“Yeah?” Ridley answered with a slight hint of annoyance.
“Annie’s at Hail House,” I told him.
“Goddammit, this is not what I need right now. I’ll be by there as soon as I can, but I’ve got my hands full at the mall right now…motherfucking son of a bitch!”
A scuffle ensued, and I knew Ridley was really in a predicament if he couldn’t even speak.
Ridley was a big guy, over six foot two and two hundred fifty pounds; he could easily fit the description of a giant.
Ridley’s grunt of pain had me running to my bike.
Although I wanted to go to Annie, I knew she would be safe.
Ridley, however, wouldn’t be if the sounds coming from over the line were anything to go by.
Before I got onto my bike, I called one last person who I knew would round up the rest of the boys.
Our president, Peek.
“Yeah?” He growled.
I could hear the whir of the tattoo gun going on in the background, so I knew he wasn’t too busy.
He wouldn’t have answered if there was a client in his chair
His wife would have.
“Ridley’s getting his ass kicked at the mall, and Annie’s at Hail House without me,” I divulged.
“Motherfucker. I’ll get everyone rounded up.”
I hung up, shoving the phone into my pocket as I straddled my bike.
The bike started up with a thunderous roar, and I was accelerating out of the parking lot within moments of the call.
It was five minutes into my drive when Wolf’s bike pulled in behind mine.
I had no clue where he’d come from, but I was happy for his assistance.
I hadn’t seen much of Wolf in the past couple of weeks.
His son was having facial surgery that was supposed to correct something to do with his jaw.
When Wolf’s son, Nathan, had been a young child, he’d been shot in the head by a serial killer who’d been preying on cop’s pregnant wives and family.
Nathan’s real father had died, as had Wolf’s child and wife.
Wolf had taken Nathan in since his father and Wolf had been best friends, and they’d been together ever since.
Nathan took up a lot more time of Wolf’s lately, though, due to his surgery…and I felt like a real shit for not putting in more of an effort with him.
I’d been too busy dealing with my own shit to notice that Wolf looked tired.
I raised an arm at him as a hello, and rode side by side with him until we reached the mall’s entrance, pulling in just in time to see Ridley take a punch to the face by a bruiser that had about a hundred pounds on him.
Although it didn’t seem possible that anyone could be bigger than Ridley.
Another man was behind Ridley on the ground, and yet another was about ten feet behind him peeling himself up off the fucked up gravel parking lot.
Wolf pulled to a stop only feet away from the downed man trying to get up, and I stopped a couple feet shy of the man trying to beat Ridley to a pulp.
Anyone could beat one trained man with enough people, and it looked like the man still standing hadn’t been playing fair.
I picked up the lead pipe that I was fairly sure was responsible for the gash across Ridley’s forearm, and took a swing.
It hit the behemoth in the back, across both kidneys, taking him down to his knees instantly.
I wasn’t against using whatever I could to gain the advantage.
He’d be pissing blood for weeks.
Yes, I could’ve easily taken him down without hurting him, but the son of a bitch needed to realize that he couldn’t fuck with a cop and get away with it. Especially a man belonging to The Uncertain Saints.
“Fuck,” Ridley gasped, putting both of his hands on his knees.
I laughed. “Getting lazy, old man?”
Ridley flipped me off.
“Fuck you. Thanks for comin’,” he growled.
I snorted, pulling the cuffs from my back pocket and putting them onto the goliath before lifting him up to his feet.
“Start walking,” I snapped when he continued to stay hunched forward.
I knew from experience that getting hit in the kidneys hurt like hell, but that was the least of my worries right then.
Wolf was leading his man, cuffed, to the cruiser as well.
It would be a tight fit, but all three men fit like a couple of sardines in a can.
“Alright,” I said, walking back to my bike. “Let’s go get Annie.”
Ridley got into his car and followed me as I hauled ass out of the parking lot to Hail House.
Hail House was a bar and grill owned by Hail Auto Recovery.
It was something they picked up in exchange for a job they’d done for the bank.
They’d done really good for themselves, and as usual, business was booming.
I pulled into the back of the lot, backed my bike into a spot, and started for the front door.
I knew the moment Atticus saw me.
He was working the front door, lazily leaning against the wood beam of the porch.
When he saw me, though, he put the cigarette he was smoking out on the bottom of his shoe and straightened.
“What are you doing here?” He asked casually.
It was anything but casual, though.
It was calculating.
“My girl’s here,” I told him.
His eyebrows rose.
“You didn’t tell her she wasn’t supposed to come here?” He shot back.
My hands gripped into tight fists.
There wasn’t bad blood between the ‘Hail Raisers’, as they referred to themselves, and us.
There was, however, a certain rivalry.
A rivalry that sometimes got taken too far.
This time, however, I wouldn’t be leaving without Annie.
