“I’m out,” Hunter said bluntly. He gave his friend a quick glance. “Skid can step up and take over for me. I already told Burke what’s happening.”
I looked at Reese, wondering if he’d say the same thing. Nobody could blame him if he decided not to go to California—but there was no way in hell I’d get a chance to save Jessica without him there. He looked at me and sighed, reaching up to rub the back of his neck.
“I’ll go,” he said to Hunter. “You take care of my girl for me, and I’ll make sure we got your club’s back.”
Hunter seemed surprised, and I saw Ruger and Horse exchange a glance I couldn’t interpret.
“Appreciate that,” Hunter said, turning toward Skid. “You need anything more from me?”
“Naw, I got it.”
“I’ll head back to the house,” Reese said slowly, although I could see it was killing him to leave Em. “Call me when she wakes up? I’ll come back and see her before we take off.”
“Sounds good,” Hunter said. “And Pic?”
“Yeah?”
“I’ll take good care of her. I promise.”
“Gonna hold you to that.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The plane touched down at eleven that night.
I’d fallen asleep on top of Reese, which was comfortable and wonderful and probably more than I deserved, but I figured I’d take advantage while I could. He seemed to want me with him, and I even felt a slight stirring of hope at one point. Maybe I hadn’t killed everything between us when I pulled that trigger?
Then I wrestled my head out of my ass, because I couldn’t afford to let hope distract me.
Still, there was a noticeable change in attitude toward me after we got back from the hospital. Nobody had been at Em and Hunter’s place initially—apparently they’d cleared out in anticipation of a police raid.
A raid they’d expected because of me.
The combination of my silence and the fact that I’d saved Em had gone a long way toward rebuilding the club’s goodwill, and nobody bitched when Reese announced I’d be coming with. That meant everything, because if they found Jessica, I needed to be there for her. If they didn’t, I had other, less pleasant work ahead of me.
Now it was one a.m. and I was sitting in the dark. Waiting. We’d gone to a warehouse in the middle of bumfuck San Diego, which was apparently very similar to regular San Diego, but with more shootings and gang activity. It’d taken quite a bit to convince Reese to let me join them for the actual attack—I think he’d planned for me to hang with the women at someone’s clubhouse or something.
Fuck that.
We’d compromised when I swore to stay outside in one of the vehicles (an anonymous-looking cargo van—something I was starting to think was MC standard issue) unless they called for me. Puck stayed, too. During the time we’d been stuck out here, he hadn’t said anything to me. Not. One. Word. I hunched down in the darkness, praying for something to happen. Anything.
I still wasn’t sure who our targets were or where the rest of the men had gone—we had about thirty in our group total, a mixture of Reapers, Silver Bastards, and some other club of locals who were apparently their allies. None of them wore their distinctive colors and everything was very hush-hush. All of them had ignored me completely, except for Puck, who radiated resentment at being stuck with babysitting duty.
Fair enough, because I was starting to resent his silent ass, too.
After what felt like hours, Puck’s phone vibrated. He answered it, grunted a few times, and hung up, turning to look at me with a frown marring his handsome features.
“They need me inside,” he said. “You’ll have to come, too—can’t leave you out here by yourself. Keep quiet and don’t say, do, or touch anything. Understand?”
I felt like telling him that he was young enough to be my son, and I wasn’t fucking stupid. Instead I said, “I understand.”
Another grunt. Some day he really was going to have to learn some real words, I decided.
We stepped out of the van and started around the side of the building. Around the corner we found a door guarded by a man I didn’t recognize. He opened it for Puck silently, eyeing me with suspicion as I followed the prospect inside.
The warehouse surprised me.
I don’t know what I was expecting … Maybe some kind of big, open space with catwalks and spotlights, and an evil genius laughing maniacally in the background.
A hairless cat or two?
