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Squeezing a little harder, he steps close and whispers in my ear. “You’re not smart. We both know you’d have never figured it out if I hadn’t told you.”

Queenie’s hand lands on his shoulder and she says one word in a pleading voice, “Please.”

He lets go, pushing me back. “Anthony is my son. My only child. And you took three years of his life with your testimony, and now your friends are stealing what’s left of his inheritance.”

Stepping back as my hand comes up to touch my throat, he adds, “Congratulations, bitch. You’re not going to live long enough to share that information with anyone.”

I realize with terror that his threats are just him raging at me. Dead women don’t repeat secrets. The difference between me and all the men in this room is that they’re his employees and obligated to keep his secrets. And me? I’m nothing more than a loose end right now.

He glances back at Queenie’s hand, which is still on his shoulder. Then he barks at Roderick, “Separate them. Queenie comes upstairs with me.”

“Wait. What are you doing?” Queenie asks, clearly confused about why they’re splitting us up.

“Separating you because you keep her brave.” He doesn’t even look at her when he says it. He’s too busy looking at me with absolute disgust. “I’ve watched how the two of you interact. As long as you’re beside her, little Beth believes she has a chance. At one time, she did. Unfortunately, she doesn’t. Not anymore. Things have gone too far.”

“Even if you kill us, the Sons are coming for you,” Queenie says.

“Who talked about killing? This is a survivable situation for you. For Beth, not so much.”

When he steps back, his men come for both of us. When Queenie doesn’t immediately fight it, I know she’s already three moves ahead of every man in the room. They move forward, clueless about what they’re up against.

Queenie drops her hands down onto the back of one of the metal fold-up chairs. And somehow, I just know what she’s planning to do. She’s not going to let them kill me because priority number one is to stay alive. So, it’s time to fight.

Like always, I follow her lead. Dropping my hands onto the back of a second chair, I wait until they’re close before lifting the chair, snapping it shut and using it as a weapon. Within seconds, Queenie and I are back-to-back, cracking guys in the head who are unlucky enough to get close without their guard up.

Of course, that wasn’t a sustainable plan. It’s just the best we could come up with on the spur of the moment. They overwhelm us in short order. And the big guy who drove the van and manhandled us into the van takes me down to the ground so hard I feel my bones rattle. By the time he hauls me back to my feet, I see them forcing Queenie up onto a dark catwalk.

The big guy wraps chains all the way up both of my arms and around my body before jerking me towards the back of the building. Cold fear slams through my entire body because I think this is it. I’m going to die tonight, without seeing my daughter one last time or saying goodbye to the man I love.

He forces me down a back hallway to a heavy fire door at the end of it. I think he’s going to take me outside and kill me execution-style.

“Please don’t kill me,” I stammer, unsure what to say to convince him.

“I ain’t killin’ you yet. I’ve got things to do first.”

He quickly threads the chain through the push bar and locks it with a rusty padlock. Then he stalks back off in the direction we came. For the first time since my abduction, I’m all alone. Something about standing there in the dimly lit hallway wearing clothes my kidnappers bought for me is more dispiriting than anything that came before.

I wedge myself into the corner where the wall meets the door frame, and I take a deep breath. It occurs to me that if I die here, Josie probably won’t remember me. She’s too young. She won’t know how much I endured or how hard I fought to get back to her. She might never know that her father’s a good man who tried desperately to get to me in time.

Then I think about Striker. I never got to tell him he’s Josie’s father. If I die, Tessa will tell him, and he’ll come for her. He’ll be a good father to her. But my daughter will grow up with other people’s stories about me and none of her own. The crushing pain in my chest must be what losing hope feels like.

Chapter 20

Striker

We’ve known for years that meth was moving through the tri-county area, but as long as they weren’t pushing it in Cedar Falls we decided it wasn’t our club’s problem. Sons is not trying to police the whole fuckin’ world, just our little corner of it.

Unfortunately, Delaney made it our problem when he abducted Beth and Queenie. Rock decided we were going to go scorched earth on this one and our club was all too happy to accommodate that request. Now, we’re balls deep in their shit and they’re acting like we’ve got no right to be burning their shit to the ground.

This is the fourth place we’ve visited. It’s nothing but an older barn sitting on thirty acres in the middle of nowhere. I’ll bet my bottom dollar this one is housing a meth lab as well. Regardless, we’ll be lighting it up. I live for the day we roll up on one of their properties and find my Beth there. I’ve already decided that whoever took her is a dead man walking. But if they’ve hurt her, I’ll make their death slow and painful. That’s the only thought that keeps me going.

Two clubs roll up on the property at first light. The Sons and Mica’s Raging Vultures have been on the rampage for the last two days. Queenie’s youngest son came over the county line with ten of his own patches because he’s as dedicated to finding his mother as I am to finding my old lady.

The two meth cookers inside come stumbling out to a wall of bikers. When the guns come out, their hands go up comically fast. It takes Slate less than ten minutes to learn everything they know about Delaney’s operation and other properties. Unfortunately, they don’t know where our women are.

We move on to the next location. Each new person we talk to knows next to nothing. We’re lucky to learn about another site. We just keep moving from one site to another. There are three different teams roaming around, tracking leads and burning down Delaney’s meth operation piece by piece.

We’re not innocent angels either. We extract any money or resources from each site before burning the drugs along with the meth lab. I’d be lying if I said we didn’t rough up members of his crew. We did, mostly in an effort to get more information. But in the end, we let them go. We need them to report back to Delaney that the Sons are destroying his world, burning his businesses down one at a time. Mica has a head for numbers. He reckons we’ve cost Delaney nearly a half million dollars in equipment and product. Good. He needs to know what crossing us is costing him.