by Franca Storm
“Right, yeah.” Fuck. My reaction seemed even worse now that she’d put that out there. “You know, baby girl, just because there can’t be an official government record, don’t mean you can’t have a wedding, and it don’t mean it ain’t real and deep between the two of you.”
She nodded to herself, then took a breath and shook it off.
There was warmth in her eyes as she looked back up at me. “Thank you for saying that. See? You’re already getting there, changing.”
“Just want you happy and I guess sometimes that don’t mean my idea of what’s best for you.”
“You’d actually be surprised how often I take your advice into account.”
“Yeah, is that right?”
“Yeah. When I’m stuck on something, I always consider what you’d do.”
Well, shit. “Means a lot, baby girl.” I leaned down and kissed the top of her head. “Love you.”
She threw her arms around me, hugging me tightly. “I love you too, Dad.”
“It’s all gonna be okay. Everything. I swear it to you.”
Nodding against my chest, she told me, “I know. I trust you.”
The clack of heels coming our way had us pulling back.
I looked out to see Dani coming up to us.
“Everything okay over here?” she asked, flashing me a look that let me know she’d seen my first reaction to Ash’s ring.
“You already knew?” I asked her.
“Maybe,” she answered coyly.
Ash grinned at her, then told me, “You’d better watch yourself, Dad. The two of us share secrets now.”
I couldn’t help laughing.
I was glad they were getting along.
They had before Dani and me had hooked up, but I hadn’t been sure how that was gonna turn out once Ash knew Dani had officially become my woman. She’d told me a number of times over the years that she’d wanted me to find somebody who made me happy, but saying it and experiencing it were two different things.
Thankfully, it’d worked out well all around.
As the two of them started talking, first about the promise ring, then my ring, then Ash offering up some wisdom about club life and how to deal with me, I was pulled out of it by my phone buzzing in my leather jacket pocket. I’d figured on dealing with it later, enjoying the time with my woman and my daughter, but then it kept buzzing, over and over.
Whatever it was had to be something urgent.
I stepped back and pulled it free.
Swiping it open, my breath caught when I took in the messages that’d come through.
Adrenaline tore through me.
My heart thumped wildly in my chest.
That hyper-vigilant state took me over and everything around me amplified to an intense level.
My contacts had come through with a viable location.
We’d got them!
Knox’s time was up!
27
~Daniella~
I HURRIED DOWNSTAIRS.
Unlocking my phone as I went, I rapidly scanned my calendar.
Had I forgotten about an appointment?
It wasn’t normally like me. I was ridiculously organized and on top of things.
But I hadn’t exactly been in the best frame of mind today.
Since last night, actually.
Since Scott had announced that he’d gotten a lock on Knox’s location.
Since he’d told me that the club would be making its move against them tonight. In fact, it could actually be happening right now. He hadn’t given me an exact time, just referencing late evening.
Every moment, it’d felt like I’d been right on the verge of completely freaking out.
It was a similar sensation to the one I’d felt when I’d found out that Scott and Iron Kings had ridden out to take down the Rogue Riders a few months ago. Only it was even worse now. We’d been friends before, but now… now we were so much more, so much closer.
He’d become everything to me.
The idea of him being in danger, especially the horrific kind that he was riding into right now, had me sick to my stomach.
It occurred to me in an overly-hopefully, extreme wishful thinking way that maybe it was him ringing my doorbell right now. He’d promised to call as soon as his mission had been completed, but maybe he’d decided to surprise me and show up at my place instead to tell me in person that the threat was over with and everything was finally all right.
Picking up my pace as that wonderful prospect took me over, I rushed to the front door, unlocked it, and threw it open, even forgetting to do a safety check through the peephole first in my haste.
Wishful thinking indeed.
It wasn’t Scott.
Cocking an eyebrow, I took in the figure of Skylar Wright instead. She was smiling brightly back at me. Before I could second-guess myself about screwing up my schedule again, she brought a bottle of Cabernet into view from behind her back, indicating that it was a social visit.
“Uh… hi,” I spoke, a little taken aback by the unexpected turn of events.
She picked up on my confusion and gestured to the bottle, explaining, “A housewarming gift, if you will. You mentioned that you’d only just moved back in. I figured it warrants another warming.”
I stepped aside to let her in and she strolled on in. As I locked the door behind her and moved to join her in the lobby, I noted her antsy behavior. She was shifting her weight a lot, her eyes darting all around, and she was a good ways into peeling the label off the wine bottle.
That was when it hit me.
“You’re worried about the guys too, huh?” I asked, gently.
I realized that the housewarming thing was more of a cover than anything else. She’d come to be with somebody else who could understand what she was going through. When we’d had our business meeting a few weeks back, she’d tried to play off the depth of her connection to the club’s VP, Deviant, but her true feelings for him had shone right on through anyway. She cared deeply about him. And now he was out there riding into hell alongside the man I loved.
She nodded, then pushed her easygoing attitude to the surface, as she winked at me and said, “I still stand by the housewarming rationale.”
