Property of Drex (Book 2) (Death Chasers MC Series)

by C. M. Owens

  “Get your ass in fucking gear. The last thing we need to do is be late,” Rush snaps.

  I slowly put away the dead phone, and try to wrap my head around what she just said. I’ll have to deal with that later. It’s not a good idea to be distracted right now.

  Fuck.

  Chapter 36

  EVE

  I slowly lower the phone as the barrel of the gun stares me in the face. Well, not the actual barrel, since there’s something else on it… A silencer?

  They say your life flashes before your eyes when you’re about to die. That’s not true. Everything goes fast and slow at the same time, and you feel like your stomach is twisted around a pole.

  He takes the phone from my hand, drops it to the ground, and crushes it under his heavy boot.

  “Good girl,” the guy says, peeking out the crack in the door after we hear the roar of the engines zooming out of the garage.

  At least I got to say what I’ve been holding back. I wish I hadn’t held back now. The lone tear that rolls down my cheek isn’t for my own life. It’s for the redhead on the carpet who is slowly bleeding out, dying right in front of my eyes.

  Colleen wasn’t nice to me when I got here, but she definitely redeemed herself when I was in the hospital. Her eyes meet mine with tears running as she stays paralyzed in place, frozen in death’s embrace as she tries to silently apologize.

  She had to have let him in, probably at gunpoint. The Death Dealer tat on his left bicep lets me know what this is about.

  I could scream. I could have told Drex what was going on—or tried to. I could do anything other than stand here, and there’s no doubt in my mind someone would kill this man. He’s outnumbered.

  But how many would die in my place before he went down? My life isn’t worth risking someone else’s. Colleen is already going to die because of me.

  He shoves the gun against my cheek, and I tense so tightly that my teeth start to hurt as he peers out the crack in the door again. He leans back and pulls out his own phone, and I watch as he glances down at Colleen.

  “Hey, it’s me. Drex is gone, the girl is with me, but I had to shoot the redhead who runs the salon. She made a grab for my gun.”

  Colleen’s eyes water more, and she starts to gurgle her own blood, doing something with her hand under the bed that I can’t see. I start to go to her side, but a cry of pain escapes me when the gun drops and digs into the flesh between my neck and chin, pressing up until it feels like I’m choking.

  “Yeah. Not here. Can’t I just kill her up here like Herrin wants?”

  He glares over at me like he’s expecting me to say something in protest, but I don’t give him the satisfaction of making another sound.

  “Yeah. I get it. He’s your brother and you want some revenge. Just don’t tell Herrin I went along with this. Give me a distraction so I can get her out the door without anyone seeing.”

  He hangs up the phone and glances over at Colleen. “Sorry, Red. Wrong place wrong time.”

  She laughs. She freaking laughs while choking on blood, and I watch as she brings her phone out from under the bed and winks at me. The guy doesn’t notice, but I do. He’s busy staring out the crack while driving that gun into my skin more, forcing me up on my tiptoes as my head angles back against the wall.

  I hope she didn’t call Drex. He could get killed. Or the others could get killed. Maybe they’ll just get here in time to save her life.

  The bullet wound is in her side, and she moves her hand down to hold pressure on it.

  Something happens somewhere, because the chairs scrape loudly across the ground below, and the sound of hurried footsteps drive away. The guy with a gun grabs my hair and starts dragging me out the door, rushing down the stairs so fast that I almost fall down.

  He slings the door open, still dragging me with him, but now that the gun isn’t under my chin, I start fighting, clawing at his hand while screaming.

  “Bitch,” he growls, clamping a hand over my mouth just as my knee comes up and collides with his balls.

  He loses his hold on me as he stumbles backwards, and I dive for the door, only to feel my hair being ripped back again as my back lands into a hard body and my feet come off the ground. Someone has lifted me, and another disgusting hand comes over my mouth.

  I try to bite into the flesh, even manage to draw blood, but all I hear is a sadistic laugh as I struggle in vain.

