Page 3 of Obey

That smirk again, and then: “The nuclear option. I have someone inside Devil’s operation, but they’re not powerful. They can’t do much to help us. Not going to pull the trigger on a gun pressed to Devil’s head or anything like that.”

“Then what good are they?”

Frank’s smile grew. “Information. My contact isn’t high up in the organization, no leadership responsibilities. But that doesn’t mean they can’t feed us all the information we need.”

A spy on the inside who could give us information.

They might not be able to deliver Saraya, but they could tell me where she was and whether she was okay.

Which meant I’d know where to go to save her—and how to hit Devil where it hurt, before he even knew it was coming.

Yeah. That sounded about perfect.

“Make the call,” I told him, pushing myself away from the table and walking toward the kitchen. I needed a beer and something to eat, because if this was real—if Frank could get me that sort of information—then I had a trip to make and planning to do.

I was just going to have to try to keep my mind off Saraya until I got all the details in place. Once I knew where she was, I could start thinking about how I was going to save her.

Until then, I needed all my focus on convincing the other clubs that this war was something that concerned them, too.

CHAPTER 2

SARAYA

IT WAS HOURS BEFORE I was able to focus on the world again.

I came back to myself slowly, the world around me fitting itself back together in bits and pieces like a puzzle that was somehow doing itself. The rough feeling of carpet under my cheek. The rub of my jeans against my thighs. My shoes, which were pinching more than I remembered them doing.

And then the memory of how I’d gotten here. The early morning journey to the bank where I knew Devil would be showing up to make a deposit. The darkness around me as I rode through the city on my own.

The lies I’d told to Knight’s guys to make sure they didn’t follow me. The failed shots at Devil. Him rising up off the ground and grinning at me when he should have been dead.

The hand coming down over my mouth.

A flash of Knight and Remi in the distance, their mouths open in shock.

Someone shoving me into the trunk of a car, and then the squeal of tires underneath me. A drive that took ages while I fought to keep the panic down.

The knowledge that things were going very, very badly for me, and were probably going to be worse.

And then the fists and boots that were waiting for me at the end of that trip. I didn’t know who it had been or even where we were, but between the blows, when I was given seconds of reprieve and was able to think, I realized one very important thing: They weren’t going to kill me. They’d been told to hurt me as badly as they wanted but to keep me alive.

The thought hadn’t made the blows hurt any less.

But they’d given me the light at the end of the tunnel to hold onto as they came. Because I’d learned long ago to ignore the physical pain. Put it on the other side of a wall and watch from afar as it happened, to protect myself from it.

Particularly when I knew that at some point, it would come to an end.

I didn’t remember when it had, which probably meant I’d passed out while they were still beating me. Now that I was awake, I started to realize that the pain was yet another puzzle piece. Or rather... it was the foundation that all the other puzzle pieces were sitting on. A deep and consistent ache that touched every part of my body, making it hard to breathe. Impossible to move.

Hard to think.

I groaned and tried to sit up, thinking that being right-side-up would at least make it easier to engage my brain, but froze when I felt something around my wrist. I lifted my arm up and down, experimenting, but yes, there it was. The cold kiss of steel on my skin and the sliding sound that came with it.

Someone—whoever had brought me here, I supposed—had handcuffed me to something.

I was broken, battered, and lost, and I was also very definitely a prisoner.

I’d known things were going to be bad when I woke up, but this was...