I laughed. “Come on,” I said, leading her into the kitchen. “I’ll grab a couple of glasses. There should be a bottle opener in the middle drawer next to the sink.”
She placed the bottle down on the counter. I heard her rifling through the drawer as I grabbed a couple of my fancy crystal glasses from one of my cabinets. I spun and placed them down on the counter, just as Sky bounded over with the bottle opener.
As she set about opening it, I crossed to the fridge and told her, “I’ve got Chocolate cake if you’re up for it. Devil's food cake.”
“Hell, yeah. This situation calls for some intense stress-eating.”
“Agreed.”
As I got down to cutting the cake, grabbing a couple of plates and forks, Sky poured the wine, filling our glasses to the brim.
I passed her a plateful of cake and then I raised my glass, “To the men we love and their wildly complicated lives.”
We both chuckled as we toasted.
As I took a sip, I saw Sky’s face fall, the worry she’d been trying hard to hide revealing itself.
“They’ll be okay,” I told her. “This isn’t their first rodeo.”
“Yeah,” she said. “They will.”
I knew they would, because I couldn’t accept anything else.
They had to be.
***
Three glasses in.
Two slices of cake down.
We’d both long given up the pretense of a laissez-faire approach to what was happening miles away with our men right now.
Sky and I had been discussing it in-depth, analyzing and rationalizing for the last hour.
“I hope Ashley’s all right,” I said. “It would’ve been good for her to be here with us too.”
“I know,” Sky agreed. “Sh
e’s got more at stake than us. Her man, her father, and the club members she considers actual brothers are all riding into danger.”
“Shit,” I muttered, taking a gulp of wine.
“She won’t be alone up there, though. They wouldn’t allow that. She’s probably up at the clubhouse and, knowing her determined nature, she’s likely right there with whoever’s overseeing the mission from the clubhouse.”
“Yeah, I bet.”
Sky shoveled some more cake into her mouth and moaned in appreciation. “God, this thing is good. Where did you get it?”
I was about to answer when my phone started ringing.
Sky and I exchanged a look and I knew we were both thinking the same thing.
It could be word from the guys.
The tension ramped up and I hesitated for a few moments, as the awful possibility of it being bad news gripped me.
“Like you said, they’re okay,” Sky said, trying to reassure us both.
I took the risk and snatched up my phone.
I was frowning in the next second when I eyed the call display.
It wasn’t Scott.
It wasn’t any of the guys who’d headed out to deal with Knox and those psychotic mercenaries tonight.
“Jesse,” I told Sky.
She cocked an eyebrow. “What? Why?”
I shrugged. There was only one way to find out. I took the call, answering, “Dani here.”
“Good. I was worried you might be asleep.”
“I won’t be sleeping until this is over and done with.”
“You and me both.”
“So, it’s not over yet? That’s not why you’re calling?”
“No. Sorry. I’m assisting with security while they’re dealing with Knox. Clubhouse. Club family. Business assets. Monitoring the feeds, protection detail, all of it.”
“Okay,” I answered, not sure where he was going with it.
“I can’t get a hold of Chris or Alex, the two guys watching you. I need you to take a look outside and confirm their presence. It’s possible they took their break together, despite being told not to. Maybe their phones died. Things are tense right now so a mistake could’ve been made.”
“Sure. Of course,” I stumbled. He was clearly trying to make it seem like it wasn’t a big deal, that there were viable explanations as to why he hadn’t been able to make contact with my protection detail. The problem was, the explanations he’d cited weren’t actually viable. My gut was telling me that something was off in a big way. “We’ll check now and I’ll call you right back.”
“We?”
“Sky’s here with me.”
“Skylar Wright, you mean? Deviant’s woman?”
“Uh huh.”
“Good. That’s very good.”
I frowned at that. What did that mean? “All right, we’re going now.”
With that, we hung up, and I filled Sky in on what was going on.
In the next moment, she was bolting to her feet, and pulling a frigging gun!
Okay, so that was why Jesse had sounded so relieved.
He knew she was some kind of badass, able to handle herself better than most.
“Always take precautions,” was her explanation.
She led the way, her gun at the ready, as we hurried toward the front door.
Pushing the curtain aside carefully, she peered out through the bay windows, eyeing the country road at the end of my driveway. “They were here when I drove in, but there’s no sign of their bikes or them now,” she reported.
I started for the front door, but her hand came down on the door before I could open it.
“No,” she said. “We go out there and we’ll be sitting ducks. If the guys have been taken out, their assailants could be anywhere. Your place is surrounded by so much foliage, perfect cover.”
My pulse picked up at her words, adrenaline shooting down my spine.
“Is there any other way out of here? A more concealed way?” she asked.
I shook my head. “The back door through the kitchen leads into the yard which backs onto a forest.”
