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DC
At the hospital I was whisked away for scans, x-rays and stuff before having surgery to fix the damage done by two of the stab wounds to my lower abdomen. Not that I was awake for any of it. Hawk insisted on inspecting the sites once I woke up after my surgery and I could see it pissed him off. He quizzed the doctor about scarring and if we could expect any problems during pregnancy. What?
I certainly wasn’t planning on getting pregnant anytime soon.
Was Hawk thinking about it? With him asking that question he had to be.
I refused to even think about much less discuss it with him. Not that he tried, he acted like he had never asked the pregnancy question.
That was a good thing. Wasn’t it?
After a very, very short stay at the private hospital (Hawk didn’t trust their security) I was back in our room at the compound. I had strict instructions from the doctors, no strenuous activities until my injuries were healed, completely.
Doctor speak for no sex. They needn’t have given us the warning.
Hawk wasn’t touching me, at freaking all. Not that I blamed him.
I looked hideous. My face wasn’t as swollen anymore but it was a healing mess of black, blue, green and yellow. I had a large cut on my forehead and a smaller one on my cheek, both had been closed with tiny little stitches that would leave me with minimal scarring. The rest of my injuries were healing as well. But I was still stuck in bed with orders from Hawk not to put one toe on the floor. The inactivity was driving me crazy. Luckily I had Molly and the other old ladies fussing and keeping me company.
Mad Dog was recovering well and would be coming home soon. Miraculously none of the club brothers had been seriously injured during the attack. Everyone was doing well and already back at work.
Unfortunately the news regarding the club girls who were hurt during the attack wasn’t as good. One of the girls had succumbed to her injuries and although the other one survived she had refused to come back to the clubhouse and had gone home with her parents to recover. She would not be coming back.
Everything was back to normal or as close to normal as possible for a motorcycle club under threat.
I had no idea what had happened to Speedy and Big Ed but I felt sure they were locked up tight in a dungeon somewhere. In the confusion during the fight at the hangar Jane Warne had disappeared. Poof. Just gone. But I knew she would be back. She hadn’t accomplished what she had set out to do and she was definitely not finished with us.
My dad and his brothers were frequent visitors and I loved seeing them even though it pissed some of the Iron Dogz off to see the Road Warriors walking through their clubhouse. That in turn pissed me off and I made it my mission to end the enmity between the two clubs. They might make their money in very different ways but at their cores they were all outlaws and always would be. They were brothers in blood and bone.
The very dark cloud that continued to hang over us all was the kidnapped children. They hadn’t been found and the taskforce couldn’t find any evidence that the container had ever reached the docks. A search of the Josephine had come up clean. Shortly after the search Hawk told me that the taskforce had left to follow up on a lead they had on the head of the human trafficking ring.
I was pissed that they had given up on those children.
I was convinced they were locked up somewhere on the outskirts of the city. They were worth too much money to the traffickers to let them die without a last effort to ship them out. Someone knew where they were and was looking after them. I was convinced there was someone just like the woman who had watched over the kids in the warehouse out there watching over these kids.
Every single day the Iron Dogz and the Road Warriors were out there searching every single container yard for those children but it was like looking for a needle in a haystack. Durban was one of the main ports in South Africa and containers were moved in and out of the country every day by sea and by road. It was an impossible search.
Some were convinced the children had been shipped out on another vessel without anyone being the wiser. But I had a feeling in my gut they were still in Durban. But they were becoming a heavy liability and if we didn’t find them soon the traffickers were going to cut their losses and either kill them or leave them to die.
Speedy knew where they were but he wasn’t talking, no matter what was done to him he wasn’t giving them anything.
Big Ed, however, swore on his childrens’ lives that he knew nothing about kidnapping children and selling them. All he knew was that Speedy was taking out the Dogz and the Warriors and that it would benefit his club. Which was why he got involved. Jane Warne had played him and pulled him into her sick world. After a very short phone call to Snake, Big Ed had been handed over to his club. He was now their problem and good riddance.
