Guns & Burning Rubber: The Iron Brotherhood series

by Westlake, Samantha

  So what next?

  Well, ideally, the first goal would be to get out of these handcuffs. Kara risked a quick glance up at the metal bracelets around her wrists, the pipe in between her limbs and keeping her arms lifted up above her head. The cuffs looked like a standard set, which meant that they would be relatively easy to pick - if she had the time and was left alone to do so. She would also need some sort of tool.

  However, the more pressing problem, as well as the biggest obstacle to her getting free, was definitely Savage. The man was standing over her now, looking down at her with a grin. Kara could feel the cool air of the basement blowing against her mostly naked body, and she knew that as soon as Savage started on her, she’d have no chance to escape. The longer his torture went on, the more bruised and battered she would be, and the tougher it would be for her to have any shot of escaping.

  If Kara was going to make a move, she had to do so now.

  So she tilted her head back to look up at Savage. Ignoring how leaning back against the wall made her shoulder sockets scream in protest as the handcuffs cut into her wrists, she put on a wide, toothy smile, beaming up at the man standing over her.

  Savage paused at that smile, tilting his head a little to the side in confusion. Kara was supposed to be nearly catatonic with fear, paralyzed by knowing that she was about to be raped, and then killed. She wasn’t supposed to be smiling.

  Kara pulled the smile as wide as she could, even as her lips burned in protest. She opened her jaw slightly, as if she was about to whisper some secret to the hulking biker standing over her.

  Savage bent down a little closer, trying to get close enough to hear what was about to come out of her mouth.

  In a single, swift motion, Kara threw her leg up, slamming it as hard as she could into the fork between the man’s thighs.

  #

  Watching Savage’s face change was an exercise in satisfaction.

  At first, the man didn’t react, and for a second Kara feared that maybe he somehow hadn’t felt the kick, that he was wearing a titanium cup. He just stood there, frozen and motionless.

  But then, slowly, the man’s face crumpled, collapsing in on itself like a depressurized soda can. He fell down in stages, first bending at the neck, and then at the hips, and finally at the knees.

  Like a tree toppling in slow motion after receiving the final axe blow, Savage sagged sideways, falling off his feet. The man was curling into a fetal position even before he hit the ground, his eyes staring out at Kara with a mixture of horror and shock behind them. He looked as if he couldn’t believe that a captive woman, even one facing rape followed by death, would dare to inflict such pain.

  But Kara wasn’t done yet.

  As the man sagged forward, he was still awake and conscious. His dropping down to his knees, however, brought his head within range of Kara’s limbs.

  She snapped out her foot again - and this time, she slammed her heel up against Savage’s jaw. The man’s mouth slammed shut, nearly taking off the tip of his tongue. His neck snapped back, and Kara saw the man’s eyes rolling back in his head for a second before his lids dropped shut.

  The man hit the floor heavily, lying across her feet - and totally unconscious.

  From her position, still sitting on the floor with her hands bound and restricted, Kara glared down at his prone figure. “That’s less than you deserve, you ass,” she told him. The words weren’t strictly necessary, and probably somewhat unprofessional, but no one else was listening on a wire.

  And they made Kara feel a little better, if nothing else.

  Okay. Most imminent threat - namely, being raped and killed - was now neutralized for the moment.

  On to the next challenge. She looked up at the handcuffs, twisting them back and forth to search for the keyhole.

  Kara didn’t have any tools on her; her outfit didn’t leave much room for concealed weaponry. But this big oaf in front of her, lying unconscious on the ground, probably had something that she could use. She wiggled one foot, struggling out of her boot so that she at least had the flexibility of her bare toes.

  Cautiously, Kara probed at Savage’s prone figure, searching for something thin and sharp, anything that could be used to pick the lock on the handcuffs. She kept her other booted foot ready to lash out in case the man woke up, but it seemed that her one-two attack had rendered him thoroughly catatonic.

