Milton walks back in and sets a folder on the table, along with a mug of coffee for himself. He sits in front of me, clicking his pen repeatedly as he opens the folder to read over the papers.
“I need your side of what happened in Beaver Falls,” he says, never looking up from the papers.
Ah, the biker bar.
“I was accosted,” I state.
He keeps clicking his pen and nodding.
“What were you doing in Beaver Falls?” he looks up, locking eyes on me.
“Business.”
One corner of his mouth pulls up.
“Which business?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I smile.
The relationship between the Plantain Police and Warrior of the Gods is an odd one, we need each other but dislike each other too. We keep the city safe really, we don’t allow shit to go down here and we never shit on our doorstep. Regardless, sometimes trouble followed us here. We needed the cops who inadvertently fed us information, because any news was spread around here like a wild fire. Although I’m not sure who exactly, I know we have insiders. When my dad got busted, I knew Sr. Milton purposely withheld evidence when the FBI took the case. Despite Sr. Milton and Dad hating one another, he owed him. In their early twenties Sr. Milton’s sister was raped in Coral Groves, a town not far from here. It’s where all the college kids hang out, and my dad stumbled onto it while in progress, and beat the shit out of the guy. My dad took Milton’s sister to the hospital, and called her parents. I won’t go as far as to say that my dad tracked the guy down and killed him, but we all know that guy did end up in an abandoned building with his throat slit. Generations don’t forget that shit, time can go on but bloodlines don’t erase the history. So whether we don’t like each other or not, our pasts won’t let us forget we’re linked.
“Would you like to file charges against the man in Beaver Falls?” he asks.
“No.”
Milton writes on the paper and clicks his pen...again.
“A patron called the police at the bar, of course they saw the guy with the blood pouring from his face, cops took it upon themselves to watch the security video, saw you, Rocket, and Smokey and thought I might want to take care of it. The guy’s not pressing charges.”
“I wouldn’t think so.”
Like what biker is about to take a woman to court for kicking his ass?
“Do anything else while you were there? See anyone I mean.”
I look in his eyes, my expression blank and he begins to look uncomfortable after a moment, his eyes diverting from mine.
“No.”
The fact that he can check the prison records, if he hasn’t already to see if I’d been there, was silly to lie about, but it wasn’t any of his business.
“Okay, thanks Maven, appreciate you coming down on short notice, just didn’t want to have this sitting on my desk.”
This is all he wanted to talk about? This could have been asked at my office or calling me and asking me to come up, this didn’t require an escorted meeting in an interrogation room. Which further makes me wonder who’s behind the mirror.
“I’ll give you a ride back,” Milton says as we walk out the front doors.
I see Smokey still sitting on his bike. He’s leaning against a black Ford F150, with his arms bent on the open window talking to the driver.
“No, I’m good.”
Without looking back, I walk over to the passenger side of the truck and get in. Sven and Smokey both look at me for a second, before Smokey moves away and starts his bike. The Who’s – “My Generation” is playing on the radio as we begin down Main Street, and Sven turns it down as he speaks.
“All good?”
“Yup,” I reply, looking out the window.
“Beaver Falls?”
“Patron called the cops.”
He then turns the radio back up, and we sit in comfortable silence the rest of the ride. When we pull into the president’s reserved spot, I reach for the door handle, but his hand covers mine. I look over but he’s not looking at me, his eyes on the clubhouse in front of us.
“He’s a good guy. A man,” he tells me.
I furrow my brows, unclear on who ‘he’ is. My eyes then follow his line of sight to see Dornan standing with Joey talking. They both seem anxious, Dornan’s brows are furrowed, something he does when he’s stressed. The urge to rush to him, to know what’s wrong, overwhelms me.
“I know,” I reply.
Sven finally looks over at me.
“You’re good for him, always have been. You put his head in the right space, he needs that.”
Did Missy tell Sven about our talk earlier? Or has Dornan confided in his dad like I had with his mom? I really don’t know what to say, but I nod and Sven lets go of my hand, giving me a soft smile. As soon as we exit the truck, Joey and Dornan approach us, the worry on both their faces now.
“We’ve got a problem,” Dornan says. “The Steel Axes want seven hundred guns now, not five hundred. They want the other two by tonight or there’s no deal.”
Steel Axes are a black gang, they’re who we sell guns to, and they in turn sell to whoever’s demanding.
“Shit,” I sigh.
“We got any insight on the Durango compound?” Sven asks.
“Just talked to Chilly and he’s going to get all the intel he has and get back to me. We gotta do this job quick.”
“Let everyone know we’re going to gathering,” Sven replies.
5
With a long look Dornan watches me, before heading around the club to corral everyone. I go inside and make my way for the basement, this is where most of our equipment for jobs is stored, including my laptop. Heading into the gathering room, I plop down in my seat and begin trying to hack into Durango. This is a bad idea, I don’t like doing a job on a rush, no one does, but going in basically blind is scary as fuck. I’m so engrossed in what I’m working on, that I don’t notice the room fill and draw quiet until Sven begins to talk. Still I remain focused on making progress, and not liking what I’m seeing.
