Rambler just stared at her for a long moment. He glanced over at his brothers and shook his head. Looking back at the girl, he glared at her. “Those are just words. Can you prove it?”
Phoenix glared back at him. “I don’t have to prove anything, not to you, not to anyone.”
“You do if you want to live or stay here,” Rambler threatened.
“You can’t keep me here if I want to leave.”
“Wanna bet a nickel?” He grinned. “Why did you come here anyway?”
“I came here for some answers to questions I’m not sure I know how to ask.” She reached inside her pocket then stopped rather abruptly when she heard the click of a weapon being primed. She looked up and found one of the men behind the man they’d called Rambler holding a gun pointed directly at her heart. “I’m only reaching for something in my pocket. It’s not a weapon.”
“Lower your weapon Bearcat,” Rambler told his man.
Bearcat lowered his weapon.
She dipped her hand into her pocket and drew out a small piece of material. She smoothed it out and passed it over to Rambler. Her hands shook as she drew them away. “This is what led me here.”
Rambler stared at her for a long moment then lowered his eyes to the evidence she shared with him. His heart froze at the sight of what she had given him. There on the table in front of him was a Brothers of Chaos patch. It was discolored with patches of brown and Rambler knew it was blood, Mac’s blood. This patch was his own brother’s patch. It had been ripped from his cut the day he was murdered. She’d been carrying it around with her for the last twelve years when he thought it was lost forever.
He lifted his head and asked her, “Where the fuck did you get this?”
Phoenix stared at him and finally admitted, “That’s the real question isn’t it? I don’t know. When I came to, I found myself in a small cottage at the edge of the Big Bend National park. I think I was like nine years old and the old man who found me told me I had been beaten and left for dead. I was never supposed to survive. I do know that. If he hadn’t found me I would have died out there and no one would have ever known it.”
“Who found you?” Raven asked.
“An old man named Moon. He was living there in the cottage with his grandson Tao. He took care of me which wasn’t easy as I couldn’t remember anything. I couldn’t even speak for a long time as my throat had to heal first.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” Rambler frowned.
“Whoever knocked me out wrapped a rope around my neck and I was slowly strangling to death.” She shrugged. “Lucky for me, the rope was old and had already begun to fray enough that it broke easily.”
“Can you prove this?” Bearcat growled. “How do we know anything you’re saying is true?”
Phoenix just stared at the other man then reached up and untied the scarf at her throat.
When she drew the material away, there was a moment of complete silence as the men looked at her throat. The scars she had looked angry and raw but you could see where a rope had been wrapped around her throat twice. The rope had dug into her skin, they could all see this, but the scar was also twelve years old.
No one said a word as she slowly covered her throat again.
“Did you ever remember anything?” Rambler asked.
She shook her head. “That’s why I came here. I’m hoping to remember by coming back here. That maybe I would remember something, anything that would lead me to the truth.” She gazed steadily at Rambler. “Don’t you see? I need to know what happened to me as a child.”
“Do you have any idea where your mother is?” Bearcat snarled. “Where did she go and why did she leave you alone in the fucking desert?”
Phoenix shot her gaze over to stare at the man. “My mother? You know my mother?” She turned back to Rambler. “Does that mean you know my father too?”
Rambler hesitated then nodded slowly. “Yeah, we know your father.”
She paused then studied him for a moment. “Why doesn’t that sound like a good thing?”
Rambler leaned back in his chair and glared at her for a moment. Then he said, “You have to understand something here. We have no way of knowing if you are telling us the truth or not. You come without warning, you tell us you don’t know who you are, you give us a story that’s a little hard to believe, you look like a woman we used to know a lifetime ago, a woman who left us under suspicious circumstances and just expect us to believe you, hook, line and sinker?”
Phoenix frowned. “What do you mean my mother left under suspicious circumstances?”
Rambler looked down at the bloody patch on the table. “Twelve years ago, the man who wore that patch died when he was shot in the chest. His name was Mac and he was your bodyguard the day you and your mom disappeared. We don’t know who shot him or why.”
Phoenix was stunned by his admission. “You think my mother might have shot this man? You think she abandoned me in the desert, leaving me for dead? Don’t you?”
“We don’t know do we?” He reasoned. “You and your mother are the only ones who know what the truth is here. You claim you can’t remember and your mother has been gone for twelve years. Who knows if she’s even alive today?”
“And my father?” she asked softly. “What did he think when this went down twelve years ago?”
“Your father thought he had the perfect love story,” Rambler explained. “Shelby was a good woman. I’ll give her that much and she was good for Thunder. But to get her, he had to piss off a powerful man. That man wanted to kill him when he took her away from him. Shelby always lived looking over her shoulder, then you were born and they thought they had the world by its tail. Some of us didn’t agree and we kept any eye on her. Of course, we couldn’t take our concerns to Thunder. He wouldn’t hear anything against his woman but toward the end, twelve years ago Shelby was more than a little jumpy and she was hiding something from us. We weren’t stupid. We knew something was in the air. Then there came the day my brother died.”
Phoenix was getting flashes of a memory that had been buried deep in her brain. At first, it was just seconds of an event she couldn’t understand, one that terrified her. Then the memory of that day flooded her mind and played out like a movie in her head. It didn’t last very long but she remembered the shouting then two men fighting and a gunshot. She’d seen one man fall, then her mother screamed. As she tried to kneel down next to the man on the floor, the man who shot his gun hauled her up on her feet by her hair. He pushed her toward the car he had waiting but the driver shouted something to him and the man turned to Phoenix. He pointed a gun at her and the shot echoed in the street.
The bullet had torn a groove in the side of her head but it hadn’t penetrated her scalp and she screamed. She heard her mother call out her name and then someone grabbed Phoenix off the ground. She was dragged over to the car and thrown in the backseat beside her mom. She’d never been so scared in her life.
Phoenix got to her feet, grabbed her head and cried out. “No, no, no… mama don’t let them hurt Mac,” she whispered as she slowly backed away from the table. She turned and began to run away. She didn’t get very far before she bumped into a huge man.
A huge, very angry man. Rage pulsed off him as he caught her up in his arms.
Amber eyes glared into amber eyes and she panicked. “No, let me go. Don’t hurt me!” She fought to get away but the other man wouldn’t let her go. His fingers tightened as they bit into her upper arms. Phoenix cried out but the man held her tight.
“What the fuck is going on here?” He growled. He looked over at Rambler and the boys then back at Phoenix. “Who the fuck is she?”
Rambler got up, walked over to his president then reached out and took off Phoenix’s sunglasses. Stepping back, he watched as Thunder scanned the girl’s face and then stared at her eyes.
Thunder’s fingers tightened on the girl’s arms until she cried out. He pushed her into Rambler’s arms and everyone there could see Thunder’s prints on her skin. “What the fuck?” he whispered as he shook his head. He stared at her in shock. “Phoebe? Is that you? After all this time, you came home? Why?”
“My name is Phoenix. I don’t know of any Phoebe,” she stated quietly as she rubbed her arms. She turned to Rambler. “Who is he? Why does he have the same color eyes that I do?”
Rambler stared at her for a few seconds then he replied, “This is our president, Thunder and I think he’s your dad.”
Phoenix turned her head to gape at Thunder with shock in her eyes. She broke away from Rambler and began to back away from both of them. She shivered as shock set in. Pain exploded behind her eyes and her hands went up to the top of her head as she fought against the feelings overwhelming her.
Her heart was pounding in her chest as she stared at her father. Then suddenly, she felt light headed and her eyes rolled back in her head as she passed out.
