Juice didn't see her again until she was being forced out of a slow moving van in front of the Teller Morrow Garage.
She landed hard on her left arm, and her white dress was dirty and ripped, the seam hanging down a few inches from the rest of the material. Her vest was relatively untouched, but when Juice kneeled down next to her, to try and see if her head was bleeding, he saw two dots of blood on the collar. She groaned in pain as she sat up, with help from Juice and held her arm to her chest.
"Tara!" Juice yelled for Jax Teller's girlfriend, Doctor Tara Knowles. She came running towards them, with Jax and a few other men clad in Sons of Anarchy cuts behind her.
Carefully, Tara inspected her hand, knowing it was most likely broken from the girl's fall. Tara pushed up from the ground, ordering someone to pick the girl up and bring her into the Sons of Anarchy clubhouse. She followed behind Juice carrying the girl, grabbing her medical bag from her car on the way.
Juice laid Cole on the couch, not wanting to put her on any hard surface, knowing she could have more injuries then just her arm. Cole stared at Tara's face, hazel eyes unfocused as Tara poked and prodded. She pushed back Cole's bangs, finding a gash on her forehead. She disinfected and cleaned it, knowing it wasn't deep enough to need stitches.
"What the hell happened to you?" Tara asked, knowing the girl wouldn't answer her. After a few more minutes, after most of the men had dispersed, Tara asked her another question. "Are you hurt anywhere else?"
"Not serious," Cole said quietly, and Tara stared at her wrist she had just put in a makeshift splint.
"You need a cast for your arm. I'm taking you to the hospital."
Cole's eyes flashed up to meet Tara's. "No, no hospitals, no cops."
Tara looked up at Jax, then to Juice. She turned her eyes back on Cole. "I can get the supplies to make the cast, but it'll be until at least tomorrow before I can get back here."
"I'm fine," she said. "You've done enough already, thank you."
She made to stand up, but Tara pushed a hand against her shoulders. "You're not leaving until I can cast your arm. Do you understand me?"
Cole glanced around the room for the first time, taking in the wall of mug shots and then back to the two remaining men in the room. Both were wearing cuts, and the blonde, the man she hadn't met before, his had a patch that said Vice President. That hat to mean something important.
"Okay," she said.
"My name is Tara."
"I'm Cole," she replied.
"That's Jax and this is Juice," Tara continued.
Cole nodded. "I met Juice already."
Jax looked at Juice with confusion. He hadn't mentioned meeting the new girl in town to anyone before and it had been a topic Gemma had brought up, wondering who the hell she was.
The next day, in the late afternoon, Tara returned after her shift at the St. Thomas hospital with all that she needed to create Cole's cast. Cole had been put up in a dorm room, and she had slept with a pillow holding her wrist up and men making sure she didn't leave, both at Tara's request. She barely slept, still feeling the pain from Tara pressing against her arm to see if the bone was actually fractured and not just sprained.
With a man with a scarred face helping her, Tara casted Cole's arm in blue plaster, after giving her pain pills with a fake name on the prescription label. Cole thanked Tara, expecting to be able to leave.
After the scarred man left, Jax replaced him and he sat in a chair in the corner. No one knew this girl—not even Juice even though he had met her before—and Jax wasn't taking any chances with leaving Tara alone with her.
"What happened to you?" Tara asked.
Cole pressed her lips together in a line. She glanced down at her cast, then up at Tara. "I'm grateful, really I am. But I don't think it's any of your business what happened to me. I'm an adult; I can take care of myself."
"Obviously not! You were just pushed out of a moving vehicle less than twenty-four hours ago!" Tara exclaimed, turning to Jax for support.
"You got dropped off on SAMCRO property, it's our business," Jax said.
"SAMCRO?" Cole questioned, as she noticed the patch on the side of Jax's cut.
"Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club Redwood Original," Jax clarified. "Now tell me, who did this to you?"
"I never saw their faces," she told him. "They weren't wearing any cuts like you."
"What did they say to you?"
"They said they would come back and kill me, if I told anyone about what happened to my mother and sister," Cole said. "And trust me, I'm not about to tell you what happened. I don't want to end up like them."
Jax stood and motioned for Tara to leave the room. He wanted to speak to this girl one-on-one to get the truth from her. If the Sons were going to be involved, he wanted to know what they were up against. Jax walked across the room, and sat on the bed next to Cole.
"I need to know what we're up against here, if we're going to deal with this. Do you understand me?"
"You don't need to help me. I'll just move to another place," she told him. "I've been on my own since I was fifteen, okay? I know how to disappear. They've found me once before, but that was a long time ago. It's taken them six years to find me since then. If I just move, I'll have another six years most likely."
"Do you really believe that?" He asked, watching her intently. When she didn't answer, Jax said, "The Sons keep a lot of secrets, what's one more?"
Cole sighed, and ran a hand through her hair. "Why should I trust you?"
"You don't know me, you have no reason to. But I want to help you."
She contemplated it a few more minutes and said, "My father was a junkie. Terrible one, too. Half the time he didn't even remember he had a wife and kids. He was always in debt with his dealers. He couldn't keep a steady job because of his addiction, so he could barely ever pay them. When I was fifteen, it got really bad. He gave me and my sister and my mom up to his dealers. I think they were running human trafficking or something, and my dad thought three women would suffice to cover his debt. It was."
Cole paused, looking away from Jax and swallowed.
"I was out of town when the men came to get us. They took my mother and sister, while I was away on a field trip with school to our state's capital. I had my mom's cell phone, because I would be away for so long, so she could get in touch with me. That night, my dad sobered up a little. He realized what he'd done and called me, to tell me what happened and not to come home. I haven't seen any of them since then, but I know my father's dead. My mother and my sister haven't been seen since then, either. The local newspaper ran a story about my mother taking me and my sister away from my dad, so no one even looked for them."
"How'd your father die?"
"They most likely killed him after finding out he told me to stay away," Cole told him. She looked over at him. "I don't know why they're still after me, but I've been running ever since."
Jax thought for a moment. "They couldn't have just been drug dealers."
"I saw their faces every week—sometimes more—since I was three years old. They know I'm still alive. I could go to the police at any moment," Cole said.
"But it's been how many years? Wouldn't you have gone to the police by now if you were planning to?" Jax asked, trying to make sense of Cole's story.
She shrugged. "You don't have to protect me. I've been fine on my own before."
"SAMCRO doesn't let innocent people be threatened in Charming. We're going to find these guys and we're going to take care of them," Jax told her, sure of himself. He knew that if these men had managed to pick Cole up in Charming, they had been watching her for a while, watching her walk past the Sons of Anarchy property each day.
"Thank you," she said quietly. "I've been afraid for almost nine years now."
Jax nodded, patted her shoulder and stood up. "Come out and eat something. Tara and my mom are still here, as well as some of the guys."
"Okay," she replied and took a deep breath after Jax left the room.
Any suggestions? Moving too fast? I don't normally share my fanfiction so...
