by Sybil Bartel
“Looks like you’re down a few brothers,” I said casually.
As much as anyone could shrug with their hands clasped behind their head, Stone shrugged. “Price of doing business.”
I circled him slowly. To give him credit, he didn’t follow my movements. “Wasn’t hard to get at you either.”
“No, I suppose it wasn’t. But next time it will be.” His casual smile stayed in place.
“What makes you think you’ve got a next time?”
Stone chuckled. “I was told you were smart. Isn’t it obvious? If you wanted me dead, I’d already be dead. Simple truth.”
“Temptin’,” I admitted. “Solve a few problems with one solution.”
Stone faked a sigh. “As I am sure you can imagine, I’m a busy man. What do you want?”
“It’s not what I want, it’s what you want.”
He took the bait. “And that would be?”
I made him sweat a few seconds. “To live.”
“Sounds preferable to the alternative.”
Fast-talking fuck. “Simple truth,” I mimicked him. “I live, you live. I die—” I nodded at Neil. “He comes for you.”
Stone didn’t hesitate. “Done.”
“I’m not finished.”
“Why am I not surprised?”
I was losing patience with the egotistical prick. “You’ll tell whoever’s left in Maldonado’s organization that you were behind the hit. You take all responsibility.”
The sick fuck smiled brightly. “Planned on it,” he said happily.
“And Miss Archer no longer has any affiliation with the Lone Coasters or any member in the organization. An infringement on that will be treated the same as a threat against my life. Questions?”
His expression sobered. “May I rise?”
I inclined my head.
“Thank you.” Stone stood and brushed at his knees before returning his gaze to mine. “Despite what you may think, I have a business to run and you…” He waved a hand dismissively. “Are not part of my equation.”
“I’ll be a big fuckin’ part of your equation if you fuck with me.”
He chuckled. “I misspoke. For tonight, you’re part of my equation. But in general, you’re not on my radar. Yes, there was, shall we say, a blip yesterday but that minor occurrence was only a means to an end for one of my many daily transactions. That being said, I’ll agree to your terms with the exception of Miss Archer. She and I have a—”
“There is no you and Miss Archer,” I ground out.
Stone looked momentarily taken aback then quickly covered it. “I’m sure you can understand the delicate nature of the situation.”
What the fuck? “What situation?”
Stone rocked back on his heels. “Interesting.” He dragged the single word out. “She hasn’t told you.” It wasn’t a question.
“Told me what?” Motherfuckingshit. What the fuck was he talking about?
“Ask her.” He nodded toward Siren.
I didn’t dare look back. “I’m askin’ you.”
He fucking laughed. “Let’s just say it’s in her best interest to do what I say.”
I raised my gun and aimed at his head. “She’s done with you and your son.”
“I’m not sure she’d agree,” he said smugly.
I lost patience. I stepped forward, jammed my gun into his temple and made my voice low and controlled. “You speak her name, you think about her, or your son so much as looks in her direction, you’re both dead. There’s no longer a Nicole Archer in either of your vocabularies. We clear?”
“Well.” He inhaled. “Now that you’ve pissed in the sand, I’ll be on my way. Best of luck to you and Miss Archer.” Stone leered at Siren as she stood by Neil’s truck. “She’s quite the catch.” He backed up toward his SUV. “Are you keeping my driver, or should I take him with me?”
Neil took his foot off the driver and he scrambled to his feet.
For a second, Stone lost all his decorum and sneered at the driver. “Get behind the wheel.”
The driver lurched toward the SUV and glass crunched as he crawled behind the wheel.
Stone walked to the passenger side. “Gentlemen, a pleasure.”
“Hey,” I barked.
Stone raised his eyebrows.
“You tell Carter what I told you.”
A smile of pure delight broke out across his face. “I hear he’s dead. Maybe I have you to thank for that?” A sickening laugh filled the night as Stone yanked his door shut. The driver floored the gas, the tires spun a few times before gaining purchase, then the oversized vehicle lumbered onto the pavement and sped down the road.
