Damnable Grace (Hades Hangmen 5)

Then the van drove away.

Chapter Eighteen

AK

“AK! You here?”

Someone was hammering on my cabin’s door. I got up from the table and opened the door. Tanner stood there, rocking on his feet.

“She here?” he asked as he came inside.

“Phebe?”

“Yeah.”

“No, she’s gone to see Lilah. Why?”

Tanner pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket. He held it in the air. Ash came out from his bedroom, looking on. “No such thing as a fucking old folks’ home in that cult.”

My jaw clenched as Tanner sat down. I sat down opposite and waited for him to continue. “Though I’ve found a Sapphira. Age fourteen. Blond, brown eyes, ninety pounds, Five foot one.”

I frowned, wondering how he knew so fucking much about her. “Where?”

He slammed down the paper and pushed it toward me. It was a spreadsheet, like an inventory or some shit. Shipping forms to Mexico, private accounts.

“Meister ain’t just trafficking these bitches as hookers in the ghost town. The asshole is selling them. He gets them, uses them as whores, then ships them to Mexico to be sold to who-the-fuck-ever for whatever-the-fuck-ever” Tanner pointed to a row on the sheet. “Sapphira. Cult bitch. Sold by ‘Prophet Cain’—Judah—to Meister months ago. Meister has reels and reels of these order sheets. And he’s making a fucking mint selling these whores off to some dick in Mexico. Sapphira is getting shipped out soon. She’s on his latest form.” I felt the anger sweep through me like a storm. “Guessing the date Meister purchased Sapphira is about the time Judah told Phebe he’d sent Sapphira to the old people’s home, yeah?”

I nodded, unable to speak. Then I got my shit together and slammed my fist down on the table. “She was in that ghost town with her all that time? She was there with Phebe and neither of them fucking knew it? Drugged. Out of their fucking minds.” Then the storm turned into a motherfucking hurricane. “And I was there! I could have gotten her out too!” I pushed my chair back, jumping from my seat. “Fuck!” I roared and ran my hands through my hair.

“We gotta tell Ky and Styx. I need to go back in, I need to—”

The door to the cabin flew open, cutting me off. “Is Grace here with Phebe?” Ky was fucking panting, his face red, breath fast.

“No.” My eyebrows pulled down. “Phebe’s with Lilah.”

Ky shook his head. “No she ain’t. I’ve been with Li all morning. Phebe never came.”

As his words hit me, I felt my breathing sound in my ears. “She said she was going to Lilah’s.” Ky stared at me. “We got cameras on that fucking road, right?”

Ky took in what I said. “Fuck! Grace disappeared playing hide-and-seek in the woods.”

I didn’t think any further, just pushed out of my cabin and jumped on my bike. I heard my brothers do the same behind me as I raced up to the clubhouse. I jumped from my bike and ran through the door.

Hush and Cowboy were in the bar. They were on their feet in seconds. “What’s wrong?” Hush asked.

I heard Ky, Tanner and Ash run in behind me. “Cameras!” Ky shouted and ran behind the bar to the small side room where the security cameras were kept.

Smiler came to work the monitors. “What you wanna see? And when?”

“Perimeter road. ’Bout two hours ago,” I said, thinking of when Phebe left. I looked at the clock on the wall and felt my blood turn to ice. “Around eleven a.m.”

Ky stilled and looked at me. “When those fuckers would be on the road.”

Smiler scrolled through until he found the footage, and we saw it there before us in grainy black and white. Phebe walking out of the woods, standing on the edge of the road . . . waiting. She’d been fucking waiting for the fuckers.

What the fuck?

Bulging veins almost broke from my neck when I saw one of the fuckers grab Phebe and drag her back toward the car. Then out from the woods came Grace. I watched Phebe’s face as she obviously heard her. I saw her mouth open and scream something. Fuck, she was telling Grace to run. I could read it on her lips. But the asshole holding her slammed his hand over her mouth then bashed her head with the gun. She sagged forward, fighting consciousness. Another Klansmen took Grace before she’d even reached the edge of the woods and threw them both in the back of the van.

They drove away.

There was a heavy silence.