  There were no hairpins or bobby pins on the man, but Kara felt something bulging in Savage’s back pocket. A bit of digging revealed the handle of a pocket knife. That could work.

  A bit more wiggling, and Kara managed to free the folded blade from its pocket. Trying to breathe as smoothly as possible, she grasped the object in her toes and lifted it up, contorting her body as she tried to bring it up towards her hands. Damn it, she thought to herself as she struggled, I should have been doing yoga all along!

  Eventually, after a couple near-slips, she managed to transfer the knife over to her hands. From there, it was the work of a minute to flick it open and rearrange her grip until she was able to slide the tip of the blade into the small hole on the handcuffs.

  Handcuffs are a wonderful tool for keeping someone restrained, but they aren’t designed for long-term use. The locking mechanism in a pair of handcuffs has to be thin enough to not make the cuffs unreasonably bulky, which means that the lock has to be small and simple. Instead of using tumblers, like a traditional lock, a handcuff lock simply uses a ratchet to hold the cuff’s swinging arm in place. The key is usually little more than a lever that can disengage that ratchet.

  In a pinch, any thin tool with a bit of springy flexibility can serve as a substitute for that key, reaching the ratchet and managing to get under it to lift and disengage it from the teeth on the cuff. In the past, Kara had practiced picking her own cuffs using, among other items, a bobby pin, a steel street sweeper blade, and a paperclip.

  Now, she discovered, a knife blade worked almost as well.

  With a soft click that made Kara’s heart leap like no other sound she’d heard recently, the cuff’s hold on her left wrist suddenly loosened. Carefully keeping the knife blade still inserted in the lock to hold the ratchet open, she wiggled around her other hand until the cuff slid free, and her arm could drop back down to her side.

  As soon as she lowered her arm, her wrist burst into fiery pain, but Kara forced herself to ignore the sound. Instead, she flicked the knife back into a folded position, and then yanked the other cuff down and out from the pipe through which it was looped. With the cuffs down in her hand, it was much easier to pick open the other cuff, even using her off hand to manipulate the knife blade.

  Once the cuffs were off, Kara rose up to her feet. She shoved Savage off of her as she stood, and then looked down at the man. At first, revulsion spread across her face - but then, it was replaced with a grin that, if Kara had seen it on anyone else, would have looked particularly evil.

  It was the work of moments to shove the man up against the wall, where she had been sitting until a minute earlier. Getting his arms up was a bit tougher, but Kara eventually managed to get the cuffs closed around his fleshy wrists, locking him in place.

  Let the man rot there until the police came to rescue him, Kara thought to herself with satisfaction.

  But she still had to get out of this place. Undoubtedly, now that she had been captured, Alicia saw no reason to keep the party going upstairs. Hopefully, most of the Hellraisers would still be in the dark about her, and she’d be able to sneak out.

  That was the best case scenario.

  The worst case scenario, of course, was that they all knew about her infiltration, and were keeping a keen eye out for her trying to escape. They would probably be armed, and Kara knew that she didn’t stand much chance of fighting off an attack with just the little pocket knife in her hand.

  Really, she needed to get her hands on a gun of some sort. A pity that Savage didn’t have a gun on his person. Apparently, the man had considered his hands, and pos
sibly this knife that Kara now held, enough to get the job done.

  Kara glanced around the basement, searching for a better weapon, but all she could see were the large wooden crates, scattered across the floor and stacked against the walls.

  Wait a minute, she suddenly thought.

  Weren’t these crates the smuggled goods that she was searching for?

  Stepping over to the nearest crate, Kara shoved the knife blade into the crack between the boards nailed to the top of the crate. A few twists, and she managed to get one of the planks levered up from the sides of the crate.

  Risking splinters from the rough wood, Kara grabbed the edges of the board and hauled up. The nails still embedded in the ends of the board squeaked in protest, but they reluctantly gave way.

  Tossing the board aside, Kara peered into the straw filling the inside of the crate. She brushed some of it aside, and then sucked in a breath as dark, well-oiled metal gleamed back up at her.

