A PRICE TO PAY: A Dark Bad Boy Romance

by Zoey Parker

  Shit, this is getting kind of thin, I thought. For most cops, this would be the exact moment when they'd start to get suspicious and demand to see a license and registration, or go back to their cruisers to run the plate number and vehicle against any recent thefts.

  Before the trooper could respond, the radio clipped to his uniform crackled loudly and a voice droned from it. “All units, all units, perpetrators from the attack in Milwaukee have been spotted heading south on I-94. Two males on motorcycles wearing helmets, considered heavily armed and extremely dangerous. All available officers are requested to join the roadblock currently being established near the Gurnee exit. Please respond, over.”

  “Holy hell!” the cop exclaimed. “Looks like I need to be going after all, ma'am. I'm very sorry. I hope your service truck gets here soon. As soon as it does, I'd advise you and your husband to get off the highway as soon as possible. There could be some serious trouble up ahead.”

  “I understand,” Jewel said. “Thank you very much, officer. You've been very kind.”

  The Trooper tipped his hat and got back into his cruiser, hitting the sirens and lights. He got back on the highway and zoomed off ahead of us.

  “Good job,” I said. “Now shut the hood, hop back into the car, and get ready to roll if we need to. They should be here any minute.”

  As if on cue, I heard the hornet-whine of a pair of sports bikes bearing down behind us.

  Jewel raced to the front of the car, slammed the hood, and ducked into the driver's seat, shutting the door behind her. She reached behind the dashboard panel and delicately brought out the wires, rubbing her fingertips next to them expectantly. Her shoulders were hunched, as though she was preparing to scoot down when the shooting started.

  I pulled the duffel bag away and thumbed the switch on the side of the rifle, setting it for full auto. As I did, I reminded myself to stick to short, controlled bursts, or else I'd run out of ammo in a hurry.

  I glanced out the back window and saw the two bikes coming toward us in a cloud of dust. One look at them and I could see that Boomer hadn't been kidding about the Chayners' look. One was decked out entirely in red, the other in black. Both of them wore stunt-riding overalls embroidered to look like reptilian scales, and the face-plates of their helmets were painted with the faces of snarling dragons. Their bikes were decorated to match, with detailed paintings of coiled scales, claws, and flames.

  As soon as I saw them, I couldn't wait to shoot them, if only for wearing corny-ass circus outfits and giving bikers everywhere a bad name.

  “Get ready,” I said, bringing the butt of the rifle to my shoulder and sitting up. “This is gonna be loud.” Jewel covered her ears.

  I squeezed the trigger and pumped quick bursts of automatic gunfire through the back window of the Saab, directly at the Chayners. I went from left to right and back again, trying to get them both as quickly as possible.

  But that's the problem with machine guns. What they give in terms of being loud and intimidating, they take back in accuracy. Even with two hands, controlling them and managing to hit anything can be a real bitch. I mostly tried to hit the road in front of them, hoping to at least take out their front tires.

  Instead of skidding to one side in the face of danger or obstacles as most bikers would reflexively do, the Chayners kept coming head-on. Smart. They knew that pulling to one side would present a larger target. Rather than do that, they both reared up on their back wheels, popping wheelies so synchronized I'd swear they really were in the circus after all.

  I let off another burst and managed to clip the rear wheel of Red Chayner. His bike spun out and flipped backward. I saw Red use his whole body to kick the bike away from himself so he landed on the pavement on his back as his chopper smashed into the highway next to him instead of on top of him.

  As a stunt rider myself, I had to admit that was extremely badass.

  Red was already on his feet and pulling out his compact Uzi as Black sped past us and skidded to a stop. I knew that even with an AK, trying to fight two men with Uzis would be a guaranteed loser move. I'd have to handle them one at a time, and quickly.

  Instead of fighting in the open, Red opted to dart over to his fallen bike. It was a foreign make and model—a lightweight crotch-rocket, and Red had no problem lifting it up and crouching behind it to use it as a shield.

  I thumbed the switch on the side of the rifle to semi-auto, and hoped I hadn't already spit out too many bullets to finish this properly.

  “Get down as low as you can,” I said to Jewel. She scuttled down in the space between the dashboard and the seats.

  Red was firing his Uzi at me and the rounds were burying themselves in the Saab's trunk and bumper. He was using the gun expertly, going from side to side to spray as much of the target as possible since he couldn't stop and aim.

  But I could.

  I sighted Red down the barrel of the AK as well as I could, but it was hard to keep focus and not flinch with the hail of bullets coming toward me. Red was also moving the bike up and down in front of him whenever he could to make it harder to avoid hitting it. Worst of all, I knew Black was on his way with an Uzi of his own.

  I squeezed off a shot and it buried itself in the red fiberglass of the bike's protective shielding.

  Fuck.

  Another shot hit the front wheel, leaving a dent in the frame and making it spin around.

  Fuck.