“Get the prez,” Ky eventually said to Ash, words ice cold. “Get fucking everybody.” His tone was too calm, and with Ky, that meant he was about to fucking blow.

Tanner ran out of the room to the office where the computers were held. Fuck knew what he was doing. But I couldn’t move. I was raging. Seething, Fucking growing killing mad. I just stared at the re-run of Phebe standing on the edge of that road, then being knocked the fuck out.

Bitch had been giving herself up.

She’d been going back.

“Why . . . WHY?” I lost my grip on my anger. I picked up a chair and threw it across the room.

Arms wrapped around me from behind and suddenly Flame was in my face. “Calm the fuck down.”

“We’ll get her back,” Vike said in my ear. Brother after brother came running into the bar.

Then Lilah came bursting in, tears pouring down her face. She ran to Ky. “We’ll get her back. I swear,” Ky said to his old lady

I watched Lilah. I braced my body, prepping for anyone to dare and fucking lay blame at Phebe’s feet. Lilah looked at me, and I was ready, braced for a fucking fight. But then she said, “She said something to me yesterday. I have thought of little else since Grace went missing.”

Lilah’s voice was thick with emotion. She shook her head. “She told me everything about her past. And she said she also had dreams. One in particular where Sapphira asked for her help. A dream where Sapphira was being drugged and held down by a man . . . just like Phebe had been in the ghost town.”

I remembered her nightmare. I remembered her holding her hand out in the air when she was still asleep, calling out Sapphira’s name, gripping someone’s phantom hand in her own. “She remembered.” I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up. “She fucking remembered that Meister had her daughter too.”

Lilah’s head fell in disbelief. “It is true? He has Sapphira?”

I nodded. “Just found out.”

“She will never forgive herself that Grace followed her and was captured by those men.” And fuck, Lilah was right. If things went to shit . . . if we didn’t get them back . . .

“We’ll get her,” Vike said, clearly seeing what I was thinking.

“Church!” Ky ordered. We piled into church and took our usual seats. Styx burst in, face full of thunder—the fucking Hangmen mute was out in force.

With the slam of the door, church was in motherfucking session.

*****

Four hours. Four hours of waiting for Tanner to find something. Four hours, driving myself insane wondering why Red hadn’t told me what she suspected—that Meister had Sapphira.

Why the fuck hadn’t she said shit to me? I would have helped.

Boots came rushing into the room, and I got to my feet. Hush and Cowboy pulled their bandanas off their faces. “Nothing,” Hush said.

Cowboy nodded. “Gone. Everything was cleared out. Fresh tire marks on the ground, so they haven’t been gone long. About three large vans, I’d say. A couple of trucks too.”

I sank down on my seat. Ky was pacing the room. “Where the fuck would they have gone?”

I remembered Tanner’s sheet on my kitchen table. “Mexico.” Styx and Ky looked right at me. “On the sheet that had Sapphira’s name on, an order sheet or some shit, it had Mexico as the destination.”

The door opened, and Tank and Tanner came in, Bull following behind. “Drop-off tomorrow, over the border. Some isolated farming community about twenty miles out of La Cruz.” Tanner read the notes in his hand. “Buyer meets them there and they do a drop-off. Pric

k called Garcia.” He looked up. “That’s all the info that Meister had recorded.”

The minute Garcia’s name was out of Tanner’s mouth, Styx and Ky went completely fucking still. The temperature in the room seemed to drop about twenty degrees. “What?’ I said and watched the prez and the VP look at each other. Silent, unspoken communication. “What?” I asked louder. Ky’s blue eyes were almost black, pupils blown. His skin was mottling with red, and his hands were clenched into fists.

“That’s Diablo turf,” Tank said. We go onto their turf, that’s a declaration of war.”

We all looked to Styx, who had lifted his hands. He looked at Smiler and signed, “Get in touch with Chavez, the Diablo prez. Tell him we want through the border, undetected, and we need to meet in a neutral place to do it.” He rolled his neck. “We meet them tonight and get in by morning. We gotta be there when the trucks arrive. Surprise the fuckers.” He looked at me. “I know that’s your bitch, but we need you and Smiler to get us a plan together. Tanner?” Styx looked at the White Prince. “You got us some eyes on this farm place?”