Reaper Unleashed (15 page)

He nodded again, his thumb in his mouth and his eyes glued to Reaper.

“I need you to squeeze your eyes shut tightly. Can you do that?” he asked, watching as the little boy squeezed his eyes tightly shut and his face twisted into a scrunched version of his normally elfish face. Reaper felt his head ache as the boy did as he was told. He was a good kid. “Good, very good. Now, you go with Uncle Iron and I will go get your mommy, but remember you have to keep your eyes closed tight, okay.”

“Eper come too?”

“I need to help mommy. You go with Iron.”

He looked unhappy for a moment and hugged Reaper one more time before allowing Iron to take him. Iron nodded and Reaper knew that the boy wouldn’t see the men’s bodies. There was no need for the boy to have that memory. This night had been frightening enough for him as it was.

He followed Iron, watching for a moment as he carried the boy, whose eyes were shut tightly, out of the room. He felt a sense of ownership take him over as he watched Josh fading away with Iron as he walked into his room going to Sarah.

“Oh, for goodness sakes relax, Bull, I won’t let him kill you. Now turn around,” Sarah was saying as he entered the room. She was trying to remove the shirt. She didn’t realize that she was displaying her left breast, he was sure. He had a feeling she was about to ask Bull for help. A possessive growl starting in his chest, his grey eyes landed on the other man in a dark glare and he palmed his gun.

“I wasn’t looking. I swear. I didn’t look, don’t kill me!” Bull whined, holding his hands up in a defensive pose.

“Jeez, show some balls, Bull!” Sarah seemed disgusted with the man but Reaper knew Bull was smarter than he looked. He would have killed the man for looking at her and Bull knew it. He motioned for him to exit and Sarah said, “A little help would be nice so I don’t scare my son.”

Reaper pulled the shirt off for her, careful of her wound. He inspected it, feeling a little relieved to see that it looked better than it had the first time he’d seen it. It had stopped bleeding at least. “It looks like the bleeding’s already stopped,” he murmured.

“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 felt agonized by the thought of her being attacked in his home. This shouldn’t have happened. She lifted her good hand to his cheek and he leaned into it, needing the contact desperately.

“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. He couldn’t hold back the fear that poured through him at the thought of her or Josh dying.

“But you did. You did make it and that’s all that matters,” Sarah told him, holding him, and he clutched her to him.

He pulled back, his eyes drawn to her bare breasts, unable to help the way they seemed to command his attention, and he wanted desperately to make love to her. He felt starved and he would have reached for her if he hadn’t noticed the blood that trickled down her left breast. Fuck, here she was bleeding and likely in pain and he was being a fucking pervert, hard as stone with wanting her. It was fucked up and he needed to snap out of it and help her. His hands were gentle as he put his shirt on her.

“We have to get you to Lance. He needs to check that your shoulder is okay. And your face,” he added, his teeth cracking as he rubbed a hand over her left cheek, anger burning in his gut at the sight of her swollen cut cheek. Lifting her off her feet, he began carrying her towards the door.

“I can walk, Reaper.”

“Just humor me. I need you close or I am going to lose it here. I’m holding on by a thread, baby.” She didn’t say anything else and he was grateful because he was already feeling a bit crazed. This could become a problem, he realized, because if she was ever really hurt they’d likely have to restrain him. When they got to the car Josh dove for his mother. He stopped the boy from landing on her shoulder but allowed him to hug her.

Sarah shushed the boy as they got into the car and her ridiculous statement that she was fine made Reaper snort. She wasn’t fine, she was shot. After she had held Josh for a moment, they put him into his car seat. Reaper sat with her in his lap, unwilling to allow her to move too far from him while he was still reassuring himself that she was going to be okay.

He carried her inside when they arrived at Lance’s place despite her protests about being able to walk. Josh went with Iron and Lock, who’d brought him a lollypop out of the kitchen. They went to the small play area set up in one corner of Lance’s office while he carried Sarah into the exam room. The hospital was small and used only by the club. Lance walked into the room grinning.