Instead, dim security lights showed an interior that looked less like a crime lord’s fortress and more like a Costco. There were long stacks of boxes and bins and pallets forming alleys, some of them piled nearly to the ceiling. A perfectly normal forklift was parked near the door. It didn’t even have a machine gun mounted on the roof or anything.
Puck pulled out his gun and started down the second row of pallets, which my active imagination immediately pointed out would operate like a cattle chute. You know, the long, narrow paths they use to guide animals to their deaths in slaughterhouses?
Not a happy thought.
He crept through the darkness and I followed him like a good girl. Then I tripped on my own shoelace, somehow doing an elaborate dance and shuffle to stay upright without making a sound.
When I was stable again, I dropped down into a crouch to fix the lace. Puck kept moving ahead, oblivious, and there was no way I could stop him without making a sound. Which was worse? Making noise or getting separated?
Making noise seemed more likely to get us killed.
Sucked to be screwing things up less than five minutes into the operation. Kneeling down gave me a whole new perspective on the situation—specifically a perspective low enough to see through a gap in the pallets that was only about two feet high, and maybe eighteen inches wide. On the other side of the gap I could just make out a … Oh shit. That was a body over there—not one of the bikers, he wasn’t wearing the right kind of clothes.
There was dark black crap puddled around him on the floor.
Blood?
Yeah. Had to be blood, and way more of it than had come out of Em. This guy was deader than dead, no question. Wow. This was really happening—London Armstrong from Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, was in the middle of a gang war and people were dying … I backed away, looking ahead to see that Puck had almost reached the end of the row, still clueless that we’d gotten separated. Wasn’t that just perfect? I’d just started rising to my feet when I heard the noise.
A snuffling, whimpering cry … High-pitched, like a child or maybe a young woman. My mom radar went on point, because I recognised that cry.
Jessica.
She was somewhere on the other side of these pallets, which meant I could either run to the end of the long row and go around, or I could try crawling through that narrow little gap. But running around would take time and possibly make noise … Not only that, if I caught up to Puck, he might not let me go look for Jess, not when he had an assignment of his own to accomplish.
I’d just have to crawl through.
The only downside was Mr. McDead over there, which I had to admit was a major strike against my plan. Then I heard Jessica whimpering again, and she sounded weaker this time—no more playing around. I dropped back down and started slithering my way through the gap. It wasn’t particularly fun or comfortable, but deadly raids against notorious cartels rarely are.
The first thing I discovered when I reached the other side was that Mr. McDead’s blood was still warm—something I figured out by accidentally putting my hand in it. I could smell it, too. Metallic, with a hint of sweetness. I started to wipe it on my shirt, and then stopped, because ewww. Wondering faintly if God would strike me for defiling the dead, I leaned down and carefully wiped my hand on his shirt.
My fingers brushed a hard lump.
I froze. There was something solid under his shirt, something that had fallen down toward his left side. Giving another quick glance down the row, I didn’t see anyone, so I tugged up his shirt to look.
It was a gun.
The whimper came again, and I looked around for the source. Along the wall stretched a series of doors. They were all shut, like they were offices that’d been locked up for the night … Except for one clearly marked as a bathroom—that door had been propped open. Was she in there, hiding?
I decided to check my new gun before going in, because I didn’t want to get caught out without any bullets this time. Oh-so-carefully, I let the little bullet holder-thingy slide out of the bottom. Yup. Full of bullets, all right. Then I pushed it back up and wrapped the bottom of my shirt around the whole thing, muffling the sound as I carefully cocked the weapon.
Now I was locked and loaded, ready to go rescue my little cousin like Lara Croft herself. All I needed was Angelina Jolie’s body and I’d be set. Make that Angelina Jolie’s money—then I could outsource the rescuing and screw Brad Pitt. I felt an inappropriate little laugh try to bubble its way out of my throat, which I swallowed down brutally. Too much tension rattling around in my head.
Stop making jokes and go rescue Jessica.