  “She’s feisty. No wonder Drex has lost his fucking mind. Girl is probably damn good in bed.”

  I don’t know the voice, but it isn’t the same guy who was holding a gun on me, considering he’s hobbling toward the SUV that is parked just down the street from the warehouse. Something loud crashes from behind the warehouse, letting me know the guys are being played and misdirected.

  The guy holding me tosses me into the open door in the backseat, and I immediately try to push out on the other side, but the door doesn’t open.

  A rumble of laughter spreads through the backseat just as the engine starts, and I turn to see a semi-familiar face. He almost looks like—

  “You’re not as pretty as I was expecting, given all the fuss,” the asshole says as the SUV zooms out of the alley.

  He’s big and tall, but it’s his eyes that have haunted me, even though they’re not exactly the same.

  “Where are we doing this?” the driver I kneed in the balls asks.

  “Let’s head to the club. I’ll fuck her in the backseat while you play the lookout, and then we’ll tie her fucking body up on the flagpole. It’ll make a bigger statement than leaving her dead in Drex’s bed like Herrin wanted.”

  My eyes land on his gun, but it’s holstered to his side. The chances of me stealing it at the moment are slim.

  “Don’t even think about it, bitch,” he taunts, actually giving me a dark, menacing smile.

  My eyes jerk away, and I start searching for my next plan. Just as we turn on a back alley road, the SUV jerks to a halt. My entire body slams against the driver’s seat as the driver curses.

  “The fuck is this shit?” the guy beside me snaps.

  I look out the front windshield as a girl with long blonde hair smiles and waves at us, sitting on top of her car’s hood like she’s just chilling in the creepy alleyway with her car blocking the passage.

  Oh shit. That’s Sarah…

  “Is that Snake’s girl?” the guy beside me barks.

  He throws the door open, just as the driver sucks in a breath. “Lester, no! She’s a—”

  His words die in his throat when Lester’s body drops to the ground, despite the fact I never heard a sound. Sarah blows the end of her gun that has a silencer on the end of it as well, and she winks at me through the windshield before motioning with her head for me to move.

  I scramble across the backseat, but before I can reach the door, I hear the sound of glass splitting and several grunts come from the driver. I look over to see blood oozing from his chest where four bullet holes are, and I climb out of the vehicle through the open door Lester left behind.

  By the time I round the front, Sarah is already pulling the driver out of the front seat and putting his body next to Lester’s.

  “Hey, Eve,” she says cheerily. “Don’t worry about, Colleen. I’m sure she’ll be fine. I sent the paramedics straight there after I got off the phone with her. I’m sure the guys will hate having to deal with the cops over that, but it is what it is. She’ll be fine though. No one wants someone with DD tat to die on their table, so they’ll work extra hard to save her. Or I’ll make them regret not saving her,” she prattles on, acting as though birds are singing and braiding her hair as she struts back to her car and pulls out a camera, snapping pictures of the dead bodies that are now near my feet.

  “You killed them,” I whisper, searching for anyone who might have seen.

  “They would have killed you,” she chirps while putting the camera back in her car and skipping—yes, skipping—back toward me like we’re two friends meeting fo
r brunch.

  “I can’t believe you shot them in broad daylight,” I go on, looking away from the sight I can’t stomach any longer.

  She frowns while glancing down, but I don’t follow her gaze. I’ve seen enough blood.

  “Yeah, I should have asked questions first. Guess I got trigger happy, considering what they did to my girl and what they planned to do to you. At least I didn’t get stabby.” She smiles like she just said the most brilliant thing ever. “The blood spray is ridiculous when I get stabby and that looks like a new shirt you have on. Hot Topic?”

  I don’t know her at all. I just thought I did.

  “We should probably go before people see the two dead guys,” she points out, smirking when I scramble toward her Audi. “I’m sure the guys have already freaked out and called Drex,” she goes on with her back to me, doing something to the front end of the abandoned SUV before skipping back toward the driver’s seat of her car.