“You bring me a woman, Reaper? You really shouldn’t have,” Lance, a man in his late twenties with sandy colored hair and a nice friendly smile, joked. He lost the grin almost as fast when he took in the grim look Reaper was giving him. Reaper knew that the man had been joking but a possessive fury was unleashed by his words, one that he couldn’t control, and he contemplated ripping his head off.

“I think he’s turned into a sour puss, ahh–– sorry, don’t know your name. Anyway, he seems to have turned into a sour puss because I got shot.”

“That will do it. I’m Lance by the way. Do you work at the club?” he asked, smiling genially.

“No, Sarah doesn’t work at the fucking club. Can we get the idle chit chat bit of this done later. She started bleeding again in the car,” Reaper told him flatly, a dark scowl on his face. She frowned; he was acting like a prick and she couldn’t figure out why. He’d been so nice to her until they came in here.

“Ah, I think you may be right,” Lance told Sarah quietly once he was close enough to shine a light into her eyes before looking at her hands. She wasn’t sure what he was doing until he told her to squeeze his thumb. She was fine with the left one, but her right was another story. When she tried to squeeze his hand, she moaned as a burning pain shot from her shoulder to her hand.

“Ouch, sorry about that, I know it hurts but I have to be sure the bullet didn’t destroy any of the nerves that connect your shoulder to your hand. Bullet still in the shoulder or did it go through?” Lance asked.

“It went through.”

“Good, good.” Lance moved closer and began lifting the hem of her shirt when Reaper’s hand landed on his and Reaper made an odd growling sound. Sarah glanced at him in alarm. He wasn’t going to let the doctor treat her after dragging her here?

“Step outside, Lance. I’ll let you back in when I have the wound exposed,” he told Lance and his face brooked no argument.

“Reaper, that’s ridiculous. He’s a doctor. I’m quite sure he won’t faint at the sight of my boobs,” Sarah told him, not understanding his behavior. He was acting like Lance was going to fall on her in ravenous lust at just the mere glimpse of her breasts. Reaper ignored her comment, opting instead to stare darkly at Lance.

“Right. I need to get some equipment anyway. Why don’t you get her ready and I will be right back,” Lance said, stepping back from her with a wary expression as he beat feet out the door.

“Was that really necessary?” Sarah demanded, glaring at him, not understanding his rudeness with the doctor.

“If you want him breathing longer than it takes to patch you up, then yes, it was necessary,” Reaper informed her as he lifted her shirt. He arranged it so that her right arm was through the neck and it was loose enough to expose her wound in both the front and the back. Sarah moaned as the pain assaulted her again.

“Sorry, baby. I know it hurts,” he told her when she was panting from the sting the movements had caused.

“I think you’re being ridiculous, Reaper! I don’t think the man intended to fall on me with lustful intent because he got a few glances at my breasts. You yourself said I barely even have a rack!” Sarah grumbled when she finally caught her breath. She did not understand why he was acting so possessive of her.

“It’s my rack, baby. I’m the one who gets to look, not any other man.” Reaper kissed her stunned face and stepped back. She couldn’t believe that he was telling her that he, who’d never even touched her, thought that she was his possession. If she had more energy she’d have fought with him over that assumption. This was the man she was falling for, this neanderthal? She only shook her head and waited on Lance to come back.

He entered the room carrying a suture kit as well as several other devices. Lance glanced at her shoulder and looked over at Reaper while he moved to her side to inspect the wound. He ran the scanner over it in the front and then again in the back.

“Very good. It didn’t sever any of the nerves, which is good. I will have to sew it up though because we don’t have a surgical stitcher, even though I asked for one months ago.” Lance directed the last part of his conversation at Reaper.

“You’ll have one tomorrow and you can fix her then. Just stitch it for tonight the old way.” Reaper grimaced and sat holding Sarah’s left hand while the doctor used some pain spray before he began stitching the wound in her shoulder.