Neil gestured toward my right arm. “You’re hit.”
The adrenaline that’d been keeping the pain mostly at bay dissolved and a stinging burn spread across my entire arm. I glanced down at the graze wound. It was the least of my worries.
I turned to Siren. Her breath was coming too fast and the ashen look of fear was stealing all her coloring. I wanted to take it away more than I wanted to take my next breath but I needed to know what the fuck Stone had over her.
“What was Stone talkin’ ’bout?” I demanded.
“Please. You don’t understand.” Her voice cracked. “I can’t—” She never got the rest of her sentence out.
A pickup hauled ass around the corner, slid to a stop inches from my bike and the passenger door flew open. Randy dropped out of the cab and single-handedly aimed a twelve gauge at my face. “Get in the truck, Nicole.”
Everything went slow motion.
Kicked-up dust floated down to my boots. I took in each of the seven men in the back of the truck training guns on us. Five with handguns, two with AK-47s. A blood-soaked makeshift bandage was wrapped around Randy’s thigh. A huge red stain had grown on his left shoulder as blood dripped down his arm. The old Ford needed a new muffler. Same as me, Neil had a 9mm in each hand. Siren was three feet from the cab of Neil’s truck.
I calculated if both Neil and I each took out two men with our first shots, we’d still be dead. We were outnumbered. But none of that stood out as much as Stone’s parting words.
I mentally assessed Randy’s wounds. “Stone thinks you’re dead.”
“I bet he does.” Voice steady, arm not wavering, it was the most confident I’d ever heard him.
“I’m not lettin’ her get involved in your family shit,” I warned.
“She is my family.”
“She’s not comin’ with you.” No fucking way.
“You’re outnumbered,” he countered.
I kept my aim on his chest. “You’d be dead with my first shot.”
“I’m already dead.”
“Not if you stop the bleedin’.” Maybe.
“She’s coming with me if we gotta stand here all night.”
“You don’t have all night.” I gave him fifteen, twenty minutes tops before he bled out.
“I drop now, you’re still outnumbered and they’ll still take her.”
“I’m willin’ to gamble with those odds. Neil?”
“Same,” Neil agreed.
Randy ignored Neil. “You don’t know what you’re dealing with, Talerco.”
No fucking shit. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”
His jaw clenched as he moved his injured arm closer to his body. “She needs to live.”
“Concur.”
Randy glanced at Siren. “Walk to the truck, Nicole.”
“Don’t do it, Siren.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her looking between us, but I couldn’t risk taking my eyes off Randy. “You know the difference between me and Neil and eight armed men, darlin’?”
“No.” Her voice shook.
“Seventeen years of Special Forces military training. Do you think I’m gonna let anythin’ happen to you?”
“Talon,” she quietly pleaded.
“Answer the question, darlin’.”
“You’re outnumbered,” she repeated Randy’s words.
> “You’re right. But I’m still not gonna lose. Know why?”
“No.”
I went for broke. “Because this mornin’ was the best fuckin’ mornin’ of my life.”
Randy growled and Siren sucked in a breath.
“Get in Neil’s truck, it’s armored,” I lied.
She didn’t move.
“Right now.” The second I said it, I knew I’d fucked up because she stepped backward instead of toward the truck.
Randy smirked.
Then Siren twisted the knife. “Randy, if you let Talon look at your wounds, I’ll go with you.”
Fuck no. “Not happenin’.”
“I’m done playing games with you, Nicole,” Randy barked. “Get in the fucking truck.”
“Hey!” I took a step forward and eight guns swung to my head. “You yell at her one more time, you’re dead.”
“I’m already fucking dead, you motherfucker!” Randy pulled the trigger.
A deafening blast rushed past my ears. I dropped and rolled, then took up position on one knee and fired off four rounds before I took one in the chest. The impact a hundred times worse than a punch to the sternum, the air left my lungs and I reeled back. Another shot hit me in the stomach.