  “If you don’t mind, though,” she continues while shutting the door and squealing tires in reverse, driving us down the alley backwards without looking, “I’d like to show you something before turning you back over to him.”

  I’m too busy trying not to taste my stomach in my throat to do anything other than nod.

  She jerks the wheel and the car slings to the side, leaving the passenger side facing the alleyway once we hit the street, and she hands me a key fob.

  “Lock the doors for me, please,” she says, confusing the shit out of me. I press the lock button like a grateful—

  The loud explosion rattles the car, and jars me out of my own thoughts as I stare down the alleyway in horror at the SUV that just blew up. My eyes go down to the key fob, then back to the SUV, to the bodies that are also on fire now, burning much too fast for a normal sort of explosion. I think. Hell, I don’t know anything about explosions.

  Sarah bursts out laughing before squealing away from the chaos, and I turn to gawk at her as she drives like a bat out of hell down the street.

  “Was that me?” I whisper hoarsely.

  “Yeah. It was. Felt good, huh?”

  I drop the key fob like it’s on fire, and she laughs a little harder.

  “Relax, Eve. They were already dead. The last thing you needed was any prints or hair fibers to be found, since you were just in there. By the way, that was Lester, Jessie’s brother. You remember Jessie? The rapist who Drex put in the hospital? Well, Jessie died two days ago. I can only imagine what Lester wanted to do to you as punishment. You can tell me thank you at any time.”

  I swallow the bile in my mouth before choking out, “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome,” she says proudly, beaming as she continues to drive like a hellion, taking us out of town. “Now you can do me a favor. Tell me all about Marshall Hicks.”

  My head snaps in her direction at the sound of my uncle’s name. “Why?”

  “No questions right now. Just answers, please.”

  “He’s my uncle. My dad’s half-brother—same mother, different dads. Why the hell are you asking about him?”

  She cuts another curve, taking us into another small town, and she zooms down the street.

  “Because I had a friend of mine digging into your family. Sorry. It was when you seemed so out of the loop about your father. I wanted to find out what else he hid, considering the Death Dealers never knew about you, yet Benny and Ben did know. My friend is a hacker like no other, and he found the hidden trail that linked Aaron to his family. By the way, do you know how badass your father was to be able to bury that shit and make it seem like he was a completely different Aaron Marks?”

  “Sarah,” I groan. “My uncle? Why are you asking about him?”

  “Oh. Right. Sorry. It struck me as odd that he was a rich lawyer living in Dallas, when you and your family were hurting for cash. Until I realized he isn’t living in Dallas. He lives just outside of Halo. Guess who employs Marshall Hicks under the table.”

  I’m too busy trying to stave off an inevitable migraine to try and guess anything.

  “Sarah, please have mercy on me.”

  “Your uncle is part of a team of ten lawyers working for the Death Dealers. And I think he set your father up with the accounting job just so he could set him up to take the fall for stealing that money. Then I think the bastard killed your father and had Ben plant the seed in your head that it was Herrin or Drex. Obviously it didn’t work out as Ben intended, but it gives us probable cause to believe your father was legit murdered.”

  Definitely not fighting off that migraine now.

  “And I thought I was the conspiracy theorist. Are you sure?”

  “Marshall is a slow kill kind of guy from what I’ve gathered. He would definitely be behind a plan as elaborate as infiltrating the Hell Breathers, using your connection to them. He’d have heard some whispered rumors of what the boys do with the vehicles, but not the details. He’d know about Cecil, since they’ve had to have numerous talks with anyone working for the boys during an investigation—and there have been many. Marshall is one of the desk jockeys. Not one of the pavement-pounders who comes to the boys. It’d be smart to stay off grid if you’re trying to fuck them over, but stay close enough to fuck them over. And now the feds make sense.”

  “None of this makes sense. My uncle killed my father?” I’m too stunned to even try to process my feelings.

  “That part is still conjecture. I’m talking about the feds make sense.”

