Wanted: An Outlaw Anthology

by Lane Hart

  “I’m a pig because I don’t chase married chicks?”

  “No, because all you think about is sex. Would you be protecting me if we hadn’t —” Six stops talking abruptly.

  “What?”

  “Uh-oh,” she hisses. “Look behind us.”

  I’m about to ask her what she means, but a check of my mirror tells me instantly. Two cars have appeared over the hill behind us. They’re driving two abreast, and gaining on us quickly.

  “Shit.” I punch the accelerator with my foot, and Six’s engine groans in protest before starting the process of speeding up. This compact ain’t the car I would have chosen for a high-speed chase, but I don’t have much of a choice right now. I fly over the next hill, and suddenly my foot leaves the accelerator and slams on the brakes, lurching us forward in our seats.

  There’s a van at two-hundred feet ahead of us, blocking both lanes. Ditches on either side mean I can’t chance driving off the road.

  We’re fucked.

  I slow the car, scanning the scene quickly to assess our situation. There’s at least two people in each of the vehicles. We’re outnumbered three to one. I could pull out my piece and start shooting, but neither Six or I would make it out of that alive. Instead, I keep it hidden in my waistband and hope no one takes it off me before I have a chance to use it.

  “Get the fuck outta the car!” one of the men yells, waving a gun at us and miming taking aim. Six flinches, but looks at me for direction. I nod once.

  “Stay alert,” I murmur. “We know what they want. They’re not gonna kill us before they get it.”

  They’re not gonna kill her, anyway.

  And I have to stay alive to make sure she gets out of this.

  Just before opening my door, I reach down and drop something under the seat. We both climb out of her car and stand to face the dark-complected man with the gun he’s a wiry guy with prison tattoos and bad teeth. He points into the trees and snarls, “Walk. Dizz, move their car off the road.”

  Six looks at me and I give her a quick nod. She starts off down the slope. I start to follow her, the but wiry guy barks at me to stop. “Hands out to your sides,” he drones.

  Behind me, another guy moves up and starts to frisk me. It’s only a matter of seconds before he finds my gun. Wiry guy flashes me a crooked grin. “Thought you were gonna get away with that, didn’t ya?”

  “Let’s get on with this,” I retort. “You want me to follow her, or not?”

  “Go.”

  As we go, I note they’re not bothering to hide their faces, or what they call each other. Either it hasn’t occurred to them, or they aren’t planning on letting us go afterwards.

  I’m betting it’s the latter.

  We go about five-hundred yards until wiry guy calls for us to stop. As we turn around, I notice a couple other more people have joined us. One is a pale, angular ginger whose face is a war zone of freckles. The other is a woman, with bleach-fried blond hair and too much makeup on.

  “What do you want with us?” Six demands in a loud, clear voice. “Why don’t you just tell us?”

  “You know what we want, honey,” the woman sneers. “And don’t think we won’t do whatever it takes to get it.”

  “Lexxi,” the ginger guy grunts. “Shut up.”

  “We don’t even know who you are,” Six insists. “How would we know what you want?”

  “Flash wasn’t enough of a message for you, Stacia?” wiry guy snaps, pointing the gun at my head. “You need another reminder?”

  Six makes a low, fearful sound in her throat.

  “Flash,” Six mutters dully. “So you’re the ones who killed him.”

  “Flash betrayed us,” the ginger says. “He knew what he was getting into. He knew as soon as we got out of the pen, he was finished. That’s why he ran.” He grimaces, showing a row of small, gray teeth. “And led us straight to you.”

  “What do you want with me?” Six cries. “I don’t understand.”

  “The key,” Lexxi drawls. “Flash didn’t have it on him. And we know you’re his girlfriend.”

  “Ex-girlfriend,” Six corrects. “And I haven’t seen him in years! He just showed up. He’s been stalking me. I didn’t know why!”

  “You better hope you’re lying,” Ginger drawls. “Cause us getting that key back is the only thing keeping you alive.”

  “What’s so special about this key, anyway?” I ask, cocking my head. “Whatever it is that’s locked up, why don’t you just force the lock? Blow it open?”

