“Stay low and stay quiet,” I hiss in the basement as I lead Kate across it to my destination: an old shelf that conceals an emergency exit the kids in the apartment like to use. I’ve seen them run down here dozens of times, and on the stolen CCTV cameras, I saw them reappear in the garage. Normally, the only garage access is outside. It’s a long shot, but it’s our only chance.
“Where is this going to take us?” Kate asks as I shove the shelf aside to reveal the doorway.
“Garage,” I say. “You saw me park my bike by the building across the street, so we’re going to need to make a run for it. Keep that suitcase up and don’t let go.”
“Wait!” she says, and I hear that jingling again as she fumbles with her pocket.
She takes out a ring of keys, and she tosses them to me. I catch them in one hand, furrowing my brow.
“Take my car,” she says, “it’s on the first floor of the garage, and it’ll give us a way out with more protection than a suitcase.”
I flash her a grin and nod.
“Ever tell you I’m glad I saved you?” I say as I lead her through the exit as the other tenants look on, stunned.
We race out to the parking garage, which is empty, as far as I can tell. It’s empty insofar as there aren’t any gunmen in eyesight right now, which is better than I was expecting, frankly.
I see her car immediately, and I don’t have time to wait any longer. I pick Kate up and run with her before she can so much as finish giving a yelp of protest.
“That’s my car, right there!” she says hurriedly.
“I know,” I snap.
“Shit, right,” she says as I come skidding to a halt by the trunk. Before I can set her down, she has hopped out of my arms and made it halfway to the passenger side door. I hop into the driver’s seat, and as soon as she shuts her door, I peel out of the parking space and screech out of the parking garage.
My heart skips a beat at what I see as soon as I do.
Buzz brought an army with him. There must be nearly a dozen bikes out front, some of which have their rider on them, but most empty. The apartment must be crawling with men by now. All the better that I’m getting us out of here. The sooner they realize what they’re looking for isn’t there, the sooner they’ll leave those innocent people alone and come after us.
If only that last part weren’t so tricky.
I see someone’s head turn in our direction, and the rider shouts to the other. Time’s up. I turn the wheels in the opposite direction and gun it, and the screeching of tires announces our departure while the sound of roaring engines behind me tells me we aren’t going to make the stealthy getaway I was hoping for.
I’m barely halfway down the block before I see motorcycles in the rear-view mirror.
“Get down!” I shout, using the handbrake to careen around a corner and try to shake them. Kate’s car isn’t built for speed, but in a city, I just need to put as much between us as I possibly can. If they’re chasing me and trying to follow Buzz’s orders, they won’t be careful, and that means we might just stand a chance.
But before I clear the corner, we feel something hit the car toward the back, followed by the unmistakable sound of a tire bursting, and the car starts spinning.
We’ve been hit, and this car isn’t getting far with a blown-out tire.
Breaker
I guide the spinning car as it careens through the narrow street and comes to an abrupt halt several yards down it. By the time we stop, Kate is clutching the dashboard and looking terrified, but her attention snaps to the rear-view mirror at the same time as mine does. We ended up facing the same direction we were headed, but with a tire blown out, there’s no chance in hell we’re about to outrun these guys.
“Shit!” she shouts, “Can we still drive on this?”
“Yeah, but not in a way that’s gonna let us shake these fucks,” I say, throwing the car into reverse. “Hold on.”
“What?!” she blurts, snatching the seatbelt and scrambling to fasten it.
I stomp down on the gas, and the car flies backward toward the intersection.
Kate clutches the dashboard and lets out a steady stream of curses under her breath as I keep my attention on throwing the car back in as straight a line as possible while building speed. What I’m doing is beyond risky, but it’s less risky than trying to outrun a pack of Buzz’s men on a blown-out tire.
Just as we hit the corner, so do the bikers.
