by Sophia Gray
It definitely would have been the first time a woman held my heart in her hands, but I wasn’t about to let anyone know that.
“You’re the boss,” Mick said. “Let us know what the plan is. We’ll be ready.”
“Thanks, Mick,” I told him.
“No problem.”
We hung up, and I was on my way down in the elevator. At the ground floor I looked around, wondering which way I would have gone if I had someone like Skull coming to pick me up. I would have gone out the back and met them in the alley between the building and the parking deck for the next apartment complex over.
I ran through the doorway into the alleyway, and I suddenly felt like I was standing on any of the streets in the industrial side of town. Everything back here was gray and dingy. The road was covered in a layer of filth that just seemed to settle every time it rained or with every passing car or truck. Everything was concrete. Sunlight didn’t quite make it all the way down between the buildings here.
I looked around to see if I could catch a glimpse of anything, but there was no sign of anyone behind the building. If she’d met Skull back here, they were long gone by the time I had even arrived at the apartment building.
“Hey, brother,” an old, scratchy voice called.
I looked around but didn’t see anyone.
“Hey, man,” he said again, and a tall, lanky homeless man stepped out of the shadows. “She said you might come looking for her,” he told me as he approached.
“Who did?” I asked.
“That fine little blonde,” he answered. “She told me to let you know what happened when you showed up,” he said.
“All right, then, what happened?” I asked, a little irritated that he hadn’t just come out and said it yet.
“She got in the car with three other guys. There was a fourth, but he got shot. They stuffed him in the trunk and hauled ass out of here,” he told me.
“Do you know where they went?”
“I didn’t get a good look at which way they went from here, but they turned north up at the next street.” He nodded at where the alley opened up to the road about a block away.
“How long has it been since they left?”
“I don’t know. I’m not too good with time out here, but it couldn’t have been more than maybe ten or fifteen minutes, man. They just left.” He scratched his filthy, matted hair.
“Thanks for the info, man.” I fished out a twenty and handed it to him.
“No. Thank you, man,” he said, smiling and laughing at the money I’d handed him. He was probably going to go get something to take the edge off the heat of the day, maybe take away the ache in his bones from being on the concrete all day.
I hurried to the parking garage and called Mick back.
“That was fast,” he said when he answered.
“Yeah, a guy living by the dumpster out back saw the whole thing. Apparently she was jumped again,” I told him.
“Did he say if she was okay?”
“He made it sound like she was. She took one of my guns and apparently shot one of the guys trying to abduct her. They had to put him in the trunk according to my friend here.” I laughed.
“Right on. Did he happen to see where they went?”
“Yeah, he said he thought they turned north on the next street,” I told him. “Mean anything to you?”
“Yeah. You’re right there by the interstate, right?” Mick asked.
“Yeah.” If they’d gone onto the interstate, I knew there was still a chance of catching up with them. It was a fairly straight highway, and chances were, they weren’t jumping off immediately. It was better than trying to figure out where they were going within the city.
“All right. Rumor has it Skull has a hideout upstate. He’s probably taking her there. He knows we’re on to him. If that’s where he’s going, and he doesn’t have a huge head start, we can still catch up with him,” Mick explained.
“That’s the best news I’ve heard all day,” I told him.
“Good. Now get back here so we can get everyone together. I’ll grab a few guys and meet you outside when you get here. We’ll ride out together and try to catch up with them. Don’t worry. If she’s all right now, she’ll be all right when we get there. Then, you can do whatever the hell you want,” he said with a laugh.
“Yeah, but I think karma may be handling all of that for me right now,” I told him.
“Good.” He killed the call.
I stuffed my phone back in my pocket and hopped on the Roadster. It was time to head back to HQ to get the guys together. We had to hurry. Skull already had at least a fifteen-minute head start, and that gap was widening every minute we weren’t on the road behind him. If we could catch up to him, I knew it would get ugly, but at least we would get Clara back.
I would get Clara back.
I gunned the engine and pulled out of the parking deck. I didn’t know what I intended to do to her once I got her away from Skull. All I could think of clearly was what I was going to do to Skull once we caught up to him. He’d earned every bit of our scorn over the past couple of years, and he was about to face the full wrath of Storm’s Angels, especially after taking so many guys from us.
I wondered what Clara was thinking that very moment. I wondered if it had occurred to her yet how badly she’d screwed up by trying to play both sides of the field on this one. She’d tried to be a double agent, and it didn’t seem to be working out for her.
Now, in an attempt to go back to her old boss, she’d been kidnapped by him, and we were about to be on our way to rescue her. The irony was ridiculous.