“What’s the word from Chilly?” Sven asks.
“Says the place usually has twenty-five to thirty people there at all times, heavy security but there’s a shift change at midnight. Our best bet is to try and get in then,” Dornan answers.
“Maven,” Sven says.
“Security is heavy for sure. Cameras, dogs, fences, key code entry to all the doors, looks like the guards patrol one certain building which I assume holds the goods, the area is so large there is a possibility for us to get in when the two guards are on opposite sides of the building, but we just need to coordinate our exit with that too.”
Sven heaves a heavy sigh. “This is gonna be dangerous, more dangerous than usual. I need everyone who’s on board to be in this one hundred percent, I need everyone on alert, if you think you can’t, say it now.”
Looking up to notice for the first time, that Drag’s here...with two black eyes and a cut on the bridge of his nose. He hasn’t been around much lately, and thinking back to the last time I saw him was at the tavern after our last job...when he tried getting me to go home with him. When Dornan looks around the table and locks eyes with Drag, Drag immediately looks away. There’s my answer, Dornan must’ve beat him up. It can’t be over him trying to pick me up, or could it? But I don’t have the time to analyze that now, or my head will explode.
“Everyone be ready by eleven,” Sven ends.
I continue to work on the security as the guys wander out. Unsure how much later, Dornan walks in again and sets a bottle of water beside my laptop, placing his hand on my shoulder and giving it a squeeze. I look up at him and there’s something in his eyes, like he wants to say something, but is debating on whether he should or not.
“Not sure I want you on this one,” he says softly.
The tone of his voice hits straight to my gut, and instantly makes me ache. “But we need you,” he adds, his eyes trailing down my face to my lips
.
“I’m good for tonight,” Joey says entering and sitting down across from us. “Katie was cool with it.”
Both Dornan and I look at him with question.
“Well, she doesn’t know the job but she was fine with me not being home ‘til later,” he amends.
The three of us sit in silence, the sound of my keyboard clicking and Dornan’s text messages firing off fill the space.
“I think I got it,” I suddenly say, causing the two men to lean closer.
“There’s a thirty-five second window for us to get in the door to the warehouse, I can set it up on my phone to unlock when we’re there. But the doors lock automatically from the inside too so when we leave I have to manually do it.”
Dornan runs a hand over his face and takes a long look at me, then Joey.
“We got this man,” Joey shrugs.
There’s a rock in the pit of my stomach, I’m still not happy about this. We don’t know the layout of the grounds or the inside, and we can’t be certain the building we’re going to actually stores the guns.
The three of us, Smokey, Rocket, and Drag, go down to the basement and get our gear together. Unlike normal jobs, we all grab a gun and some clips of ammo. There’s an uneasiness hanging in the air, and no one talks as we prepare for the unknown. Even as we leave the club, Sven has a look of worry etching his features. Chain who is normally quiet and rarely speaks, tells us ‘good luck,’ and that just freaks me out even more.
Just as we’ve always done, we double check our gear as I hack into the Durango server. Turning on our pre-paid unregistered burner phone, to set up the system for the automatic locks, then we wait as Rocket drives us. We sit in the van until midnight, Rocket’s parked up a hill on the back end of the warehouse, out of the view of cameras. I’m not able to get into the system to shut those down, but make sure the flood lights go off when we make our way down to the doors, and hopefully no one will notice since it will be shift change. Drag scales the cement block wall and clips the barbwire, before jumping down and running low towards the massive building at the bottom of the hill. Joey goes next and waits for me on the other side of the wall to make sure I clear it, before we both run down to meet Drag. I remove my glove to work the touch screen of my phone, making sure to cover the screen the best I can to not bring attention to ourselves, even though I don’t see anyone on the grounds. The door clicks, and Drag holds it open as we make our way in. Smokey just makes it, but Dornan’s still ten feet away and running towards us as a red light begins to flash beside the door, signaling that the alarm’s about to go off if it stays open any longer. Dornan signals for us to go and Smokey closes the door, leaving Dornan outside and we all stand still for a moment taking in the surroundings. The building appears empty, but we can hear men talking somewhere not far from us, the voices echoing in the large space. At first glance, the inside mimics a massive home improvement store. With its rows of huge steel storage shelves that have to be at least fifty feet high and seventy feet long, filled with wood freight containers. Joey signals for us to split up and meet back in ten minutes, this is going to be difficult since we don’t know where the hell we’re going.
Smokey and I split to the left, quickly glancing down the aisles, looking for crates that will signal us to where the guns are. The Durango people use color coded labels on their crates, and Chilly told Dornan the ones we need have a blue and green mark of spray paint on the front. We’ve gone down twenty or more rows before my eyes land on the colors, I tap Smokey’s arm and we halt. Moving down the aisle towards the crates, they’ve already been opened, and the tops are just sitting on the boxes thank God. As I reach for the bag inside my sweatshirt, I’m startled as I hear a pop then a zip and another pop…gunfire. Smokey pushes me back and out into the main aisle, as he removes his gun from the back of his pants and aims to fire. But before he can get a round off, he grunts and steps back, falling onto his ass. Grabbing the sleeve of his sweatshirt, I try pulling him towards me but he’s too heavy. He groans and has his hand pressed to his chest, blood seeping over it.
