“What?” Dane asked.
“I fuckin’ hate the name Little Ike. Always have. I’m Isaac.”
“Isaac, then. Let’s go make a call.” To the rest of the men standing on the parking lot, Dane said, “You fellas know what to do.”
They did, so while Dane and Isaac rode off, and most of the rest of the men stood watch, and Griffin offered his mediocre medical assistance to the Horde kid, Gunner went and opened the back of their van. He got a crowbar from the toolkit and headed to the Horde truck—a pickup with a basic camper shell.
Showdown came with him and opened the tailgates. Two dead men were stacked on one side, wedged between the wall of the truck bed and three identical wooden crates stacked one atop the other.
It was highly unusual to open the cargo mid-transit. Gunner did that from the Bulls’ secure warehouse outside of Tulsa before he organized for the different runs, but with the disruption of this run, he had to look and make sure those crates were right.
He didn’t like Showdown hovering over him, but the Horde had killed to protect these crates, so he didn’t send him off.
Pushing the crowbar under the lid of the top crate, he pried it up. The nails gave with a protesting shriek.
Just behind his shoulder, standing four inches or more higher, Showdown whistled. “What the hell is that?”
“That is an RPG-29 Vampir. An unguided, portable, anti-tank missile launcher. No recoil. Operates in confined spaces. Will blow your average M48 into itty bitty pieces and pretty much vaporize anything that isn’t a fucking tank. These babies retail for seven figures a pop.”
“Who the fuck is buying million-dollar missile launchers? Three of them?”
Gunner had come to his terms with the reality of the Volkov buyers long ago. Nobody who bought black market guns in quantity was a fucking Boy Scout. Or a Girl Scout, either. “Not a question you need or want the answer to, brother. Best let it go. Not our concern who the Russian lady does her business with.”
“Jesus,” Showdown muttered.
“Nope. Pretty sure it’s not him.” Gunner set the lid back onto the crate and used the crowbar to put the nails back down. In Tulsa, he’d make sure the seal was tight.
~oOo~
The Bulls had intended to stop for the night, keep the cargo under guard while they got some sleep, and ride back to Tulsa in the morning, fresh and, they’d hoped, dry, but with the attempted hit on the run, they decided not to take the risk. They rode all the way back, doing nearly eight hundred miles round trip with little rest and no sleep.
Adding sprinkles to that shit sundae, the rain picked up again, and they rode home just as wet as they’d started off—only now it was dark, and even colder. The weather this fall had so far been odd as fuck, swinging from near summer heat to near winter cold and pausing in the middle for a day or two of actual fall. The state had had two F3 tornadoes at the end of September, and it was getting late in the year for that kind of bullshit. The spring had been wildly erratic, too. The whole year was wonky.
After Gunner had the cargo fully checked and safely locked up, he thought long and hard about crashing right where he was. He was exhausted. But the day had been miserable and uncomfortable, and he missed Leah. He wanted to be home, have a hot shower and get into his warm bed where his girl was sleeping.
So he rode home, through a bit more wet and miserable.
The apartment was dark, except for the light over the stove that Leah liked to leave on, and the little stained-glass nightlight she had plugged in over the sink in the bathroom. He had to go through the bedroom to get to the bathroom, but he crept as quietly as he could past her sleeping form, fighting the urge to kiss her head, and made it without waking her. He eased the door into the jamb, turning the knob into its latch.
A weird thing he’d always enjoyed was showering in the dark. Since he was a little kid, he’d preferred baths and showers in a room as close to dark as possible. It was cozy and calm. So Gunner left the lights out and showered with only the amber glow of the stained-glass nightlight—a sunflower. Leah loved sunflowers.
He’d washed and was leaning on the wall, his eyes closed, letting the hot spray ease his ride-sore back, when the shower door slid quietly open. The cool air alerted him to the fact just as Leah stepped over the side of the tub and into the shower with him.
“You’re home.” She hooked her arms around his waist.
“I am.” He stood up straight and put her under the spray, smiling as she tipped her head back and let the water cascade over her hair. Even in the dark, she was gorgeous and so fucking sexy.
When her hair was slick, she smiled up at him. “I thought maybe someone had broken in to use our shower.”
He chuckled. “Yeah, man. Those shower bandits. They’re a scourge.”
She snuggled up close, burying her face in his chest. “I had lunch with my dad today.”
“Yeah?” The mere mention of that asshole sent a hit of protective instinct through his veins. He lifted her chin, though he could barely see her face. “Was that a plan? Did it go okay?”
“He came by the office and asked me to lunch. It went okay. It was weird.” She took her chin off his hand and went back to snuggling, rubbing her face in the curls of his chest hair, the way she liked. He liked it, too, that contented, trusting touch.
“Weird how, Lee?”
