Mercer: Prophets MC

by Laura Day

  But by going to the club, I'd made a mistake. A bad mistake. And I likely got Sherry killed because of it. The tears rolled down my cheeks again, and a lance of sorrow stabbed me in the heart.

  “I needed my last paycheck to get out of town,” I sobbed. “And the owner wouldn't be in for a few more hours. Sherry said it was safe to wait it out.”

  Mercer shook his head in disbelief. Maybe he was used to dealing with killers, but I wasn't. I didn't ask for any of this. This wasn't my doing!

  “It's not like I know how to handle myself when people are trying to kill me, Mercer,” I snapped. “This isn't something I could have prepared for, you know.”

  He looked at me, and I saw the sympathy flooding into his eyes. “I know. I'm sorry. I just – ”

  He looked in the rearview mirror again, and I saw his eyes narrow. His jaw clenched, and an expression of rage settled down upon his face.

  “What is it?” I asked, knowing what it probably was already.

  “They're behind us,” he said. “Fuck, they're onto us.”

  I could feel myself shaking as I held my baby close. I knew they were behind us as soon as I heard the bikes. I hoped and prayed that I was wrong, but part of me had been expecting him to say that. He tightened his grip on the wheel, and his entire body tensed up once more.

  “Hold on to Laila,” Mercer demanded, pressing down hard on the gas and speeding up as he headed for the freeway onramp.

  He kept an eye on the vehicles behind us in the mirrors as he raced down the back road. I knew he was hoping to lose them on the freeway. Hell, I was hoping for that too. But we had to get there first. And I wasn't entirely sure we were going to get there before the guys on the bikes ran us down.

  I could no longer see out the window, I was nearly sitting on the floor of the truck. The lack of vision only amplified my fears. After all, what we can't see is a hundred times scarier than what we can. Mercer swerved hard to the right, and I was pressed hard against the door. Laila was crying, a sound I hated to hear, but there was nothing I could do to stop her screams. I spoke to her, in a soft, soothing tones and that didn't work. So I sang to her.

  She quieted down briefly, and it was just my voice in the air, singing to my child as Mercer raced down the road. I could see the tension in his body and knew that a screaming child was doing nothing to help the situation. But what could I do?

  The sound of gunshots made my heart race harder than ever before and pulled a scream from my throat. Even worse, it caused Laila to fuss once more. I continued singing to her through my own terrified cries.

  I flinched at the sound of even more gunshots.

  “Fuck, how do they know it's me?” he asked, looking back.

  “Lucky guess, maybe?”

  “Apparently so,” he grumbled.

  Chapter Thirty Three

  Mercer

  It was Abrams and McCoy on the bikes behind us. They were a couple of prospects for The Prophets – men I hardly knew and who hardly knew me. I didn't have a beef with either of them. At least, I didn't until they started shooting at me. McCoy was just a redheaded kid, fresh out of the army after an honorable discharge. Abrams was older, but new to the club. Mid-life crisis or some shit like that. I never really cared to get to know either of them or hear their stories.

  And it didn't really matter anyway, since they were on our tail, throwing shots at us. I didn't want to hurt them, but I was starting to fear that maybe I wasn't going to have much of a choice. But before it came to that, I wanted this to be as bloodless as possible. My plan was to lose them on the freeway. The more cars around us, the less likely they were to keep shooting us. Not only would they likely not risk hurting an innocent bystander, even if they did have a shot at us, but there would also be a hell of a lot more witnesses too.

  At least, that's how I was hoping it would go down. The older club members were more likely to play it safe and not risk drawing unwanted attention to the club. But I was rolling the dice with Abrams and McCoy. They were prospects and were likely looking to make a name for themselves. The question I had was, whether or not they were so eager to please Bates that they'd put everyone on the road in danger? It would be reckless and not something I would do. But I didn't know about a couple of newbies looking to make their bones with the club.

  I gritted my teeth and pushed down harder on the accelerator, trying to coax even more speed out of the old beater. We were about to find out whether or not the prospects were reckless or not.

  And then I saw the sign that made my blood run cold. Not a whole lot scared me, but seeing the “Road Closed Up Ahead” sign made me incredibly nervous. I'd completely forgotten that there was construction on the road going on.

  “Son of a bitch,” I muttered to myself.

  The entry to the freeway was closed. And to get to another off-ramp, we had another few miles to go. The problem was that on these backroads it was just my truck and the two prospects on their bikes. There was literally nothing from preventing them from killing us out there. Nothing except for me, anyway. But I didn't want to hurt them. I wanted to avoid bloodshed. I was done with killing.

  I had to lose them.

  If I couldn't get through to the freeway, I wasn't sure where to go or what I was going to do to protect Val and her little girl. I had to think up a plan on the fly.

  “Hold on tight,” I growled, slamming on the brakes and cranking on the wheel.

