Extreme Curves (Dangerous Curves Book 7)

by James,Marysol

  “Kevin’s not available right now,” the man said. “He’s taking a little rest.”

  “What – what did you…”

  “Your boyfriend is now missing his right foot,” the man informed her. “That’s gonna make working out challenging, huh?”

  “Oh, God.” Lilly shut her eyes. “You – why did you –”

  “Well, we had this brand-spanking-new mini-chainsaw just hanging around,” the man said cheerfully. “Seemed a shame not to use it. Again, I mean.”

  “Oh… oh, no…” Lilly gagged, clutched the sink. “Oh, fuck…”

  “Don’t you puke again,” the man barked. “You fucking get your ass to see King, and I mean right the hell now. You give nothing away, bitch… nothing.”

  Lilly made a small sound in her throat that she hoped sounded like assent.

  “Go. Now.”

  On autopilot – because God knows, she had precisely zero control over her body right then – Lilly left the bathroom, somehow still clutching her coffee, and walked into the backroom. Tex’s voice was coming over the speaker in the middle of the table, so she nodded at King, managed a smile, and sat, thanking Christ that she could just be quiet and listen.

  Well, pretend to listen. Because all she could hear ringing in her ears were Kevin’s screams of agony, and the scream of a chainsaw slicing through bone, and tendon, and flesh.

  My fault. My fault.

  “Lilly?”

  She forced her mind to the here and now, and looked across the table at King. Those gray eyes were fixed on her, unnervingly focused and intelligent, as they always, always were. Dammit, she had to step up her game here – and fast.

  “Yes?” she said, keeping her voice inviting and calm.

  “Did you hear what Tex just said?” King asked her.

  She faltered, felt sweat start to break out along her hairline. “About…”

  Valentine huffed. “Weren’t you the one who was cheerleading for this, Lilly?”

  “I’m – I’m sorry.” Lilly clenched her hands together under the table. “I – I got some bad news last night about… my mother. I’m a bit out of it today. I didn’t get much sleep.”

  “What?” King said, and sounds of concern came over the speaker. “What happened?”

  “Oh, nothing terrible.” Lilly dug her nails into her palms. “Just – just some bad medical news. She needs more tests next week.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Tex said sofly. “You need anything?”

  “Time off?” King offered.

  “Oh! No, thank you.” Lilly plastered a smile on her face. “I’d – I’d rather stay here and work. If I need to go, I’ll let you know, King. Thank you.”

  He nodded, eyes still examining her face closely. She sucked in a deep breath, scrambled to change the subject.

  “So… what did you say, Tex?”

  “Nice recovery,” the voice in her ear hissed. “A bit too close, but I won’t take it out on Kevin. This time.”

  “Oh.” Tex was cheerful and enthusiastic, and Lilly fought hard to look interested. “Well, Lilly… seems you got your wish.”

  “Yes?” she said, clueless. “About…”

  “About Ace and Spider!” Honey said. “They’re together!”

  “Oh,” Lilly said, knowing that she needed to summon some energy here, even if it was all faked. “That’s – that’s great! I mean… really great!”

  “Yeah, it’s actually kinda cute,” Tex said. “We’ve learned to listen from below before heading upstairs to check things, though, I can promise you. They’re going at it like rabbits, I kid you not.”

  “Well, they do have seven years to make up for,” Knox said. “Do they ever come out of the bedroom?”

  “Oh, sure,” Tex said. “Their big thing now is to go for little walks outside in the snow together, I suppose to get some real privacy away from us. One of us stays on the front porch, another stays in the house, and the last of us follows ‘em around the open field at a discreet distance. We don’t want to hear what they’re saying, of course, but we do need to keep on eye on them out there. I mean, we can spot anything coming from the road for miles around, but still… we do have that patch of trees a mile out.”

  At the words ‘front porch’, Lilly’s focus had snapped back into place, and fast. Only three of the safe houses had a porch, and when Tex talked about the open field, the road, the isolation, and the patch of trees, suddenly she knew – she just knew – where they were.