  The third shot connected with the side of Red's helmet, shattering half the visor in a spray of tinted plastic. I heard him yell in pain as he fell backward, clutching his face.

  Goose.

  I turned toward Black just in time to see him walking towards us as he opened fire on the front of the Saab. The bullets riddled the hood mercilessly. Jewel screamed from under the front seats, but from the look of it, the shots were getting caught up in the guts of the car instead of going through and hitting her.

  I pointed the rifle at Black and squeezed the trigger four more times without taking the time to aim. The first two missed, while the third got him in the left shoulder. He cursed, but held onto his Uzi and kept advancing.

  But on my fourth trigger pull, I heard a click.

  I'd run out of ammo after all. And I had no time to reload before Black got here and finished the job. I reached for the Glock, fumbled it, and dropped it on the floor of the back seat.

  Sure enough, Black strolled up to me, pointing his Uzi with his good arm. His face was hidden behind the dragon mask, but he was nodding to himself slightly, and I was willing to be he was smiling under there. He walked straight up and leaned through the open window, pressing the barrel of the Uzi between my eyes.

  This is it, I thought. It's over. Seven years thinking about nothing but revenge, and it all ends here with my brains blown out all over a sunny stretch of highway. At least I didn't die in prison. At least I got a couple days to be free first. At least I got to spend some time with a good-looking woman.

  “I don't know who the fuck you are or what the fuck you thought you were doing here,” Black said, his voice muffled under the helmet, “but when you get to the Pearly Gates, you can give them a message from me. The Chayner brothers won't be joining them any time soon, and when we do, it damn sure won't be the work of a bottle-blonde dude wearing khakis.”

  Black pulled the trigger and my eyes squeezed shut.

  Nothing happened.

  I opened my eyes again. Black was holding his Uzi in front of his face and looking at it quizzically, his head tilted to one side.

  “Looks like you jammed up,” I said. “Uzis will do that. Know what won't, though?”

  I reversed the AK and smashed the wooden stock of it into Black's stomach as hard as I could. He doubled over, dropping his machine gun. I opened the rear door of the car and scooted out of the back seat, prepared to take the fight to him.

  But Black was a quick bastard, and a tough one, and he'd already recovered. He attacked me with hands so fast they were almost a blur, punchi
ng me twice in the stomach and once in the jaw before I even knew what was happening.

  Clearly, he'd had some kind of martial arts training, whereas all I had was years of experience street fighting and surviving prison brawls. I kept telling my right arm to hit him back, but it felt oddly heavy and it wouldn't obey my commands.

  Another moment and Black had swept the legs out from under me with a swift kick, sending me to the ground.

  “I don't need a gun to end you,” Black sneered. He reached into a pocket of his stunt suit and pulled out a large, curved knife.

  A shot rang out and I winced, figuring Red had somehow recovered and decided to save his brother from getting his blade dirty. But a small, round red hole had appeared on the chest of Black's overalls and he was looking down at it.

  I looked over my shoulder and saw that Jewel was leaning out the driver's side window with her .22 aimed at Black. Smoke was drifting up from the barrel. Jewel's eyes were filled with tears.

  Black reached up slowly and undid the chin-straps on his helmet, taking it off. I wasn't sure what I'd expected but the face behind the visor was boyish and clean-shaven. This hardboiled killer looked like he was barely old enough to buy beer. His blue eyes watered as he stared down at the bullet hole in disbelief.

  “That wasn't supposed to happen,” he commented in a mildly confused voice. Then his eyes rolled up in his head and he hit the ground, dead.

  I picked myself off the ground, trying to hold back a groan of pain. In the twelve seconds or so that we'd fought, Black had really managed to kick the shit out of me. My chest felt like it was full of broken glass and my jaw was throbbing.

  “I...I...” Jewel sobbed, the gun trembling in her hand.

  “You saved both of our lives,” I said. “You did good.”

  “I killed someone,” she stammered, her voice barely above a whisper. She let the pistol fall from her hands and it hit the pavement with a heavy clack. “I...don't know what I'm supposed to...do with that, how I'm going to live with it...”

  “You will, I promise,” I assured her, picking the gun up. “But for now, just see if you can get the car running, okay? It's taken a lot of hits, but it doesn't have to get us too far, just off the main road. After all that, we'll probably have the cops here pretty soon. I need to search these guys to see what they're carrying.”

  “Okay,” Jewel said, turning to work on the wires hanging from the dashboard. She seemed very out of it, and I hoped she'd be able to shake it off, or else we'd be back to the beginning with her freak-outs. We didn't have time for that. I hoped that giving her the car wires to focus on would help.

  Sure enough, a few moments later, the car's engine roared to life. It sounded like a meat grinder and there was greasy blue smoke billowing from under the hood, but there was still a solid chance that it could keep itself together long enough to get us away from here.