And Atticus knew it.
Which was why, reluctantly, he let me in.
“She’s in the back with your boy,” Atticus said.
I raised a brow at him.
“How’d you know he was one of ours?” I asked.
I truly wanted to know.
There are only two places in all of the area that we would ask our members to take their cuts off out of respect.
At the Hail House and at the police stations.
Not because we were ashamed or anything, but because we were respectful.
You didn’t bring attitude into someone else’s house; which was, essentially, what we were doing.
Although Apple hadn’t worn his. I knew it even without Atticus’ affirmation.
“Boy has a Saint written all over him,” Atticus drawled as I passed.
I nodded at him and went in search of my girl and Drew.
I had high hopes for Apple.
He had a good head on his shoulder, and at the age of thirty-five and some change, I knew he’d seen more than most men his age should have to.
He’d been in the military since he was seventeen and had only gotten out two and a half years ago when an IED took off a good chunk of his right upper arm and a portion of his shoulder muscle.
Although, as I walked towards Apple’s broad back, I couldn’t find a single thing that indicated that he was handicapped in any way.
I knew he trained his body hard to make up for what he saw as his shortcomings.
He was a good man, but he didn’t seem to have a grasp on how to deal with women.
Something I realized moments after walking across the entire damn bar to get to them.
Annie had a cup of something clear in her hand that resembled Vodka.
“What kind of name is Apple?” Annie asked as I walked up to where they were sitting.
Drew’s back went up.
“It’s the kind of name that my momma gave me, and I never questioned it,” Drew semi-snapped. “She taught me that it was what was at the core of a man that
counted. Not a name.”
That’d been somewhat of a sore subject with our newest prospect. The boys teased him relentlessly about his name, and coming from men, it wasn’t anywhere near the same as it was coming from a woman.
A drunk woman, at that.
I hid a smile as I looked down, studying what Annie was wearing.
She had on low riding black jeans that barely covered her curvaceous ass.
A white and black striped shirt
“They should call you Core when you become a member. That sounds a lot more masculine,” Annie continued, unaware of the pot she was stirring.
I came up behind her, and I knew the moment she realized someone was behind her because goose bumps started to pop up all over her arms and exposed back.
“Who’s behind me, Core?” Annie asked with deceptive calm.
The newly christened ‘Core’ turned his head slightly, nodding at me in acknowledgement, then he disappeared without another word.
“You shouldn’t tease a man about his name. It’s not nice,” I told her, caging her in with both of my hands against the table at her side.
She stiffened impossibly more.
“Why are you here getting drunk? Who told you about this place?” I asked, leaning down so my mouth ran along the back of her shoulder.
She shivered.
“I h-heard about it from Lenore,” she whispered.
I smiled against her skin.
“What else did she tell you about this place?” I asked carefully.
I opened my mouth against her skin, and whatever words she was about to assault my ears with, drifted off the tip of her tongue as if they’d never been.
“Mig,” she breathed.
“I’ve missed you,” I told her.
She wouldn’t remember that admission in the morning, so that’s why I felt free to say what I did next.
“And you need to be careful. I have enemies. I make new enemies every day. But as much as I love you, I’ll never expose you to the ugliness of my world. It doesn’t matter how much you beg me. There’ll never be any time that I’ll ever be right for you. It breaks my heart to say this, but you deserve everything. The moon and the fuckin’ stars combined. I wish with everything that I am that I could give that to you, but I can’t. I’m a street fighter who started to use his fists from ten years of age, and I only got worse from there. Your beauty doesn’t belong in my dark world,” I whispered into her ear. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t protect you with my life…and take you out of situations that I know you aren’t safe in.”
She sniffled, and my heart ached even more to know that I caused her to cry.
However, she got up on her own volition, grabbed her keys, and started to walk out the door.
Chapter 10
Fuck the fucking fuckers before the fucking motherfuckers fuck you.
-Text from Annie to Mig
Mig
Atticus’ eyes narrowed on Annie before his gaze snapped back up to me.
He must’ve read the situation, because he didn’t say a word as I walked out the door just as quickly as I’d arrived.
Once outside, Apple caught up with me.
He didn’t stay by my side, but he stayed close enough that if I needed anything I wouldn’t need to yell.
Wolf was still on his bike, gauging the situation.
Annie’s sniffles were making my stomach cramp, but she didn’t say a single word.
Not even when I led her to my bike.
“Are you okay to ride behind me, or do I need to drive your car home?” I asked.
She finally turned to me, and the look on her face had the breath leaving my body.
God, she looked broken.
And I’d done that to her.
I’d given her the green light, just to rip it away from her at the first sign of trouble.
But I wouldn’t budge from this.
At least, that was what I told myself as I helped her onto the back of the bike, mounted in front of her, and rode away.
She didn’t hold on to me on the first half of the way to her home.
