Chapter Twenty-One

"We've had the cops up our asses because of added traffic to this area, but aside from that, shit's running smoothly." I'm looking around Jed's warehouse, Boner's cousin who took over the shipping and transportation of our merch a few months back. It looks clean and the numbers are impeccable according to Bear who does our books.

"What're you tellin' ‘em?" Boner asks as he puts his long-ass hair into a man bun.

"That business is boomin'. What else? I mean, everything looks legit from the outside. I make sure of it." I can't deny this ship is sailing much smoother than the fuckfest down in Myrtle Beach last year.

"Thanks for the tour, man. Appreciate it." Because of the massive influx of stolen parts that we're laundering through here, he's had to build a new storage area, with our help, of course.

Prez will be happy that shit is going right; one less thing to worry about.

"All right, boys, time to head home." We shake hands with Jed before Boner goes in for a shoulder side-hug and I can't hold myself back.

"Is your helmet gonna fit with that bun on your head, Boner?" For my trouble, all I get is a middle finger in response.

"Touchy," I whisper-yell to Bear, who's chuckling, the sound muffled by his ever-growing beard.

"Come on, boys, I've got an old lady waiting for me." Shouts and hollers ring out and instead of making them shut the fuck up, I bask in the feeling of having someone who loves me waiting up for me.

As usual, a somewhat long-distance ride always means one or all of us engage in some kind of one-on-one racing or showing off our wheelie skills. That being said, when we're outside of our county, we try not to fuck up too badly since we don't have our deputy looking out for us as best she can.

Plus, now I have someone to go home to, something to look forward to, so getting pinched by the law for any-fucking-thing isn't on my to-do list.

About halfway down 17, we stop in Jacksonville, where New Bern Highway becomes Rockford Highway, to get gas. Bash fills us up while Boner, Bear, and I go into the station to get drinks.

My phone is out as I wait in line, tapping out a message to my Cherry Pie, making sure she's wet and ready for me.

Me: I'll be home in 45. I want you on our bed. Naked. Legs spread, cunt open and wet.

Depending on her mood, she'll either respond with her usual sass, telling me she takes orders from no man, or she'll make me hard in an instant, telling me she's already wet and waiting. No matter which it is, her responses are always swift.

"That'll be all?"

I look up at the cashier and nod, handing him a fifty to pay for our fill-up and bottle of water.

Looking down, still no response. Little brat is making me wait.

When I look back up, hand out for my change, I notice the cashier's bored expression from seconds ago is gone and in its place is something close to worry or fear.

That's when I realize I'm grinning and I don't need to look in the mirror to know it's not a normal, happy-go-lucky grin. I'm planning a million ways to punish my girl in the very best ways.

But he doesn't know that.

"Thanks," I throw over my shoulder just as Bear and Boner walk up behind me, ready to pay. "See you two outside."

By the time we get home, I'm a one-track mind heading straight to my suite without even rubbing down my beautiful Philia. I can do that later, after I've shown my girl all the ways we can put her hormones to good use. Like orgasms. Lots and lots of brain-altering orgasms.

With Ninja in my hoodie and a spring in my step, I swing open the door to our living space and call out a classic, "Honey, I'm home!" and chuckle at Ninja's beeline for his food. While we were up in New Bern, he'd finished his carrot sticks so I'm guessing he's starving.

My musings are interrupted by the utter silence in our suite. No music or humming, no rustlings of sheets or running water. I can feel that Mackenzie's not here but I check anyway. Room empty. Bathroom empty.

Before worry sets in, I remember that my mother-in-law is only a couple of doors down, and because my little Cherry Pie gets bored real fast, I smile at the thought of her finally spending quality time with the only family member she has left.

Two minutes later, I'm standing in front of Darlene's room knocking three times in quick successions.

"Come in." At her voice, I peek in my head and grin.