  I hustled over to Red and saw that he was still writhing and twitching on the ground. He'd rolled over on his belly and his gloved hands were groping helplessly for something, even though his Uzi was just a few feet away from him. I realized the shattered plastic visor had probably blinded him.

  I leaned down and picked up the Uzi, holding the barrel between Red's shoulders. “Looking for this?”

  Red stopped struggling.

  “Roll over on your back,” I said.

  Red paused for a moment, then rolled over, his right arm still under his back at an odd angle. I figured it probably got broken when he hit the ground.

  With the visor broken, I could see that the Chayners had been more than just brothers—they'd been identical twins. Red had the same impossibly-young face as Black, except for the blue eyes, which were punctured with shards and bleeding heavily.

  “You can still live to carry on the family name,” I offered. “You just have to tell me what you two bozos were sent to grab from The Flytrap, and hand it over.”

  Red started to laugh, the blood bubbling up on his lips. The jagged spears of plastic twitched from one side to the other as his mangled eye muscles tried to move eyeballs that weren't there anymore.

  “You're Rafe, aren't you?” Red burbled. “Sure you are. Jester said you might be dumb enough to get mixed up in this. He said you were a nobody.”

  “Yeah? Well, I just iced your brother,” I sneered, “so I guess Jester doesn't know as much about me as he thinks he does.”

  “But he...sent you to prison, right? Seven years?” Red chuckled, his lips red and wet. “Man, you should hear how he still laughs about that. Laughs and laughs. Hey, when you were up there, did you end up bending over a lot? 'Cause that'd explain the hair and the faggy clothes and whatnot.”

  I knew I didn't have time to keep playing with him, so I put my left boot on his groin and started to apply pressure. Red yowled.

  “Sticks and stones, Red,” I growled. “Do you have something for me, or not?”

  “Oh, sure, shower-boy,” Red hissed. “I've got something for you. It's right here!”

  Red whipped his right arm out from behind his back and I gasped. He was holding a grenade without the pin or spoon in it.

  And he was laughing again.

  I turned and sprinted for the Saab despite the pain in my body. “Grenade!” I screamed. “Get down!”

  I saw Jewel duck down again a split-second before the explosion smacked my back with a hot hand, pushing me forward so I landed face-down on the highway. I felt the pavement scrape skin off my already-aching jaw, and my eardrums felt like someone had run an icepick in one ear and out the other.

  I blacked out for a moment. When I came to, everything seemed like it was vibrating. Jewel was helping me off the ground. I heard a high-pitched whine and thought it was ringing in my ears, until the pitch steadily lowered into a warble and I realized it was sirens approaching.

  “We need to get out of here now!” Jewel yelled. Even though her face was just a few inches from mine, her voice sounded like it was coming from deep underwater.

  I looked over my shoulder at the blackened smear of limbs and clothing that had been Red just a minute earlier. I had no way of knowing whether Red had been the one carrying what Jester wanted, but if he had, then whatever it was, it had been blown to pieces.

  “Not yet,” I croaked. “Gotta search Black.”

  “We don't have time!” Jewel moaned. “We have to go, Rafe!”

  “Black might...have it,” I slurred. “Can't...leave...without it...”

  Jewel looked at Black, then back at me. “Okay, fine,” she said. “You just get yourself to the back of the car, okay? I'll go search him.”

  “You don't know...what you're...looking for.”

  “Yeah, well, neither do you,” Jewel snapped back. “Now get a move on, unless you miss prison food more than you let on.”

  I staggered back to the car and collapsed in the back seat. All I wanted to do was close my eyes and go to sleep, but some part of my brain screamed that I probably had a concussion from the blast and dozing off was the last thing I should be doing.

  A few moments later, I felt Jewel's hands pushing my legs farther into the car and shutting the door behind them. The driver's side door slammed shut, and I felt the world around me moving, drifting, shifting.

  We were going forward at high speed, but somehow, I was still lying face down on the highway. I was still in my cell in Potawatomi. I was still standing outside the house my parents had lived in, watching it smoke and shudder and fall apart as it burned with them inside of it, and they screamed and Jewel screamed and the sirens screamed as I disappeared into the smooth and silent darkness.

  Chapter 27

  Jewel

  My face and arms felt miles away from me, as though I were controlling them with a remote and the signal was weak. I couldn't stop thinking about the way the gun had jerked slightly in my hands. About the hole it made in the black rider.

  I had never even been fishing or hunting before. I didn't even like horror movies.

  And I ha
d taken a life.

  My rational mind shrieked at me from a dim and distant place, telling me it didn't matter because the rider had tried to kill me. It was begging me to just move and get us both out of here as fast as possible before the police showed up. And then what would I say? How could I explain any of this?

  Rafe was beaten and barely conscious in the back of a stolen car I'd helped him disguise. He was holding what was probably a very illegal kind of gun. He had a hole in his right bicep from a bullet that had gone through the Saab's trunk and the upholstery of its back seat—Rafe hadn't noticed the wound himself, but I had.