  The truck shuddered as it spun, acting as if it might break apart into a million little pieces right beneath us. But it stopped, and suddenly we were facing the other way. I slammed on the accelerator, and the truck shot forward. She was ugly as hell, but still had it where it counted. The two bikes sped past us as we went the other direction, the eyes of the prospects wide and their faces painted with shock.

  “What are you doing?” Val nearly screamed. “Won't there be more of them?”

  “Doubtful. I don't even know if they for sure know it's me,” I said. “Those were just warning shots. They weren't actually shooting to kill us.”

  “If they didn't know it was you, why in the hell would they be shooting at us in the first place?”

  I shrugged. “Got no idea.”

  I was trying to calm her down and ease her fears some. The last thing I wanted or needed was for her to get hysterical on me. Putting people in the middle of a gun battle who weren't used to the sound of gunfire tended to make them more than a little hysterical.

  It was an understandable reaction, but it was one I couldn't afford to deal with right then and there. When I checked the rearview, I saw that the prospects were turning around and heading for us once more.

  “Where are we headed, Mercer?”

  Honestly, I had no idea. “We can't get to the freeway, so I'm heading downtown. We'll lose them somewhere downtown.”

  The two prospects were behind me again, and it was Abrams who pulled up beside me, gun pointed at my window. This had to stop. This had to end. I needed to get them off my tail and keep Val and Laila safe.

  As I stared at the grim expression on Abrams' face, I sighed. He was mean mugging me with his gun pointed my way, but I didn't think he actually had the balls to pull the trigger. He just aimed it threateningly and gestured for me to pull over. My gun was ready too. I held it just below the window, and when it was clear that Abrams wasn't going to take not for an answer, I raised it and shot without stopping to think.

  I had no idea if I'd actually hit him or not, but his bike spun out of control, and he went down, skidding off the side of the road. In the rearview mirror, I saw Abrams himself go flying. If he wasn't shot, the accident was going to do some significant damage of its own. One way or another, he wasn't coming after us for a while.

  It's not what I wanted, but life had taught me that we hardly ever got what we wanted.

  With Abrams out of the picture – perhaps permanently – that left only McCoy. The kid. I remembered the last run we'd been on together and recalled thinking that he just wasn't
cut out for this life. When one of our guys got shot, he turned pale and looked sick. I was surprised he hadn't puked all over his goddamn shoes. And when it came time to shoot back, he froze. Just stood there with the gun in his hand no more useful than a paperweight.

  I remembered thinking that it was more than a little strange that a military vet would freeze up under fire. But then I learned that he'd never been in combat. Most of his tour had been spent stateside and he'd only done a couple of months in Germany – not exactly the front lines. So it made some sense to me that not having the experience of being under fire, McCoy would go deer in the headlights at the first sound of gunfire.

  As I watched in the rearview mirror, I saw that McCoy had stopped at Abrams side. I watched him pull his bike off the road and then run over to Abram's motionless body.

  I felt bad doing that to a brother – but the guilt was short-lived. They'd been shooting at us and had orders to kill us. I felt bad. They were nothing but pawns in the game Bates was playing. Foot soldiers – who are most often the ones who bear the brunt of things. I felt bad that I'd had to hurt one of them, but my sympathy had its limits.

  “All clear,” I said. “For now at least.”

  Val let out a relieved sigh and climbed back up into the passenger's seat. She was pale and looked absolutely stricken. She gave me a smile that looked as false as the one I gave her. We'd survived Bates' opening salvo and were feeling relatively good about that – but we both knew there was going to be a lot more to come.

  “That was too close for comfort,” I said, simply for the sake of saying something to break the tense silence between us.

  “You're telling me,” Val said, as she situated herself and Laila into the passenger seat. “I'm the one living it, remember?”

  “How could I ever forget that?” I asked.

  ***

  Val hunkered down in the seat next to me, with Laila in her lap. It wasn't the safest situation with the baby sitting on her lap, out of a car seat. The last thing we needed was for her little girl to get hurt if we were to happen to have a fender bender or something.

  “We should probably get her car seat,” I told Val.

  She smiled and looked like she was going to burst out into laughter. I looked at her, not getting the joke.

  “Yeah, she should probably be in a car seat,” Val said. “But on the whole, I think that being on the run from men with guns who want to murder me – and are willing to risk shooting into a moving vehicle to do it – is probably a bit more dangerous.”

  I couldn't help but smile ruefully. Yeah, she had a point. I hadn't really thought about it, but yeah, I guessed that worrying about car seat safety was probably pretty low on our list of priorities at the moment.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I guess I wasn't thinking about it that way.”

  Val smiled again and put a hand on my arm, giving it a gentle squeeze. “Don't be sorry,” she said. “it's sweet.”

  I cleared my throat and tried to keep my eyes on the road. There was something about Val that was like a drug to me. I couldn't explain it and didn't understand it, but simply being around her was intoxicating. I felt lightheaded, and my thoughts were clouded. Not that it was unpleasant. Truth be told, I liked the effect she had on me. It was just a little disconcerting at times.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, nibbling her fingernail as she kept watching the cars behind us.

  “I have no clue,” I said.