"Hey, Darlene. Just wanted to steal my girl away for a little while. Do you min—" As I step into the room, I notice it's empty and it takes my brain a minute to comprehend.

"Oh. She's not here, honey. You know her friend Spencer came by earlier so she went to get a drink downstairs with him." Her smile is warm without a worry etched on her skin. Since she's been here, I've noticed the tension dissipating more and more as the days pass. I can't imagine the kind of fucked up hell she had to live through while in the hospital, but one thing I do know: we'll make it right. There are a few Toxic Rebels that need to feel the wrath of the Psycho, and in due time, they will.

Prez has ordered me and the others to stand down for a few more days so that any kind of attack is planned out and can't be tied to us. He understands my thirst for revenge but he also has no plans on losing yet another member. We're all like sons to him and every loss takes a mental and physical toll on him.

It's the only reason why I'm not going rogue… my respect for him is strong enough to keep my psycho at bay.

For now.

"‘Sup, Vi?" Trotting into the clubhouse bar, a quick scan of the place tells me she's not there. No Spencer and definitely no Mackenzie.

"Hey, Psycho, need a drink?" Shaking my head in guise of an answer, I sweep the room with my gaze once more. Brothers are playing pool or darts. Some are getting their dicks wet, others are smoking weed. None of them are hanging out with my girl.

"You seen Mackenzie around?" My question is directed at Violet but my eyes are everywhere as my gut begins to churn. Something's not right, I can feel it in the tightening of my muscles and the immediate acceleration of my heartbeat. My body is already reacting to what my mind is refusing to accept.

"Yeah." My head whips around to look at Vi, hope springing to the forefront as I hang on every word she's about to say. "She was here earlier with her friend, the paramedic, I think?" I nod, trying really fucking hard not to shake the rest of her answer right out of her. "But she left with Grinder and Kincaid about…" Trailing off to look at the clock hanging on the far wall, she nods to herself, and in those mere seconds I've got a million different ways Mackenzie could be in trouble running through my head. "Yeah, about an hour and a half ago. Man, you should've seen her punch Rea in the fucking nose. Brutal and totally badass."

Immediately, my phone is in my hand and Mackenzie's number on my screen. Pressing the green button, I clench my jaw when it goes straight to voicemail. I want to react to the fact my girl is now, apparently, getting into fist fights, but I'm pretty sure that's the least of my worries.

Motherfuckers. I'm going to tear Grinder's balls off one at a time then feed them to him. And fuck, Kincaid may be a prospect, but she's the level headed one of the three. What the fuck was she thinking?

"They say where they were going?" With my eyes still on my phone, I question her at the same time as I pull up Grinder's number. My voice is eerily calm, but only because I'm using all of my fucking energy to keep myself in check. At this rate, it won't be long before I'm losing my ever loving mind.

"Ice cream, I think?" Sucking in a breath, I remind myself that Vi isn't to blame and force a clipped thanks her way. Although none of this is her fault, I want nothing more than to shake her over and over again in hopes of getting more answers out of her. Which is fucking ridiculous, but here we are.

My gut twists again at the sound of Grinder's short and far-from-sweet message on his voicemail.

"Ain't got time for your shit, leave a message." Goddammit, why the fuck did they think it was okay to go into town knowing damn well the Rebels are out? If anyone sees her…

No. I cannot go down that spiral path or I'm going to burn this whole fucking place to the ground.

Practically running down the outside stairs and heading for the garages, I search out Kincaid's number on my phone and realize I don't fucking have it.

Hoops is the first brother I see, half of his body inside a Mercedes where the engine should be. I only know it's him because of his height.

"Who the fuck's got Kincaid's number?" My body is buzzing with rage and worry and probably love but also… when I find her, she's getting a fucking spanking like no other. Pregnant or not, she's gonna have the imprint of my hand on her ass for days.

"Fuck!" I barely register the sound of skull against metal as Hoops eases his way out of the Merc's hood and glares at me. Dude is never angry, he's the most level-headed one among us, but when he's pissed, his face transforms into something close to animalistic.

