Copper (Hell's Handlers MC 4)

“I want him out here. I want him to feel the air, see the stars, smell the clean scent of the forest. He needs to realize everything he’s never going to have the chance to experience again. He needs to feel what I’m taking away from him. I want him to experience one last flicker of hope that we’ll let him live, right before I slit his fucking throat.”

Shell swallowed. Though she couldn’t see his face, she imagined Copper stroking his beard, deep in thought as he plotted someone’s demise. There were stories about that, too. About the lengths Copper would go to protect his club. His men and their families.

But now she had a front-row seat to the horror show.

“You got it,” Zach said. There was some rustling, then silence that seemed to drag on for hours but was probably only minutes. Everything appeared darker, longer, more intense when outside in the hours following midnight.

Finally, footsteps crunched over leaves again, followed by a grunt and a thud. Shell blew out a silent breath and peeked around her tree. Someone had lit a lantern, illuminating a small clearing in the woods. A man knelt on the ground, arms bound behind him with Copper, Maverick, Zach, and Rusty circled around him.

Back to her, she didn’t have a view of Copper’s face, but she sure had a clear line of sight to the man on the ground.

Reaper, they called him. Because of the number of men he’d sent to their graves. Those were rumors Shell believed. She’d seen the dark-eyed man in action. Her insides quivered at the memories, and she sucked in a soundless, trembling breath.

This was why she’d followed the guys into the woods when she should have been home snoozing away in preparation for school in the morning.

Reaper was the man who’d killed her father five years ago.

Earlier that afternoon, she’d been at the clubhouse helping some of the ol’ ladies prepare dinner. Tasked with letting the men know their meal was ready to be devoured, she’d wandered toward Copper’s office only to hear Reaper’s name being tossed around in conjunction with plans to head to The Box in the night.

Her mind and body had frozen until the noises from Copper’s office alerted her to the men mobilizing. Then, she’d scurried back to the door of the kitchen and pretended to emerge just as they did, feigning her ignorance.

Even by the dim glow of the lantern, it was apparent the eyes staring up at Copper held no remorse. No fear. It was as though life, even his own, held no value to him. Almost made her wish the men would keep him alive and in pain a while before ending him. Most might find it sick. Most might wake with nightmares after watching someone die, but Shell had already been down that road. The soulless look in his eyes was the same she’d seen the night he stole her father from her. Memories from that time had stayed so strong, so fresh in her mind even with the passage of time, and Reaper’s brought them right back to the surface.

She’d been with her father that fated night, four years ago, when the madman known as Reaper shot him in cold blood at a gas station.

As long as she lived, Shell would never forget the horror of that night. It was late on a Saturday, and her father was driving Shell and her mother home from a family barbecue at the clubhouse. From the second row of their truck, she’d watched her dad walk out of the quiet gas station market, two coffees in hand. Seconds later, Reaper appeared from the shadows, shot her father from three feet away, then disappeared as fast as he’d materialized. She’d had as clear a view of his pale face that night as she did now.

It all happened so fast, it was over before her brain processed what her eyes had seen. But once it did, her heart broke clear in two, and she screamed so loud she couldn’t speak for days.

Now, finally, more than four years later, justice would be served, MC style. And she didn’t have it in her to find anything wrong with that. Maybe it was how she was raised, or maybe it was just in her blood, but she had always felt safe, loved, and protected knowing the club would do anything and everything to protect and avenge its own.

Copper had been there that night. He’d witnessed her devastation, seen her in the lowest moment of her life. In her lovestruck teenage mind, she’d hoped some of the reason for Copper’s tireless search for Reaper had something to do with him wanting to ease her pain, though, in truth, he’d have done it for anyone associated with the club.

“You’ve been a hard man to find,” Copper said as he stepped closer to his captive.