I hear shouts, curses, gunshots, and the sounds of a lot of tires screeching as the pack swerves to avoid the car I just reversed into their stream of oncoming traffic. Most of them manage to swerve out of the way, but one lays his bike down and skids, spinning and clipping the back of the car and rolling off limply.
“Get out and stay behind the car, we’re going for that bike,” I shout, and I don’t have time for her to respond before I get out of the car and dart for the laid-down bike. The rider has just started to push himself up, and as soon as he sees me, he reaches for the gun at his side.
I reach him first. Barely stopping, I stoop down to one knee and bring my fist down on his face, hard, and it cracks his head against the asphalt, putting him out cold. Before I can even make sure he’s out, I reach for that gun he was going for and take it from him, aiming it ahead of me and firing as soon as I see bikes.
One of my shots ricochets off the metal of someone’s bike, and another hits a man in the arm. The gang takes the next block’s corner to get away from my suppressing fire, and I know our window of opportunity is rapidly shrinking. We have enough time to get on this bike and get out, and I can only hope the accident didn’t damage the vehicle too badly. Kate comes running as soon as she sees me propping the bike up, and she has hopped on the back of it before I can even get fully seated.
“Is he dead?” Kate breathes, clutching me from behind and looking down at the man whose bike I’m stealing.
“No, and he’ll be thanking me if his buddies don’t get off our ass,” I grunt, and I peel away from the site of the accident, heading in the very direction we came from. It’s not ideal, but heading down the road we spun or continuing onward just sets us up for the pack to intercept us. Back is the only way they won’t be expecting.
I don’t know the streets of Cheyenne as well as I’d like, I’m riding a bike that isn’t my own, and there’s a gang whose tactics are as unpredictable as their leader chasing us. I can swear I feel Kate’s racing heartbeat on my back, and I can’t blame her. The sounds of engines aren’t that far behind us, and no matter how many turns I take through alleys and narrow side-streets, they’re always just a few steps behind us. And if we take things onto the highway, the police will be on us in no time. Our cop on the take is useful, but I don’t have the kind of resources to keep this level of heat off us.
Another turn takes us down a street with several hotel garage parking complexes on it, and I move us into the second one down, guiding us behind a concrete pillar and waiting in the shadows to see if I’ve managed to buy us a breather. Kate’s hands are cold around me, and I reach down to warm them as we watch the stream of bikes roll past the block from the outside. They’re moving slower than the last time I saw them, and I can’t help but think there are fewer of them now than it sounded like.
Something’s up, but I can’t tell what exactly, not yet.
“How the hell did they get here this fast?” I murmur.
“They knew you were coming to find me?” she asks.
“They shouldn’t have,” I growl. “In the inside left pocket of my jacket, there’s a cloth, can you hand it to me?”
She pauses, then obliges me, and I run the rag over my face and shake it out while we have a breather.
“It’s about as far from their clubhouse to here as it is from mine to here,” I say.
“Wait, yours?” she asks, and it occurs to me that we’ve barely had time to catch up.
“A lot has changed, kid,” I say, glancing back at her with a tired smile. “Didn’t th
ink I could keep an eye on you while flying solo, did you?”
“I didn’t know what to expect, honestly,” she says, and I have to wonder… just how much was she thinking about me in the time we’ve been apart?
“I run a club not far from Devil’s Tower,” I explain, deciding to tell her before I second guess myself. “Turns out, I wasn’t the only one who wanted to split from Buzz as soon as everything went down with you. He never backed down on his new ‘business model’. He’s been recruiting groupies while the core members split off and joined me. Nobody’s turned a gun on me yet, so I figure I’m doing an alright job,” I say, still watching the roads outside through the openings in the parking garage between floors.
She’s quiet for a moment before saying, “I’m surprised to hear you tell me all that.”
“Me too,” I admit, looking back at her. “But if we’re going to get through this together, we’ve got to trust each other. You did a hell of a lot more to trust me back there than I’d ever expect, so you earned a little truth.”
“I… thanks,” she says after a moment’s hesitation. “But what happens now?”
