RUNNING GAME (A SECOND CHANCE SPORTS ROMANCE)

by Nikki Wild

  The rising tension amongst the Devil’s Dragons almost crackled in the night wind. Seeing our destination only made the imminent threat more tangible…

  Hunter lifted his wrist and signaled to the others. The bikers fanned out over the dirt as we left the trail and traveled over the flat desert.

  The farmhouse gradually rose in the distance. I could see now why he wanted to stake things out a few hours in advance – the engines were so loud that you could hear them from ages away out here, in the relative emptiness…

  I sensed that something was wrong, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

  As the looming building came close enough to distinguish windows, a clenching sense of danger came over my chest…

  BANG!

  A bullet ricocheted nearby, and several bikers broke formation.

  The bikers broke formation and soared towards the building, whipping out pistols and firing a few warning shots. Nobody fired directly at the building – they recognized the unknown on possible hostages.

  Returning gunfire matched our efforts, and one of ours was knocked from his bike as we made it to the farmhouse. All around me, bikers dismounted and took tactical positions along the porch.

  “Possible abductees. Known two, maybe more,” Hunter hissed quietly, before issuing brief objective reminders. “Shoot to kill. Save the girls if you can. Scour the house. Watch your six, and move in pairs.”

  Everyone gave a rapid-fire nod.

  He gave the order. “Dragons, move!”

  The men immediately followed the commands, forming pairs that moved in all directions. The majority of the bikers descended into the house, kicking open the front door as Hunter hung back with me.

  We remained crouched by the front steps as he quietly hissed to me: “We’ve got to get to that fence. The men will run distraction and back us up from doorways and windows as we make our approach. You ready and armed?”

  I nodded, brandishing my glock.

  “Good. Follow my lead. Stay behind me.”

  Keeping low, he crept around the side of the house, following the first pair that slid around the side. We heard the sounds of gunfire from ahead, and spotted them crouched near the far corner.

  Just when I was starting to wonder if there were any hostiles inside the house, gunfire began to rain on the other side of the wall. I heard shouts and screams and I could only hope that it wasn’t our side taking the brunt of things.

  “What’s the scope?” Hunter hissed to one of the two bikers hiding behind the corner ahead of us. They were crouched in preparation – one held a shotgun up, while the other was quietly wielding a pistol.

  “Two trucks and a van. Can’t see anything else… didn’t get a good look, but they’re being guarded by a few–”

  Bullets fired out again, but they weren’t aimed our way. Instead, the sound of breaking and splintering wood panels told me that they were aiming straight ahead at the house.

  Before Hunter could spot the danger that I was putting myself in, I took the risk of peeking out from cover…

  I spotted the formations of visible cartel members. There were six in total… I ducked back behind cover, and a few bullets whizzed into the dirt near us.

  “What did you see?” Hunter demanded.

  “We’ve got half a dozen guarding the van,” I explained. “Three on offense, three on defense. Defense is clustered by the van – that’s where the girls are. They’re firing potshots at the house…”

  Another few bullets fired off, mostly aimed at the other corner. We heard shouting and returned fire, but no anguished screams from our side.

  “…And the three on offense are attacking the windows and back door. They’ve got the advantage, and we’ve gotta do something fast, or…”

  Another hail of bullets fired out, and we retreated a few crouched strides backwards.

  “I don’t know if this is such a good place for a woman!” One of the bikers hissed to us. “Why did we bring her? She’s just going to get hurt!”

  Something inside me snapped.

  I leant forward around the cover, already aiming down the barrel of the gun. One of the cartel members stumbled in dirt, stepping clearly into view. He looked me square in the eyes and fumbled to lift his rifle…

  BANG!

  With one good, clean shot, I let off a bullet that immediately dropped him to the ground.

  A few of the others rushed over to fire bullets against our corner of the house, but we retreated backwards. The pistol biker dropped to a knee in front, hugging his shoulder against the wall as he prepared to defend against anyone who rounded the corner…

  The enemy chose to hold their ground, turning most of their attention to the other bikers, who saw their chance to return fire from multiple vantage points.

  “What the fuck were you thinking?” Hunter demanded, cupping his hand beneath my chin and sharply turning my head. “What if you took a bullet? This isn’t the time for stupid fucking theatrics like that!”

  “I saw a chance, and I took it,” I retorted.

  He gazed into my eyes. His stare was filled with a mixture of dominating anger, and the very real fear over losing me.

  “Be more careful,” he warned me, allowing defeat to cloud his features. “Swallow your pride. Don’t you dare let proving someone wrong get you killed.”

  I nodded, accepting his words.

  Hunter let go of my chin. Checking the chambers of his pistol, he crept in front of the kneeling biker.

  “Alright… we don’t have a lot of time here… we’d better mount an assault, and fast…”

  We heard more bullets inside the house, and then a conspicuous lack of gunfire. Hunter and I shared a quick look before a biker rounded the back corner and called out to us in a hushed voice.

  “The house is clear, boss! We sure showed those fuckers, eh?”

  A fresh round of bullets hitting the dirt up in front told us that the battle, while swaying in our favor, was far from over.