The good news was that with her in Skull’s custody, it was less likely anyone would be contacting him to let him know what our next move was. The bad news, of course, was that he probably already knew his boys hadn’t taken out everybody, which meant someone was going to be riding up on his ass at any minute.
Hopefully, we could get to him before word did, and we’d still have some element of surprise. Plus, being one guy down on his ride, we had an advantage over his fire power, or so I was telling myself. I needed all the morale I could get.
We were about to go toe to toe with our biggest rival and the man competing for our reputation of being the toughest, meanest organization on the street. He may have had better weapons, but, like I always said, he didn’t have the balls it took to do what was really needed when the shit hit the fan.
And the shit was about to hit his fan in a big way. He’d taken business from me. He’d taken men from me. He’d even gone so far as to take my old lady from me. I wasn’t having it. I wasn’t going to put up with his shit anymore.
The orders were going to be to shoot to kill. We were going to take out Skull and whoever else was in that car besides Clara. She was going to be the only survivor. If anyone else showed up, we were going to take them down, too.
This was war, and we weren’t about to back down.
The engine roared as I sped away from the apartment building back towards HQ.
“Hey, man, we’ll get her back safe and sound.” Mick offered his encouraging words with a hand on my shoulder once I arrived. He could see how troubled my eyes were when I pulled up. He stood outside with four other members armed and ready on their motorcycles.
Afternoon had begun to turn to night, hurting our chances of catching up to Skull and his men. I looked at my guys, who were waiting to hear some encouraging words from their president, especially after having lost so many men earlier in the day, but I didn’t have anything left in me. This whole mess was really starting to take its toll. Part of me wanted to just throw my hands up and walk away, but I knew I couldn’t do that. I owed it to Clara to go after her.
I couldn’t explain why I owed it to her after everything she’d done, all the trouble she caused, but I felt it deep inside. I owed her another chance. Trust was hard to come by in our line of work, and she’d worked pretty hard to earn mine, despite turning around and stabbing me in the back with it.
But I would have done the same for any of my guys. I understood the relationship she had with Skull.
I walked up to the closed bay door and turned to face the members who were prepared to ride with us in pursuit of Skull and his goons. They had guns strapped to their backs, and they were just waiting on the signal to go. I wanted to make sure we were all on the same page and not just running wild out there on the highway. We needed to handle the situation, get Clara, and come back with minimal deaths. We’d lost quite a few men already.
“All right,” I told the guys, “if we’re going to go, we’ve got to leave now. Skull has Clara. He picked her up at my apartment earlier this afternoon. He’s heading north on the interstate, we believe. He’s got a hideout upstate, and we think that’s where he’s going. Now, look, it’s a couple of hours away, and they’ve probably a good thirty-minute head start or better by now. We’re going to be chasing them down in the dark, but we can do it.”
I looked at their faces, and they still looked lost. I felt like I should have been able to give them some sort of pep talk, but I just didn’t have it in me. I felt just as tired and defeated as they looked. I glanced over at Mick.
“It’s all you,” I told him, patting him on the back as I stepped aside.
“All right, it’s go time. They’ve got a pretty good head start, and it’s getting dark. You know how this works. We’ll ride together. Stick close to each other but keep your distance from them until it’s time to take them down. And remember who we are,” he said. “We’re Storm’s Angels, and we’re going to ride out with Hell on our backs.”
Mick sounded like he was ready to kick some ass, and that seemed to get everyone else in the mood, too. I was just ready to get it over with. I wasn’t going to be happy until I saw Skull dead and Clara back in my arms.
Chapter 20
Clara
So, I knew I hadn’t just had sex with Mason, but my face blushed as I realized I’d had that dream in front of Skull and whoever else was in the car with us. I went to move my hands to cover my flushing face, but they wouldn’t budge. My wrists were tied together. I moved my legs. They were, too.
I lay across the backseat of his sedan, except I wasn’t alone. Two strong hands held onto my bound ankles. I started to piece together what had happened to land me in the backseat of the car.
“I hope you don’t mind,” Skull said. “We had to take some precautions for everyone’s safety.”
“Motherfucker,” I growled.
“Such foul language,” he said in his smooth voice. “I really don’t like what’s happened to you since you’ve been hanging out with those bikers, Clara. We need to work on your attitude once we get you home.”
“Where are you taking me?” I snapped.
“Up the road. Out of the way. We have a lot to talk about.” Behind his calm tone was a dangerous threat. His voice was like a snake coiling itself into a striking position.
“You don’t want to talk,” I told him.
“Why do you say that? Of course I do. You’re one of my most valuable assets. Well, you were until Storm’s Angels got to you,” he said.
