***
To clear up any confusion, I'll say that I really do enjoy the positive reviews. I didn't think I'd care, but they're surprisingly rewarding. However, I'm just as happy to hear about it if you catch me in any linguistic stupidity.
I make no apologies for this story being a touch dark—that's how I roll. Any story with Tig as the romantic interest is going to have a dark side or be out of character. I think he's the kind of guy who has a hard time seeing regular women as people, rather than toys. He likes his toys, but he's just not wired to see women as equals. (Sadly, I've known some real men like this too. It's not very sexy in reality.) The only woman he really cares about is Gemma. She's tough, she's secretive, and she's willing to both endure and dish out pain to get what she thinks is necessary. Tig respects that.
This is a longer update. Happy now? :) I'll try to keep them over a thousand words each, but it's going to slow down while I untangle some continuity and fill in scenes.
-B.
***
The surprise of the afternoon was when the Nords returned and Anne wasn't the only one they came for. Before she could master her features back to indifference, Anne's green eyes went wild with fear when two of the Nords walked right past her and seized Tig. Like her, he was concerned the change in pattern meant they knew the cell phone had been stolen. Despite the distraction, he was amused that she seemed more scared for him than herself.
They roughed him up, but Tig didn't mind much. At least it wasn't boring. He put up enough of a fight to keep his pride, though his side was a misery of pain. It had healed enough that he was less worried about bleeding, but a punch near the bandage just about put him on the floor with dizziness.
Tig forced the Nords to carry most of his weight, chuckling at them as they complained. Since the phone call, he felt cocky. Sam Crow would come. It had been at least three hours since Anne stole the phone. The hard part for his brothers would be finding a Nord and leveraging the location out of them. No telling how long that would take, but Tig would put money on Clay breaking some skulls in a hurry to get him and Half-Sack home.
Connor had broken a lot of rules in his wild, crazy approach to challenging other gangs. However, it meant that retribution could be equally brutal. The thought of it made Tig smile.
Unsurprisingly, the hall opened into in a warehouse. Along one wall, there was a line of tables and what looked like an efficient system for weighing and bagging blow. Interesting that the Nords were branching out of meth and stepping into Mayan territory—Connor was in a hurry to burn bridges with every other gang in the region, it seemed. There were cleaner ways to commit suicide. Tig scanned the room and counted seven Nords, all of them armed. If nothing else, the man was smart enough to keep himself surrounded by muscle. It wouldn't be enough.
Anne walked ahead of the Nords, her eyes downcast. She moved gracefully and without hesitation, but as always, her tense hands betrayed her. He watched her go to the side of a Nord who was not sitting so much as lounging, his feet up on a crate. This was Matthew Connor. He was lanky but muscled like a runner, and he wore an expensive looking leather jacket over jeans and a shirt. There were tattoos showing on his neck and hands; predictably, his skin was practically a gallery of swastikas. The Nord wore his blond hair long and pulled back, matching a neatly kept beard. Tig hated him on sight.
Connor had a beer in one hand. The other hand flashed out to catch Anne's wrist, pulling her off balance with a rough yank. The chain rattled as she fell, but she barely flinched. Connor watched Tig's reaction with a smile on his face, his hand idly playing with the chain around Anne's neck. She was docile and still under his hand, but when her head lifted, her eyes met Tig's. She was warning him.
"You were a Sergeant at Arms for the Sons, yes?" Connor said, cold eyes on Tig, who smirked.
"You wanted me dead, I'd be dead. Keeping me locked up? That's seriously gay, man. What game you playing here?"
"No games. Just business. High stakes, but it is what it is."
"And what is this? Looks like some seriously twisted kink from where I'm standing."
Connor didn't rise to the bait. He smiled at Tig and twisted the chain in his hand. Anne made a tiny noise of distress and gasped for breath before he loosened his grip. "This is payback."
No, Tig thought. This is foreplay. He'd seen enough kink to recognize the lust and satisfaction in the Nord's pale blue eyes. The man was utterly unhinged.