“Reaper, you don’t have to get a stitcher machine. It’s fine. The stitches will hold it and it only takes a little while longer to heal,” Sarah told him, unwilling to be the reason he bought such an expensive piece of machinery. 

“Yes, five weeks longer,” Lance informed her as he stitched the back of her shoulder. She wished he were still doing the front so she could glare at him.

“It’s fine. I needed to get it months ago,” Reaper told her. She wanted to protest but he stopped her by squeezing her hand and saying, “It’s for the rest of the club too, baby.” She nodded, too tired to argue.

Lock opened the door of the loft for him to carry a sleeping Sarah inside. He walked through the kitchen, glad to see that the floor was clean and the bodies that had littered it were gone. Iron was carrying Josh, who was also asleep, into the house. Sarah had conked out as soon as the pain meds Lance had given her kicked in.

He was pissed that she’d had to get stitches tonight. He should have gotten that damned stitcher months ago. Then Sarah wouldn’t have needed the strong painkillers Lance had given her. She also wouldn’t still be in pain. The stitcher healed the exterior completely. The insides took a bit longer depending on the severity of the wound but the pain was gone within ten hours.

He carried her into the hallway but didn’t put her in the bed she’d been using. Instead he carried her to his room and lay her down in the middle of his king size bed. She rolled to her left side, curling around the pillow and drawing her leg up. He watched her for a few moments before he stepped back. Iron was standing behind him with Josh.

“Do you want him in here or the other room?” Iron asked.

“Here,” Reaper told him

“You sure? He might jostle her,” Iron asked, waiting, but Reaper knew Sarah and waking with the boy nearby would reassure her even if he inadvertently hurt her.

“Yeah, put him in the bed. It will be fine,” he told the other man and Iron nodded before putting Josh on the bed beside Sarah. As they left the room, he paused to crack the door so that he could hear her if she called out.

Heading out into the living room, he saw that they were all still waiting. He looked at them standing or sitting on his newly destroyed furniture. He could see the holes bullets had made in his walls and he was glad for every one he saw because it meant they hadn’t hit Sarah.

“Reaper, you need to call Death,” Lock told him from where he leaned against the wall drinking a beer. Bull was eating a plate of casserole at the coffee table. Rebel had an empty plate in front of him. He shook his head at the men. He’d never had a problem with them making themselves at home before but that was his fucking casserole. Sarah was a damned good cook and these assholes were eating his food.

“I will. What went down tonight shouldn’t have happened. Someone who had the code betrayed me and I want that fucker found. This room holds all the men I trust in this club right now. You four, Death, Colt and Mack are it. I want the man who set this up found. I won’t have this happen again. Sarah and I are the only ones with the code for the house from now on. I want four men on the house at all times. One of the four of you will rotate in and Colt can be on point when Iron or Rebel aren’t.”

“Reaper, I know you don’t want to hear this but are you sure you can trust her? She took those men out like a pro. That shot to the head would have been hard for any of us and she managed it. How?” Lock asked, setting the empty beer can on the coffee table.

Reaper wanted to rip him apart with his bare hands at the mere suggestion that Sarah was a plant. He looked at the other man with fire burning in his guts because somehow he knew that she wasn’t involved in this.

“I’m not a plant.” Sarah’s voice came from behind him and he spun, seeing her standing in the living room holding onto the wall. She looked exhausted and before he knew it he was moving towards her.

“How do we know you’re not lying?” Lock asked, his voice holding disbelief.

“What would I be doing, Lock? You think I want to deal with the assholes that came into my home trying to murder my son? Is that what you think?”

Reaper pulled her into his arms trying to protect her from the suspicions being thrown her way. “Baby, it’s okay. I know you weren’t involved, just go get some rest.” He tried to usher her back into the hallway.

“No,” she said, jerking away from him. Moving to stand in front of Lock, her finger in his chest, she screamed, “Fuck you, Lock! I would
never
put my son in harm’s way!”

