Cash (The Henchmen MC Book 2) (19 page)

My gaze fell to my knees, unsure how the hell I could get out of this.

“Lo?”

“She didn't pick me up and she didn't come back to Hailstorm either. No one has heard from her. I've called. I've texted.”

“Maybe she just wanted a break. She eats, sleeps, and breathes Hailstorm. I know you probably think Wolf is...”

“Unhinged?” I supplied.

“But he's a good guy. If she's with him and not answering, she's got to be happy.”

If she was alone with any man, in his house, half-naked... she was anything but happy. She was... I didn't even want to think about it.

“I need to see her.”

“Christ, babe. I don't think I was even supposed to tell you I saw her. I can't be bringing you there.”

“Look, I get your loyalty. What you feel for Wolf... that's what I feel for Janie. You have to bring me to her.”

Something happened then that was so shocking, I felt it in the uncomfortable swirling in my stomach- a guard came down over his face, locking calm, jocular, cocky Cash away, leaving nothing behind. Just a biker. A faceless Henchmen.

“Sorry, Lo. Can't.” Even his voice didn't sound like him.

So that was the way it was.

Well, that was to be expected in a way I guess. Brotherhood before everything, especially 'bitches'. That was how an MC worked. What part of me had gotten confident enough to think that I would change it, that my asking would somehow outweigh that?

I felt the crack in my heart start to seal over and I could only describe it as excruciating.

Stupid, stupid me.

“Right,” I said through gritted teeth, moving off the bed with rigid purpose.

“Lo, don't do this...” his voice pleaded, his hand reaching out and closing around my wrist.

I turned back, my other hand moving over his hand, grabbing, and twisting hard. “I didn't do this,” I countered, dropping his hand and enjoying it a little when he had to rub it with his other hand, “you did.”

With that, I grabbed my clothes off the floor and made a dart for the bathroom. I slammed the door and locked it.

“Idiot,” I hissed at my reflection, barely bothering to register that the cuts had scabbed over and the bruises had gone from the graphic blue and purple to a faded yellow and green.

I turned on the water, unwrapped my ribs, and stepped under the spray, staying there until the tap ran cold. Showered and dressed and convinced I was ready to be a cold, indifferent bitch if I needed to be, I went downstairs to, well, look for a fight.

All I was greeted with was fresh brewed coffee with a sticky note attached to the pot. “Nice try. But you haven't pushed me away yet. Be back later. Shit to do – Cash.”

He just expected me to stick around for him? Well he was going to be sorely disappointed when I wasn't there, wasn't he?

It wasn't all spite. I genuinely needed to get out. I had logged into the Hailstorm system and got the information on the properties belonging to Henchmen members. Now that I found Wolf's place, I needed to go there and check on Janie for myself. Fuck Cash and his reluctance to share the information. I didn't need him. I didn't need any man and that was the way it should be.

I picked up my cell and called a cab seeing as Cash stole my car yet again. I gave it a couple minutes before making my way toward the door and pulling it open.

“You made another mistake, Wills,” Damian's voice met me, making my entire body run cold as I turned my head to see him leaning against the side of Cash's house. “You're never going to learn, are you?”

The shock made my reaction slow and he was off the house and shoving me in to Cash's living room before I could draw a breath. All I could think as I slammed hard into the couch and heard him kick closed the door, was what Cash was going to think when he saw chaos and blood all over his house.

Even facing my worst fears, he was on my mind.

God damn it.

Eighteen

Cash

Damian Crane was a god damn hero.

I felt an unfamiliar knot tighten in my stomach as I read through the articles about his service, how he saved countless lives, how he came home after duty only to be stabbed twelve times in his own bathroom.

“What the fuck are you up to now, Lo?” I asked the inside of her car as I flicked through the websites on my phone, trying to find something out, trying to get any piece of dirt I could find to untie the knot, to make it so that Lo wasn't on the hunt for a fucking American hero.

There was nothing.

He was a Marine. And when he finally came back home, he worked at a private security firm. There was nothing to suggest criminal activity. Nothing to suggest he was anything other than a model citizen.

There was only one article mentioning his family- his dead father who was also a Marine, his mother who was battling dementia, and his wife Willow.

For the fuck of it, I typed 'Willow Crane' into the search bar.

What came up made the knot disappear, but only because I felt like I got a swift kick to the god damn guts. Because what came up was a bunch of pictures of a young, gorgeous, soft Lo. There was no mistaking her- the long blonde hair, the strong legs, the great rack, the brown eyes. The only difference was the eyes didn't have the mask down over them, blocking out all emotion. No, Willow Crane's eyes were so sad, so haunted as she stood next to her husband that I almost couldn't believe it was the same woman.

“Jesus Christ,” I murmured as memories flashed into my mind, one in particular.

Wolf was in the kitchen, freaking out because he thought I hit Lo and Lo had said something in a tone that was way too sharp, way too defensive.
Do I seem like the kind of woman who would stay in the house with a man who beat her?

“Fuck,” I growled, zooming in on the picture. If you looked really closely, you could see the bruises on her arm, just above the elbow, peeking out from under her sleeves. “God damn it.”

She married Damian Crane. And the asshole beat her.

It went so against the Lo I knew, the woman she had made herself, that it was hard to imagine. But looking at her picture, she looked so young, so much softer in the body without all the hours of training she did at Hailstorm. She looked... soft and... sweet. No way did she stand a chance against the giant, hulking mass that was her husband who had been trained how to do combat by the best special operations team our government had to offer.

