In spite of everything, I have to laugh. Mom finishes her Coke, then slides off her stool and motions for me to do the same. She gives me a tight hug. “You’re gonna be okay. Just focus on her. On what she needs. Not what you need. That’ll carry you through. And you call me if you think she needs me. Sometimes it’s easier to talk to a woman about these things.”
Reenie waves goodbye to Tedward and leaves the clubhouse. I stare after her, realizing maybe for the first time how lucky I am to have the parents I do. Gigi doesn’t have a mom to cry to. She never has.
I find myself wanting her to think of Reenie as that mom.
Hours later,when it’s long past dark, I climb carefully into bed with a still-sleeping Gigi. She rolls over in her sleep to face me. I gather her into my arms. She wakes, half-sedated, and lets out an ear-piercing scream. She starts to attack me, kicking out with both legs and trying blindly to connect with her fists. Alarmed, I hold onto her as carefully as I can. “Gigi, sshhh, Gigi, it’s me, Mack. Sshhh, it’s all right. You’re safe. You’re here safe with me…”
Before long, the wild look in her eyes dissipates as she slowly comes to and realizes where she is. She bursts into tears and cries into my chest as I continue to hold her, thankful that she’s letting me touch her.
Thankful that she’s letting me be anything to her at all.
25
MACK
The next day, Gigi explains to me, Fury, Magnus, Norse, and Elmo what Blaze — also known as Dylan — said to her while she was his captive. About destroying her, and then Fury, and then our entire club.
Elmo is in attendance because we’re trying to figure out the location where Dylan was holding her hostage. Gigi tells us that she was so scared and frantic to escape that at first, she was just driving blindly, trying to keep the bike on the road and looking for any sign that would turn her in the right direction to get her back to us.
“I remember the highway number I finally pulled onto, when I saw the signs pointing me toward Minneapolis,” she says, and tells us what it is.
“How long were you driving before you hit that road?” Elmo asks her.
“Fifteen minutes? Twenty?” Gigi frowns and shakes her head. She’s pale and drawn, and I can see in her eyes that she’s remembering the terror she felt then. “I was probably only going forty or forty-five miles an hour for most of that. I barely remembered how to ride a bike, and that one was bigger than I was used to.”
Blaze/Dylan’s bike is hidden away in an outbuilding on our compound, after being thoroughly checked for trackers. He won’t be getting it back.
Elmo has Gigi describe everything she can about the place she was held. When she can’t remember anything else, he says, “Okay. Give me a bit. I’m gonna go pull up some satellite views. See what I can figure out.”
Half an hour later, he comes back and asks us to come into his command station. When we get inside, he pulls up a chair for Gigi and starts typing in some stuff. On one of his large monitors, an aerial view comes up. Elmo points to it. “Do you recognize this at all?”
Gigi takes a deep breath and starts to examine the image. Then she freezes. Her eyes grow wide.
“That’s it. That’s where it is!” she chokes out. “Oh my god, Elmo, you’re a genius.”
“Are you sure?” Fury asks her.
“That’s the trailer,” she breathes, pointing at a rectangular structure. “That’s where he held me.” She shivers. “He might still be in there, if they haven’t found him.”
Gigi explains to the others how she got away from Dylan. How she stabbed him with his own knife, then crushed his head with a fire extinguisher.
“Is he dead?” Magnus asks her.
“I don’t know.” She looks down at her hands. “He was definitely unconscious when I left. I didn’t wait long enough to figure out whether he was still breathing.”
“If he is, he won’t be breathing for much longer,” Fury says through gritted teeth.
“Fury, no!” Gigi cries, clutching his arm. “Please, let this go. I’m here. I’m safe now.”
“Babe, we can’t let it go,” I tell her. Fury gives me a sharp look when he hears me use the term of endearment, but he says nothing about it. “If nothing else, we need to make sure that Blaze is actually dead. Until he is, you’ll never be safe.”
“But we need to make those motherfuckers pay. Every last damn one of them,” Fury rasps.
Gigi looks at each one of us imploringly. “No! Please! Please, stop this quest for revenge. Too many of your own people have already been hurt. You know the Royal Bastards won’t get out of a war without it killing too many of your own people. I don’t want to be the cause of that.”
“You’re not the cause, Gigi,” Magnus says grimly. “Besides, this is club business now. Brothers, we should be talking about this among ourselves, not in front of her.” He turns to Norse. “I’m calling church for later today.”
Our VP leaves the room to go alert the other men. I take Gigi back to the apartment, noting that she’s practically vibrating with anxiety. We’re barely inside when she starts to beg me to get Magnus to change his mind.
