by Paula Cox
“D-Do something,” Phillip gasped. He tried to lift his arms to point to one of the goons, but they barely made it a foot up before collapsing back onto his lap. Those glossy eyes twitched to Nash, and with his last deep breath, he hissed, “J-Just kill him…”
The room was quiet, peaceful even, as Phillip slumped over in his chair, and Nash remained unmoved as one of the goons darted over to check his pulse. When the burly black haired lackey was satisfied that his boss was alive, he rounded on the spot to glare at Nash. Oh, if looks could kill—Nash would have been more than six feet under.
“How do we even know you’re wearing a wire?” he barked, and Nash sensed the other goon shifting behind him. There was the slight creak of the hardwood floor, the rustle of cloth fabric as he moved his arms. Holding the man’s gaze, Nash reached into the top of his shirt and pulled out the microphone portion of the wire, displaying it to both men with the best shit-eating grin he could muster.
“Keep talking, boys,” Nash goaded. “I bet the pigs want to record as much of your involvement as they can get.”
The two goons looked at each other dumbly, lacking the nuance that the other pair had to have full conversations without saying a word in front of Nash. He tensed, waiting for them to spring to action, and at the slightest movement behind him, he lurched forward and grabbed the nearest open bag of coke. Without hesitation, he flung the bag at the guy on the other side of the desk, effectively blinding him with a dangerous combo of a potent drug and a powerful sedative, and then turned back to deal with goon number two.
Nash managed to dodge the first swing, the second, and even the third. He nailed the guy right in the gut with one punch, then brought his knee up for the final blow to his nose. There was a sickening crack when his knee collided with cartilage, and his attacker went down with a groan. A very solid body hit the floor seconds later as his partner hacked and swiped at his face, and Nash searched the fallen grunt for a weapon. Nothing. Not even a knife around his ankle.
“What the fuck are you doing, Crest?” Nash muttered, pushing the dazed goon back down and straightening up. “At least give these guys a fair chance here…”
The fair chance came when the guy Nash thought he’d already incapacitated flung himself across the room and tackled Nash to the floor. For such a big guy, he definitely came out of nowhere. But he was still struggling to see with all that coke powder smeared across his face, probably in his eyes, and Nash used just about every dirty trick in the book to get the guy on his back, then slammed his skull against the ground hard enough to send him to the dream world. He waited for a few long moments to make sure the guy was actually out, his chest heaving, and his breath coming fast from the exertion.
When he was sure his opponent was down for the count, Nash wiped his face to get any remaining residue off. He’d never been a powder drug kind of man, and he wasn’t about to start now when he needed his faculties as sharp as ever.
There was no telling how long Phillip’s boys would be out for, but Nash took a few minutes to do a sweep of the office, wishing he had more time to gather the evidence he needed. As of right now, the wire basically had a confession recorded on it, but he wanted a paper trail to link Phillip Crest to the hitmen who executed all those Steel Phoenixes last year. Unfortunately, he had to abandon the file cabinet at the first sound of groaning. It was conscious groaning, the rekindling of awareness, and he wasn’t in the mood to go for round two with these guys.
Abandoning the tainted drugs, Nash made a run for the door, only to come to a biting halt as soon as he yanked it open. Outside the room were about a dozen guys, all of them armed with assault rifles. Dressed in black as if they were some fucking elite Black Ops squad, they straightened up at the sight of Nash’s disheveled appearance—obviously something was wrong.
“Fuck,” he hissed, and just as the bullets started to fly, he slammed the door shut and pushed the nearest cabinet over to block it. Bullets blew holes in the wood, in the walls, and he dove for cover behind Phillip’s desk. Covering his head with an arm, he grabbed the microphone wire and brought it to his mouth, then hissed, “You guys planning on intervening anytime soon, or you just gonna wait until they fill me with lead first?”
Chapter 46
Phillip’s goons practically blew the guy’s office the shreds. As Nash hid behind his desk, he wondered if any of them even considered that their boss was inside, slumped over on his chair, completely vulnerable to all that gunfire. Hell, he wondered if they even cared. Hands over his head, the lone Phoenix waited, unable to fight fire with fire in this instance, and he suddenly realized that perhaps Phillip hadn’t given the men in the room guns on the off chance that Nash might overpower them.
Well…
No. Phillip wasn’t that great at foresight. He was a shrewd man, and if he tried this takeover in a town with a less established motorcycle club, maybe he would have been even more successful. As it were, his biggest mistake was trying to steal Blackwoods from the Steel Phoenixes. He could hire as many guys as he wanted, but this was a Phoenix town, from the tip-top north end luxury homes to the southern-most rundown industrial warehouses, the Steel Phoenixes ran this town.
And they proved that. He was only left to cower for two minutes or so, the walls and furniture and windows shredded by gunfire, until his reinforcements arrived—and they definitely weren’t the cops.