I clicked back through the articles, finding the one about the stabbing- twelve knife wounds. Overkill. A crime of passion. I knew with a kind of absolute certainty that I didn't usually possess, that Willow Crane had been the one to do it. And, in doing so, she stopped being Willow Crane and started being Lo.

What the fuck did I do with that kind of information? Approach Lo? Ask her about it? Risk her shutting down on me?

It really didn't take much thinking to realize he had been the one who had beat her a few days before. That was why she wasn't involving Hailstorm. She didn't want them to know about her past, to know she used to be a battered woman. She didn't want anyone to hear that and think of her as weak. Never mind the fact that she stabbed that fucker twelve times and got away, built a life where no one could ever hurt her again, never mind that she was the strongest woman I had ever met and that was really saying something since I knew exactly what kind of torture Summer had been subject to. Summer had three months of that. Lo had years of enduring beatings and... fuck... I didn't want to think about the other things that might have happened to her.

It was then that I decided to do something that she would never forgive me for because it wasn't my place to do so. But, at the same time, I needed help... and they were the only ones who could help me.

I needed to find the mother fucker and then I needed to teach him what I thought about a man who put his hands on the woman who trusted him to take care of her.

To do that, well, I fucking needed to bring in Hailstorm on the plan.

I drove there thinking of all the ways I was royally fucking things up with Lo. Then I wondered why the fuck it mattered. She was a woman I was fucking. She wasn't
my
woman. Hell, I never
had
a woman that I would call mine. That wasn't what I did.

But for some reason, betraying her, it was bothering me... even if it was for her own good.

“I know you were here the other night, man, but can't say you're a welcome guest,” the guy at the gate told me on a shrug.

“Don't have time to have a pissing contest with you. Get me who is in charge. It's about Lo and it's fucking important.”

At that, his face betrayed him- he looked concerned. He closed the door to his little booth and picked up a phone. Not two minutes later, an older man with graying hair walked out. He had the silver fox thing about him I hoped I had at his age. Bet he still got all the pussy he wanted.

“Malcolm,” he said, nodding his head at me.

“Cash,” I said, getting out of my car and making my way to the gate.

“This is about Lo?” he asked, lowering his voice a little.

“Yeah.”

“You know where she is?”

“My house,” I said and every muscle in his body tightened. “She's in trouble, Malc,” I said, keeping my voice low so only he heard me. “She's gonna hate me for coming here, but I need your help to get her out of trouble.”

He nodded his head at the guy in the booth who pressed the button to open the gate. “I knew something was up,” he told me as I fell into step with him as he led me toward the command center so we could talk without being overheard. Hailstorm always had people everywhere. “Alright,” he said, closing the door to the brick building with reinforced walls and bullet resistant windows (Hailstorm was a goddamn fortress) and leaning back against it, his arms crossed over his chest. “What's going on?”

“Do you know Lo's real name?” I asked, not knowing if she shared more with her higher-ups than she did with most people.

“Wasn't my place to ask,” he said simply.

“Her name is Willow Crane,” I said, pulling my phone out from my pocket and showing him the picture I found earlier. He looked at young Lo, his face softening. “That is her husband, Damian Crane- Marine, American hero, wife beater...”

Malcolm's face snapped up and I saw a mix of sadness and anger in his eyes. “What?”

“Yeah, man. For years until she finally got sick of it and stabbed him twelve times and left his half-dead ass behind.”

“Half-dead?” Malcolm asked, looking disappointed.

I nodded. “She showed up at the compound a couple days ago. She was... beaten. Her face, man,” I said, looking down at my shoes for a second.

“Fuck,” he cursed back.

“And her ribs,” I added. “As you guys know, she helped us out a while back. She was calling in a favor...”

“Because she didn't want us to know about this?”

“Yeah.”

“Now we need to work together and find this bastard.”

“Yeah,” I agreed again. “I don't have the resources you guys do to locate him. But let me get one thing straight, man,” I said and his brow raised. “When we find that mother fucker, he's mine.”

“Only if you make him hurt,” Malcolm said, pushing off the door, looking fierce.

“That's the plan.”

“Alright. Let's get to work,” he said, moving over toward the computers and sitting down. “Wish to hell Jstorm was still around.”

“Jstorm?” I asked, taking the seat next to him despite not having a damn clue how to work any of their software.

“Janie. She's the best at this shit.”

“Well, we will have to make do,” I said, not sharing what I knew about Janie. The situation was messed up enough as it was.

It was the middle of the afternoon and Malcolm was beside me letting off a string of curses that would have made a truck driver blush as he clicked and typed, doing god-knew what.

“Nothing?”

“Not nothing. I know his place, his work. But he's on vacation from what I can gather. No one has seen him. Even tapped into the facial recognition software they have on the streets around here... nothing is catching him.”

“Fuck,” I said, shaking my head and standing. I needed to go, to do something. I couldn't sit around all day feeling utterly useless. “I got to go. Lo is going to be wondering where I am.” That was a lie, she was probably happy as hell that I was gone. “I'll give you my number and you can keep in touch.” Malcolm swiveled his chair to me, a weird grin on his face. “What?”

“I have your number. We have
all
of your numbers.”

“Oh... right,” I laughed, rubbing the back of my neck. They knew everything.

“Congrats on your clean STD screen last month,” he added with a huge smile. “With all the tail you get...”

“That's not fucking creepy at all,” I laughed.