  “Okay.” Hunter, weighing his options, finally decided on a clear course of action. He nodded to each of his nearby men in kind. “Victor, Ricochet, defend this corner. Sarah and I are going to mount an offense from the front.”

  The two bikers nodded.

  “Good shooting,” Ricochet quickly threw in, nodding at my pistol.

  “Top shot in the academy… You should have seen how pissed the boys were.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” he smirked, turning his attention forward, loading a pair of fresh slugs into his shotgun. “Keep the boss alive, and let’s bring these girls back home.”

  “Yessir,” I replied, turning and rising to a lowered gallop behind Hunter.

  We circled back to our original position and crept into the house. A biker defending the front door escorted us forward, gun at the ready in case those further inside had missed someone.

  The house was pitch-black. He led us via flashlight, guiding us around or over a few stray corpses as we crossed through a couple of rooms and over to the stairs.

  “Up or down?” He asked.

  “Up,” Hunter replied immediately. “Better for us to strike from the high ground.”

  The biker handed us the flashlight and felt the wall, sliding around a corner to attack the outside forces from a ground-floor window.

  Gunfire continued from outside, returned from his men defending strategic assault positions. Hunter led me upstairs, greeting one of his men who laid in wait in the darkness at the top.

  It was Grizz, motionless in the shadows with a pair of pistols at the ready.

  “Continue defending this point… I don’t want anyone sneaking up after us,” Hunter ordered him, and the burly biker nodded silently, his eyes focused dead center down the stairs.

  Hunter flicked off the flashlight as we came in view of the upper floor windows, gazing out over the dirt. A couple of bikers were reloading weapons as we approached, both crouched low on the floor.

  “Skid, what’s going on out there,” Hunter re
quested.

  The younger biker of the two glanced our way, his fingers pushing bullets into his revolver chambers. “We’ve downed a few of them, but a couple more climbed out from the van. A couple of the fuckers were hiding in the truck, too.”

  “What about the girls?”

  “If they’re here, they’re in that van,” he replied, flicking his revolver closed and giving the chambers a quick spin. “We’re going to have to kill ‘em to get down there, though. We keep picking these bastards off, but they ain’t surrendering.”

  “Damn,” Hunter hissed. “I knew they weren’t the white flag type… these assholes are going to return fire down to the last man…”

  Gunfire hit the wall near us and all of us instinctively hit the floor.

  We heard a shriek from outside as another couple of cartel members dropped to the ground, and slowly climbed up to the window.

  More gunfire forced us to retreat.

  It sounded like they were assaulting every defensive point at once, firing everywhere that they knew held one of our people.

  “They’re staggering their fire,” Hunter realized aloud. “They’re distracting us, keeping us out of position … which means… oh, fuck, we’ve got to get down there and–”

  The sounds of screeching tires cut him off. The color drained from my face. I realized what he had been trying to say… and how completely screwed we were.

  “They’re here!” The other biker at our side shouted out. “There’s a van on the other side of the fence! They’re moving the girls!”

  We rushed downstairs, trying to make it to the back door. Hunter had the flashlight, guiding our steps as we descended as fast as possible.

  I felt my foot slip…

  Stripped of sight, I fumbled around as I rolled painfully down the last few several steps to the floor. My pistol clattered out somewhere near me, and Hunter froze, whizzing around to secure me.

  “Go!” I hissed. “Save them!”

  “Done,” he replied without a moment’s hesitation, disappearing around the corner.

  What if they missed someone in here?

  I shuddered at the thought.

  The gunfire continued, and I heard the spray of gravel. A couple of more screams rang out.

  It was impossible to figure out what was going on out there…

  There!

  My fingers clasped around the barrel of my pistol. I was careful to slowly push the barrel turned away, facing out into the dark as I lifted the pistol from the ground.

  Fumbling around with my other hand, I found the wall, guiding myself unsteadily back up onto my feet.

  In just a few moments, I could return to the fight – and put down some of these rabid dogs that dared to kidnap teenage girls and force them into this filthy, despicable world that they had chosen.

  BANG!

  BANG! BANG!

  The sound of screeching tires hit the air again. Gravel hit the side of the building in the van’s flight, and I knew that the surviving members of this little cartel operation were fleeing.

  Well, at least we saved them, I thought aloud, hoping desperately that that was the truth.

  I rounded the corner, facing out onto the back patio. Visible through shattered windows, dead bodies littered the ground; none of them were ours, thank god.

  The bikers that had fought from this vantage point were leaning against the walls, their chests heaving from the disappearing adrenaline. They turned to face me, weapons still held high, but none of their faces looked particularly victorious.

  With mounting horror, I stepped out the back door to face Hunter. He was doused in blood, climbing up the steps in a slow, quiet stagger.

  “Where are the girls?” I asked, glancing over his shoulder at the abandoned vehicles on our side. “Did you fight them off? Are they in the van?”

  Hunter glanced up in a frightening glare. “No,” he replied quietly. “The girls are gone.”

  12

  Furiously, Hunter slammed his fist against the side of the farmhouse in anguished defeat.

  The rest of us listened in unified silence to his frantic shouts and vicious cursing. Several of his Dragons glanced between each other, and one of them took a few steps forward to try and sympathetically clasp his leader on the shoulder.

