Reaper Unleashed (14 page)

“No, stay still. Lock, get the fucking bikes out of the way so we can get the cage out and have Bull bring me some fucking towels. It’s going to be okay, baby.” Lock took off to do his bidding and Bull brought some towels for him to press against her wound, making her cry out. It seemed to make Reaper, who was in some sort of panic mode, flip out even more. She could almost feel the panic that thrummed through his body in the tenseness of the air surrounding them. She rushed to assure him “I’m okay. It’s the head blow more than the blood loss. A lot of this blood was from him. I shot him twice, just not a kill shot. He took out my better arm.”

“Fucking A, did she just say she couldn’t kill him because he took out her good arm?” Bull asked chuckling.

“She did,” Rebel said, laughing and over Reaper’s shoulder she could see him glancing over at Bull with a huge grin on his face. “Boss’s woman is lethal. I hope he never pisses her off.”

“Shut the fuck up. Is the cage ready?” Reaper demanded.

“Yeah, Boss, cage is out,” Rebel said sobering.

Reaper lifted her into his arms, but she tugged on his arm. She could still hear Josh calling out to her. He was calmer, but not reassured. He was now calling for Eper too. He must have heard his voice and known he was here. “Josh needs to come with us. He needs you, he’s still crying, Reaper. You need to calm him down.”

“No, Sarah, we don’t have time to…”

“You get my son calmed down now! He’s been through enough tonight and I won’t have him upset any longer. He needs to know we’re okay. Now go get him and Bull will help me into the bathroom to clean up some. My head’s feeling better now that it’s not being used as a volleyball.” Sarah saw the internal war within Reaper. He wanted to calm Josh down as much as he wanted her taken care of. She glared at him until he nodded.

“She gets hurt again and you die,” he said to Bull as he walked down the hall to enter the bedroom where Iron was trying to calm down Josh.

Bull helped her up. “You know, I don’t think I have ever seen anyone argue with Reaper when he’s scowling like that. He likes to shoot people when he’s in that mood, you know,” he told her as he helped her into the bathroom in Reaper’s room.

She shook her head and grabbed the shirt Reaper had left on the bathroom counter. “Turn around so I can change.” These men acted like Reaper ran around and killed people willy-nilly. She was quite sure he had a reason for killing most of the people that ended up dead around him.

“Are you insane, woman?” he bellowed.

“What?” Sarah asked, not understanding what the hell he was freaking yelling about. She knew it was making her head ache though.

“He will fucking kill me it he thinks I helped you change your clothes!”

“Oh, for goodness sakes, relax, Bull. I won’t let him kill you. Now, turn around.” Sarah rolled her eyes, not really understanding why grown men acted like Reaper was the boogieman.

She painfully tried to remove the shirt that was bloody and ripped. She had trouble when she tried to lift her arm to take the shirt off the right side. She was about to ask Bull for help when Reaper appeared in the doorway. He glared at Bull, his grey eyes almost black.

“I wasn’t looking. I swear. I didn’t look, don’t kill me!” Bull whined.

“Jeez, show some balls, Bull!” Sarah growled, disgusted. Looking at Reaper, she asked, “A little help would be nice so I don’t scare my son.”

Reaper motioned for Bull to get out and he left with a sigh of relief. Reaper pulled the shirt off for her, careful of her wound. “It looks like the bleeding’s already stopped,” he murmured as he inspected her shoulder.

“See, I told you I was fine.”

“You’re not fine, Sarah! You were shot in my home where you and Josh should have been safe.” He looked so agonized by this admission that she lifted her good hand to his cheek, her heart aching for him.

“I’m okay, Reaper. You saved me.”

“I almost didn’t make it,” he whispered, his arms suddenly clutching her to him, his voice rasping with emotion. She felt that emotion echo to her core because she felt just as strongly for him. Somehow over the past three weeks she was falling in love with him, she realized. That was why when she’d had the choice of hiding what she was or fighting, she’d fought. She knew the truth with blinding clarity and it nearly ripped her heart to shreds because Reaper wasn’t a man you got to keep. He was too leashed by his reputation and his club.