Okay, then. I took a centering breath, edging toward the bathroom door. The shattering crackle of gunfire suddenly echoed through the building, scaring the hell out of me. Men shouted in English and Spanish, followed by more shooting. I scuttled across the floor and through the bathroom door, into total darkness. Then I tugged the door shut behind me—it might not provide much in the way of a barrier, but it had to be better than hanging with a dead body right out in the open. Trailing my hand along the wall, I made my way deeper into the room, around a corner.
The gunfire died down outside.
Now I heard someone else breathing in the tiny room. Jessica? Murderous cartel thug? How the hell was I supposed to tell them apart in the darkness?
“Can you help me?” a voice whispered, and I nearly started crying because my mama instincts had been right—I’d found my girl and she was alive.
“Jess?”
Silence, then a sobbed attempt at speech. “Loni? Is that really you?”
“Yeah, baby, it’s me. I’m here to save you. You’ll be happy to hear I left the minivan home this time.”
More silence.
“Am I imagining this?”
“No, Jess. I’m real, but the warehouse is full of dead people and I touched one of them, so I think we should get the hell out now, okay?”
“They’ve got me handcuffed to the pipes,” she whispered. “I’m on a toilet, so I won’t make a mess.”
Jesus Christ. I suddenly wished Mr. McDead were still alive so I could kill him again—given his position outside, he’d probably been guarding her. I assumed the bikers had taken him out, but who knew? Whoever it was hadn’t found Jess, which was the only thing that mattered. Now I just needed to get her out of the cuffs, then sneak her out of the building without getting both of us killed.
Easy, right?
“Loni?”
“Still here,” I said quickly. Another round of gunfire filled the air—time to get her loose and out the door before someone came in here and started killing us.
Speak of the devil …
Footsteps thudded outside as someone ran down the long canyon between the wall and the pallets. Then the door banged open and bright white light flooded the bathroom, blinding me. Jessica screamed as shooting seemed to explode all over the building. I scuttled backward frantically, away from this new threat, more screams filling the air. Jessica’s, but also from men outside. Men in pain, or dying.
This shit was getting real.
My back hit a wall and I found myself under a sink, blinking rapidly as my eyes adjusted to the light. Not six feet from me, I saw a short, fat Hispanic man in an expensive-looking suit stop in front of the lone stall, gun in hand. His breath came heavy and he muttered to himself as he dug in his pockets for something.
Keys.
He opened the stall and I caught a glimpse of Jess for the first time—only a flash, but I saw dried blood and her jaw was swollen. She shrieked as he reached for her, and then I heard the clatter of what had to be him fighting to open the handcuffs. Jess kicked out and the key dropped, skittering across the floor to the far corner of the room.
“Leave me alone!” she yelled.
“Shut your mouth, cunt!” the man yelled back. Then he slapped her. Hard.
She shut up.
Outside the gunfire died off, but a new noise had started up. A shrill wailing that could only be a fire alarm.
Holy fuck. I had to end this somehow or we were both going to die like rats.
The bastard lowered himself heavily to his knees, muttering curses under his breath as he hunted for the key. His motions were desperate, and I realized I wasn’t the only terrified one in here. Good. Nice to know the bad guys got scared, too. Maybe I could use that against him.
Jessica’s frantic eyes met mine over his back. Her face was bloodied and bruised, and she’d obviously lost some weight. More than she could afford. To make things even more wretched, her hands were fastened behind her, and they’d left her on the toilet with her pants around her ankles.
Shouts sounded outside, and a loud crashing noise. Like a body thrown against the wall?
The man muttered under his breath, his movements growing more frantic. I couldn’t figure out why he didn’t just run away—was he cornered in here? If that was the case, he needed Jess alive. A hostage was his best shot to get out, although whether the club would let him go to save Jess was very much in question …
He spotted the key under one of the urinals and backed out of the stall, scuttling across the floor toward it like an exceptionally large cockroach.
I smelled smoke. More shouting outside.