I should apologize but I'm not in my right mind. I never am when it comes to Mackenzie.

"Kincaid?" This comes from Jonesy, who's jogging up to me with his phone in hand. I'll vote for him to patch in just for this.

"Yeah, call her. Now." It doesn't take a mind reader to know I'm losing my shit, but Jonesy doesn't blink an eye at my fucked up attitude.

"The fuck's wrong with you, Psycho?" I raise a brow at Hoops like my name should answer his fucking question. It's not lost on me that he's my VP and could easily sway a vote to strip me of my patch and kick me out for being an asshole, but I know he wouldn't. Also, I don't really give a fuck right now.

"Mackenzie's missing." Those words out of my mouth and becoming real almost have me puking all over the garage.

"She ain't missing, you fucking idiot. She's with Grinder and Kincaid. They took one of the club trucks and went for ice cream. Jesus fucking Christ. Keep this up and she's gonna bolt." Stunned, I stand there staring at Hoops who never—fucking never—talks like this. What the fuck is his problem? And yeah, I'm not ignorant to the hypocrisy of this situation and the thoughts running through my mind, but this is Mackenzie we're talking about.

My entire fucking world is out there and I can't reach her. There is no exaggerating. If there's one reason for me to lose my fucking mind, she's it. She's my reason. For everything.

"Oh yeah? Then why the fuck is nobody answering their phones? Grinder practically has it welded to his hand and never fucking turns it off. Explain to me why the fuck it's going to voicemail." Every word out of my mouth rises in pitch as the realization that something is not right seeps into my bones. Into the very fabric of my existence.

"Shit." Hoops knows it, too. Because I'm right. Grinder never lets his phone run out of battery. He never turns it off. Not once, in all the years I've known him, has that fucker ignored my calls. Hell, until today, I had no idea what his voicemail message sounded like.

"Yeah. Shit." All this is happening while Jonesy is calling Kincaid over and over again. Hers is ringing but she's not picking up. This could be normal, if she were on her bike. But she's not. Vi and Hoops both said they'd left in the spare truck.

A quick sweep of my gaze confirms this when I see both bikes sitting exactly where they should be.

"Fuuuuuuuuck!" The roar that barrels through my lungs, up my throat, and out of my mouth doesn't even sound human to my own ears. It's part animal, part creature, a lot monster.

That's when I realize Bear is there, his huge arms around my shoulders, and I can't understand why the fuck he's holding me down. When did he get here? Oh yeah, we're in the garage… New Bern… He's the treasurer.

I can't exactly form coherent thoughts, everything is coming at me in chopped up intervals.

"Fucking calm down, Psycho." Thrashing around, fighting his hold, I blink, over and over again, desperately trying to clear away the dark edges and red filter of my vision. The fuck is happening to me?

"She's gone, Bear. She's fucking gone. A-fuckin'-gain!" Through the red haze, I see the crowd of brothers and Khunts surrounding us. The sound of Prez's voice is piercing through the ringing in my ears as he speaks, calmly, with Bear.

They're all isolated words. "Calm. Plan. Trailers." But the one word that brings me hyper-focus is the last word I hear. "Rebels."

Without allowing any of the consequences to keep me from getting my girl back I take a step toward the entrance of the garage, only to find myself completely trapped.

"What the actual fuck?!" My words are a feral mixture of a scream and a growl, which is the exact moment Bear gets in my face.

"Had to tie you to the titanium pole so quit ya movin' before you hurt yourself." This time, I do fucking growl. No, it's a snarl and it promises long, drawn-out pain for this treachery.

