I didn’t know how long Caspar planned on keeping Charlie here, but there were reports that the Secret Service was looking for him. Keller’s crew hadn’t said a word about us having him and neither had the LoV...mainly because they had no fucking idea he was alive. And no one would.
But, true to his word, Keller didn’t implicate us with Jessa, and neither did the LoV. Still, I didn’t trust the LoV enough. Not for very long, anyway, and the thought of Jessa being forced back with her family didn’t sit well with me.
I didn’t tell Caspar what I was doing...not until I had the plan firm in my mind. And only then did I tell him, I’m ready to become Defiance.
“Why now?”
A lot of reasons. Some you know. Some you never will.
Caspar studied me. “Jessa.”
She’s part of it. She deserves our protection. And she wants it.
“And you want it too?”
I do. I want to wait for Bish, but he wouldn’t want that—I know he’d want me to join now. I can’t let his sacrifice go in vain.
Caspar clapped me on the shoulder. “Just be prepared for some pain, brother.”
Goes without saying.
And I scream from the top of my lungs
Jessa
“Jessa, hey, listen. Caspar wants me to take you to see Charlie again.”
The biker in front of me was Lil’jon. After Mathias had left, he’d talked to me for a while, telling me how brave Mathias was when he and Bishop first came to Defiance, how they really brought the club together. How I had a really good man in my corner.
Now, two days after Mathias had returned, Lil’jon seemed happy for me, but Tru and Aimee had gone quiet. They’d been sitting with me outside the infirmary, and now Tru said, “I’ll go with you, if you want.”
“It’s better I do this alone,” I said. Now that Mathias was back, I felt as if I could do anything. Anything except worry him more.
I walked along the darkened path with Lil’jon. “Does Mathias know where I’m going?”
“Caspar said he’d tell him, in case you wanted him here. We can wait,” he said, but I shook my head.
“Let’s just get it over with.”
“That bad, huh?”
“You have no idea.”
When we approached the door, Lil’jon took a key out of his pocket and let me in, saying, “Are you okay in there alone?”
I wasn’t, not at all, but Lil’jon wasn’t who I wanted with me. “Just find Mathias, okay?”
“I will, Jessa,” he promised. I walked in and the door shut behind me.
And the lock clicked.
At first, I thought, of course he’d lock me in because then Charlie couldn’t escape. But Charlie was chained to the wall.
Or at least he had been, at one point. Now, he was behind me, his hand covering my throat, another stuffing a rag in my mouth so I couldn’t scream. I gagged hard and he didn’t let go. He tied my hands behind me, plastic biting into my wrists.
“I’ll bet you want to know what I’m going to do with you?” he asked. “I don’t have long before I need to decide. I’m leaving tonight. I could bring you to Keller’s with me and do our original deal. I think that might be the best thing. Or, I could just send you back home to D.C.”
Both options had me seeing white-hot anger coupled with intense fear, but I couldn’t say anything through the gag.
I didn’t have to, because he continued, “But don’t worry, that going-home part’s not an option. See, I called home, Jessa. I spoke to your father and I told him that you were alive. And do you know what he said? What your mother said?”
I didn’t want to know—not then, not ever—but Charlie wasn’t giving me that option. Instead, he yanked my hair and he held out a tape recorder and he forced my ear down to the speaker so I could listen. And then he pressed the play button.
Charlie’s voice was first. “Yeah, she’s here, with me. I’ve got some help in getting out but I need more. Things got a little rough.”
“I thought you were taking care of her.” My father’s voice, but something in his tone didn’t jive with the “taking care of her” line.
“I tried. Look, I can still bring Jessa home.”
“That’s not what we wanted, Charlie. That wasn’t the agreement.”
“What do you want me to do? Leave her kidnapped by a biker gang?”
“If you pay them enough, will they take care of it?”
“Yes.”
“Fine. We’ll make sure the money gets to you. Enough to free you and enough to take care of the other problem.”
“This isn’t my fault. You shouldn’t have checked her into that hospital after she tried to kill herself.”
“I wouldn’t have if her mother and I would’ve been the ones who found her,” my father said, and then the tape stopped and I stared at Charlie in horror.
“Yeah, Jessa, that’s right. You’re the other problem. We can’t have you running around, spilling what you know.”
Who would I tell? What difference would it make? I wanted to ask, and that was the truth. It’s not like I could go to foreign governments and tell them what the United States was planning, and even so, I didn’t have any proof.
“It’s just bad for business, Jessa. Especially if the lights do come back on.”
“Just leave me here.” I said it through the gag, but even though it was unintelligible, he knew what I wanted—he’d known it all along.
He laughed. “You’d like that, to stay here and be that biker’s slut, but I can’t trust you. I could never trust you. I should’ve gotten rid of you a long time ago, just like your parents asked.”
In the air tonight
Tru
“Hey babe.” Caspar’s arms slid around her waist and Tru ran her hands over his muscled forearms.
She looked over her shoulder and he caught her mouth for a kiss. “Hey. I thought you’d be with Jessa.”
“Why’s that?”
She pulled out of Caspar’s arms, but only so she could face him. “Because she’s with Charlie, on your orders.”
Caspar shook his head slowly and Tru grabbed at him. “Go get her, Cas—please...something’s really wrong.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Numb
Mathias
Something was very wrong. I froze as my body chilled and I tried to figure out what was happening. My first thoughts ran to Bish and I put my palms against my forehead and tried to concentrate.
Was he hurt? Because I hurt and, fuck, if something had happened to him in Keller’s care...
“He’s gone, he’s gone!”
Lil’jon was shouting that, over and over, and it didn’t fully register where my pain was coming from until I looked up and saw what was happening for myself.
A crowd had formed around the middle of the compound, oddly silent after Lil’jon’s warning. I tried to focus, to push down the panic and anger forming, and I saw the people moving back, moving away from something coming toward them.
Not something. Someone.
Charlie.
He’s gone was Lil’jon’s way of saying, He escaped. And he’d grabbed Jessa.
Caspar was next to me. “You don’t know if she helped him.”
I know she didn’t, I signed as I watched Charlie and Jessa move toward the main gates. He’s got to have someone waiting for him.
“Keller or LoV?”