  Kara’s lips spread into a grin. An observer, watching Kara smile like that, might have been reminded of a crocodile, or some other reptile that had just spotted its next meal.

  With an effort, the FBI agent levered the metal object up out of the crate, turning it in her hands as she checked it over.

  Let’s just see any of those bikers try and stop me now, she thought to herself.

  CHAPTER 11

  At the top of the wooden stairs leading up and out of the basement of the Hellraisers’ clubhouse, Kara Sybil paused, pressing her ear up against the closed door. For several seconds, she stood there, almost holding her breath as she listened intently.

  There was definitely some sort of commotion going on outside the basement, that was for certain. She could hear feet pounding along as someone ran past the door, accompanied by muffled yells. None of the voices was distinct enough to make out the words, but the men beyond this door were definitely agitated over something.

  Was it worth risking an escape now, or should she wait? It was a tough question, made worse by the fact that Kara knew that there was no truly correct answer - at least, not one that she could work out with her incomplete knowledge.

  The darkness threw off her internal clock, but she felt as though it was later in the evening. How long would these parties last? Maybe, if she waited, it would die down and give her a better chance to get away.

  On the other hand, of course, the longer Kara waited, the more likely Savage was to wake up, down where he was handcuffed at the bottom of the stairs. Kara doubted that even the muscled, violent biker could tear free of his restraints - but he could certainly make a lot of noise, drawing attention to Kara’s position.

  The sounds coming from the other side of the door didn’t sound quite right, somehow. There was something going on. Those shouts didn’t sound like they were happy, cries of joy or excitement.

  Instead, they sounded almost panicked, angry, filled with rage and fear.

  A loud popping noise came through the door, louder even than the shouts and yells. The sound made Kara freeze, every muscle stiffening automatically as her body reacted to the sound even before her brain had fully processed it.

  That was a gunshot.

  That clinched Kara’s decision. If there was shooting going on upstairs, it meant that, one way or another, the party was definitely over. Kara didn’t know who was shooting, but it meant that she had an opportunity to move.

  Time to make her escape, she decided.

  Kara turned the knob of the door slightly, freeing it from the hole in the jamb, but didn’t push it all the way open just yet. Instead, she let go of the knob, instead shifting both of her hands down to the weapon clasped in both of her hands.

  She took a deep breath in through her nose, slowly let it out of her mouth, and then took in one more.

  And then, raising up a foot, still with the ridiculous thigh-high boot covering it, Kara kicked open the door leading up from the basement. Gun up and at the ready, she charged forward, ready to attack the first threat she spotted-

  -and she froze, her mouth falling open and barely managing to remove her finger from the trigger in time.

  Gimli’s wide-eyed face stared back at her, drained of color as he looked up along the length of the heavy gun barrel in Kara’s hands. “Easy, easy!” he said hoarsely, his words tumbling out of his mouth in a waterfall.

  Kara let her eyes close for a fraction of a second, and then lowered the barrel of her gun down so that it wasn’t pointing in between Gimli’s eyes. “Gimli!” she said, her voice filled with warring concern and relief. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  As she caught her breath, letting her heartbeat drop back down to a more normal range, Kara eyed the man from top to bottom. Gimli was breathing heavily, she noted - and it didn’t seem to be due only to the fact that a woman had just tried to shove an assault rifle down his throat. He was hunched down a little, slightly crouching on the balls of his feet, and his dark leather vest had a couple flecks of unidentified dark wetness.

  And clutched in his hand was a large, gleaming chrome semi-automatic pistol.

  At the sight of that gun, Kara paused, not letting her guard down all the way, but Gimli didn’t appear about to shoot her. In fact, he showed quite the opposite reaction - after taking a breath, a smile replaced the expression of shock on his face.

  “Thank god you’re alive!” he breathed, moving forward and lifting up his arms to reach out in a hug.