One of the Nords kicked Tig hard, knocking him down on one knee. They wrestled him down to the ground in front of Connor. He heard the rip of duct tape. He kicked, and scored a solid blow on one of the Nords, but injured and against two men it wasn't much of a contest. He raised his head to look at Anne. She wasn't looking at him. Her eyes were intent on Connor's. She was, he realized, watching for opportunity.
"Get the ink." Connor ordered off-handedly, without even glancing down at Anne. She moved like a pet expecting a swift kick. She fetched the tools and brought them to one of the Nords standing over Tig.
"Here's how this is going to go. First, we're going to mark you as property of the Nordics. Sure, you'll be able to black it out later, but you'll always feel it there. And then we're going to break your legs so badly you'll never be able to hold up a Harley ever again. Sounds like fun, right?"
Tig fought, but really, there wasn't much he could do. When the tattoo pen hit his skin, he tasted bitter, bitter hate. Connor watched, and at one point sent Anne to get drinks for the Nords whose weight held him pinned to the ground.
They'd barely sketched out the palm-sized swastika on his back when the growl of a truck engine penetrated the walls of the warehouse. The Nords froze, heads coming up and turning to Connor, who flung his beer aside and reached for a gun. A moment later, a truck crashed through the loading bay doors.
"Thank fucking Christ," Tig muttered. Then he realized that he was in the open, thoroughly hog-tied, in the middle of a gun fight.
Gun shots and shouting filled the echoing space. Tig was on fire with adrenaline and he could barely move. He thrashed, kicking his way towards the wall for protection. When Anne's hand touched his face, he almost lashed out at her. Twisting to look up, he saw a goddess, her hair a dark mane around her pale face, eyes blazing green. She had a knife she must have taken from the body of a Nord and she was crouched next to him. She flinched at the gun shots, and her hands shook, but she did not hesitate. Before he could ask, she was sawing at the duct tape, intent on her task in the cacophony while the bullets flew past them.
Answering gunfire rang out. Tig looked up and saw Clay standing over them, giving covering fire while Anne freed him.
She worked on his wrists first, hacking and tearing through the tape. His hands were numb, so he let her free on his ankles while he worked feeling back into his fingers. When he finished tearing the tape from his legs and looked up, Anne was gone. So was the knife. He yanked a gun from the hand of the dead Nord closest to him and threw himself into the fray.
It was hard to keep focused, but seeing Clay in the room and all the Sons cuts around him was an anchor. He was, he realized, enjoying himself. A gun in his hand brought him back to the Sergeant he'd almost forgotten how to be, locked in a closet for god knows how many days. He felt joy.
And suddenly, things were quiet. Tig stood at Clay's side, one hand on his president's shoulder. He scanned the room. Nothing but Sons and bodies. He looked for his brothers. He looked for Anne.
"Where's Sack?" Chibs asked. "He jack-rabbited out of the room they had him in, but I lost him after that."
Gun extended, Tig stalked through the warehouse. It was dark in the back, only feeble threads of sunlight penetrating the dirty yellow glass of the narrow windows. It was in the hallway that he found more than just Half-Sack. Kip was on the ground, clutching his gut and coughing. Matthew Connor was also on the ground, looking dead or close to it.
That was disappointing. Tig had hoped he'd get to murder the crazy son of a bitch.
Knife in her fist, Anne was kneeling in Connor's blood and staring down Happy like she'd cut him if he came too close. It was possibly the sexiest thing he'd ever seen in his life, but it was also a very bad idea. Happy was in his element, hyped up from the fight, and was inching closer to her. The kitten had claws, but he'd bet on Happy in a knife fight every time.
"Hey, hey! Hap, knock it off." Tig said, getting Happy's attention. "What the hell."
Half-Sack groaned and gasped, "Wasn't her that hit me, damn it. Don't hurt her."
"Anne, it's okay. Put the knife down. No one's going to hurt you." Tig put himself between Happy and Anne. "What happened?"
Half-Sack looked up with blood-shot, exhausted eyes. "I didn't want to let this bastard get away, but he got lucky. Then Anne... you should have seen it. She just came up behind him and stabbed him like it was nothing."