I knew the Crow could make Speedy talk. I just had to convince Hawk to let me do it. But he refused point blank to even talk about it. If I broached the subject he silently got up and walked out of the room and didn’t return until hours later smelling of cigarettes and whiskey.
After a week, a whole week, of lying in bed like a cabbage while the world went on without me I snapped. I had had enough.
Every day I tested my strength and I was slowly but surely getting stronger. My abdomen felt tight and ached when I moved too abruptly but otherwise I was fine. My ribs were sore but no longer unbearably so and of course my arm was still broken.
I was ready to do my bit for the club but mostly for those poor children. I was so very worried they would die before we got any closer to finding them.
The Crow had to extract their location from Speedy. There was no other way. I was going to do the unthinkable. Act without the presidents’ permission.
I waited until the compound was silent. Most of the men were out searching for the kids or taking care of the day to day business. There were brothers watching over me but I knew with Molly’s help I would be able to give them the slip for an hour or so.
Molly and I had come up with a plan and we had taken one of the other old ladies into our confidence. Ina was a mother with two little boys and was happy to help. They were going to help me get into the dungeon where Speedy was being kept.
Our plan was simple. Molly and Ina would walk me down to the old ladies sitting room for tea and a long chat. It was a good plan because the men avoided the room like the plague. My guards hung out in the common room while I visited with the women.
There was another door from the room into the passage that ran along the back of the common room. The passage gave access to the club presidents’ office and apartment on the far left and the kitchen, dining area and crash rooms on the right before it came to an abrupt dead end at a tall bookcase. The bookcase disguised the entry to what lay underneath the clubhouse.
With Molly and Ina’s help I changed into black cargo pants, a long sleeved black t-shirt and my boots. We wrapped my cast with plastic wrap before I pulled on my gloves, forcing the black Nitrile glove to fit over my slightly swollen fingers and over part of the cast.
We successfully sneaked down the passage and descended down beneath the club. At first the rooms were innocent enough, rooms used for storage and such. But then we reached a heavy wooden door and once we pulled it open I insisted that Molly and Ina wait for me and not go any further.
Where I was going they could not, and should not, ever go.
I found the room by the stench leaking from it and once I opened the door it became so much worse. The stench of fear, suffering, despair and death rolled out of that door and I knew there was no way I was leaving him alive once I got what I wanted.
Speedy was naked and suspended from chains in the middle of the icy room. His body was stretched into a star shape and he wasn’t looking good. Not good at all. His body had been battered almost beyond recognition, dried blood all over him. It was clear to me he wasn’t going to last another night. He was close to the end. Taking the long narrow sheet of plastic from under my arm I rolled it out over the stuff covering the floor around the body, protecting my boots from carrying evidence out of the room when I left.
I slowly approached until I was right in front of him. His eyes were closed and his breathing heavy and laboured.
“Hello, Speedy.” I said softly and he slowly forced his swollen eyes open. They widened as much as they could with shock and horror.
“Wha...what...are you...doing here? Get out. Leave. Not...place for...you.” His eyes were tiny slits in his swollen face but even in the state he was in he kept them on me.
“I can’t leave until you tell me what I need to know, Speedy. Please tell me so I don’t have to hurt you.” I continued in that same soft voice as I visually inspected his abused junk and the blood that had dried on the back of his thighs. He had been subjected to pretty much everything those little kids he had sold would be going through.
It was inhuman, horrible and frightening what the man I loved and his men had done to him. But the Crow didn’t care she was here for one purpose and one purpose only. To find those kids.
“Why? Why...would he...send...you? You...shouldn’t be...allowed in...this filthy...room.”
I sighed and shook my head as if disappointed. “Unfortunately I’m more comfortable in rooms like this than Hawk or any his men, Speedy. I can tell you my secret because we both know you aren’t long for this world. I’m the finder of secrets, the breaker of lies, the collector of spies, the bringer of pain and for some, the final destination.”