  Before he could encircle her, however, Kara drew back, lifting her own weapon up a little higher. “Hold on,” she said with caution. Currently, she wasn’t sure who she could trust - and until she knew, she wasn’t going to let her guard down for anyone.

  Gimli looked puzzled at her refusal to let him hug her. “What?” he asked, sounding confused.

  “Why are you here?” Kara repeated, very casually taking a small step back, putting a little space in between her and the short, bulky man with the pistol.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Gimli still looked puzzled, as though she should have figured it out by now. “We’re here to rescue you!”

  This answer just raised more questions for Kara. She opened her mouth, but the different questions warred with each other, and for a second, nothing came out. Instead, mouth still open, she just stared at Gimli.

  And in that second of silence, she heard the thudding of another pair of booted feet, approaching from around the corner of the kitchen.

  “Gimli!” a voice shouted, coming from the same direction as the rapidly approaching feet. “Any luck?”

  “Over here!” Gimli called out from behind Kara.

  She turned and glared back at him, not sure what he was responding to but still not thrilled that he was giving away their position. But she couldn’t say anything - the footsteps had reached the corner and their owner was about to appear.

  From around the corner, a big man, tall, clad in black leather like armor, and carrying a heavy pistol, came into view.

  For the third time in as many minutes, Kara felt her mouth flop open.

  All she could do was stare back at Cross as he stopped dead at the sight of her.

  #

  “Cross?” The name felt dry in Kara’s mouth, but all of her thoughts felt as though they were knotted up together, none of them able to be straightened out and separated from the others.

  For a second, Cross just stared back at her, still breathing heavily. “Kara?” he said back, his arms dropping down towards his sides.

  And then, before the FBI agent could even prepare a response, the man swept forward, towards her.

  This time, Kara didn’t resist the hug. On the contrary, she threw her arms around the man fiercely, squeezing him as tight as she could manage, not caring about how her gun became an awkward rod that probably poked against Cross’s back. She buried her face into the crook of his neck, inhaling his calming scent, shaking slightly as she squeezed him as hard as she could possibly manage.

  For several seconds, the two of them just hel
d each other tightly. Neither Kara nor Cross spoke a word. Kara could feel herself shaking, and she knew that Cross was also shaking slightly. Whether those shakes, either hers or Cross’s, were due to nerves, adrenaline, passion, or any combination of the above factors, she couldn’t say.

  Finally, eventually, the man’s hold on her slackened slightly. He moved back slightly, but he kept his arms up, his hands clutching Kara’s shoulders so tightly that she was almost afraid he was going to pierce the skin.

  “What the hell happened to you?” Cross asked her, gazing so intently into her eyes that she swore that she could see his soul, lurking just behind his pupils. His words were calm, but his face was tightening into anger. “What did you do?”

  What could she say? “I made a stupid decision, that’s what,” Kara burst out, the words coming straight out her mouth without any sort of filtering by her brain. “I’m sorry! Oh, Cross, I’m so sorry!” At the corners of her eyes, Kara felt tears suddenly welling up.

  At the sight of those tears, Cross froze for a second, the anger instantly vanishing and replaced by concern. “Hey, it’s okay,” he murmured to her, pulling her in once again for another hug. The man’s arm rubbed up and down her back, and Kara could feel its heat through the flimsy tank top she still wore.

  “This is great and all,” Gimli spoke up behind them, clearing his throat as if apologizing for daring to interrupt, “but we’re kind of still standing in the Hellraisers’ base, here. This really isn’t the best place for this sort of conversation, is it?”

  Cross jerked, as if he had forgotten where they were. “Gimli, you’re right,” he said immediately, releasing Kara from the hug. “Let’s focus on getting out of here - and then we can talk.”

  But for a minute longer, his hand lingered on Kara’s back, a silent but comforting gesture.

  Waving for Kara and Gimli to follow, Cross started for the doorway leading out of the kitchen - but the crack of a handgun from somewhere nearby made him freeze. “Shit,” he murmured, dropping down into a crouch.