No, the cops had put a wire on him. Somehow they’d known something big was about to go down that night, and they’d followed Nash with the intention of getting in on the action. Not wanting to spend the night in jail, Nash floated the idea of him wearing a wire, and they could listen and gather evidence, enough to strike Phillip Crest down where he stood, preferably while he was cutting some bullshit ribbon in the name of the university that employed him.
However, as soon as Nash left police custody, all his drugs intact, he contacted his crew back at the bar via text, and minutes later one of their few tech geniuses hacked the feed so that they could hear every word he said, not the police. Nash then fled the scene before the cops realized something was wrong, knowing he’d have to deal with them some other day but preferring that it wasn’t today. Not when so many important things hung in the balance—namely ensuring Eliza’s safety and making the Phoenix killer pay.
So as he drove, he fed the Phoenixes directions to the warehouse, acting like the fucking Pied Piper to all the city’s rats. His boys followed him, lowliest delivery runner to the highest rider. All but Micky, he hoped, who’d be back at the bar making sure nothing happened to Eliza.
And making sure Eliza didn’t do anything stupid like try to follow the herd.
Nash waited patiently as new gunfire joined the fight, a chorus of men’s voices screaming at one another rising over the din. Slowly but surely, the roar settled to just a din, then to nothing, as the firefight no doubt moved from the hall in front of Phillip’s office to the rest of the facilities. For all the fuck-ups Phillip had made, choosing this location wasn’t one of them. The abandoned warehouse sat on sprawling grounds. It was a fenced in area, easy for him to control, and there were plenty of places to have an epic fight, guns blazing, before sunrise tomorrow morning.
As he padded toward the door, stepping over chunks of wood and wall insulation, Nash hoped the fight wouldn’t last until sunrise. The Phoenixes were efficient killers, but he had no idea how many creeps Phillip had skulking around the property.
He held his breath as he waited by what was left of the office door, peering through the holes as best he could. Smoke spiraled up from fallen bodies, or maybe it was the dust whirling down from the ceiling. Whatever it was, the hall outside looked like a total fucking warzone. He clenched his teeth at the sight of a fallen Phoenix, but for the most part, the bodies covering the ground were unfamiliar to him.
It would have been easy just to burst out and join the fight, but Nash knew better. He had to be cautious, to be patient. He waited almost too long, until his body hummed with adrenaline and
his legs trembled with anticipation. Finally, Nash pushed the door open, careful to get around the creaks and groans, and slipped into the hall.
Blood marred the floor, a sea of red staining the off-white linoleum. Once, when he first started in this business, the sight of so much blood would have made his stomach turn. Sure, he’d always been a big guy—tough exterior and all that—but graphic violence like that, in person, was enough to make anyone queasy. Now it was something he could ignore, something he could breeze by and pretend it wasn’t there. The smell was something he’d never be able to get past, the metallic scent thick and lingering, the kind that clung in his nose for days after something like this.
Not that he had been to many bloodbaths by any means. This was a special occasion.
He moved cautiously through the scattered bodies, careful not to step on anyone who might just be stunned or knocked unconscious. When he saw the opportunity, he grabbed a gun out of one of the dead men’s hands, checked for ammo, then stuffed another handgun into the back of his pants, just in case. The echoes of gunfire rang on somewhere else in the building, which told Nash that this fight was far from over.
Were these all Phillip’s men? Despite the blood and bullet holes, their faces were unrecognizable. Probably not local boys, as he’d suspected earlier, and it seemed a shame they had to come to Blackwoods just to die.
Shaking his head, Nash hurried off to join the fight, not wanting to leave his brothers to deal with Phillip Crest’s hired help alone. He found the firefight shortly after, with the Phoenixes trying to retake the higher ground as strangers climbed up metal stairwells and shot down at them from walkways above. Gun loaded and safety off, Nash found his place and picked off all the men that he could, knowing in that moment it was an “us or them” sort of situation.
Of course, there would be trouble for them in the future. The Steel Phoenixes planned to clean up the mess they left at the warehouse, but all the evidence against Phillip was going to the police. They couldn’t, however, leave any traces that they were the ones who killed the hired help. It was going to be a big cleanup tomorrow, but it’d be worth it. Once they had Phillip in their custody, it would all be worth it.
No one could ever predict a shootout. Men scattered. Sometimes Nash was shooting with fellow Phoenixes, and other times he was flying solo, darting out of danger just in the nick of time. Bullets whizzed by his ears, the hum of metal flying by a sound he could never shake.
But eventually the fighting died down. The gunfire grew more intermittent, and everywhere Nash went, he was finding more familiar faces than not, his Phoenixes in better spirits each time he ran into them. Eventually, all that was left was to clear the building, then it was time to get out for a while, to collect their wounded and dead so that the people who actually cleaned crime scenes like these could get to work.
He was crossing the open lot outside when he finally saw some faces he knew better than most. Hammond. Toby. Most of the old boys who had been around the longest, the ones who had threatened to kick his ass to the curb if he didn’t find out who was making Phoenixes drop like flies. They’d come out to help him in his time of need. They’d come to exact revenge. They’d come for retribution for their fallen brothers. He couldn’t help but smile.