  Where Ace Cuddy was.

  Her conscience reared its head now, and she fought it down. If she told the man in her ear what she knew, then she was effectively sending Ace to his death, that was for sure. Maybe the boyfriend too; maybe even some of her fellow Men.

  Was Kevin worth that much blood on her hands?

  Was he worth any blood on her hands?

  She’d just finished asking herself those questions, and then she knew: yes. Yes, he was. Kevin was innocent, completely and totally. Ace wasn’t anything like innocent, and her colleagues knew how to defend themselves. They had also accepted the risks when they had started working for King – and a big one was being attacked, hurt, maybe killed, in the line of duty.

  Spider was possibly going to be collateral damage, and she struggled with herself briefly over that. Like Kevin, he was an innocent… but then again, by choosing to get involved with a one-percenter MC member all those years ago, Spider had also accepted certain risks, hadn’t he? Maybe he wasn’t totally innocent, after all? That thought bubbled up in her brain, and she clung to it, like a life raft, or a talisman, or a pardon.

  Like forgiveness.

  She knew that she was telling herself all of this so she could do what she was about to do. If she truly believed that Kevin was the biggest innocent here, then she could reconcile her betrayal and her stupidity and her failure.

  Lilly needed to believe it. So she did.

  “I’m sorry,” Lilly said, getting to her feet. “I just – I need a minute. Is that OK, King?”

  “Yeah, of course.” He looked concerned. “You alright, hon?”

  “Yes… I just…” She swallowed. “I promised my Dad that I’d call him at eight this morning to get an update. I’ll just do that and be right back.”

  “OK.”

  She strode out of the room, her head held high. No way she was doing this while feeling weak or beaten or defeated. If she was going to turn her back on her colleagues, walk away from every belief she held dear, betray her principles, and send her soul straight to hell, she’d damn well stand by it all.

  No snivelling. No excuses. No pretending that she was doing wasn’t fucking heinous.

  If Lilly was going to do this, she was going to do it with her eyes wide open.

  She marched back to the bathroom, saw that it was still empty. She stood for a few seconds in front of the mirror, meeting her own bright blue gaze.

  “What are you doing, cunt?” the voice in her ear demanded. “You slitting your wrists?”

  “Fuck you,” she gritted out. “You’ll get what you want. Give me thirty seconds.”

  “Ooooh, mouthy,” the man teased. “I’ve seen you, bitch, and I think that your mouth has better purposes. Like being wrapped around my cock.”

  “I’d sooner blow a leper,” she snarled. “Now shut up so I can focus.”

  He chuckled, but stayed quiet. She closed her eyes, retrieving the information that she needed from the thousands of phone numbers, names, addresses, dates, e-mail accounts, and faces that she’d filed away. Safe house addresses were committed to memory, of course, never ever written down or shared by any kind of written message. Lilly sending this text was a first in many ways.

  She took the burner cell out of her blazer pocket, tapped out the address to the only saved number in the phone book, pushed ‘send’. In her ear, she hear
d a beep and knew that he’d gotten her text.

  A pause, then she heard him talking to someone else. More voices, movement, maybe chairs scraping on a floor.

  “Where’s Kevin?” Lilly demanded. “Tell me.”

  “Ooooh,” the man said and his voice dripped with malice and venom. “You want your one-handed, one-footed man, do you?”

  “Fuck you,” she repeated between gritted teeth. “Tell me, or I tell King what’s going on and I call the safe house and warn them. You don’t tell me where Kevin is, and that means he’s dead anyway – and then I have exactly fucking nothing to lose, prick.”

  “Fair point,” he said, almost amiably. “I’ll text you the address in ten minutes.”

  “But –”

  “Get in your car and start driving north. You’ll get more specific info while you’re on the road.”

  Without a word, Lilly flung herself out of the bathroom, down the hall, out the door. She ran to her car, and almost ripped the door off its damn hinges. And when she peeled out of the garage parking lot, she didn’t so much as look back, even though she was pretty damn sure that she’d never be back to the garage.