Her voice was muffled when she answered. “Weird that it’s so careful and proper between us now. Like we’re strangers. But nothing bad. He’s trying, and that’s good. He asked me to do my thing with the Harvest Festival, so I’m going to go by HBC for a couple hours after work starting next week.”
“Your thing?” The water began to cool; Gunner reached out and added more hot.
“Yeah. I do a kids’ musical program, and a craft thing afterward, where we paint pumpkins and make little black cats out of pipe cleaners, stuff like that. There’s some work to get it all set up.”
Every day, he learned something new about her that made her more perfect. “You are the sweetest girl in the whole fucking world.”
He felt her shrug in his embrace, and shake her head against his chest. She seemed sad, considering that she was making progress with her dad.
“You sure you’re okay?”
Now he felt her nod. “I’m just glad you’re home. I needed to be where I am right now.”
Tired as he was, Gunner was hard as steel. He’d been struggling to keep his eager cock out of her way, and he’d been seriously entertaining the idea of lifting her up, putting her against the wall, and fucking her breathless. But her mood seemed too vulnerable for that. She needed him to take care of her.
“Let’s go to bed, so you can fall back asleep right where you are.”
Keeping her close, he turned off the water and pushed open the door. He grabbed a towel off the rod and draped it around her, grabbed one for himself, then picked her up and carried her carefully out of the shower and into their room, to their bed, making sure she stayed right where she needed to be.
~oOo~
Gunner sat in the party room with Griffin, Simon, Becker, and Eight Ball. He and Simon had been knocking balls around on the pool table, but neither of them had been able to focus on the game, so they’d given up, and now everybody there was sitting around, drinking, not paying attention to the National League playoff game on the television.
Slick was behind the bar, refilling the ice chest. Kymber and Kendra were the only sweetbutts around at that point in the afternoon, and none of the guys were paying them much mind. Gunner watched with distracted disinterest as the two girls talked together, sitting at the bar. They posed like they were on display, just in case.
He had the stray thought that they were a nice combination. Kendra was a working girl, on the roster at Maddie’s place, and she knew her work. Kymber was a stripper with noteworthy skill on the pole. They were friends and liked to play together—and they played well.
He wondered what kind of girl would fuck guys for he
r day job, or dance naked for them, and then spend her off time fucking bikers for free, but he was looking at two prime examples. He didn’t know enough, or care enough, about either girl to make a judgment on anything but fuckability.
Interesting that the thought of them together did little for his cock. He was having a purely academic conversation with himself and not imagining taking them upstairs. Fuck, he really was all in with Leah if he couldn’t get it up for the thought of a three-way with a couple of hot professionals.
Griff passed Gunner a blunt, pulling his attention from the bar, and he took a long hit before he sent it to Simon. Simon stared at it for a few seconds and then looked over his shoulder at the front door. “Shit, shouldn’t somebody have called in by now?”
“D’s not gonna call in unless there’s trouble, you know that,” Becker answered, holding out his hand for the blunt. “No news is good news.”
Delaney, Dane, Rad, and Ox had ridden into Missouri to meet with the Horde and a Volkov contingent. On the agenda was the hit on the Horde and their special Volkov cargo. They’d left late the day before for a meet early that morning, and none of the Bulls who’d stayed back had heard shit from anyone. That wasn’t unusual, but it was nerve-wracking, considering the topic of the meet, and the fact that the relationship between the Volkovs and the Night Horde wasn’t enthusiastic on either side. It was the Bulls holding that together.
When they finally heard the symphonic roar of four big Harleys riding up, everybody in the clubhouse, even the sweetbutts, stood up. The arriving Bulls came through the side door within a couple of minutes, with Delaney in the lead.
As he walked by the bar, he barked an order at Slick: “Get over to the station and fill in for Apollo. Tell him we’re in church right now.”
Slick nodded and hurried out. Kymber went around the bar and started pulling bottles of beer from the cooler. Kendra popped their caps and handed the bottles out to the Bulls as they came by on their way into the chapel.
~oOo~
Apollo landed in his seat and took a long swallow of his beer. Delaney jumped right into the debrief.
“Comes to this, and it’s no surprise: The hit was on the Russians, not the Horde. The Volkovs are fighting off competition from the Italians. There’s a Mafia enclave in St. Louis, trying to come back into power. They’re connected with some family back East with some name I can’t pronounce.”
“Abbatontuono,” Ox interjected.
Delaney glowered at him for half a second, then nodded. “Yeah. Apollo, we’re gonna need some intel on them.” Apollo nodded, and Delaney continued. “They’re based in Connecticut or somewhere, but they got branches all over the country, and they don’t like the Russians moving product through St. Louis. Volkovs don’t think they were hitting that specific cargo. They didn’t know it was a special shipment. They just happened to hit that one makin’ their point that they want the Russians to cut them in or go around. Word from Irina is that she’s not cutting them in.”
