Page 23 of Jazz

A deep breath. Heavy. Rushed. My descent had stopped. For a split second. Yet to me it felt like a minute. I hit something; not quite concrete, but hard all the same. And now I was cold, but there was no pain. Only a warm, humming, enveloping glow creeping over my skin.

My limbs softened. My jaw loosened. A small sound escaped, and I couldn’t tell if it was mine, the whoosh of air indeterminate.

Darkness came, gentle at first, like a curtain lowering. I watched it take me in pieces. And then I let go into the dark. Because in the dark there was no more pain.

Chapter Fourteen

Thrash charged forwards, Dougal following, flinging his arms out to grab him but missing as all eighteen stone of muscle and bulk ran at me. He moved like a wall, each step so heavy that even the concrete thrummed under him. I moved. Because if I didn’t, I’d get flattened by an angry steam train.

Dougal gave up, not suicidal enough to take on the big, angry, ginger unit of a man, and somewhere, in the back of my brain, I made a note never to anger the fella again. Or call him ginger.

Thrash grabbed the winch handle, winding it hard like he was steering a boat in a storm. Metal grunted overhead, the chain grinding tighter with every savage turn. My gut twisted. Jazz rose higher and higher, her body a black shape against the warehouse rafters. She didn’t fight. Couldn’t. Just dangled there, head back, blindfold cutting across her face, her legs kicking for purchase and finding nothing.

I wanted to shout. To tell him to stop. But the words stuck. My throat locked around them because I knew what I was. Complicit. Guilty. Every bit as rotten as the bastards I rode with. Still, my chest hurt watching her legs kick at nothing, watching her shoulders twist under a weight no one should bear. Her body twisted under each pull of the lever, her toes cutting into the air.

Thrash laughed deep, mean, psychotic. And he kept cranking. The sound of the chain filled my skull. It was too much, too tight, too far. Something had to give.

She was so high. Right up there in the ceiling. Dangling. Legs kicking. Squirming. In pain. But still fighting. She always fought. Always. Wild. Like a tiger caught in a snare.

And then something did give.

The crack was sharp, loud, despite the chaos around me. Ten or more men staring up at her, Dougal shouting at Thrash, Skinny shouting words of encouragement, egging the big ginger volcano on. But no one did anything to stop him. Not even me. The plastic snapped clean. For a heartbeat, she just hung in the air, suspended by nothing. My stomach dropped as she plummeted, a blur of leather and limbs.

I moved before I thought. My boots slipped on the concrete, my hands shooting up instinctively. Fingers scraped, brushing the smoothness of the leather, grabbing for flesh, foranything. Because from this height she would shatter. And for some fucking reason, so would my heart. It had cracked when Mike died. Weakened. And now she had weakened it further.

The weight of her slammed into me, driving me back a step, two. Hard enough to rattle my bones. Pain lanced my shoulders, but I held on, held her, anything to stop her hitting that floor. Clinging onto her like she was the only solid thing left in the world. I fell backwards, my spine hitting the concrete. Her weight on top of mine.

For a long moment I didn’t move. Just lay there, her weight draped over me, hot and heavy, the world faded around the smell of blood and sweat and leather. I didn’t dare lift my head, didn’t dare see. Not yet. Every instinct screamed to check, to know.

But when I finally did, I saw it. Her wrists. Deep red, the skin torn raw where the ties had bitten in. The cuts gleamed in the harsh warehouse light, wet and angry, and my stomach twisted. I’d hurt her. I’d put her back on that fucking hook. I’d tried to buy myself time. Tried to think of a plan.

My hands were slick, sticky with her blood, but I couldn’t pull away. Couldn’t risk shifting her wrong. Her body was limp, almost frighteningly so. Alive, but unconscious, and I had no idea how close she’d been to slipping past that line or whether I’d broken the fall. Had she hit her head? Had I caught her cleanly?

Slowly, slowly, I could feel the subtle pulse of life under my hands, and it was terrifying and exhilarating all at once. She wasn’t dead. I hadn’t killed her. I’d got there just as she plummeted from the ceiling. Dougal had run too. He’d seen her wrists pull free from the binds. Seen her body fall, accelerating at speed towards the concrete.

My heart thumped so hard now I thought she might feel it through me, unconscious or not. I swallowed back bile and panic at the same time. Every muscle ached from the impact, from holding her, from the adrenaline still burning through me. And yet I couldn’t let go. Not until I knew she’d breathe again. Not until I could be sure the damage wasn’t permanent.

Her blood soaked my fingers. She shook against me, cold and in shock, her brain struggling to regain consciousness, ready to start fighting again.

The warehouse went dead quiet now. Just me, her, and the thud of my pulse. Then the silence broke. Boots scuffed. Low mutters. Laughter that wasn’t laughter, more a growl.

“Look at Chase the hero,” Thrash’s voice crawled over my skin.

I kept my eyes on her, not him. If I looked up now, I’d not be able to resist smashing his fucking face in. And that would get me in more bother than I was already fucking in, not least because he was three times my size and strength.

Thrash’s laugh cut through the dark. Ugly. Cruel. “You gonna kiss her better? Huh? Thought you liked your women breathing when the club was done with ‘em’?”

The others chuckled, mean and sharp. The sound needled under my skin.

I tightened my grip on Jazz without thinking. Her head lolled against me, blindfold wet with blood.

Orders said, ‘let her hang’. Orders said to break her. Tame her. Make her more biddable. And now I knew I would break all of those orders. Break my oath to my club. To the people who’d dragged me out of the darkness and into something else. Mystomach turned to stone. The looks burning holes in my back told me I’d just shifted something I couldn’t shift back.

And still I didn’t let her go.

“Get him the fuck out of here,” I growled, the words squeezing out through clenched teeth.

Dougal nodded and then stared at the Rats congregating behind him, snatching looks at each other, but no one moving.