“Now, we figure out how to get you out of here safely,” I say, leaning on the handles of the bike. “I found you because I bugged your phone. Sorry, by the way, but apparently, it was for your own good.”
She tenses, but after a disapproving murmur, she says nothing more.
“So, the only ways Buzz could know I was coming down here for you is one of two things: either he also bugged your phone, which isn’t likely, or he got tipped off right around the same time I found out you were talking about me. And there’s only one person I know you were giving my name to,” I add as her eyes go wide.
“Caitlyn,” she breathes.
“I need to know everything, Kate,” I say, turning around and knitting my brow at her. “You’ve got more than enough evidence to put me behind bars for life if you want, so this is all to help you. Anything you tell me makes it that much more likely we get out of here without a few extra pounds of bullets in us.”
“I don’t know anything else!” Kate says, exasperated. “I told you her boyfriend rides, but he doesn’t… I mean… don’t take this the wrong way, but he doesn’t look like a biker, not like you and the other guys do,” she says, holding up my kutte she’s still wearing.
I glare into her eyes, searching for anything that she could be holding back, but she glares right back, and I have to chuckle after a moment, shaking my head.
“Wait,” she says, and I quirk an eyebrow. “She works at a massage parlor, and her boyfriend rides a bike but doesn’t look like a biker. Groupies are like that guy Moxie was with when you dropped me off in Stonedale, right?” she asks, sounding more alarmed by the moment. I nod, and she continues, but I think I see where she’s going with this, and I don’t like it. “What if… you don’t think Caitlyn is someone Buzz has already gotten to, do you?”
“I’ve been suspecting for a while that Buzz is going broader than I thought,” I say, stroking my chin. “I didn’t have proof yet, but it adds up: that boyfriend of Caitlyn’s might be one of Buzz’s groupies who hasn’t earned his patches. He’d be dying for a piece of intel like this to pass along to his boss. Caitlyn would be an easy accomplice, willing or not.”
“Goddamnit,” she breathes.
“It’s part of why I never rounded up my men and tried to take out Buzz for good,” I admit, running a hand over my face and clenching my jaw momentarily. “He’s not running a club, he’s running a gang of reckless young men he has doing his dirty work when he realized pimping wasn’t going to be that easy.”
There’s nothing dishonest about my words. I don’t want the blood of that many aimless kids on my hands, because if I brought my club to war against Buzz, there would be a lot of blood between me and him.
“Alright,” I say, lifting my head and revving the engine. “Here’s the plan. I have one more solid contact in Cheyenne I’ve been saving for a rainy day: someone who works at the impound lot. We can’t take this bike any further out of the city, it’ll draw way too much attention, assuming it doesn’t break down on us. We get a new ride there and head back up to my place up north. We can regroup from there, and you’ll have a safe place to hide.”
“If that’s our only option, I’m game,” she says, taking a deep breath.
I text my contact, and it’s only a minute before he gets back to me to confirm that he’ll be ready. I carefully pull out of the parking garage and head toward the outskirts of town, keeping a careful eye on the roads. Avoiding police is easy enough, but I’m surprised to see just how empty the roads are of bikers. I can’t imagine they packed up and left that quickly, and it’s all the more reason for us to hurry.
Ten minutes later, I’m slowing the bike down at the chain link gates of the impound park. It’s a large and industrial place with no decor and very little indication as to what it even is, besides the rows upon rows of cars in different states of disrepair.
I pull the bike just inside the gates, then bring it to a slow stop and get off with Kate and gesture for her to follow me. I check my phone, and I see the latest message from my contact.
“He has a car picked out for us,” I say, closing the phone and pocketing it. “It’s just over here. Says it’s a black sedan, so it’ll feel just like old times,” I add, flashing a grin at Kate as she walks close to me.
“Don’t fix it if it isn’t broke, I guess,” she says, looking around warily. “Are you sure about this guy of yours, Breaker? Something feels… too easy about this.”