  “How?”

  “Because when the feds would lock in on a case and finally have evidence enough to go to court, the criminals in question usually have no choice but to trust their lawyers with all the details they can manage to share, so their lawyers can best defend them. Not to mention they get to read over the probing information the prosecution has gathered as well. See? It’s brilliant. He failed at his attempt to simply take the money and pin it on a patsy. That wouldn’t work twice, so he decided to steal the money-making formula and form his own empire, since it’s shady but not as risky as drugs, guns, or gambling.”

  It runs alongside my theory that a fed would have done it to get the info that way. A lawyer never crossed my mind. I don’t even know what to say. But Sarah does, because she continues.

  “Your uncle has all the makings of a criminal mastermind, but he has bad luck. First there was your father. He recruited him as the perfect scapegoat. A chunk of money goes missing, you blame the man who has immediate access to your accounts. My guess is that the Death Dealers threatened Aaron, and your father was smart enough to figure out it was your uncle. He hacked your uncle’s computer, somehow found the account, and transferred the money back, while also locking your uncle’s access out. If I had to guess, your uncle had a bug in your dad’s work computer to find out account codes to begin with. All your father would have had to do was change the access codes.”

  Mind. Blown.

  Headache.

  “Then there’s you—his second string of bad luck. He recruited Ben as muscle and a scapegoat in case shit went south. Ben assumed all the risks because he wanted the girl, and I’m guessing your uncle is good at selling someone whatever they want. But you got desperate and went to Benny for help. Herrin has been taunting Benny for a while with knowledge of how the feds knew so much about his business and how they broke up a few of his associates’ gambling rings. Benny used you as a bargaining chip, and well, the dominos fell after that.”

  I lean back, sucking in air as we pull up to a crappy one-floor motel that makes my old place look like a five-star hotel.

  “Where are we?” I ask as she turns off the car.

  Only a couple of other vehicles are in the parking lot.

  “My current squatting place. It’s nicer on the inside. Promise. No one here asks questions or eavesdrops. No one here wants to know what you’re doing in a place like this, since they have their own dirty shit going on. Gotta love these places.”

  I get out as she walks toward a door and opens it, motioning f
or me to hurry up. I take in the fact she’s dressed in all black leather like she’s definitely an assassin and dressing the part. Her makeup is heavier than she ever wore it before, and her hair looks even blonder than it did, and it’s cut differently.

  I don’t study her long, because her appearance is the last thing I need to focus on right now.

  “How are you processing all of this?” she asks as she shuts the door behind us. Surprisingly, the inside really is a lot nicer.

  “I’ll let you know when my mind catches up. I need to call Drex.”

  “Not yet. He’ll trace your phone and they’ll come here. I’d rather not have to kill anyone else today.”

  “You’d kill one of them?” I ask in disbelief.

  “Not unless they tried to kill me first. I don’t just let someone point a gun at me without pulling my own trigger, Eve. Speaking of which…”

  She pulls a gun out of her purse and hands it to me—the same one she used to kill Dumb and Dumber. I take it and look at her like she’s sprouted a second head.

  “If anyone walks through that door without knocking three times, shoot them until they drop. Understand? I have to call the hospital to check in on Colleen. When she called me, I heard what was being said and I showed up in time to put a tracer on that SUV. Fortunately I was fishing out some information from a guy nearby. I cut them off at the alley when I realized where they were going.”

  “Why can’t you call from in here?” I ask her as she pulls her phone out of her purse.

  “Because I’m paranoid for one, and for two, I don’t want you hearing who I’m talking to. I trust you, but I also know you well enough that I know you’ll tell Drex anything and trust him with it. Two can only keep a secret if one of them is dead and all that. For now, I have someone on the inside, and I’d like to keep it that way.”

  “Why?” I ask, only because I can’t help myself.

  She raises an eyebrow at me. “Think of how you feel about Drex. That’s how I feel about Jude.”

  “Jude?” I ask, confused.