Chapter 19: STEEL

Nineteen

STEEL

Investigating club business in the desert…

I keep my gun trained on the woman curled up beneath a couple blankets and making some desperate effort to hide herself behind three kegs of beer. She makes a terrified yelping noise and then sits up, drawing her knees to her chest. I can tell that she's a grown woman, but this little thing is damn petite.

"What are you?" I ask her. "Some type of Nazi whore?"

She makes another yelping sound and sticks her hands up in the air. Immediate surrender. Judging by the way her ass is shaking and looking at my gun, she's never been in a situation like this before. Even with the moonlight, it's too dim for me to get a good look at her.

Her skin is dark, but her eyes look all Chinese. I don't think she's an Indian. They have a particular way about them that seems completely absent here. This woman is something else entirely, but I don't know what. Her hair has the same texture as Juliette's… thick and bushy. But she can't be black with eyes like that.

She has to be some type of Asian or Indian.

Her whimpering and surrender don't mean she's entirely innocent. For all I know, it could all be an act. After all, I found her here hiding in some Nazi compound in the middle of the desert. It would be stupid as hell to let my guard down.

"Stop crying and stand up."

She cries harder. Christ. I don't want this woman getting under my skin, but there's something about watching one of them cry that has always melted me. This place is too fucking creepy for me to chill.

"I said stand up."

When she stands up, I get a good look at her, not like I get much information from looking at her. Keeping my gun trained on her, I use the flashlight I brought to scan her from head to toe. It's not just so I can get a better idea of her ethnic origins — although I want to know if she has any relation to Oske, or someone else we have problems with.

A woman this color can't be welcome out here. But she's not a cop. She doesn't have the smell on her.

"What are you doing out here?"

She doesn't answer. It's so fucking quiet that I hear a coyote howl. Scares the fucking crap out of me.

"I asked you a question. Don't make me put you in the ground."

"I don't know where I am," she says with a shaky voice. Shaky, but sexy. I keep the gun trained on her even if she has a voice that could make my dick hard under any other circumstances. "I left my car ten miles west. I tried to find somewhere before sundown but there were these —

Christ. She breaks down crying again and I struggle to keep my shit together. The more time we stand around having emotions, the more danger we're both in. Unless this bitch is the danger. All 5-fucking-feet of her.

"Stop crying," I growl. "What did you see? Tell me."

"T-they had a man…" she says, sobbing uncontrollably and then nearly falling over. I almost think it's a ploy, but I see her headed straight for the ground with no chance of bracing herself so I catch her — against my better judgment. Shit. She's really unconscious. Scared out of her fucking mind.

Neither of us have the privilege of falling unconscious around here.

"Hey," I snap at her. "Wake up. Wake up and tell me everything you saw."

I have to shake her pretty hard to get her awake and I start to get scared that I rattle something loose in the pretty woman's head from shaking her around so hard. But her eyelashes flutter open around those strange Asian-looking eyes.

She braces herself against my chest. The brief contact sends a surge of something dead wrong straight through me. My body tightens and I offer absolutely no resistance when she shoves me away and stumbles back to a position of standing on her own feet.

I don't have the gun trained on her anymore, which seems to make her a little more relaxed. She doesn't fight. She doesn't run. But she looks scared out of her mind.

"I watched them beat two men naked and cut their heads off," she says. "One of them saw me, but I managed to hide and the others convinced him he'd done too much cocaine but… they're going to come back. They're going to find my stupid Jeep and?—

Here we go again… another fucking breakdown. This time, we definitely don't have time because I hear noises. Engines. She must hear them too because the skinny thing gives me one horrified look and just as senseless as a doe in the highway, she takes off. It's instinct — but a stupid fucking instinct.

"Hey! Get back here!"

It surprises me that she's so fast, but we don't have time for tricks and antics right now. I yell at her to get back here one more time, but she doesn't fucking listen, so I take off after her. Doesn't matter how fast she is, I have much longer legs and once I get going, it doesn't take long to get close to her.

I skid to dead stop when the woman screams and then she flies forward and seemingly disappears off the face of the earth. What the fuck?!

The next scream sounds even louder than the first. If the men on the bikes heading our way didn't hear us before, they sure as shit heard that ear-splitting scream coming out of this woman's mouth. Fuck. I scan the ground with my flashlight, struggling to get a stable beam of light through my shaking limbs. Too much adrenaline isn't always a good thing. In the army, they train you how to deal with that rush. In prison, your best bet is giving in to every fucking impulse that comes through your head if you want to survive the mentally ill motherfuckers trying to end your life.

I think like a prisoner, not a soldier. But you don't have to be a soldier to see a big fucking hole in the ground. I jog to the edge and see her down there screaming her fucking head off and surrounded by two dead bodies.

Bodies that I recognize. Club members. And if I don't recognize the bodies, I recognize the severed heads. I categorize the dead in my head as I lean over the edge of the hole and reach for the woman stuck inside.

"Grab my hand. Now," I command her.

The engines get louder and I need to get this woman out of that hole and back to the truck. I don't have time to react. Even if I have family in that hole. She stumbles over a severed head as she keeps screaming her head off and scratching her way through mud and worse towards the wall of the mass grave.

When I get hold of her hand, it takes no effort to lift her out of the grave, she's that fucking small. What takes the effort is calming her ass down. Her screaming nearly blows out my eardrums once I get my hands on her and try hugging her close so she can feel that human warmth and calm her ass down.

That doesn't work.

"You have to calm down," I growl at her. "CALM. DOWN. My own fucking brothers are in that hole and if you want to survive, you need to listen to me."

She wraps her arms around my neck. Good. Then she kicks me, almost hitting my balls. Bad. I pinch her hard on the leg for that and she yelps loudly, biting into my shoulder. Doesn't matter. I have her attention and she's not screaming her head off. She sinks her teeth into my shoulder as I make every effort possible not to make a sound.

If I have to calm her down, I have to be the source of her calm. Even if this little menace has her teeth deep into my shoulder. I breathe slowly. Waiting for her to catch up. Ignoring the engines growing louder and telling myself it's just because the desert is so damn empty I can hear them.

You have time.

"Bite me all you want, brat," I growl at her. "You're coming with me."

I drag her to the truck and toss her in the passenger side. She sits back limply staring ahead. Shock. Terror. Some fucked up combination of both. She's pretty. I hurry around to the other side of the truck and start it up. She looks over at me bewildered and terrified.

"Don't kill me."

"I'm not going to kill you."

She glances at the tattoos on my forearm. Scared. And she finally realizes I'm a biker.

"You can call me Steel."

"Joslin," she says. Then her brow furrows. "Is that your real name?"

"It's the name you need to know."

I gotta get us out of here before we end up headless in a hole somewhere.

The two of us will have plenty of time to get to know each other…