“Is she going around, then? Does that cut us out?” Simon asked.
“If she goes around, it cuts the Horde out for sure,” Rad answered. “The meet got rough. Big Ike was in on it. That jackoff does himself no favors with the Russians.” He glanced at the president. “Sorry, D, but it’s true.”
Delaney didn’t respond, but Gunner thought he saw concession in his eyes.
“But the prince is running that show now, seems to me,” Dane said. “Not just the Russian work. He’s got the reins of the club in his hands. He damn near sat on his old man to keep things in control this morning.”
Gunner rarely spoke in church unless he was directly and specifically part of the conversation. He was neither an officer nor one of the smarter men in the room, so he listened and considered and let the men with more brains and power do the talking. But now, feeling the discussion move away from what seemed the most important point, he had to say something.
“What does this mean for us?”
“Don’t know yet,” Delaney answered. “Irina sent reps to this meet, so it’s goin’ back to her, and we’ll see what she has to say. She might agree to go around, or she might dig her heels in and push through Missouri as she has been. Either way, we’re her midpoint, and the whole western structure is designed that way. She needs us, but we need to decide if we need her enough to fight this with her—fight it for her, out here in the middle. So that’s what’s on the table now. If we want to keep her business, then we’re soldiers in this war she’s got with the Abba—Abba—”
“Abbatontuono.”
Delaney scowled at Ox again. “Yeah, them. What say we just call ‘em the Italians.” A light chuckle went around the table. “If we keep running her guns while she fights her war, we can expect trouble to hit again. If we don’t want that heat, we can use the Italians to back out of the deal.”
“Or renegotiate it.” Simon sat forward. “More risk deserves more compensation.”
“Or that,” Delaney agreed. “So what say you, brothers?”
~oOo~
When Gunner got home that night, the aroma of baked apples and savory meat embraced him. Leah hadn’t worked that day, and when she didn’t work, she cooked. Expansively.
The table was laid out for a nice meal, with placemats on the tablecloth and matching napkins folded neatly on them. She’d bought a lot of kitchen stuff he’d never bothered with. He wasn’t a cook and never did more than slap some meat in a skillet, so he’d had only as much crap in the kitchen as he’d needed to get through a few days without having to run the dishwasher. Leah had filled his cabinets. She’d made his apartment into a home.
These days, he came home to a cozy little apartment and a beautiful woman, and, often, a delicious, home-cooked meal. He’d actually been worried, when she’d first moved in, that he wouldn’t be able to deal with losing his solitude and sharing his space. How stupid had that been?
Damn stupid.
She came around from the kitchen and smiled. “Hi. Supper’s almost ready. Everything good?”
Was everything good? He had no idea. The club had voted to stick with the Russians, whatever Irina Volkov decided to do, and renegotiate their deal for a bigger cut, which meant a real likelihood for violence on runs. Gunner had voted for the plan, but it scared him.
That was a new sensation: to feel fear about the prospect of violence. He’d been chasing pain and death for so long that suddenly fearing either gave him the sense that somebody else had taken up residence in his head.
And that was true, in a way: Leah had taken up residence. She sat in the space Martin had left behind. She was always with him, and he was whole and well because she was there.
He was afraid for her—for her safety, and for her happiness. He didn’t want to die or be hurt because it would hurt her and leave her unprotected. And because he didn’t want to stop living a life she was in.
He didn’t know if everything was good in the club, but in his life, he’d never been better. He went to her, kissed her lightly, and said, “Everything’s great. It smells fucking awesome in here. Did you bake a pie?”
“Nope. It’s baked pork chops with apples. I’m about to mash potatoes, too. And there’s green beans in garlic. And Neapolitan ice cream for dessert.”
Mashed potatoes was his favorite food. If he ever ended up on Death Row, his final meal would be a big bowl of mashed potatoes and a bottle of really good whiskey. His stomach growled, and Leah giggled adorably when she heard it.
“You smell like gas station and clubhouse. Go wash up. I’ll get you a beer.” She gave him a light shove toward the bedroom.
She took such good care of him. He’d take care of her, too. He would keep her happy, and he’d keep her safe.
It was all he wanted in the world.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Gunner put his hands over hers and tried to steady their shaking. He failed. “Leah, take a breath. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
She begged to differ. In her hands w
as a gun. That seemed like plenty to be afraid of. That big safe in the closet at home was a gun safe. He had two rifles, a shotgun, five hand guns, and boxes of ammunition for all it—plus a bunch of stuff for cleaning and carrying.
He’d spent most of the previous afternoon showing her all those guns—explaining the kind they were and what their best use was, taking them apart, putting them together, showing her how to clean them and load them. He’d talked a lot—more than ever before—about his Army days, too.
That had all been fine. But today, they were at his family’s place, and he was making her learn to shoot them all.
Twist (The Brazen Bulls MC Book 2) Page 29