“But you did. You did make it and that’s all that matters,” Sarah told him, holding him to her as he clutched her, ignoring the way her wound burned and protested the tight hold. Sarah knew in that moment that she was going to be with this man for as long as he allowed it. She was going to take every moment he gave her and when he was gone, she’d know that once for a brief time he’d been hers.

He stiffened and pulled back, his darkened grey eyes on what she realized was her bare breasts. He had seen them before coved only in a white lace bra that left little to the imagination when she’d done her striptease for him at the club. Somehow in the small bathroom it seemed more intimate. Maybe it was her recent realization of her feelings for him or maybe it was the intensity of his gaze.

He looked hungry and she thought he’d touch her. Then he seemed to focus on the blood that was trickling down her shoulder again from all the movement. He seemed to snap out of it and began helping her put his shirt on, his hands gentle.

“We have to get you to Lance. He needs to check that your shoulder is okay. And your face,” he added, his teeth cracking together as he rubbed a hand over her left cheek. Sarah was sure that it was bruised and likely badly from the way it felt. He lifted her off her feet and began carrying her towards the door.

“I can walk, Reaper.”

“Just humor me. I need you close or I am going to lose it. I’m holding on by a thread, baby.” She allowed him to carry her into the living room and out the door to the car. Josh was already in the backseat and he cried ‘Mama’ and dove across the car at her. Reaper caught him before he hit her right shoulder but let him wrap his arms around her neck.

“Shhh, it’s okay, sweetie. Mommy’s fine,” Sarah told him, her good arm around him. Reaper snorted next to her but didn’t contradict her. They put Josh into his car seat and Reaper sat in the back with her in his lap, unwilling to allow her to sit by herself apparently. Iron drove and Lock sat in the front with him on alert. Bull and Rebel had been left to clean up the bodies and the mess.

Reaper was slamming his fist into Torch’s face. They’d found him with the five women they’d managed to get back tonight. He’d been raping a sixteen-year-old girl when they walked in and if the other four men weren’t already dead, Reaper would have killed him on the spot. The sick fuck needed to be put down, but first they needed information. 

When they’d decided to raid that cabin they were holed up in, they’d thought with the size of the place it would be crawling with men, and when they had only found five men with the five girls they’d saved, Reaper had known that something wasn’t right.

He just had a feeling in the pit of his stomach that this had all been a set up and if you were sending men to die as a distraction, you didn’t tell them. At least he wouldn’t. He just didn’t know what these men were meant to distracting them from. What the hell could they be planning that they wanted the club focused on these men and those girls.

“I don’t like this. Something feels off,” Death said, echoing his thoughts. That ratcheted the unease inside him up a notch.

“I feel it too.” He stepped back from a whimpering Torch, his face a mess of bruises. He had been telling them over and over for the past thirty minutes that he didn’t know anything else about the human trafficking ring they were trying to break up. It made sense that they wouldn’t use a key player in a decoy. That meant they weren’t likely to get more out of him because he didn’t know anything.

Death motioned to the door and Reaper nodded, allowing Hammer and Scruffy to take over the interrogation. He didn’t think they’d learn anything more but it was never good to take chances. Reaper and Death paused just outside the cellar, both feeling that sense of unease and neither of them liked it.

“You thinking what I am?” Death asked, looking grim.

“Yeah, something doesn’t feel right. This feels like a distraction.” Reaper felt his phone going off. He dug it out of his pocket but he didn’t look at the number, just answered. “Kinda busy right now,” he growled into the phone.

“Someone’s in the loft,” Sarah said in a voice so low he could barely hear her.

“Sarah?” Reaper asked. “Fuck, are you sure, baby?”

He wondered if she was just jumpy because she was at his place alone for the first time with him out because of club business. The shutters were down before he left and unless she had opened them, he didn’t see how anyone could get past them without the code. Any measure to open them without the code would only result in a lock out. Entering the override code only he, Burner, and Death knew would open the locks then. Thinking she was jumping at shadows, he was about to tell her that it was her imagination when her next words sent a chill up his spine.

“The shutters are up and I was sleeping so I didn’t do it. Did you?” Sarah asked. That was not fucking good. Nobody without the code could have opened the shutters. Only about ten people had that code and he should have fucking changed it before he left. He had a spy in his fucking club and he’d left Sarah and Josh there. What the hell had he been thinking? He felt fury flow through him in icy coldness. She needed to get into the gunroom. It was walled off and made from ten tons of steel and if she got in there nothing was going to get to her or Josh. It would be a tight fit but it was ventilated and as small as they were, they could do it.