  What she thought was true, of course… but what Lilly didn’t know was the real reason that she’d never see King or any of the others again.

  Chapter Twelve

  Lilly pulled up to the abandoned warehouse with the massive ‘17’ painted on it in faded white paint, and peered around. It was one of many warehouses scattered about a closed old factory, and the grounds were sprawling and overgrown. She opened her car door, listened hard.

  Nothing.

  She looked down at the ground as she walked to the open warehouse door, gun drawn. Plenty of footprints in the snow; plenty of tire tracks. She counted at least eight sets of prints, four different tire treads, some motorcycles, some larger and heavier vehicles, maybe trucks. She looked around one last time, then plunged through the door into darkness.

  What she saw stopped her breathing.

  Kevin was lying on the floor in a pool of blood. Pale, unmoving, silent, his face covered in dried blood from the bullet hole in the middle of his forehead.

  And she knew.

  “No,” Lilly said numbly. “Please. No, no, no…”

  Her feet carried her over to the body on the floor that she knew wasn’t her Kevin anymore; her hands reached to feel what she knew wasn’t going to be a strong, steady heartbeat under her fingertips; her eyes searched the face that she loved, knowing that those amazing green eyes were never going to open again.

  She’d lost him. And by losing him, Lilly had pretty much lost everything.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered to him, stroking his cold, gray lips. “I’m so, so sorry. I love you.”

  Lilly felt the bullet enter her back and tear through her lungs before she even heard the shot behind her. She was thrown forward and she slumped over Kevin’s body unable to move, surprised at the lack of pain after that initial blinding, ripping, white-hot agony.

  Dimly, she heard footsteps behind her, and she looked up at Nails Paxton.

  “Hey, bitch,” he said in a conversational tone that she knew all-too-well. “Change of plans.”

  She forced herself to glare at him, and he chuckled.

  “Gonna go down swinging, huh?” he said. “I admire that, even though in your case, it’s pretty fucking pointless.”

  Lilly kicked her foot out, made contact with the toe of Nails’ boot. Astonished, he looked down, then burst into laughter.

  “Bitch,” he said, sounding almost affectionate this time. “I like you. That’s why I decided to let you die with Loverboy here. I don’t do that for just anyone, you know.”

  It was getting harder to breathe now, and Lilly shut her eyes, trying to keep her lungs inflated. For what, she didn’t know… but she knew it was for something.

  Then it came to her, what she was holding on for.

  Play dead.

  Right.

  Now.

  She held her breath in her burning lungs, held herself still. Above her, she felt Nails go still and watchful, felt those cold blue eyes on her. Then he half-sighed, and turned away.

  “Bye, bitch,” he said. “See you in hell.”

  She stayed where she was until she heard him go out the other door, until she heard the motorcycle engine start to die away in the distance. Then slowly, painfully, she pulled the burner cell from her coat pocket, forced herself to focus.

  The phone number that she knew as well as her own swam upwards in her consciousness, faded away, surged up again, and she grasped it, tight, forcing herself to retain those digits.

  One chance is all you’ve got. Don’t you fuck this up.

  Gripping the phone, she used her thumb to dial the number. She held the phone in both hands, and almost burst into tears when she heard King’s growl in her ear:

  “Yeah?”

  “K – k –” Her throat was closing. “”King.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Li – lil –”

  “Lilly?”

  “Mmmm.”

  “Where are you? Hon, where are you? Whose phone is this?” He shouted for Knox to check the GPS tracker on Lilly’s car, then turned back to the phone. “Are you hurt? Lilly?”

  “I –”

  She knew it was no good… her voice wasn’t working, her mind was going blank, the darkness was closing in. As much as she feared to go into that cold, clammy after-world alone, and as tempting as it was to end her time on earth with a warm, caring voice in her ear, Lilly knew that she couldn’t do that.

  Not if she was going to make any of this right.

  It took everything that she had to disconnect the call, but she did; then it took everything that she had to press the ‘text’ option next to the last number dialed.