I open my mouth to put her at ease, but now that she mentions it, I have to admit, I’ve been unsure whether the strange feeling in my gut is just nerves or something more. I slow to a stop, giving her a thoughtful look, then nodding.
“No, you’re right,” I say, taking my phone back out. “Let me call my guy and see if he’ll meet us over here.”
I call the number and listen to the rings, but after just three, the line goes dead.
And that’s when I hear the whistle. It comes from behind us, and we turn around to a heart-stopping sight.
It’s Buzz.
Gray haired and grizzled as a bear, aged faster than he should have after the loss of his son, the man who I used to look up to like a father stands at the end of the alley of cars we’re standing in, gun trained on me, and there are men on either side of him, all armed and ready for a show. The wind blows his tattered kutte gently, but he looks as still as a statue as he considers pulling the trigger on me. The sounds of more footsteps behind us tells me we’re surrounded.
This was a trap.
“Now that I’ve got your attention,” Buzz says in a slow, hate-filled voice that’s dripping with bloodlust, “maybe we can finally have that conversation. Man to man. No guns, no tricks.”
To my surprise, Buzz puts his weapons down, and the rest of the men in the gang around us follow suit, even going so far as to take their ammo out of their guns. Buzz has some honor left, at least. As tempting as it is to just blow his brains out right here and now, I give the faintest of nods, take the clip out of my pistol, and toss it aside too.
“What are you doing?” Kate hisses.
“We’re outgunned,” I murmur quietly. “If I don’t give mine up, they’ll pick theirs back up faster than I can kill ‘em all.”
Kate nods softly, and I take a few steps forward to match Buzz’s. We’re still a distance apart, but the crowd is gathering in a loose circle around us, and I can tell Buzz has them under orders for this. He doesn’t just want revenge. He wants to make an example of me.
“Found out about your friend here at the lot,” Buzz says casually, holding up a phone and waving it in the air before tossing it aside carelessly. “Gotta say, you learned well, Breaker. You would have made a good enforcer one day.”
“You would have shown your real colors eventually,” I say, staring him down. I can still hear Kate shifting behind me, and most of my thoughts are on her. I
have to keep her safe, no matter what, first and foremost. I’m an honorable man, but I’m not above sucker-punching Buzz and grabbing Kate to get out of here if it means keeping her out of harm’s way. “If you think I would have ridden with you much longer, you’re stupider than I thought.”
An agitated jeer goes through the crowd, but Buzz just chuckles.
“When you talk to me like that, boy, you make me regret the day I took you in. You were like kin to me, you know that?” he says, not hiding the furious edge in his voice.
“So were you,” I say, “until I found out what you’re really like. You’d throw a woman’s life away even faster than these kids you’ve suckered into your flimsy little empire,” I add, gesturing around at the onlookers.
“Enough,” Buzz snarls. “I don’t want to hear that kind of talk from you, of all people. Not over Roadster’s grave.” He cracks his knuckles and starts approaching me, and every muscle in my body is poised. “That’s why I stopped you here. So you can answer for your crimes. I want you to know exactly how Roadster felt when you murdered him.”
He reaches into his pocket, and for a moment, I think he’s about to pull a gun on me, but instead, he takes out a shining pair of brass knuckles that he slips over his meaty fingers. My jaw tenses, and I look back at Kate meaningfully.
She’s already a step ahead of me, reaching into my pockets and taking out mine. She looks at them uneasily for a moment, then nods to me and tosses them over. I catch them and slip them on, watching Buzz’s gaze carefully.
“Those are the same ones, aren’t they?” Buzz growls. “You’re a real son of a bitch, you know that, Breaker?”
“How much have you been playing up how much you loved Roadster, Buzz?” I ask, as much to the crowd as to Buzz, whose face goes red. “That kid idolized you, and you gave him shit at every turn. Nothing ever good enough. Roadster died because he was more loyal to you than you were to him.”
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