“Sarah, calm down,” Reaper said, trying to get between her and Lock. Lock’s fists were balled at his sides and he glared down at her. Reaper shared a look with the man that let him know if he touched her he was a dead man.

“I trust her,” Bull suddenly spoke around a mouthful of casserole. It surprised Reaper that he’d said it. Bull didn’t trust many people. He was one of the least trusting men that Reaper knew.

“Why?” Lock asked, staring at the man, just as shocked as Reaper was by his pronouncement.

“Don’t know. Just do,” Bull replied.

“Look. I know that me being able to kill without flinching fucked with your heads but I can explain that,” Sarah told them and they all turned back to her. “They weren’t the first men I’ve killed. My mother wa…”

“I don’t want to hear about your life, Sarah. I want to know that you’re not trying to get Reaper killed,” Lock interrupted, making Sarah grit her teeth and scowl at him. Her left hand, the one not in a sling, balled into a tight fist.

“Do you want me to explain or not, Lock?” Sarah asked. Fury pounded through Reaper at Lock’s rudeness towards Sarah. He didn’t like him insulting her. He glared at his friend.

“Yes.”

“Then I have to tell you about my mother,” Sarah told him, anger evident in her tone. Reaper grabbed her around the waist, lifting her into his arms and sitting down on the couch with her in his lap. She didn’t protest and leaned into him. It made the tightness in his chest ease. Lock leaned against the wall watching, his arms crossed over his chest.

Iron was silent as he stood in a position across from Sarah, moving when Reaper did to keep her in sight. Reaper knew he was trying to read her. It was what the man did and Reaper allowed it. He was positive that Sarah was who she said she was, but he had to be sure. His life wasn’t the only one he risked by trusting her.

“She was a bit of a flake. She didn’t want a kid, hell, she didn’t want responsibility at all. From the earliest memory I knew that my mother wasn’t much of a mother. She was a wild beauty and she’d never had to work for anything. Ever. She really hated being a mother. I never knew why she didn’t just dump me on someone and leave, but she never did.”

“Is there a point to this gibberish?” Lock demanded.

“Let her talk and quit being a dick,” Bull told him angrily. 

Reaper smiled against her hair. She had earned a champion in Bull. Although Bull had better remember that Sarah belonged to him, he thought possessively.

“Anyway, she lived off other people. I’ve had twelve ‘fathers’ in my lifetime. I got the first one when I was five after my grandmother kicked us out. I can’t blame her, my mother never did anything and she was always spending the rent. The first one, he lasted a year and taught me to hide when a man got drunk.” Reaper’s arms tightened around her, her words making him want to kill that man who’d tried to hurt her.

“My second father only lasted three weeks before he got tired of me and mom. Then three, four, five and six were much of the same. By the time I was eight we were on number seven. He taught me how to steal. Eight was a drug addict that tried to sell me to some guy. Lucky for me, mom found a bigger pocketbook before I ended up sold to some sick fuck. Now number nine, Larry, was one of my favorites. He taught me to pick locks and be a lookout for him and his gang. By that time I was ten. Larry kicked us out and she met Frank. He was the poker player. He taught me to read people. It sometimes takes longer with some people but I’m actually good at it. Better than you, Iron,” she said, earning a raised brow from Iron.

“Are you better than him at hiding what you’re after too?” Lock demanded as he bent forward getting in her face. Reaper bristled and shoved the man away form her.

“Yes. Yes, I am, Lock. And I am not going to apologize for that! I can’t help that my life was training for being the best fucking spy anyone could have!” Sarah yelled, leaning forward as far as Reaper would let her to meet Lock’s eyes with her own. “You’re going to find that he can’t read me. I’m that fucking good.”

“She’s right. She has no tell. I noticed it that first night. The only reason I knew she was lying was she hesitated. If she hadn’t, I never would have known,” Iron confirmed.

