Craving Rose (The Aces' Sons 5)

“Fuck,” my dad choked out, his hands frantically smoothing her hair as he kissed her head over and over.

“Dad,” she said, pulling away. “We have to go get Mack.”

“Where is he, Rose?” I asked.

“She’s bleedin’,” Tommy snapped.

“I’m fine,” Rose bit out, shaking her head as she took a step back. “Just a scratch.”

Tommy made a noise in his throat that I ignored as I watched Rose.

“Where, Rose?” I asked.

“By the old swimming hole,” she said urgently. “I’ll show you, come on.”

“No fuckin’ way,” my dad said instantly. “You’re not goin’ anywhere.”

“Draw me a map,” I said as Rose opened her mouth to argue.

As the boys fired up their bikes around us, Rose knelt in the gravel.

“Through both of these stop signs,” she said, using her shaking fingers to draw a map in the rocks. “Keep going, there’s a—a turn, no, no, it’s just a curve here…”

As soon as she finished describing the house they’d been held in, I helped her to her feet.

“Hurry, brother,” she said, her face pale with fear. She let out a quiet sob. “He’s in the basement. Someone needs to take a truck.”

“A truck?” Tommy said in confusion.

“He’s in bad shape,” I said, reading between the lines. I held Rose’s eyes for a moment more. “I’ll get him for you.”

As soon as my mom, Molly and Hawk came running out of the clubhouse, I hustled to my bike and Tommy ran to my mom’s rig. I didn’t even bother with a helmet and the minute after I’d fired up my bike, I led the brothers off the compound.

We hauled ass. I was pretty sure I knew exactly where I was supposed to be going, but I still went over the surprisingly detailed map Rose had drawn in my mind. I had no idea how she’d managed to pay such close attention to where she’d come from, but it made shit a whole lot easier for us.

The shitty old farmhouse was exactly where she’d said it would be, and the place was quiet as a tomb.

“Fuck,” my dad said as we jumped off our bikes.

Yeah, that was my thought.

“You and you,” Dragon said, pointing, “You take the front door. We’ll take the back.”

We cautiously moved on the house, even though every single one of us wanted to hurry. Mack was in there somewhere, and from the look on Rose’s face, we didn’t have time to dick around.

“Rose?” Leo asked as we came up on a body, a pair of gardening scissors imbedded in the man’s eye.

“No fuckin’ way,” Tommy said in disbelief.

“It was her,” my dad said, barely glancing at the man on the ground. “I’d bet my bike on it.”

We continued forward, ignoring Tommy kicking the body on his way past it.

“Motherfucker,” he muttered.

It didn’t take much time to clear the house, and it was less than five minutes before we hit the basement stairs.

Bile rose in my mouth and I nearly tripped as I caught sight of the man on the pool table. His face was unrecognizable, and there was so much blood, I was pretty sure his body was completely drained. Jesus, was that Mack?

I jerked my head up as someone groaned from the floor on the far side of the table.

If I’d thought that the man on the pool table was bad, I was wrong.

Mack was worse. His face looked like hamburger.

“You’re alright,” my dad said, dropping to his knees. “You’re gonna be just fine, son.”

“Rose,” Mack said, his hand barely lifting from the cement floor as he tried to grab my dad’s arm.

“We got her,” Dad said.

“Rose,” Mack said again.

“We got her, son,” my dad said again, leaning close to Mack’s face. “She’s just fine.”

“Rose.”

“We gotta get him outta here,” Dragon said. He knelt beside my dad and ripped the bandana off his head. “Ain’t the cleanest, but it’ll work,” he said as he wrapped it around Mack’s thigh.

Fuck. He was bleeding bad.

I glanced around the room, looking for anything we could use as a bandage, and everything in me went still when I spotted a familiar-looking bag sitting at the far end of a couch.

“What’re you doin’?” Tommy snapped as I strode toward the couch.

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ,” I muttered as I gripped the strap and lifted Rose’s backpack.

“Need some help over here,” Leo called to me.

Loosening the straps, I put the backpack on and strode back to Mack and the boys.

“Nothin’ for it,” my dad said, using his forearm to wipe at the sweat on his face. His hands were covered in blood to the elbow. “We gotta carry him out.”

“Rose,” Mack mumbled.

He screamed as we lifted him, then mercifully passed out.

As we carried him carefully up the steps, Dragon spoke.

“This is too much for Molly, we gotta take him to the hospital,” he said, looking at each of us. “Someone dropped him at the gates. Didn’t see who it was.”