He slowly shook his head from side to side muttering no, no, no, no through his broken lips.
“Yes, yes, yes Speedy. I am the Crow.” I said in a whispered hiss.
He jerked in his restraints and his head jerked even wilder until I placed my glove covered cold hand on his chest.
“Stop. Tell me what I need and I will let you go. No more humiliation, no more pain, no more Iron Dogz. Think about it, Speedy. Pain free and free from these chains. All you have to do is tell me.”
I drew in a shallow breath trying to ignore the stench in the room as I waited.
I didn’t have to wait long.
“Promise me...promise...you’ll set...me free. Get...me...out.”
I smiled sweetly.
“Of course, Speedy. I promise to set you free. All you have to do is tell me.”
And then it came pouring out, the location of the container, the person taking care of the children and the contingency plans for shipping those kids out once the heat dies down.
Drawing the long thin bladed knife from the back of my pants I stepped up to him and slipped it up beneath his ribs and into his heart. His eyes widened with shock and then he was gone and I slipped my knife from his body. Pulling a surgical bacterial and bleach wipe from my pocket I cleaned my knife and returned it to its sheath. I retreated along that long thin plastic walkway I had laid out to the door. I couldn’t take it with me so I left it there.
I started breathing easier once I walked through that door and pulled it shut behind me. Shutting the horror inside with Speedy’s lifeless body.
I knew where those kids were and I now knew who was taking care of them. I re-joined Molly and Ina, dragged the heavy door closed and followed them back up the stairs and into the passage. Once safely back in the sitting room I removed my gloves and the plastic wrap, shoving it into one of the side pockets of my black cargo pants.
I didn’t linger in that room, not even to change back into my sweat pants and big t-shirt. I walked out without Molly and Ina and with my escort following me went back to my room.
I sank down in the chair to wait.
A furious Hawk stormed in an hour after I sat down in the chair. I had managed to hide my knife under the cushions and remove my boots but that was as far as I got because my body was aching and I was so very, very nauseous. I could still smell that damned room no matter how many times I washed my hands and face.
“What the fuck did I say?” His eyes were shooting fire and his voice was cold as ice as he shoved his face into mine.
I ignored his rage. “I know where the kids are. I know who has been watching over them.”
A heavy silence descended in the room. Not a good silence at all.
“Tell me.”
I gave it all to him and all the while I watched him closely. He shut me out. Walking to the door he called Gav into the room. Gav shook his head angrily as he looked me over.
“Help her to get out of that shit, and then burn all of it. All. Of. It.”
Not my boots! Hell, I just got them worn in.
“Not my boots. I didn’t get anything on them.”
He didn’t even look at me.
“Everything Prospect, you fucking burn everything. If you don’t you’ll be answering to me. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Prez. I got you. Burn everything.” Gav said with a nod.
Hawk left without looking at me again and I was left with Gav who didn’t say a word either. He just helped me out of my pants and t-shirt then took it all along with my socks and boots and left.
Once he was gone I cleaned my blade again and slipped it back into its hiding place. It was hidden in plain sight. Once slid into the thin sheath at the top of my saddlebag and with a stopper fastened onto the sharp end it looked like a decoration, not a weapon. I had matching decorations on both sides.
I dressed while I waited for the inevitable showdown that was coming. I had gone against the orders of my old man. Disrespected him. Drew two of the club’s old ladies into my machinations. Made two of the brothers look incompetent. Entered a part of the clubhouse that was forbidden to anyone who wasn’t a patched member of the club.
And lastly I had killed a prisoner without permission from the National President of the Iron Dogz MC.
I was in very deep shit.
Deathly deep shit.
But I just didn’t care. If I had to I would do it again. Those children had a chance at life because of what I had done.
I did what I had to do, if I hadn’t Speedy would have died without saying a word.