  One swift, meaningful look from Grizz stopped the biker in his tracks.

  With no other movement in sight, we watched Hunter compose himself. The furious biker president pulled himself back together rather quickly, all things considered.

  “Burn the bodies,” he growled.

  Grizz nodded towards the nearby bikers, and they began to fan out to collect the dead. Hunter stood silently, gazing towards the spot where the van had arrived.

  I walked up to his side, following his statuesque stare. “There wasn’t anything else that you could do,” I tried to reassure him.

  Hunter scoffed to himself before turning away, and it was at that moment I thought about just how screwed I was.

  I was surrounded by death.

  I’d shot a man dead.

  Cherry on top, I was way out of my fucking jurisdiction… and I knew that the Lieutenant was going to have a goddamn field day demoting me down to janitorial duty if I didn’t end up on the inside of a prison cell first.

  “I must have missed something,” Hunter growled to himself. “These assholes were waiting for us. There’s no reason why the cartel would have been in such a hurry. They’re more careful than this. They don’t like drawing attention. This wasn’t careful – this was hasty. Something rattled their cage…”

  “You sure that something isn’t you?” I asked, hands on my hips. “You’ve not exactly kept it a secret that you’re out for fucking blood when it comes to these people. Maybe they saw you coming and ramped shit up.”

  “Maybe,” he thought aloud. “Although…”

  We were cut off by the surprised exclamation of one of his men. Hunter and I turned towards the source of the noise, walking towards the back deck and up the stairs, into the house.

  “What is it?” He demanded.

  “We’ve got a live one!”

  Hunter and I stopped in our tracks, sharing a quick but meaningful glance. “Hold him!” He demanded, rushing to find the biker and his hostage.

  We turned a corner and spotted a wounded cartel member slumped in the corner, clutching his leg and uttering a string of incoherent profanities.

  Descending with cold, calculated movements, Hunter knelt down beside his enemy. The Víboras Verde gunner glared back up at him with venomous eyes, holding onto his wounded limb for dear life. In a final act of defiance, he spat in Hunter’s face.

  The biker didn’t even flinch. He removed a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the saliva from his eyes and lips, and rose back up to his feet. I could almost swear that he was smiling, which sent a shiver down my spine.

  “It would seem that fortune smiles down upon us,” Hunter thought aloud. “What we have here is a bonafide prisoner.” He turned to his biker and commanded: “Bring him into town. Take him to the Desert Owl.”

  The biker swallowed, but did as he was told. He checked the wounded cartel member for weapons, and then started to lift him under the shoulder.

  Another one of the Devil’s Dragons turned the corner, noticed the sight, and helped escort the wincing, cursing gunman outside.

  Moments later came the sound of a firing engine, and then a departing motorcycle.

  “The Desert Owl?” I inquired.

  “A skilled interrogator,” Hunter offered offhandedly. “He’s one of my Outlaws in the area. He has a reputation for extracting information… which means that we may have just found our way into the cartel after all.”

  “That man’s wounded. There’s a goddamn bullet in his leg. He’s not going to offer you anything if he’s dead from an infection. After all, you’re dragging him around in the desert.”

  Hunter shook his head. “The Desert Owl is a former combat medic,” he replied. “Tha
t little asshole will survive… although he’ll probably prefer death, if he proves to be stubborn… Now it’s just a waiting game… I’ll have my contact pull whatever information we can from the cartel gunman. I’m hoping that we can find out where those girls are being taken. Hell,” he added quickly, “he might even know where your missing cheerleaders have gone.”

  I tried to swallow down the pit in my stomach. Not only had we attacked a cross-border cartel operation… not only had I shot and killed someone, villain or not… but I had stood by and watched this faction pull a man from his deathbed to be grilled for an interrogation?

  Shaking my head, I stepped back outside for some fresh air.

  Unfortunately, the immediate sight was of a pile of cartel corpses thrown into a pile. A biker was presently dousing the heap in gasoline, and another had a flip lighter at the ready.

  “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I groaned to myself.

  But no, the bikers stepped aside, and the lighter was flicked and thrown. Within seconds, the mound of dead cartel men was roaring in a hot, heavy blaze.

  “You look surprised,” Hunter murmured from behind my shoulder. “You chose to accompany us on a midnight expedition to stake out a cartel operation. You’re in goddamn law enforcement, Detective… what exactly were you expecting?”

  I shook my head in anger.

  “Not this.”

  Hunter stepped aside, crossing his arms as he leaned back onto a support beam on the back deck. His stern face turned to watch me carefully.

  “What in the hell are we going to do?” I asked fruitlessly, throwing my hands up in exasperation. “You’re just expecting me to stand idly by and let you torch bodies… let you torch evidence?”

  Hunter nodded without an ounce of regret or consideration on his face.

  “That’s not how we do things!” I groaned with mounting anger. “How can you just act so blasé about this shit? Who the fuck thinks that torching bodies is normal?”

  Hunter’s eyes darkened, even in the low visibility under the moonlight. “Someone who has lived on this side of the law for as long as I have, Detective… someone who has done this for a very long time.”