Blood splattered his white t-shirt, some of it his own, some of it from other men. His body ached. He desperately needed a shower, and he couldn’t wait until he was stripped down and clean, climbing into bed beside Eliza and curling up beside her warm supple body. The sky was finally clear, dark and full of twinkling stars. A gentle breeze brushed his face. In the distance, his boys waved at him, and he waved back, a wave of exhaustion passing over his body.
And then he heard it—but it was too late to do anything. A shot. A single, solitary shot fired from a rifle probably. The whiz of the bullet, its hiss almost too loud. It pierced his shoulder before he had a chance to run, to turn, to do anything. Pain radiated from one side to the other, blooming across his chest and surging down his arms. And the pain wasn’t the only thing to travel down.
He’d never been shot before, but as he crumpled to the ground, he had an image at the back of his mind of him rising victoriously, like a phoenix from the fucking ashes, and making the most epic headshot known to man. That’s what happened in the movies, but not in real life, apparently. Because when he went down, he stayed down, and suddenly the once quiet night was alive again with chaotic gunfire and shouting.
Only Nash drifted farther and farther away from it with each passing second, until suddenly his world was as black as the night sky.
Black, but starless.
Chapter 47
Eliza had never been at the hospital this often in her life. Sure, she saw the doctor the normal amount over the years, usually for an annual physical and the occasional uncomfortable gynecological exam that she felt she didn’t need, but as she rushed through the hospital doors that morning, knowing Nash was somewhere in the building, wounded, she wished she didn’t have a reason to be there.
After Nash had left her with his friend Micky at the bar sometime last night, Eliza was situated up in the office away from the clamor of the rowdy bikers. While Micky wasn’t exactly a frightening figure, he had the good sense to assume she’d be uncomfortable with fifty burly strangers all in various states of drunkenness. While she’d been grateful for the buffer between her and the chaos downstairs, she had wished she could be involved in the decision-making. Not that she had much to contribute or anything, but it felt wrong not having a say in what happened to Nash while he was out there trying to take down a man who’d been framing—and ordered an attack on—her father.
When things returned to a dull roar, Micky came up and explained everything that had happened. Almost two hours after Nash left her, his kiss still lingering on her lips, she learned that he’d been pulled over by the cops and loaded with a wire. Apparently the police had their own suspicions about all the murderous activity taking place in Blackwoods over the last few months, and they figured the Steel Phoenixes were their way in to finding a solution.
Micky had explained that they had a guy in the club who could hack into the microphone feed so that the Phoenixes could listen to everything that went down between Nash and Phillip Crest before the police did, and if she wanted, she could sit in the room and listen to the proceedings.
Eliza had never agreed to anything so fast in her life.
And so, she had listened. She’d listened to his heartbeat, his heavy breathing. She’d listened to Nash being taken hostage and being taunted by the man whose birthday and Christmas cards were tucked away in Eliza’s keepsakes box under her bed. She’d listened to Phillip taking the cocaine laced with sedatives, the scuffle that followed, and the intensive gunfire that happened after. Nash’s plea for backup. The ensuing battle. She’d listened to it all with tears in her eyes and her heart pounding in her chest.
It went on for hours. Sometimes she had wanted to leave, especially when it all sounded most dire for Nash, but she stayed through it all. Even when her head was heavy with weariness, Eliza sat in the same chair all night and well into the early morning, praying that each minute spent listening to Nash wouldn’t be the final moment.
And then it had happened. The shot. The groan of pain. The heavy fall to what she assumed was pavement. The wire lost its feed then, and Micky had to physically hold her back from rushing out the door of the bar to find him.
“The boys’ll look after him,” he had assured her. “He was breathing after the hit. I’m sure he’s fine.”
And so she waited. She’d fallen asleep for fifteen minutes around dawn, only to awake with a startled inhale, eyes fluttering wildly as if those fifteen minutes had made her forget where she was. Once again Micky made her wait, forcing her to eat some take-out breakfast bagel and slurp down some tea before she went anywhere. The fighting was over, apparently, and by seven in the morning she hailed a cab and went straight to the hospital.
It was the same hospit
al where her father was still recovering. Nash had apparently been dropped off about two hours prior to her arrival, but only now had anyone let Micky know that he was awake and able to see any visitors.
She’d rushed through the hospital’s main entryway in a flurry of sleep-deprived panic, totally bypassing the information desk in the process. It wasn’t until she had reached the elevators that she realized she had no idea where she was going, and Eliza turned away when the metal doors hissed open, off to find out exactly which room Nash was staying in. When pressed, Eliza said she was family, though she refused to get any more specific than that.
After a bit of searching, the information nurse sent her up to the third floor where Nash was set in a private room with a police officer in front of it. They made eyes as she approached, Eliza a little wary and him a little tense, but when she explained she was his girlfriend, the officer let her pass. With the door open, she forced herself to stop and ask, “Is he under arrest?”
The officer’s lips set in a thin line before he said, “Not technically. We’ll just need to ask him a few questions.”