Come Out Swinging (Reach for the Moon Book 2), Sam Hall [leveled readers .TXT] 📗

to get them down. He forced his uncle down on his knees, hands behind his back, keeping the gun pressed on Gary the whole time. “Lorcan, mate…”

“Just shut the fuck up.” Lorcan said the words with such deadly intensity, the whole complex went quiet. When I looked around, I saw Mason, Micah, and Declan all had their guns out as well, but kept them aimed down, ready to back Lorcan’s play. When his eyes met mine, they burned bright, piercing straight into me. “Dominance displays don’t cut it here,” he told me, and I hated that he knew that. “Not unless they’re backed by something real. Ask him for what you want.”

I shook my head, refocussing my attention back on his prone uncle.

“Where is she? Where’s Bridget, my cousin?”

“We didn’t look after that side of things. Your aunt, she likes to do her own wetwork, so to speak.” Gary let that sink in. “She’s not in town, that’s for sure. They made sure to take her out, remove her as an obstacle, then Peters and your aunt gave her over to us to get rid of.” Lorcan’s fingers tightened on the gun grip, his knuckles going white. “I gave her to Marty, Jim, and Baz to dispose of. You’re in luck. The boys, they like to play with their food. If you get the fuck out of my face, you might be able to track her down before they finish with her.”

For a second, my body and the world faded away, and there was only this long hollow feeling of harrowing emptiness. Not entirely empty, as a long, drawn-out scream rose and rose to fill it, and only my teeth clamping down stopped it from coming out. I was such a fucking idiot. I thought… I assumed… For a split second, I felt the ache inside me from where I’d tried to force in Aidan’s knot, and my fingers clawed at my stomach to shift that.

“Where?” I forced out.

“The big forest in between here and Berkefeld. We don’t shit where we eat.”

“I know where that is,” Lorcan said. “There’s an old cabin… I’ll drive.”

He pulled back, all four men keeping their guns trained on Gary’s men as they did the same to mine, while Gary got to his feet. He fixed the lot of us with a gaze of molten silver.

“I hope you’re too late. I hope you find the bloody corpse of that Spehr bitch, or better yet, roll up just as they’re choking the last breath out of her, all that rush for nothing.” I didn’t have time for posturing, but I bristled anyway, snarling my disdain. “Your family, they think they can put on airs, but you’re just pieces of shit like the rest of us. But you, Lor.” I didn’t like it when Gary’s gaze swivelled to my mate, so I moved to stand beside him. “Don’t come ‘round here again. No more ‘Hey, uncle…’ calls. The Engels, we stick together no matter what, and you broke the only fucking law we abide by. Anyone else, we’d shoot you where we stand. As it is, we’re gonna have to tell Lila her son’s dead to us.”

“You just admitted to handing over a woman beat half to death to a pair of raping, abusing fucks. Tell me what I’m losing, Uncle? I’ve been wanting this family to fuck off and leave me alone since I was a kid. Now I have a mate, and I’m breaking ties with you. Sounds like a win-win.”

“Then off you run, little Spehr lackey. If you’re quick, they might not have raped all her holes.”

And so that was how we ended up packed back into the 4WD, Lorcan throwing the car into gear and sending it screeching down the street, the Engels men watching us leave. But as I looked out the back window, I saw Gary fish out his phone and put it to his ear, no doubt to let his sons know we were on our way.

Chapter 18

In a movie, this would have been so much quicker, more thrill packed, with the Engels on our tails or something. Instead, we screamed out of Lupindorf like a bat out of hell, the lot of us holding onto the ‘oh fuck’ bars until we cleared town, then it was the long straight stretch of road that led to the nearby town. I stared out the windows, watching endless fields and softwood forests pass us by, until Zack pulled me in tight by his side.

“It’ll be OK.”

“It won’t.” I shook my head, stiffening in his arms.

Here was I, surrounded by all these guys who cared about me and… I was sinking into a space women instinctively knew, where all the stories they’d heard of sexual assault or rape, all the lore they’d had handed down to them from mothers and grandmothers about staying safe, all the statistics, and all the grim, horrible reality of assaults on women comes welling up. We spent so much of our existence ignoring that elephant in the room, pushing away its invasive bulk, until finally, we couldn’t, because one of our own was in danger.

“Paige, we’ll…”

“I’ll shoot the fucks…”

“We’ll damn well…”

But their voices all blurred into an amorphous muffle, clutching at my focus but unable to keep it. Instead, I was pulled under by the rumble of the engine and the sounds of the wheels on the road, caught up in their endless whirr.

“There!” Declan shouted, jerking me out of my trance and pulling me free of Zack’s grip, my eyes following where my love pointed. “Fresh tracks!”

“A bit closer than I thought, but hang on!” Lorcan yelped, wrenching the car to the left, the whole bloody thing rolling precariously sideways as we all leant against the momentum of the turn.

“You’re gonna fucking kill us!” Mason shouted.

“Nope, I’m gonna kill them. Shoulda done it years ago. Get your guns out,” Lorcan shot back.

“Won’t need ‘em,” Micah said in a deadly growl. “Those fucks are going down.”

We were