps that should have been taken a long time ago, and now a Widow Maker is dead, and a psychotically dangerous woman is on the loose.
Two days have passed since the farmhouse. I thought we’d have some tearful phone calls back to Seattle, where the Doc and Sophia both told their family they were fine, that they were both alive and well, but that hasn’t happened. Sophia’s mom is away on some church retreat in the wilds of Alaska, so she doesn’t even know Alan was missing. As for Soph’s sister, Sloane is so entrenched in her studies that it’s normal for her to be MIA most of the time anyway. So it goes that after some long, painful discussions, Sophia has come to a difficult decision, and once again she’s making sacrifices for the club.
I hug her to me, throwing my arm around her shoulder as we walk down the hill toward the clubhouse. Night is all round us, pressing in from all sides, endless and eternal. There are no clouds, but the stars seem to be strangely absent, too. Everything is blackness—a strange, heavy kind of night.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” I kiss Sophia on top of her crown, holding her to me. She’s shivering a little despite the warm breeze, which teases at her hair, lifting strands, sending them whirling up around her head.
She takes a deep breath and then lets it out slowly. “Maybe,” she says. “Maybe not. I thought this would be over by now. I just thought…”
“You can pick up the phone, you know. All you have to do is pick up the phone and call them. No one in the club will think badly of you for it. You know that, right?”
She nods, biting her lip. “I do. But this kind of makes sense in a way. I just can’t believe my dad agreed to it. He’s always played everything by the book. He’s a conformist. He’s never broken a law in his life. The fact that he’s about to lie to the cops…a DEA agent, at that…” She shakes her head, stunned. “I never thought he’d do this. Never in a million years.”
I’m more than a little surprised too, but then again I know exactly what Alan’s going through. I know there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for this woman, no matter how drastic or complicated it seemed. The morning after the farmhouse, Lowell came to the compound, and this time she had a warrant. She ripped the place apart. Thanks to Shay, there were no weapons on the property, and no hysterical Columbians locked in the basement. Lowell went away frustrated and furious, promising to figure out exactly what part we played in Hector Ramirez’s demise, along with our involvement in the transportation of weed and cocaine. As soon as she walked out of the door, Cade said we needed someone on the inside. Someone who could tell us what she was up to. How close she was getting. And Alan Romera put up his hand.
“I’ll tell her Alexis called me, asking for money. I’ll tell her I know she’s with you and that I think she’s being held against her will. If she thinks I’m in communication with my daughter, she’ll be in touch with me regularly. I’ll feed her information. She’ll tell me what she knows, too, surely?”
Soph looks around at Cade first and then back at me. “If she thinks I’m here against my will, she’ll come after you.”