“Talon!”
Choking, chest on fire, vision blurred, I fell back and hit the ground. The sound of automatic fire ripped through the night and hot shells started raining down on me.
I unloaded everything I had.
The Ford’s tires chirped and dirt kicked up into my face as taillights flew down the county road.
“Siren?” I tried to yell but only choked.
Neil stood above me, holding a machine gun. “She is safe.”
“Goddamn.” I ripped my vest off.
“You are fine. Nothing pierced your armor.”
“Cocksucker.” Still fucking hurt. I pushed to my feet but had to bend at the waist to catch my breath. “You had a motherfuckin’ machine gun and you waited till after they started firin’ to pull that shit out? What the fuck?” Holstering one weapon on my thigh, I shoved the other in my back waistband and looked toward Neil’s truck for Siren.
“I didn’t need it until you dropped to the ground and retreated.” He grabbed my vest off the ground and threw it and his machine gun in the bed of his truck.
“You callin’ me a pussy?”
“Yes. She’s with the son.” Neil inclined his head to where Randy had been standing.
I turned and looked. The sight gutted me more than the shots I took. Silent tears streaming down her face, Siren kneeled over his prone body.
I walked to her side and leaned down to check Carter for a pulse.
Fuck.
Gripping his hand, she looked up at me but she already knew. “He’s dead.”
I hated him. I’d wanted Randy Carter dead. But never, until that very second, had I considered the ramifications of him dying by my hand. His chest riddled with bullet wounds, I couldn’t even be sure my shots had killed him but it didn’t matter. I saw the look in her eyes before she’d turned back to his body.
This was my fault.
Neil stepped up beside me. “André is on his way.”
All I could do was nod.
“Use the truck. Take her home. I’ll wait for André.”
“I’ve got the bike.” Part of me wanted to pull Siren into my arms and comfort her but the other part didn’t want anything to do with having her on my bike right now.
“I’ll ride it back.”
Neil hated rice rockets. He’d told me when I’d bought it that they were for short fucks with small dicks. When I’d reminded him I was six-two and hung like a motherfucker, he’d only repeated himself. I didn’t know why I was thinking about all this when Siren was lying over her dead ex, but I was. “C’mon, Siren.”
“I’m…” Her voice cracked. “I’m not leaving him.”
I reached for her arm. “He wouldn’t want you here when the cops show up.” I didn’t know what the fuck he’d want and I didn’t care but I threw it out there anyway.
She let me pull her to her feet. “What’s going to happen to him?”
Morgue, autopsy, box, ground. It was death. No words made it pretty. “Nothin’ you can do for him now, c’mon.” I ushered her to the passenger side.
“I shouldn’t leave him. He wouldn’t leave me.”
Inhaling, I swallowed everything down and said the only nonconfrontational thing I could think to say. “Neil’s here. He’ll handle it.”
Her watery eyes looked up at me. “I didn’t want him to die.”
Something I thought was beyond breaking, broke. “I know.”
“He was…he was the…” A sob escaped from her chest and she covered her face with her hands.
I put her in the truck, threw her bag in the bed and walked around to the driver side. Seeing all the bullet holes, it was a fucking miracle I wasn’t dead. I got behind the wheel and felt shit shutting down. Three tours in Afghanistan, countless deaths, dismemberments and more gunshot wounds than I ever thought I’d see in my lifetime, it had an effect. You shut down or you lost your goddamn mind. That shutdown, the part of my mind where every injury became clinical, it wasn’t something I was proud of. And it wasn’t what Siren needed right now but in that moment, it was all I fucking had.
I DROVE AS SILENT TEARS fell down Siren’s face. I didn’t even give a shit she was mourning him. Maybe he’d been her Leigh. Maybe he’d been good to her once. I didn’t know. I didn’t know shit about her or her past or what the fuck Stone had been talking about.