“Well fuck! How are we supposed to know she isn’t fucking us over then?”

“Because I trust her,” Bull said and all eyes turned to him as if he’d lost his mind.

“What? That’s ridiculous,” Lock growled, throwing his hands in the air.

“It’s not. He isn’t very trusting because he has good instincts. So you should listen to him,” Sarah growled. “It doesn’t matter. I learned what I learned and no one can change that.”

“Of course, you want us to trust his assessment!” Lock bellowed

“Let me finish this story, I’m tired. When I’m done you can discuss it to death if you want. I really don’t give a fuck. My eleventh father figure was a con man. He’s the reason I have no tell. You name it, he had run it. He lasted from the year twelve to thirteen. That’s when mom met Hank. Tom, the con man, had just left us on the side of the road miles from anyone we knew and I was sure we’d end up dead. Only Hank happened by and he took us home with him. He also kept us long after the time when mom started to annoy him with her spending habits and her lack of good will for others. When I was seventeen, he told me three days before he and my mother were killed that it was because he knew if he turned her out I’d go with her and I was the closest thing he’d ever had to a daughter.” Sarah wiped at her eyes and Reaper realized she must be crying. Hank was important to her and his death had scarred her.

“He was an arms dealer. He taught me how to shoot almost anything. He taught me to hit moving targets like a pro and I found I’m damned good at it. I can actually shoot pretty well with both hands. Although I may need to start practicing with the left hand again. I missed that last idiot’s heart.”

“Only by a quarter inch,” Bull informed her.

“I was that close?” Sarah asked, surprised.

“Yep, bet it was because he moved at the last second.” Bull smiled as he looked at her.

“Huh, good to know. Anyway, I thought I’d finally found my home and would one day take over the business, but his partner wasn’t happy with the way he was dealing his arms after he met my mom and me. He’d cut back on the harder runs and he wasn’t making as much because he wasn’t selling to the harder crews. He was worried they’d come after mom or me in order to get back at him if he sold to rival gangs.” Sarah paused, taking a deep breath before she continued. “That night I was in the private range he’d set up in the cellar. I heard the guns going off when I was reloading and rushed to see what was going on. I walked in to see them shoot mom in the head and as she fell lifelessly to the floor this sort of rage came over me and I shot the man who had killed her.”

Reaper stiffened, holding her to his chest as he ached for her. He couldn’t believe that his Sarah had seen so much pain in her short life. To watch her mother, no matter how bad she’d been at taking care of her, die like that must have been traumatic. He rubbed her back much like he had Josh’s earlier, wanting to soothe her. She hugged his arm and leaned back into him. It warmed his heart to know she was allowing his closeness to comfort her.

“I just stood there in the open watching as he fell. I was too shocked that I’d killed him to move. I think it was that I hadn’t even thought of wounding him that surprised me. I had one thought. Kill. I would have died then if Hank hadn’t grabbed me, tackling me to the ground, because several of them opened fire. I was disturbed by what I’d done. I had never killed anyone. Never even thought of it. It was a shock to know that I was capable of that kind of violence. That was the first time I was shot.”

“You were shot before tonight?” Reaper demanded.

“Yeah, in the leg. Hank tackled me but a bullet caught my leg. It was just a graze really. Hank pulled me back to the bedroom he and my mom shared. He shoved me out the window with all the credits he had to his name, two handguns and some clothes he’d had for me in a go bag he always insisted on having ready. He told me something as I begged him to come with me. He kissed my forehead and whispered,
‘Sear-bear, you have to go. You have to run. Go live your life. Make better choices than your mother and I did. I love you like you’re my own daughter and I want you to live. Now go and never look back.’
From that night on, I tried to always make good choices. I worked hard and didn’t steal, even though it was easier. I lived my life the way he would have wanted me to. I made better choices.” Sarah finished on a hiccupping sob and Reaper rubbed her back, gently holding her tightly. He’d known he could trust her. What she’d just told them confirmed it.