Total pages in book: 157
Estimated words: 145088 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 484(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145088 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 484(@300wpm)
Hammer didn’t fight when led into the car, but he didn’t miss the way Lion kept himself at a distance, as if he feared Hammer might break free and eat his face like a rabid chimpanzee. Ryker would be talking his ear off for the next few days, while Hammer remained unable to defend himself, nor go to Ryker’s place to steal his computer as evidence. He was no hacker, but someone skilled with tech could surely snoop out deleted files as long as Hammer got the machine itself.
The car door shut in his face.
Shane sat in the driver’s seat, while Frank squeezed his massive form into the passenger’s side and pulled his thick black braid to the front so it wouldn’t be trapped behind him. Hammer was broad-shouldered, tall, he didn’t fit into all beds, and had to watch his head in doorways. He trained for strength and agility, ready for anything the biker life could bring his way. But Frank was the kind of guy who could drag a car behind him by a rope held between the teeth, like the Maori demigod he apparently was despite living in a junkyard. Even when relaxed, he exuded confidence in his dormant power. Hammer could imagine himself taking on Shane with the element of surprise, but with his hands cuffed back and Frank present, there was no way out. Only a fool would have lost his temper in a situation this impossible, so he leaned back and stayed quiet.
The club all mounted their bikes and followed the car in a grim procession, taking away every hope he might have had for a quick escape between the mounds of trash.
“Can I order the food I want or will you just give me instant ramen?” Hammer asked Frank.
“This was short notice. You’ll get what we have tonight, and maybe tomorrow we can work out something else.”
Shane smirked at Hammer in the rearview mirror. “Dex does make instant ramen an art form, so maybe he can sway your opinion on it.”
Dex… Dex…
Right. Frank’s fuck-up of a nephew, who once backed a cement mixer into Handsy’s motorcycle, then tried to pay for the damage with a pink machine gun. Handsy had actually taken him up on the offer, only to find out the firearm didn’t work.
“Is that code for we’ll poison you?” Hammer asked, trying to stay calm despite the buzz of the bikes feeling like a swarm of hornets that might sting him to death the moment he left the car.
Frank shrugged. “You know the drill. We won’t touch you. Whatever you did is not our business.”
And yet it felt fucking personal to sit cuffed in the back of their car and about to end up locked up like an animal.
Their trip through the maze of junk came to an end, right beyond a heap of old shopping carts stacked together like a freak tree of metal. They stopped in a clearing with four inconspicuous shipping containers arranged around an empty space.
Hammer did not bother trying to get out and sat still, waiting until Shane opened the door for him with a little bow. “I admit, I didn’t expect we would be hosting the executioner himself. Look how life surprises us.”
Ignoring him, Hammer stepped out and faced his biker ‘brothers’ who’d all stopped not too far away and eyed him as if he were the greatest danger to their existence. Him, the man whom they shared so much with in all those years. What a joke it was that Lion sometimes referred to them all as family.
No one spoke, but when Lion nodded at Frank, Shane pushed Hammer toward the open shipping container. Hammer had spent two years in juvie, and later in life ten months in jail, so he despised having his freedom taken away. But it was obvious that trying to run away with his hands cuffed, just to get lost in this labyrinth of crap, would be futile, so he didn’t resist.
The container was a grim space that reminded him of a death pit with a cell at the back. If anything, it could work as a setting in one of Hammer's stories. The bars making up the door to the cell were uneven and made of scrap but solid. Frank had boasted about building all of this himself, and at the time, Hammer had praised him for the sturdiness of the work. The irony of it all.
The cell was unlocked, and he stepped inside, staring at the six-pack of bottled water and cardboard box filled with cheap, packaged snacks resting next to an old mattress someone had attempted to ineffectively clean in the past. There was also a bucket equipped with a lid, but he’d rather pretend it wasn’t there at this point.
He turned back to Frank and Shane when the heavy metal door locked with a loud clang. Those keys they had? They looked as if Frank had welded them himself and appeared like something from a movie set in medieval times. Did that mean he’d get drawn and quartered once this was all over?