I couldn’t see him. I was facing the backseat. But I could feel his eyes through the rearview mirror, staring at me.
Waking up in the back of his car with two of the guys who’d approached me behind Mason’s building, I couldn’t shake the horrible revelation that Mason was right about the attack at the park. If he was driving the car now, it meant he was the driver then.
“You were behind the attack at the park, weren’t you?” I accused him.
“You noticed. Guys, I told you we couldn’t keep it a secret from her forever,” he said.
The other two men in the car chuckled. The one who had been shot behind Mason’s apartment did not. I wondered where he was. Then I remembered all the closing doors when they first put me in the car, and I knew one of them must have been the trunk. We were driving up the road with a dead body in the back of the car.
“Why would you do that?” I asked him.
“Do what?” Skull replied.
“You know what I mean. Why did you have your men come after me at the park and again behind Mason’s apartment? It seems a bit like overkill if you ask me. I was willing to go with you either time,” I explained to him.
“Yes, that’s true,” he said thoughtfully. “But at the same time, Clara, I wanted to make a point.”
“What point was that?” I asked.
“This is a business. Wouldn’t you agree?”
It was frustrating trying to talk to him with my back to him, but I couldn’t manage to turn over. “Yes, I’d agree: this is business.”
“Okay. You were sent to do a job, were you not?” he continued, and I didn’t like where he was going with his questions. He was setting me up to look like I hadn’t done my job for him.
I didn’t answer. All of my smartass answers were gone. This was Skull talking to me this way, treating me like I was some stupid kid who didn’t know any better. I knew better than to try to smart off at him the way I loved to do with everyone else. If I talked to him the way I talked to Mason, the consequences wouldn’t have been pretty. Of course, I was beginning to see that the outcome of this situation wasn’t shaping up too well for me anyway.
“What did I send you in to do?” Skull asked after I didn’t answer.
“You sent me to steal drugs that weren’t there,” I told him. “You sent me to follow faulty intel, just like I warned you it might have been, and it turned out to be a trap.”
“Has that ever stopped you before?” he asked.
“I’ve never gone into a trap like that before,” I answered him. “You’ve never given me half-assed information like you did this time. What happened this time was you got greedy and didn’t think before telling me to act.”
The hands on my leg tightened as a warning for me to watch my mouth, but my anger was starting to boil. There was no watching my mouth now. I didn’t have to rely on my sarcasm. I was just going to let Skull have it for setting me up and sending me in blind.
“So, when you failed to follow up properly on the information I gave you, what happened to you?” he asked. I couldn’t believe it. He was really going to blame me for his fuck up.
“I fell into the trap I’m starting to think you helped set for me,” I said.
“So you got caught,” Skull clarified for me.
“I guess you could put it that way,” I sort of agreed.
“Well, how you would you put it any differently, Clara?” he challenged me.
“Exactly as I did a moment ago. I trusted you, just as I always have, and I walked right into a trap you should have seen from a mile away as soon as you heard that blatant lie about Mason bringing all the drugs back into the Storm’s Angels clubhouse,” I said, trying to put as much blame on him for it as I could. He was right, though. I should have known better than to follow his lead without doing my own research first. We were both too excited about the news we’d heard. He rushed to tell me, and I rushed to take advantage of it.
“You’re a professional thief, right? I thought that was what I’d trained you for,” he said, his tone thick with accusation.
I didn’t respond. I wasn’t going to honor him by acknowledging his accusations while he talked to me like a child. I wasn’t a child. I hadn’t been a child for many years. I was a professional, and I’d done a good job for him, to the point that we were maybe both a little overconfident in my abilities.
“Tell me this, Clara. What good is a caught thief in this business? What good is a thief who’s been identified by her target?”
“No good,” I said lowly.
“Right. No good at all. And to make it worse, you weren’t just caught. You were taken in. You were staying with your captor at his apartment. Did you get any good intel that way?” he asked sarcastically.
“You know I did,” I snapped. “I told you they were on the way to kill you.”
“Yes, about that. I alread
y knew. See, Mason isn’t the only one out there who can plant information on the street. I will tell you this, though. He did move it.”
His last statement sent chills down my spine.
“But it didn’t stop me from getting more of it,” he added.
My stomach turned to ice. My heart stopped. My breath caught in my throat. Someone else had stolen drugs for him, someone who wasn’t me. I wondered if he’d gone and found another young girl off the street. I wondered if he was training her just to be a thief or if he’d used her for anything else first. He was such a pervert with other girls. There were a few I wasn’t even sure were old enough to be in his little inner circle, but I never said anything to him about it because he’d done so much for me.