The only thing that was touching were the insides of her knees around my hips.
And I found that I didn’t like that.
Really.
But did I have a right to care about that when I didn’t plan to go there with her?
No.
Was I rational when it came to Annie.
Hell no.
I took a corner a little tighter than I usually would, forcing her to wrap her hands around my waist.
She squeaked and scooted forward where she was exactly where I wanted her, and I was finally able to take a deep breath since Drew had called me nearly an hour before.
When I pulled into Annie’s store, I waved at Wolf and Drew as they accelerated past me.
Tonight was my night to watch Annie, anyway.
So I’d drop her off, tuck her in like the guy I should be, and watch from the shadows until my relief came.
“Where’s your bag?” I asked her.
“Upstairs. I brought my key and driver’s license, though,” she answered, getting off and walking to her door.
I followed her, stopping just behind her when she got to the door and unlocked the lock.
What I noticed she didn’t do, however, was unarm her alarm.
“You know the point of that alarm, right?” I asked, leaning against the doorjamb.
She shrugged. “Sure do.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What, you want to get your place broken into? You want another two by four to the head?”
She leaned forward into my space, giving me a clear view of the tops of her breasts.
“I fail to see how having an alarm would keep me safe from two by fours,” she sneered.
I flicked my eyes up to hers, not knowing what to say to her logical words.
I took a deliberate step back until she could easily close the door.
She didn’t.
And I had to force myself not to take another step forward.
“Make sure you arm it from now on,” I growled.
She sighed.
“The number is like, a million numbers long. It’s hard to remember,” she admitted.
I took a step towards her alarm.
“You have the number written down?” I asked.
She nodded, walking to the small kitchen table that was in the middle of the back room, pulling her massive bag off the cluttered mess.
She walked back over, digging into her purse until she unearthed a piece of paper, then handed the bag to me.
I was slightly amazed at how heavy the bag was.
I’m talking nearly twenty-five pounds.
How could any woman find that comfortable to carry?
“What do you have in here?” I asked, watching her punch in the buttons. “Rocks?”
She typed the last number and pointed to it.
“There,” she said. “You have thirty seconds to leave before it starts freaking out.”
I snorted, then started to mess with the system info, holding my hands out for the slip of paper.
She gave it to me, and I punched the numbers in one more time before changing the code completely.
“There,” I said. “Now it’s easy.”
She raised her eyebrow at me in question.
“It’s the numbers of your birthdate, followed by mine,” I informed her.
She rolled her eyes.
That’d been a funny experience.
We’d learned that our birthdays were on the same day, but I had nine years on her.
She’d teased me of robbing the cradle, and I’d informed her that she’d like my type of cradle robbing.
“Will you hand me a pen out of that bag so I can write it down on another piece of paper just in case?” She asked.
I reached blindly into the bag, freezing when I felt the unmistakable feel of a firea
rm.
I pulled the cold metal gun out slowly, raising it up so I could get a good look at it.
“Since when did you start carrying a firearm?” I asked.
She shrugged.
“When I got out of the hospital,” she answered, turning her back on me.
I closed the door, very intrigued to know the answer as to why she felt the need to carry one.
“Do you know how to shoot this?” I asked, holding up the .40 caliber pistol for her inspection.
“Ish,” she wiggled her hand as she made her way to the coffee pot.
I gritted my teeth.
“You don’t know how to shoot it?” I asked with incredulity.
She turned to look at me, noticing the tone that my voice had taken.
“I know how. I just don’t know if I could actually shoot anyone,” she explained.
I growled low in my throat, handing the gun back to her.
“Show me how to unload it,” I instructed her.
She took the gun, and I could immediately tell she didn’t use it anywhere near as much as she should if she’d planned on carrying it for protection.
She bit her lip, pulling the plump softness in between her teeth.
I watched, cock straining to attention, as she slowly expelled the magazine from the gun, then jacked the bullet from it.
The bullet that was in the chamber hit the floor, and she bent down slowly to pick it up.
I used her inattention to snatch the gun away from her, followed shortly by the clip, loading it and having it ready to fire in less than six seconds.
“Now what?” I asked.
She glared.
“I didn’t know I needed to prepare to have you take it from me,” she snapped.
I laughed.
“No guy who wants your gun is going to tell you he’s about to take it,” I informed her dryly.
She pursed her lips, crossing her arms over her ample chest and glared.
With one last look, I handed her the gun and left without another word.
This would be one long night.
***
I was going to die.
Like really, seriously going to die if I had to listen to one more minute of this torture.
I was fucked.
Well and truly fucked.
I’d had the inside of Annie’s place wired when she’d moved out of her old house and into the back of her store.
So that meant I not only had a visual but also an ear into what happened in Annie’s place.
Jack & Coke (The Uncertain Saints Book 2) Page 7