“Hell no, I didn’t. How the fuck did they get in? They had to have the fucking code. Once the system goes into lockdown there is nothing getting in or out without the damned code. Baby, you need to get Josh and get into the gunroom. It’s like a vault and you’ll be safe in there.” He waited for her to say something but she didn’t respond and he realized that she wasn’t listening

“Sarah, Sarah, baby, listen to me!” Reaper demanded, his heart beginning to pound and his guts tied in knots as his brain gave all sorts of nasty scenarios as to why she wasn’t listening to him.

“Get here, Reaper. I only have seven fucking bullets in this gun and I don’t know how many of them there are,” she told him in a firm voice and he almost died. She couldn’t handle those men. Fuck, he didn’t even know if she could handle one man with seven bullets much less more. Did she even know how to handle a gun at all? He didn’t know but he wasn’t going to chance it.

“No, fuck, don’t engage them. Sarah, hide in the gunroom. The code is 73…” He let his voice trail off because she had hung up on him.

“Trouble?” Death, who’d been silently watching him throughout the conversation, asked.

“I have to go. Now,” he said, not caring about anything except getting to Sarah before she was killed. And the fuckers in his house had better hope like hell she was alive when he got there or the Headhunters were going to learn why he’d been coined ‘The Reaper’ because the cold was already settling in his soul.

Death’s hand shot out catching his arm and Reaper turned his frozen gaze to the other man.

“Sarah and Josh?” he asked, but Reaper didn’t have time to chat. He just shook off Death and walked towards his guns on the counter without a word. He was going after his woman and his kid and anyone in his way was dead. He heard Iron speaking behind him as he grabbed the guns and his knife.

“Sarah’s his woman and Josh is her kid. There must be trouble,” Iron said to Death.

“I see. He’s patched her?” Death asked.

“No, that has to be brought before the club but he owns them. We need to go with him. He’s entered the cold and we all know what’s going to happen if she’s dead. Nothing will stop him then,” Lock told him.

“Fine, go. When he’s calm, tell him we need to discuss this,” he heard Death say as he walked out of the club. He was on his bike when Iron, Lock, Bull and Rebel came running out of the club to get on their bikes. He didn’t wait for them, he just took off but as he roared out, he heard his men behind him and he knew if Sarah was dead, Lock was right. Nothing would stop him from killing every last one of the Headhunters he could find.

The twenty-minute ride to the loft took twelve of the longest minutes of his life. He pulled into the open garage door with a cold fury eating him alive. He got off his bike, his movements clipped, and he headed up the stairs. Lock, Bull and Iron pulled in as he reached the top of the stairs. With his gun out, Reaper stepped into his kitchen, not bothering to pause.

“Fuck,” a man who was bleeding on his kitchen floor from two wounds said before Reaper shot him in the head, not even pausing before he moved through the kitchen into the living room. Two more men were dead on the floor and he was glad that he’d opted against carpet in here. The sudden odd thought didn’t really register as he rounded the corner towards the sounds of a struggle.

A man was on top of Sarah, his hand drawn back to hit her across the face, when Reaper grabbed him by the collar jerking him back, his gun going to the man’s temple as he moved. He squeezed the trigger and let the man fall behind him in the hall in a single movement. Then he was on his knees beside Sarah.

“Sarah, oh fuck! Sarah.” His hands rose to her face as she smiled at him with bloody teeth and a dazed look. Her face was swollen along her left check and a small cut was bleeding there. Reaper felt the cold melt as panic settled inside him. There was so much blood on the floor that he felt it soaking into his pants.

“Damn,” Lock said as he came around the wall.

“Is she okay?” Iron asked, crowding into the hall behind Lock and Reaper.

“No, she’s not fucking all right motherfucker!” Reaper roared. His hand was wet with all the blood. “How the fuck did this happen? And turn on a fucking light so I can see where the hell all this blood is coming from.” He knew he was acting like a fucking pansy assed idiot but he didn’t give a fuck. Sarah was bleeding and he needed to know where it was coming from. Someone snapped on the light and he could see blood had soaked the shirt over her right shoulder. The shirt was completely soaked to somewhere around her waist and his heart nearly stopped at the sight of it when the light was flicked on.