  Gripping the phone, using her thumb again, she typed:

  THEYR COMING SAFE HOUS

  Her grip weakened, faltered, failed. The cell clattered to the floor, and when it started to ring with a call from King, Lilly didn’t have the strength to even reach for it, let alone pick it up.

  The last thing that Lilly Forrester heard before she died was the ringing of a cell phone.

  And the last thing that she felt was the cold hand of the man that she loved, clutched tight between both of hers.

  **

  Joker looked down at the cloned cell phone in his hand, and grinned at Lilly’s last message. He glanced up at the sign on the side of the highway, indicating that the small farming town they were aiming for was less than ten miles away.

  “No, bitch,” he said aloud to the text message. “We’re already here.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Sarah, Mirrie, Naomi, Gabi, and Maria were well aware that King’s Men, Dallas Foreman’s people, and the bouncers at Curves were ex-military types, though – admittedly – they had very little idea what that actually meant, in practical terms. Even Maria, who had seen her boyfriend Dillon in action at Open Skies Ranch, shooting down bad guys in cold blood, was pretty hazy about what exactly these people were capable of.

  They got a crash-course, though, when King’s call came through.

  Within seconds of getting off the call, Val, Tank, Dallas, and Curtis had their guns out, had the women strapped into kevlar, had them gathered in a group by the front door, had eyes on the yard outside.

  “Go,” Val said to Curtis and Dallas, and they nodded, stepped out, went to get the SUV’s. Val turned to the women, who were only just beginning to feel petrified, because it had all happened far too quickly for them to feel anything much at all. “Gabi, Naomi, Sarah, you’re with me and Curtis. Mirrie and Maria, you’re with Dallas and Tank. Yes?”

  They all nodded.

  “What’s going on?” Sarah said in a tiny voice. “Why are we in such a rush?”

/>   “We need to move you,” Val replied, merely stating the obvious without actually providing any information. “Now.”

  “Are they coming?” Mirrie asked. “My brother and the MC? Have they found us?”

  “All you need to know right now is that we’re moving you to a secondary location,” Val said crisply. “We’ll explain when we get there.”

  “But –” Mirrie protested. “I just –”

  “No,” Val snapped, watching as Dallas and Curtis pulled up. “No more talking. We need you to shut up and be compliant, and you need to do exactly what we tell you, without giving us a hard time or questioning us. You distract us when you do that, and if we’re distracted, you’re at risk. We all are. Now, Mirrie and Maria, you go with Tank to the SUV. Stay behind him, stay quiet, and stay down when you get into the back seat. You hear me?”

  The women nodded, and Tank hustled Mirrie and Maria out double-time. Once he was in the front passenger seat, Dallas hit the gas and tore out. Val looked at the last three women.

  “Ready?”

  They nodded; Gabi gave a small sob. Sarah hugged her with one arm, and Naomi squeezed her hand.

  “It’s OK, Gabi,” Naomi said. “No way Curtis or Val will let them anywhere near us. All we have to do is get to the SUV. That’s it… just one foot in front of the other. Alright?”

  Gabi sighed shakily, but managed a tiny smile. “Yes. I – I can do that.”

  “Good,” Val said, tightening her ponytail to keep the hair out of her eyes. “We’re going now, ladies, so move your asses. Go. Now.”

  As one, Sarah, Gabi, and Naomi ran across the yard to the open door of the SUV. They dove in, scalps prickling and chests heaving, Sarah and Gabi sliding over quickly to make room for Naomi, who slammed the door behind her. Valentine jumped into the front seat, her gun still out.

  “Go,” she ordered Curtis, who didn’t say a word as he peeled out. She spun in her seat and nailed the women with a steely violet stare. “Stay down. Don’t move until I tell you.”

  They nodded yet again, their hands clutched tight and together. They held their breaths for almost twenty minutes, and when Curtis finally stopped the SUV, they were almost dizzy from tension and fear and lack of air. And when the back doors flew open suddenly, they all jumped and cried out.