  “It’s to a safe deposit box,” Lexxi spits back. “Can’t exactly bust it open in a bank, now can we?”

  “Lexxi, shut up!” wiry guy growls. “Jesus!”

  “That seems like a bad place to store something valuable if you need to get to it quickly.”

  Ginger snorts and rolls his eyes. “Yeah,” he mutters. “No shit. Letting Flash take care of hiding the jewels was a big fucking mistake. Leave it to his dumb ass to choose a goddamn bank.” The wiry guy looks pissed. I get the feeling this is a bone of contention between them.

  “I don’t have the key,” Six insists. She raises her hands in a supplicating gesture. “And I don’t know where it is.”

  “Why the fuck should we believe you?” the wiry guy retorts. “Grimm. Lexxi. Search them. If it ain’t on them, we’ll just have to convince them to tell us where it is.”

  Six makes a strangled noise. I know she’s on the verge of losing control. I have to do whatever it takes to keep her calm.

  “It’s okay, babe,” I murmur. “Deep breaths.”

  The ginger, whose name is apparently Grimm, steps forward and starts frisking me. I resist the urge to clock him in the jaw. Lexxi moves to Six. She tells Six to remove her shoes, and then her jacket. Six shoots me a worried look.

  “What the fuck is this?” Lexxi asks with a frown as she examines the jacket. She feels the lining where Six has sewn it back together with dental floss. As she does, her mouth opens in shock and elation. “Holy fuck!” she yells, her voice echoing through the trees. “It’s here! I got the key!”

  Just then, a shot rings out, and then a volley. I barely have time to register what the sound is when Grimm is on the ground. I launch myself at Six and tackle her, bringing us both down and out of the range of fire behind a tree. I yell at her to stay down and crawl on my elbows over to the motionless Grimm. I find a gun tucked into a waist holster and pull it off him. Just then, the second guy and the chick bolt away and make a run for it. Taking aim at the guy, I fire at his calf and bring him down on one leg. A second shot hits him in the back, and he falls forward into the dead leaves. Off in the distance, a few more shots. Then a familiar voice rings out.

  “Bullet!” Angel’s voice calls.

  “Here!”

  I run over to where Six is lying as half a dozen of my brothers emerge through the trees. She’s unhurt, but shaking and bewildered. As I help her to her feet, she falls against me, trembling like a leaf.

  “It’s over, babe,” I murmur against her hair.

  “H—how did they find us?”

  “GPS. I left my phone in the car.”

  Angel approaches us, flanked by Thorn and Beast. “Brother. You okay?” He glances over at Six.

  I nod. “Yeah. Thanks to you. It was lookin’ a little hairy for a while.” I look down at Six, who is still clinging to me like a lifeline. This is —”

  “Stacia,” she inserts, swallowing. “Thank you for saving us.”

  “All in a day’s work, little lady,” Thorn chimes in, doffing an imaginary hat.

  “Who the fuck are you, Robin Hood?” I grouse, trying not to smirk.

  “What were these shitholes after, anyway?” Beast asks, looking around at the bodies lying on the forest floor.

  “Oh! My jacket!” I feel Six’s body stiffen as she glances around in alarm. “Lexxi has it!”

  As if on cue, Gunner emerges from the trees with her. Lexxi is wearing the jacket, and trying without success to wrench h
er arm away from him.

  “Caught this one trying to get away.”

  Lexxi gives him a venomous look and continues to struggle against his grip.

  “Look, you,” I snarl, stepping up to her. “You oughta be thanking your lucky stars you ain’t dead.”

  “Fuck you,” she hisses. I just laugh.

  “I’ll take that jacket now,” Six says beside me.

  Gunner lets go of her just long enough to pull it off of her and hand it to us. “What the fuck is so special about a jacket?” he frowns.

  “Long story. I’ll tell you later.”

  Six turns it inside out to look at the lining. “The key’s still here,” she says, holding it out so I can see it’s still sewn shut. “She must not have had time to pull it out.”