"If anything happens to her, Bear, I swear to fuck I will—"

"You'll what, Psycho?" Now Prez is in my face and the rage he's letting me see shocks me into brief calm. "Remember the last time you went in half cocked? Remember what happened to you? You wanna do that again and leave your old lady alone? What about ya kid, Psycho? Gonna leave him alone, too?" My lip curls up but I hold it in because it's one thing to go ballistic on Bear, it's a totally different story when it's Prez in my face.

"No."

"No. You're not. Now calm the fuck down and let's do this right." His words have their intended effect because "do this right" doesn"t mean, we wait. It means we plan. And we do it now.

Relaxing against the pole, I keep my mind busy by watching the brothers run around gathering their bikes and running to the storage unit where we keep our small arsenal.

"Prez, we don't have the spare truck, Vanessa's home with hers and the vans are loaded with parts for transfer. Want us to take it all out?" Boner's looking at our President for wisdom when Jonesy speaks up.

"My old roommate"s got a van. She lives about ten minutes away, I can go grab it and we can use that. It'll be faster, no doubt."

Prez takes a second to think about it before he reacts. "Go."

Jonesy runs, not jogs, to his bike and within less than two minutes, he's gone. Dude is definitely getting my vote for a patch.

"I can help. Unchain me so I can help load." Now that the haze of rage has dissipated enough for me to look at my surroundings, I understand why Prez was so pissed off.

Around me are tools, car and motorcycle parts all over the fucking place. It looks like a tornado came through and we were the epicenter. I don't even remember doing it. How fucked up is that?

"We go in at sundown, so we need to wait another couple of hours. If we go now, the only place we'll end up is six feet under or locked up for life. You get me?" I'm nodding at Prez because my logical brain understands everything he's saying, but my gut? My gut is filled with dread and deep, soul-crushing fear.

They're right though, going in like a maniac will get us absolutely nowhere.

Against every bone in my body and cell in my brain, I clamp my jaw and do as I'm told, knowing damn well that if they let me loose, I'd be on my bike and out of here faster than you can say "Kill those bastards."

The wait was fucking unbearable.

Jonesy came and went with his van. The brothers loaded up on all kinds of weapons, some making my trigger finger itch with the need to spill blood.

No brother was spared, all lined up behind Prez in our normal hierarchy, we rode out in a roar of engines with a blur of dust left in our wake.

The whole way I blocked out images of Mackenzie lying dead in a pool of blood. It's not difficult to imagine it, I've already lived it and it was fucking brutal. Knowing it was fake doesn"t erase the pure agony of finding her and being told she was gone.

If anything happens to her tonight, it won't be from a plan she had. It'll be real and there's no fucking way I can live with that. So I push the thoughts back and only concentrate on getting those punks, maybe killing them all.

Rockford and Stonebrook are like sister towns, the line that separates them a natural boundary: The Cape Fear River. The name has never felt more apt.

As we arrive at the Rebel trailer park, we don't aim for stealth, we want them to know we're here and we're not coming in peace or quiet. We're coming in force.

Before I'm even off the bike, Jonesy has the van stopped at the entrance, blocking anyone who'd try to ride off and is running to the back to open up for us.

A crowd of women has already formed as the Rebels run around trying to organize themselves against the raid of pure rage that are the Sons of Khaos as we all load up our weapons.

A semi-automatic in one hand and a baseball bat swinging in the other, Prez, Bear, and I walk up the center of the trailer park as the other brothers start shooting up the trailers. They don't kill the women running around looking for shelter, but they don't miss any of the Rebels trying to get back into their trailers, surely looking for their own guns.

I know exactly where the main recreational trailer is, but the sight of a half-naked chick running out of what used to be Mackenzie's trailer makes my blood boil. How dare they give it out without a second thought? How dare they replace her?

As I walk up the path, I swing my bat over the bikes and let the satisfaction of watching them fall to the ground seep into every breath I take.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing, you fucking psychopath?" There he is. Isaac fucking Moore, president of the Toxic assholes and number one rapist of my girl. Yeah, I want him. I want him so badly I can taste his fucking blood on my tongue as I dream up all the different ways I can make him bleed.