My arm throbbing, my chest feeling like a I’d gone three rounds with a heavyweight and lost, all I was focused on was that she’d fucking sold me out to Carter when she’d said I’d help him.
I pulled into my driveway and remembered Kendall. “Fuck.” I grabbed my phone.
Siren jumped, looking behind us.
“Just forgot somethin’.” No compassion in my tone, I dialed Neil.
He answered on the first ring. “Ja?”
I heard voices in the background. “I forgot Kendall.”
“Busy.”
“How long before you can go get her?”
He switched to Danish. “Knee-deep in shit with local. They’re trying to connect your mess at the apartment building to this.”
“Goddamn it. André there?”
“Ja.”
“He’s got friends on the force here. He should be able to smooth it over.” I glanced at my watch.
“He is covering our tracks but even he has his limits.”
Fuck. “They figure out it’s my bike yet?” I knew I shouldn’t have taken his truck.
“Ja.”
I sighed. “How long before black and white’s on my doorstep?”
“Not long. You still have the key to Blaze and Layna’s place in Miami Beach?”
“Yeah.”
“Go.”
Me and Siren. Alone. Inhaling past the soreness in my chest, I took as deep a breath as I could. “Kendall’s still out there.”
“Not my problem. Hide my truck.”
“It’ll be in my garage with the keys in it but you’re gonna have to dump it.”
“You can buy me a new one after you pay my legal fees.”
“Shit. You gettin’ arrested?”
“Don’t know yet.”
“You’re not in cuffs or you wouldn’t be talkin’ to me,” I stated the obvious.
“You’re wasting time.”
I rubbed a hand over my face. “You know where to find me.”
“Wait to hear from us.” Neil hung up.
I pulled into the garage and dialed another number.
It rang five times then, “Surf’s not up but the party’s raging!”
“It’s Talon.”
“Braaaahhh,” Braige slurred as music pumped in the background. “Wazzup? I got lotsa hotties here. Come show us some looove.”
“You gonna remember this conversation in the mornin’?”<
br />
Braige laughed. “Damn, dude, you sound waaaay sober.”
“Braige,” I snapped. “Walk outside. Now.”
“Ohhh shit. Okay, hold on.” The music in the background faded to a dull bass. “All right, man, I’m outside,” he said, sounding marginally more sober.
“I need you to watch the shop for a week or two.”
“Dude.” He sighed. “Surf’s up in Tahiti, man. Big storm coming. You know this. I told you me and the boys are flying out. Call your leather lady.”
“Can’t, Kendall’s busy.” I upped the ante. “I’ll let you use my equipment.”
“Whoa.” Pause. “Seriously?”
“Yeah.” Fuck. “Seriously.”
“Only one board?”
“Make a couple.” He could make ten for all I cared at this point.
Braige laughed. “Must be some hot chica, brah.”
I didn’t answer.
He laughed harder. “All right, I’m cool. I’m on it, man. When do you need me?”
“Startin’ tomorrow. And before you make the deposits each night, take your usual cut.” Braige lived to surf and nothing much else was important to him but he’d never fucked me. He’d watched the shop plenty of times, just never for this long. If I’d had another choice besides closing the place, I would’ve taken it.
“Cool, cool. You got it. This a new number or something? If I need to reach you?”
“Yeah.”
“Alright, brah, later. I gotta get back to the hotties. Keep rippin’.”
“Later.” I hung up and dialed Kendall.
“I’m not leaving.”
I leaned forward to rest my aching arm on the steering wheel. Tired, I played hardball. “Fuck if I care.”
“If you didn’t care, you wouldn’t be calling.”
“Just doin’ Candle a favor.”
“Right.” She snorted. “Because you and Candle are so tight.”
Siren made to get out of the truck. I grabbed her hand then held a finger up. “You got two choices, Kendall. I’ll pick you up and you can have a free vacation or I can call Candle and tell him you aren’t doin’ shit to protect yourself.”