  “Good,” I nod. “We’re good to go here then.”

  Angel looks around in disgust at the bodies littering the ground. “We’re gonna have to do some cleanup here.”

  Still glaring at Gunner, Lexxi seems to realize the gravity of her situation. “What are you gonna do to me?” she asks.

  “You’re a witness, bitch,” Beast growls. “What do you think we’re gonna do to you?”

  Lexxi’s face pales. “You can’t… please don’t kill me!” She starts to cry, her voice rising to a wail. “Please!”

  “Shut up,” I cut her off. We ain’t gonna kill her, but she doesn’t need to know that yet. “Give me one good reason why we should give a shit what you want?”

  Six puts a hand on my arm. “I have an idea.”

  I look at her and she continues.

  “I’m pretty sure Lexxi here might be able to buy a ride for herself back to civilization with us,” she says. “For the price of what she knows about this key. And her silence.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Six

  In the days after the shoot-out, I tried to forget about the bank box of jewels that had ended up costing so many people their lives. But try as I might, I couldn’t put it out of my mind completely.

  Part of it might have been that the key to the box was still stitched into the lining of my leather jacket. And the jacket, of course, was my one remaining physical reminder of Flash. He had been a terrible boyfriend, and an even worse ex-boyfriend. But he had been alive once, and I found myself remembering some of the good times we’d had. Things I’d long since forgotten. He was a man who had grown up poor, and made a lot of terrible decisions in his life. In some ways, he wasn’t that different from me, or from Bullet. In a strange kind of way, I felt myself mourning his passing.

  Once it was all over, I realized I no longer had to go by the nickname Six. When Bullet introduced me to Angel, the president of his club, I realized I wanted my name back. My life back. I felt like I’d earned it. So, for the first time in years, I introduced myself as Stacia.

  Six, it turned out, was the final number of times I would go on the run.

  With the permission of Angel, Bullet introduced me to Tweak, the Lords’ resident hacker. Tweak and I spent a good part of the next couple of weeks holed up in his cave-like computer room at the clubhouse, brainstorming ways to track down the location and owner of the safe deposit box. All Lexxi had been able to tell us before the Lords finally let her go was that Flash was the one who set up the account, and only he and the other two men had known which bank it was.

  Part of me wanted to just let it go, and let the box sink into oblivion at the dusty back of a bank vault. But another part of me just needed to see what was in it that had caused so much trouble. Besides, I didn’t have a whole lot else to do during my non-work hours, anyway.

  The rest of the Lords got used to my presence in their space pretty quickly. Apart from some good-natured flirting, they mostly left me be. I wasn’t sure how much Bullet’s influence had to do with that, but I was grateful for it.

  It took me a while, but I was able to figure out which bank Flash had the safe deposit box with. Tweak and I started by looking at the records of all the banks within a five-mile radius of Flash’s apartment. Thankfully, it didn’t take long to find his name as one of the account holders at a smaller branch of a large bank in the city. When I saw his name and the correct address flash up on the screen, I let out a whoop of excitement that made Tweak chuckle and hold up his hand for a high five.

  “Okay, then,” he grinned. “So, we probably have the bank. What do we do next?”

  I hadn’t thought that far yet, but as soon as the words were out of his mouth, an idea came to me. “I think I’ve got a plan,” I say.

  My idea revolves around the fact that Flash’s real name is Sam Randall. Not Samuel Randall, mind you. Just Sam. This is the name his account at the Third National Bank is under.

  Which makes it just a tiny bit easier for Tweak and me to forge identity documents and adopt his social security number as Samantha Randall.

  Tweak and Bullet accompany me up to the city, armed with the key to the box, my new drivers license complete with the name and address on the bank account. I’m nervous as hell, but I do what I can not to show it. Amazingly, the teller barely even looks at my papers before calling another employee to take me back to the deposit box area.

  Tweak waits out in the car as Bullet and I go in. The bank employee takes out the box and inserts his key. He watches as I produce mine and turned it in the second lock. Then, giving us both a quick nod, he exits the room to give us our privacy.