“Josh” Sarah said weakly.

“Iron, get the boy and calm him down, but don’t let him out here,” Reaper commanded, his hands ripping the neck of her shirt to find the wound in her shoulder. His heart pumped wildly in his ears when he saw the bullet hole in her shoulder. Sarah had been shot.

“Fuck, you were shot!” Then he was pulling it up at her waist expecting to find another bullet had hit her there but was relieved to find no wound across her slightly rounded stomach.

“Through and through. I’m fine, just dazed from the knocks to the head and the pain,” Sarah told him, lifting her good hand to cup his face. He stared at her in utter disbelief. She was trying to reassure
him
when she was the one who was shot. He couldn’t believe that was what was happening. That at the moment he needed comfort more than she did. 

“No, stay still. Lock, get the fucking bikes out of the way so we can get the cage out and have Bull bring me some fucking towels. It’s going to be okay, baby.”

They rushed to do as he commanded. Bull came back quickly handing him a towel and he pressed it against her wound. Reaper almost lost it when she cried out in pain.

He was losing it.
Him
. The man they called the Reaper because when he was in a situation like this one he didn’t panic, he went cold. Only at the moment he wasn’t cold, he was flipping the fuck out. Sarah had been shot.

“I’m okay. It’s the head blow more than the blood loss. A lot of this blood was from him I think. I shot him twice, just not a kill shot. He took out my better arm.” Reaper’s mouth hung open as he stared at her. He had walked by those bodies and he knew that she had killed them. But hearing her talk about it like it was no big deal was shocking for a woman they’d all thought was a Pollyanna type.

She’d taken those men out without a thought and would have killed the one who was attacking her if she could have. His baby was a bad ass. He couldn’t help the grim smirk that took over his face at the thought.

“Fucking A, did she just say she couldn’t kill him because he took out her good arm?” Bull asked chuckling, a grudging respect in his voice.

“She did,” Rebel said, laughing warily. “Boss’s woman is lethal. I hope he never pisses her off.”

Deciding that was enough messing around when Sarah winced in pain, he glared at them over his shoulder. “Shut the fuck up. Is the cage ready?” Reaper demanded. He could also hear that Josh was upset still and he was torn between staying with her and going to the boy.  He could hear the boy asking for Eper and Mama between sobs.

“Yeah, Boss, cage is out,” Rebel said, sobering.

Reaper lifted her to her feet and she tugged on his arm. “Josh needs to come with us. He needs you, he’s still crying, Reaper. You need to calm him down.”

“No, Sarah, we don’t have time to…” he began, but she interrupted him, her amber eyes filled with pain and determination.

“You get my son calmed down now! He’s been through enough tonight and I won’t have him upset any longer. He needs to know we’re okay. Now go get him and Bull will help me into the bathroom to clean up some. My head is feeling better now that it’s not being used as a volleyball.”

Reaper waged a silent war at her demand. He wanted to calm Josh down too but he also wanted her taken care of. Finally he decided she seemed okay for the moment and after lifting the towel to see the blood had slowed around the torn neckline of the shirt, he handed her to Bull who wrapped an arm around her waist.

“She gets hurt again and you die,” he told Bull as he walked towards the room where Iron was holding a screaming Josh. Josh jumped from Iron’s hold and ran to him. He lifted the boy, who was crying so hard he could barely make out the words he was saying between sobs.

“Mama, Eper, Mama,” the little boy was saying. He knew that Josh wanted him to take him to his mother, but right now that was problematic. She was covered in blood and looked a bit scary. He held the boy tightly letting him calm down.

“Shhh, mama’s okay, buddy,” Reaper assured him as he rubbed his back. After several moments of the boy clinging to him as he cried, he calmed.

Lifting his head the little boy said, “Osh see mama?”

“Okay, but first you need to do me a favor, okay, buddy?” Josh nodded, looking teary-eyed and very serious for a two-year-old. “You need to go with Uncle Iron out to the car but I need you to do something for me so that you can see your mommy is okay.”