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Honking my horn, I wait for a moment to be seen on the cameras. The gates are opened and I drive into the courtyard, seeing bikes parked on the side and a few cars as well, some of which I worked on.
Zeke steps outside, a wide smile on his face. Getting out of the car, I run over to him, throwing my arms around his neck. He spins me around, making me laugh the first real laugh I’ve let out in months.
After he puts me down, I wipe under my eyes. “The Sheriff basically told me not to come back. They won’t be looking for me. I think it worked.”
Chapter 25
Finn
Zeke walks me into the bar where Prez is sitting, having a beer. He’s dressed in slacks and a pressed dress shirt like he has been the past few times I’ve seen him. He looks unlike any biker president I’ve ever seen. The ones in movies and TV shows anyway.
He smiles at me, knocking on the bar to signal to the guy behind it. “Get him a beer and let’s all meet in the library. We need to hear all about what went down.” Prez stands up and gives me a hug, surprising me. He doesn’t strike me as the touchy feely type. “Oh, and call Shane.”
Throwing an arm around my shoulder, Zeke sees me to the library as I sip my beer. I breathe in deeply, comforted by the smell of beer, motor oil, and men. I’ve only been here twice, but I missed it. In another life, this could have been my home.
Once we’re all gathered, except Shane, I tell Prez, Zeke, and the rest of the guys how terrible it was to keep up the pretenses of a broken man because of the abduction and trial and not because I missed the love of my life. I thanked Prez, glad that he was able to convince the bikers to come down to follow me like they meant me harm.
Zeke chuckles. “They’re guys from our new Missouri chapter. They couldn’t wait to prove themselves. It was a nice break for some of them, since they’re used to working hard to set up shop. They’re practically in love with you since they were able to rest, just sitting around on their bikes all day looking menacing.”
I chuckle. “Yeah, tell them I love them back. Anyway, the sheriff kept getting complaints and he finally told me I had to go because he’s up for reelection. That was a good call, Prez.”
He nods. “Yeah, I knew the small-town sheriff wouldn’t be able to handle us bikers there to corrupt you.”
I snort. “They need some corruption. What now?”
Jace speaks up. “Well, now we party.” Everyone laughs. “Seriously, now we figure out the rest of the plan. We needed to get you here without suspicion, now we have to figure out how to get Rax. Ain’t no way we can leave him in there.”
Nodding, I down my beer. “I’ve been thinking about that. What if—”
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Shane asks and I snap my head over to him. His face is red with anger, a vein bulging at his forehead. He storms over to me, hand out as if to grab me, but Zeke stands up, blocking his way. “What the fuck? He’s a fucking snake, Zeke!”
Prez stands up. “He’s not,” he says smoothly. “He was acting on my orders.” I swallow roughly, hating that we had to do this.
Late one night after I was returned home, when my mother was out of town and before I turned my phone off for good, I called Zeke in tears, asking him if there was something I could do. He instructed me to slip away and buy a burner phone so we could talk since he didn’t know if his phone was tapped. It took a few days, but I was able to get one and call him. He knew Rax would go down and we needed to figure something out to get him back. But the plan had to go off without a hitch.
First, I had to be prepped to lie. I’m a terrible liar, but Prez and Zeke took turns talking me through it. I had to work at schooling my expressions in the mirror so I would give nothing away when I saw Rax for the first time in weeks.
It was Prez’s idea to lie about the extent of my captivity. He figured the more dangerous Rax appeared, the more likely anyone listening wouldn’t suspect I wanted to go back to him. By the time they realized I had anything to do with what we’re planning now, we’ll both be long gone.
Shane looks between all of us like we’ve grown three heads. Then he looks at Zeke with hurt eyes. “You knew about this?”
Nodding, Zeke pulls out a chair and forces Shane to sit. “Yeah. It was me and Prez’s idea. Just listen to what we have to say.”
Even though he looks like he just sucked on a lemon, he agrees, sitting back with his arms crossed.
Prez leans forward with his fingers steepled. “I’ve been working with one of the guards at the facility where Rax is being held. With the charges against Rax, he’ll have to be sent to a maximum-security state prison. The one he’s held at is federal. They do have a federal death penalty, but since he killed Trenton in a state prison, it’s a state charge. Anyway, we needed the jury, police, and the world to believe that Finn would have nothing to do with Rax because of the ordeal he went through. Finn is Rax’s old man,” he looks at me and winks, thinking that nickname he gave me instead of old lady is so clever, “and he wanted to find a way to get his man out. Making people believe Finn’s on the bikers shit list will make it seem like he’ll stay miles away from Rax. We couldn’t tell you because we needed you to be as shocked by the testimony as everyone else. The less people that knew, the better.” Prez stops talking, giving Shane time to digest everything. “And we needed to break Rax. We needed something to hobble him so he wouldn’t run without us helping. It’s fucked up, I know, but I did it for him.”
My chest hurts. I really wish we didn’t have to do that. Seeing how Rax looked at me when I lied on the stand, I’ll never forget it. The only thing that kept me from crumbling and telling the jury I was lying, that after our initial fights, we didn’t have any problems, was knowing that when it was all over with, I could be with Rax again. I wanted to tell them I fell in love with Rax, that even though he wasn’t a good person by their sense of right and wrong, he was mine and I loved him.
But that would have given him hope and he would have found a way to get out and get back to me, just as I would have if I were in that situation. Like Prez said, we needed to hobble him so he’d stay put.
Zeke clears his throat and I see how hard this is for him. Rax has been his brother since they were kids. When Prez proposed the lies, Zeke lost his shit. We had to explain it to him more than once for him to get on board. “It’s more than hobbled him. He’s defeated. I’ve never seen that look in his eyes before. We gotta do something soon or he’ll do it himself if you know what I mean.”
I know what that means and my heart rate picks up. There’s no way Rax can leave me. No fucking way. He has to let us work; he has to let us figure something out. He can’t leave me.
Looking at Prez with pleading eyes, I ask, “How soon will they move him?”
Leaning back in his chair, Prez threads his fingers together and rests them on his toned belly. “A week. My guy says they’ll move him in the middle of the night in a regular van, no prison bus. It’ll just be him, and they want to keep it low key, since he’s already escaped once. My guy will be the driver and he’s sent me the directions they plan to take. All we have to do is figure out how to get him out.”