  “Oh, my God,” I breathe. “I can’t believe this is happening.”

  “You can always lock it back up and walk away,” Bullet says.

  “No, I want to see what’s inside. I want to see what’s cost so much trouble and so many lives.”

  Inside the small box, hardly bigger than a shoebox, is a large manila envelope with a metal closure. I pull up the wings of the clasp and gently shake the contents out onto the table.

  What falls out are an assortment of loose gems, none of them in rings or any other setting. There are diamonds, what look to be topaz, and a few emeralds.

  “Huh,” Bullet mutters. “This ain’t that much. Maybe ten-thousand dollars worth.”

  “Really?” I have no idea what jewels are worth, having never owned anything but costume jewelry myself. “That seems odd. Not nearly enough for Flash to be trying to keep Grimm and Paco’s share for himself.”

  “Unless there used to be more. Maybe Flash had been selling the gems while Grimm and Paco were in the pen.” Bullet snorts softly. “That’d explain why he was coming after you by himself, instead of doing it with their help. Dumb shit knew they’d kill his ass if they found out part of it was gone. Maybe he wanted to grab what was left of the gems and leave the state. Or the country.”

  I contemplate his words. “That makes sense. He seemed scared at the prospect of meeting up with them again. I couldn’t figure out why. But now, it sort of does.”

  I pick up one of the larger diamonds and hold it up to the light. It’s beautiful — shimmering, hard, nearly indestructible. I’ve never held a real diamond before. This one would make one hell of an engagement ring for a rich socialite. “I wonder where these came from.”

  “Not likely we’d be able to figure that out, unless they’re registered. If the diamonds are certified, there’ll be a serial number inscribed on then with a laser. If not, they’re not really traceable. That’s why they were removed from their settings.”

  “How would we find out if they’re inscribed?”

  “I know someone who can check that out for us.”

  Bullet watches as I scoop the gems back into the envelope and seal it back up. I slide it into the inner pocket of my jacket and close the empty safe deposit box, turning the key to lock it.

  “What are you gonna do with the gems?” he asks me.

  “I have no idea,” I admit. “I sure don’t want to keep them. It feels wrong to sell them. But if what you say is true, we might never be able to find the owners they were stolen from. Besides which, I don’t exactly want them calling the cops on me
if they don’t believe I’m not the one who stole them in the first place. I have a juvenile record.”

  “Let’s just take first things first,” Bullet suggests. “First, we find out if they’re registered, and then we go from there. But the choice is yours. You were the one who was in danger because of them. You’re the one who had to uproot your entire life and leave everything behind over and over to keep yourself safe. You choose what to do with them next.”

  When we get back to the clubhouse to drop off the car, Tweak waves goodbye and heads inside. Bullet takes my hand and leads me to his Harley. I get on the back, but instead of taking me back to my apartment, he heads in the direction of his place.

  I don’t argue. I’m not in the mood to be alone right now, and I’m still processing what it means that I have several thousand dollars in gems in my jacket pocket.

  Almost as soon as we’re in the door, I’m in Bullet’s arms and he’s carrying me to bed. All the tension and fear of the last few hours melts away as he makes love to me, long and slow. By the end, I’m gasping and boneless. As we lie there together, I think for at least the hundredth time how there’s never been anyone like him. All other men pale in comparison, both in and out of the bedroom.

  In spite of myself, a sad sound escapes my throat. Bullet hears it and pulls me closer. “What’s up, babe?”

  “I’m just thinking about everything that’s happened.” It’s sort of true, but I’m leaving out the most important part. “It’s weird to realize I don’t have to run anymore. I’ve never really thought about how it would feel to be able to settle down. Maybe even put down roots.”

  “Glad to hear you’re thinking of sticking around,” he rumbles.

  I can’t quite read his tone, and that makes me cowardly.

  “I mean, at least for a while, anyway,” I add casually. “Chance has said I’m ready to start working unsupervised as a tattoo artist, and he’s hoping to move me up to full-time in a few months if business stays good.” My mood darkens. “If he still wants me.”