She shoved her free hand that wasn’t busy holding her gun through her hair, her eyes darting around rapidly as she clearly tried to formulate a plan of action. Judging from her systematic reactions and the way she’d stepped up so automatically, it seemed she was more than familiar with this sort of thing. And I had a ton of questions for her about all of it.
But, right now, we needed to focus.
“We need to find the most fortified position that we can inside the house,” she announced, springing into action and gesturing for me to follow her. “Call Jesse back,” she spoke over her shoulder. “Let him know the situation.”
I fumbled for my phone, my hands shaking with my fight or flight response kicking in.
Was there really about to be another home invasion on my turf?
What the hell was it about this house?
Was it cursed? Was that it?
Holy hell!
28
~Spartan~
“IN POSITION.”
“Roger,” I responded down the line to Deviant.
With the initial strategy, he weren’t even supposed to be here, nowhere near this close to the shit that was about to go down. Neither was Anarchy, who was right there with him, hidden off to the side of the only through road out of the area in the two trucks we’d brought with us instead of our bikes, so the enemy didn’t hear the thunder of our engines miles out.
The two of them had cornered Finn and me in the clubhouse lot right before we’d been ready to head out, pleading their case and pulling the brothers-in-arms, we-act-as-one card. Bastards knew that kinda thing cut right at the heart of me.
And, fuck, they weren’t exactly wrong.
We had the club for a reason. We were brothers for a reason. To be there for each other, to protect and to fight for each other. It didn’t matter what the stakes were, we had each other’s backs. End of story.
I’d just been so worked up and intense about it all because of Knox and Hammer being the threat. I knew how fucking bad that was, and exactly what it meant, all the risks, the real odds against us.
But I’d compromised in the end with boys. Deviant and Anarchy were the immediate backup to me and Finn, while the rest of the most capable brothers in the club were hanging back a half mile away as the last line of defense.
I scanned the big-ass warehouse ahead of us, Finn doing the same.
It was surrounded by a chain-link fence with a top-of-the-line security gate barring access to the inside.
I noted the roof access ladder just past a stretch of the fence.
Turning to Finn, who was checking everything out through a pair of night vision binoculars, I asked, “You see a rooftop access door up there?”
“Yeah. Just a padlock on it.”
“Hammer’s got way too cocky. It’s easy as fuck to breach.”
We still needed the right tools to do it quietly, though, so it was a good thing we were both wearing backpacks full of an overkill of mission supplies. Neither of us were used to going in without the lay of the land, specs, building plans. But we’d had to move fast.
I wouldn’t lose the assholes a third time.
Finn pulled out his wire cutters and I readied my pick set.
Hidden beneath the brush, we watched the one guy who’d been patrolling since we’d taken position ten minutes ago, finally head back inside the warehouse.
I signaled to Finn to make our move.
We made a beeline for the part of the chain-link fence parallel to the roof access ladder.
Finn made quick work of breaching the fence and we both crawled through the hole.
I took the lead up the ladder, Finn following tight on my six.
I rolled onto the roof, keeping low, Finn dropping down beside me a few seconds later.
As I eyed the door, I asked, “Explosives?”
“Checked them four times, Scott. You want me to check agai
n?”
Damn, he was on edge. That was more bite than I’d ever heard him have on a mission before. I got it, though. This thing was personal to him. Hammer and his guys were the last ones left from the team that’d fucked-up Finn’s life. He’d already taken out a bunch of them years back. He’d thought the others had gone to ground for good, we both had. Now, here they were, right on the other side of that door.
There was a lot riding on this.
Finn was risking exposure by being here. As far as Hammer and his team knew, he was dead. But showing his face here would disprove that. If any of them were left alive they could out him. He needed to be here, though. For his peace of mind and because he was the best and with those assholes, the best was absolutely needed.
Then there was the club and club family. If we didn’t take these fuckers out, they’d come for us and run right over us, not stopping until they put us all to ground.
And there was the thing I’d waited way too many years for—putting an end to that maniac, Knox.
“Just hold it together,” I ordered Finn. “And lose the attitude. Need you at your best. Lock up your emotions or we’re both dead men.”
“Got it.”
“Good.” I crouched down in front of the door and got to work picking the padlock while Finn kept a look out.
In just a couple of minutes, I had it open, the old school way, none of that fancy-ass tech that Jesse had used last time we’d pulled a break-and-enter. In this case, old school worked just as good.
“Let’s move,” I said, stepping back from the door.
He nodded and we pulled our handguns in unison, both of us attaching the silencers we’d brought with us. We didn’t want to alert the whole lot of them the second we took a shot at one or two on our way through the warehouse. The both of us could move like ghosts when we needed to, so that was what we were gonna bring to the table here, because we were up against a lot.
There were five of them inside. Well, Knox made six hostiles. Including Finn, there’d been fourteen of Nemesis altogether when they’d been in operation, way before all the betrayal and down ‘n’ dirty dealings that’d gotten them disavowed and Finn almost killed. I’d killed four of the assholes off that highway a few months back. Finn had killed four of them before he’d gone to ground.