Tig took another step towards Anne. "Hey, kid, look at me. I promised to get you out, remember? This is us getting you out. They're dead. Look, Connor's dead."
She blinked at him, then looked at Connor as if seeing him for the first time. She looked confused and afraid. Tig stepped around the pool of blood and touched her arm. The knife slipped from her slack fingers and clattered to the floor. She allowed him to take her hand and lead her away from the body.
Half-Sack staggered to his feet and cast a dark look at Happy. He slung his arms around Anne in a loose hug, which she didn't seem to notice. Tig wondered what relationship she'd built with Half-Sack. Had she been playing them both to get their help? It would, honestly, have been the clever thing to do. His hand tightened on hers.
"Fekking hell." Chibs said when he confronted Kip and Tig. Neither were clean, both were bloodied. Tig's shirt was ripped and splattered with blood and Half-Sack wasn't wearing a shirt at all. Chibs regarded the pale, dark-haired girl and raised an eyebrow. "'Who's yer friend?"
"Be nice." Kip said. "The Nords were keeping her, too. She got hurt trying to help us."
Tig looked at Anne. Her eyes were vacant. "She's got our protection for now."
"Yes." Kip said, firmly. "She goes with us."
Chibs shrugged. "C'mon, ye filthy bastards. Let's go home."
There were Sons from other chapters, mostly Nomad, searching the warehouse. They'd torch it when they were done pulling anything useful out. Unwilling to see if a key would turn up, Tig sent Juice to fetch bolt cutters from the back of the van. When Tig brought the metal sheers near her face, she flinched, but she didn't utter a sound as cut through the padlock at her throat. A second later, he had the lock open and the chain was on the ground at Anne's bare feet. Silently, she swayed against him, resting her forehead against his shoulder.
In the van, warm for the first time in days, Tig dozed with Anne curled up on the seat next to him. She'd stayed at his side every second since they left the warehouse. She was clearly afraid of the Sons nearly as much as the Nords, but never said a word. She just followed him as if she didn't have the strength to protest. Now, wrapped in a blanket with her head on his leg, she slept. He'd felt the moment she went under, because it was only then that she stopped trembling.
Jax drove with one hand, talking to Tara on his cell phone. Half-Sack was in the front seat, staring out the window with an uncharacteristically stony expression. He looked ten years older than he'd been the week before.
Tig touched Anne's hair and ran his fingertips down her face and arm. Her eyelashes trembled, but she did not wake. He traced the paleness of her outstretched forearm. No needle-tracks or scars marked the silky skin in the curve of her elbow. In fact, under the bruises, he realized that he had seen no scars at all. No ink, except what the Nords had done. What a shitty way to get your first tattoo. He idly wondered if she'd ever ridden a motorcycle in her life.
The clubhouse was home, but it had never looked quite as good as it did when Tig dragged his aching body out of the van in the yard of Teller-Morrow. His brothers were around him. Tara and Gemma, wearing identical looks of stern worry, were waiting. He lightly shook Anne to rouse her, feeling guilty when she startled awake. Her eyes were wide and scared, but she silently sat upright.
Tig leaned close and said quietly, "You're safe here. We've got a doctor, and none of the Nords are stupid enough to come into Charming. Safe, a'right?"
Tara was running to the van before Tig even got both feet on the ground, Gemma following at a more dignified pace. He waved them back enough to help Anne out of the van. Tig handed her off to Tara, and said, "Nothing wrong with me and Sack that won't wait. This is Anne. She's had a rough few weeks."
Tara eyed his bandaged midsection and gave Half-Sack an equally cynical assessment, but neither was bleeding and both were standing. Casting a dark look of concern at Tig, Tara placed her hand lightly on Anne's back and walked her to the club house, her voice soft and reassuring.
Gemma approached. She laid one cool hand on his cheek, her eyes searching his, and kissed him lightly on his forehead. When she hugged him the smell of her perfume almost brought tears to his eyes. "Welcome home."
Tig swallowed a wave of pure emotion and gave Gemma his best reassuring smile. She stepped away to welcome Half-Sack the same way. Tig stood tall, despite the hitch in his side, and walked to Church. Club business always came first.