The gunfire stops and I look down the row at two men reloading their handguns, a good fifty feet from us. I take that moment to put my forearms under Smokey’s armpits and pull him back, but before I can make any progress, they start firing again. Smokey groans at the same time I feel the impact of another bullet entering his body. There’s shrapnel from the bullets hitting the crates, sending fragmented chunks of wood everywhere, the scent of gunpowder thick in the air as the shots intensify. Smokey’s arms are limp so he can’t return fire, instead, I grab his gun while removing mine from the back of my jeans and stand. Walking forward a few steps as the men approach, still aiming and firing their weapons towards us. Bullets ricochet all around me. Hoping no more hit Smokey, my fingers squeeze the trigger four times in total. Hitting both their chests and the center of their foreheads, and dropping them immediately.
When I turn back, Smokey has blood coming from his mouth. With renewed strength and adrenaline, I’m able to crouch down and pull him back towards a door behind us, while he uses his legs to help me. I hear other voices and gunshots, along with dog’s barking in the direction Joey and Drag had gone, it’s like the sound is all around us. The doors are locked, so without thinking, I grab my black baggie and in two seconds the locks are picked and we’re in a dark room. There’s a window too high for me to lift Smokey, maybe if I push a table under it, I can try to get him up to it.
“V,” I hear Smokey choke out, before I can turn, huge arms wrap around my chest and pull me away from the window. Someone grabs me, lifting my feet off the ground with their strength. One arm moves up around my neck in an attempt to put me in a chokehold, and I kick the person in the knee with my heel, then slam my fist into his crotch. He drops me to my knees, as he staggers back a few feet. My back is still to him when he comes at me again, my hand wraps around the handle on my knife inside the ankle of my boot. With all my might, I swing back, lodging my blade into the side of his neck. The man begins to choke and drops onto me, blood pouring into my hair and face. Removing my knife, before I can roll him off me, and tuck it back into my boot. I first go to the door and lock it, before going back to the window and pounding on it with my fists. Trying to break the glass, or alert Dornan to where we are. There’s a wheezing sound followed by struggling breaths, and I’m not sure if it’s Smokey or the other guy. I run back over to Smokey who looks really bad, a pool of blood forming beneath him.
“We gotta try to get out another way.”
“Go V,” he whispers.
“Fuck you. No,” I mutter.
A crash of glass comes from behind us, then Joey and Drag are dropping in from the window. Rushing over and lifting Smokey up and carrying him to Dornan, who’s leaning down through the window to grab him. Banging starts on the other side of the door, then gunshots as they try to shoot the lock off. My adrenaline’s spiking, and I’m not sure if this is actually real it’s happening so fast. Joey grabs the front of my sweatshirt and yanks me towards the window, practically throwing me into Dornan’s hands. Once out of the building, Joey puts Smokey onto his shoulders in a fireman’s hold, and we all begin making our way up the hill towards the van. As we reach the grass, I then notice the blaring wale of the alarms going off, all the lights in the area are on and shining on us like beacons. Gunshots go off around us, as bullets deflect off the ground in front of and around our feet, we just keep running. Dornan’s a few feet behind me, using his body to shield me from the oncoming fire.
Time flashes by, and events of our escape blur together in my head. Getting to the top of the hill, making it over the fence and into the van…but then we’re safe and it’s quiet as we drive off. Smokey grabs my wrist as he lays across Joey’s lap, and his touch finally brings me back to reality. My hands cover his chest, Dornan’s hands underneath him and putting pressure on the other wound.
“Tell Emily-” Smokey begins.
“Shut up,” I snap angrily.
I end up in the long apartment hallway, leaning against the wall. I bend over and put my hands on my knees, taking in deep breaths. It’s then I notice my hands and clothes covered in blood. I rip off my hoodie and run the clean material of the inside over my face, my chest heaving with labored breaths the more I frantically try to wipe the blood. Dornan’s heavy footsteps alert me to his presence before he grabs my hands and holds them between us, causing me to straighten. His eyes look over my body, assessing if I’m hurt. Then our eyes lock, moments before his lips crash against mine, my lips part and welcome him. But this is more than just a kiss, it’s comfort and reassurance. Being shot at, Smokey, the fact we all could’ve been fucked. His teeth bite into my lower lip and I whimper, his hands tangle in my hair as my fingers grip the front of his sweatshirt, trying to get him as close to me as possible. My fingers brush against the medallion he always wears, and my heart flutters. His body presses my back against the wall as he slides a leg between mine, pushing his hips against me. Our breaths heavy and fast, I want to cry it’s so gut wrenching, so soul shattering. I’ve never been kissed like this before, nor will I ever again. My throat tightens with emotion and a small sob escapes before the kiss ends. Dornan’s strong arms wrap around me, my eyes burning as I shake slightly, while he holds me tightly against his equally trembling body.
Running with the Devil: Plantain Series Book One Page 7