"Where is she?"

"Who the fuck you talkin' about?" I swing at another bike and watch it fall, the satisfying scratch of metal against gravel like a balm to my stoked ire.

"I'm gonna fucking kill you, motherfucker. That was my racing bike." Like a snake coiled to attack, I turn my head toward the source of the voice and recognize that piece of shit, too.

"Come at me, you little cunt. I wanna see you try." I know what I look like, I don't need the reflection of the trailer's window to remind me, yet there it is. Face angled down, eyes up, and a snarl so profound I barely look human anymore. "Tell me, how many times did you get your virgin ass violated in jail?" We know people who know people and we made sure Brick got a little taste of his own medicine. At the thought of what he did to my Cherry, I bring my Beretta level with his forehead and hear at least a dozen guns cocked and loaded all around me. I don't have a death wish for myself, but holy fucking shit, I do have a death wish for him.

Leaning in, I whisper with the false calm of a fucking psychopath.

"Where." The barrel of my gun taps against his forehead, and his arms rise, worry clearly written in his wide, watery eyes. "Is. She?"

Guns go off to my right and the murmured, "Fuck," from Isaac tells me they lost one of their men.

We caught them all off guard, probably celebrating the release of their evil masters and sporting a blood-alcohol level near death. It wasn't too hard to surround them and dominate them.

The repetitive sound of skin against skin is like music to my ears. Someone is getting the fuck beat out of them and I really fucking wish it were me pummeling these fucks.

"Hey, Psycho, she's not here, man!" Sledge, to my right, hollers from one of the trailers, but my eyes never leave Brick's and my gun doesn't drop an inch.

Problem is, the longer we stay here, the greater the risk.

"Take ‘em with us. Jonesy, get the van." Prez's words are like invisible strings lifting the corners of my mouth.

"We're going for a little ride, bitches," Bear calls out, handing his bat to Boner before landing a big-ass paw on Isaac's greasy head of hair, gun barrel pressed firmly at his temple.

One of my hands darts out to Brick's throat, my fingers squeezing hard enough for his airways to be cut off. I'm not suffocating him, the dude's neck is unnaturally thick, but I am restricting the flow of oxygen and that's enough for me.

"Come on, you rapist piece of shit. Let's see how you like shit up your ass. Maybe I'll cut off your dick and let you taste it." Anyone who knows me doesn't have to wonder if I'll make good on my threats. They know I never go back on my promises.

Pushing him forward, I revel in the sight of him falling to the ground and having to crawl first before he can get back up. He doesn't go far because my foot is at the small of his back as I kick him, hard, and watch him trip again.

Just as we're passing, I see Hoops pummeling some asshole who looks vaguely familiar but I'm too far gone to care that it might be Cam, the only guy in this place who's not utter dogshit. Crow's got his gun inside some other guy's mouth and he's begging him to piss him off.

Bear and I hand off our prizes to Boner, Jonesy, and Bash so they can handcuff them to the side of the van—wrists raised well above their heads—and slap some duct tape on their mouths.

Before we all get back on our bikes, three trailers simultaneously explode, the shock knocking us back enough to make us unstable on our bikes.

That's when we all see Sledge and Shade running like they're auditioning for Die Hard, Trailer Parks Gone Wild. And they say I'm the psycho.

Time to bolt, though, ‘cause after that, the cops are going to be all over our scent. Besides, I've got the scum of the Earth to interrogate and the love of my life to rescue.

Revving my bike, Bash and Boner come up to me, hands palms up and shit eating grins on their faces.

"Figured Grinder's gonna be pissed he missed this little party so we got him his favorite treat."

Looking down, I shake my head and roll my eyes.

Fucking teeth, bloody and with the roots still attached to one. Of all the shit we need to do, these two knuckleheads think about gifting Grinder enemy teeth for his growing collection.

"Fucking nasty."