Total pages in book: 154
Estimated words: 148220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 741(@200wpm)___ 593(@250wpm)___ 494(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 148220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 741(@200wpm)___ 593(@250wpm)___ 494(@300wpm)
“So maybe dose the coffee in the kitchen.”
“Good thinking. Can you get access to a laxative?”
“I should be able to. But…” Oh no. “I have to wait until Doc comes again.”
And that will likely be on same day as the next fight in the Cage. Which means the first chance to use the laxatives will be after that fight.
Matt must see my dismay, because he pulls himself up close. “Hey, hey. I’ll get through. And this is better, trust me. Gives us time to plan, to work out the angles. Who’ll be on duty, what they drink, how you’ll dose them. We rush, we make mistakes—and we might only get one shot at this. So we’ll take it slow. Okay?”
Though the thought of waiting through another bout in the Cage is terrifying, I nod. “Okay.”
“All right. Now you better get back. And practice climbing up here, sure—but stay above your own stall and keep the Spider-Man shit to a minimum. The first rule of being a superhero is keeping that mask on.”
“Tell that to Iron Man.”
“Get a suit of armor and I’ll change my tune. Because the first rule of being my sister is that you stay alive. No matter what. All right?”
“You, too.” My vision blurs again. “And I love you.”
“Love you, too.” And even here, he’s my big brother. “Now get your ass to bed.”
8
Stone
You know your life’s in the shitter when you look forward to a five-mile run simply because there’s nothing else to do. And because it’s one of the few times each day you see the girl you’re working on.
Not talking to her much, though.
I fucked that up by pushing in and touching her on the first day. Since then, the guards hover close to Cherry while we’re outside. They don’t stop me from talking to Handlebar and Crash, but unless it’s regarding run times and pulse rates, Cherry doesn’t say much. If she does, the guards shut it down. Same goes for the morning rounds. That drill sergeant stays right on her ass.
The fucking music they’re always blasting through the barn doesn’t help, either. That’s another reason to look forward to the track. Because that’s some goddamn torture right there.
Not Elton. He wouldn’t be my choice—give me T-Pain any day—but that shit’s catchy as hell. And that’s the problem. It gets into your brain, lulls you in with familiarity and repetition, until you’re singing along in your head.
And if you’re singing along in your head? Then you’re not thinking of other shit. Like how to break out of this fucking place.
If the music’s catchy enough and the volume’s high enough, then you can’t tune it out or ignore it. You also can’t hold conversations, except by talking loud enough for everyone to hear. Then when the lights go out and the music goes off, the silence is so golden, you just fucking wallow in it. All that sudden quiet also makes you believe that every sound is louder than it really is. So you don’t risk making any noise, such as whispering to the man in the next stall and planning an escape.
It’s all straight out of a ‘how to keep dangerous prisoners docile’ playbook. So I don’t know who the hell Papa is, but either he’s got experience with prisons, or he’s got some smart fuckers working for him. Because they aren’t just relying on steel bars and stun guns and greenhorn guards to keep us in. They went for the psychological shit, too.
Lucky for me, the training the Marine Corp put me through in case I ended up imprisoned in a terrorist camp taught me about that shit. And ways to combat it, to keep focused.
Cherry’s good for that. Picturing her smiling at me—not the bright toothy smile she wears here, but the sweetly nervous one from the tavern. The one that said she was in trouble and maybe a hard ride on my dick would help her out. Then I’ll think of the softness of her lips, the heat. The way she didn’t seem to know what to do with a man who was kissing her, and her little shuddering breath when she figured it out.
I don’t even care that it was an act. That’s a damn fine memory to focus on.
The rest of the time, I’m picturing what Gunner must be doing now. I’ve been gone four days. The first day, maybe he spent a couple of hours thinking I was in bed with Cherry somewhere. But after I missed our flight home, he’d have spent the rest of the day tearing apart the town where that biker rally was held. First searching for Cherry. Then realizing what happened.
I won a rally fight. Then I was gone. Just like every other bastard who ended up in the Cage.
That’s when shit would have kicked into high gear. A hell of a lot of clubs were represented at that rally and he’d have started looking at every one—including the Iron Blood. As soon as Gunner gets a bead on them, maybe a few days more will pass where he’s gathering intel and searching for this compound.