  “Great. Way to make me feel better.” She laughed. “You're pretty terrible at that, you know.”

  “Sorry princess,” I said. “I'm not here to make you feel better. I'm here to keep you safe.”

  Val's laughter dried up, and she shot me a look of pure hatred. “Don't call me princess. Ever.”

  The mood inside the truck turned on a dime. Suddenly, any sense of lightness or humor was gone. Evaporated like a puddle on a hot July day. And in its place was something heavy. Something darker. Something – serious. And I didn't care for it. Not at all.

  “Oh, that's right,” I said, feeling my irritation rise. “You're Queenie.”

  I knew it was harsh. I knew I shouldn't be mad at her, but I was. She could have gotten herself – and her child – killed. All because she didn't want my help? All because she didn't trust me – when I'd given her no reason not to trust me. I'd hidden her. Protected her. Kept her safe. If it weren’t for me, she would have been dead long ago, and probably Laila along with her.

  “If I hadn't been there,” I said. “Where would you have gone, huh? What was your plan?”

  “I dunno,” Val mumbled. “I'd have found my car and went somewhere else. I would have gotten Laila and me to safety.”

  “Somewhere else, what a grand plan,” I grumbled. “Yeah, that would have worked out well.”

  “Like you have a plan right now, Mercer?” she snapped. “Besides driving around in a tow truck, trying to skirt any car that gets behind us?”

  “It's a better plan than sitting at the club – which happens to be the second place anyone would look for you. It was the second place I went looking for you.”

  “I was waiting to get my check – ”

  “You couldn't have waited for me to get back?” I almost shouted. “You couldn't wait for me to go with you? You had to sneak out like that?”

  “I couldn't trust you, Mercer? Okay, is that what you want to hear? I couldn't trust you!”

  She was screaming now, and so was Laila. But for different reasons. Laila was responding to her mother's emotions, which were running high.

  As were mine.

  “Did I ever give you a reason not to trust me, Val? Huh?” I was shouting too and feeling my emotions drifting over that edge. “I've put you up in a safe place, took care of you and your kid. And what did that get me? What did it get Sherry?”

  As soon as I said it, I knew I'd gone too far. Way too far and immediately regretted it. Val took in a sharp breath. She opened her mouth to argue back, but only a sob came out. She broke down, no more words came out, only sounds that literally ripped my heart out to hear.

  Her body was shaking with her sobs, and when I reached out to touch her, she jerked her body away from me as if my touch were physically repulsive to her. And maybe at that moment, it was. I couldn't really blame her. What I'd said was fucked up. Beyond fucked up. I regretted saying it, but I knew that didn't take any of the sting of it away.

  “I'm sorry, Val. I didn't mean to – ”

  “Do you think Sherry is dead?” she asked, her voice choked with emotion. “Do you think that they'd kill her? Even if she wasn't involved in any of this?”

  Most likely, yes. But I didn't want to tell her that. “Honestly, I don't know. Maybe they just knocked her out or something. Maybe they just wanted to make sure she was quiet and out of the way. I really don't know, Val.”

  Val looked over at me, but it wasn't a hopeful look. She knew the type of men we were dealing with as well as I did. She knew, just like I did, that these weren't the type of men who would knock somebody out who got in their way. Especially, if she'd seen their faces. Sherry was most likely dead, but I couldn't completely blame Val for it. There was no way she could have seen that happening. Running for her life from guys with guns wasn't something she'd dealt with every day.

  I wanted to get off the road and get her somewhere safe, but I knew that the truth was that she wouldn't be safe anywhere. Not with Bates on the job. Bates knew what he was doing, and he had connections almost everywhere, it seemed. No matter where Val went, she'd always be living in fear. She'd always be looking over her shoulder. There would always be danger lurking around the next corner. This time it was Sherry, but next time, it could be her. She knew it, and I knew it.

  I turned the steering wheel sharply, turning without much warning. She was thrown to the side and slammed her shoulder into the door.

  “What the hell?” she asked. “Where are you going?”

  “To drop you off somewhere,” I said. “And then I
'm going back to the club.”

  “Back to the club? Are you crazy? What if they're still there?”

  “I'm counting on them still being there, actually,” I said softly.

  “You can't go alone, Mercer,” she pleaded. “You don't know Ricky.”

  I laughed to myself. Ricky was the least of my concerns at the moment. What she didn't know is that as bad as Ricky was, as much of an abusive prick as he could be, he was nothing compared to The Prophets. He was nothing compared to Bates.

  Of course, Ricky wasn't even a real man in my books. Any man who could beat a woman like that – well, he was something, but he most certainly wasn't a man. He was something less. Something lower and more contemptible. Guys like Ricky were subhuman. Lower than a piece of shit. Someone who didn't even deserve to walk this earth, and because his chosen victim was a woman and not someone like me, it said a lot about how dangerous he would be. He seemed dangerous to Val, but to me, he was just another piece of dog shit I needed to wipe off my shoe – and possibly off the face of the earth.