by Emma Slate
The two men who’d accompanied Dev were leaking blood onto the ground in pools around the stumps of their lower jaws and necks.
They’d had their heads blown apart.
A sudden wave of nausea assaulted me as the smell of blood, like old copper pennies, hit my nose and I began to breathe through my mouth and hastily closed my eyes.
Gray had done his job.
“You lying bitch,” Dev seethed as he pulled me in front of him and stuck his pistol under the base of my skull at the back of my head.
“Come out, fuckers! Come out now or she dies!”
When no one made a move, he pressed the weapon more firmly to my head and made a guttural sound like he knew he was going to die.
The bite of metal against my skin made my heart pound, but it suddenly felt like everything was happening in slow motion.
I knew Gray’s general position on the roof across the street, but like any good sniper he was impossible to see. Dev didn’t know Gray was out there, for all he knew it was two men on foot down below, but Gray hadn’t taken a shot at Dev yet. That told me he couldn’t hit Dev without injuring me.
Out of the corner of my eye, the light in the warehouse suddenly turned on, causing Dev’s gaze to stray.
I took advantage of the distraction and in one quick breath, I lifted my arms into the air, balled my fist up tight and elbowed Dev in the solar plexus as hard as I could.
“Fuuuck!” Dev screamed, firing off a shot in my general direction as he lost his grip on me.
I rushed forward to escape him.
He stumbled back, tripping over one of the bodies of his men. When he fell, he dropped his pistol and his eyes darted around in search of it, reminding me of a trapped rodent searching for an escape. He was without his men, and now he no longer had a hostage to ensure he’d leave alive. Desperation had set in.
I kept waiting for Gray to take his shot, but it didn’t come.
Something was wrong.
I felt it deep in my gut.
Had Dev’s two men—Mac and Smokey—who’d been watching from the distance found Gray? Was he fighting on the roof for his life, or was his existence already forfeit?
Dev started to laugh when he realized I was alone and unarmed, that he could now finish me off and there wasn’t anyone to protect me.
I’d been right on one account.
Dev had followed me into a trap, but the trap failed.
I had no idea where Flynn was, or if Gray was still alive.
I was on my own—facing off with a madman who would stop at nothing to kill me.
My only shot in hell was making it to the van and praying his man had left the keys in the ignition.
If not…
I took a step forward only to have pain lance its way up my leg.
I looked down and realized I’d been hit when Dev’s pistol fired. A river of blood poured from the wound, trickling down my calf and into my boot. I became light-headed.
“Where’s your boyfriend now, you fuckin’ cunt?” Dev taunted, rising from the ground with a pistol he’d found by the body of one of his men. “You think his name on your shoulder is gonna protect you?”
I hobbled toward the van, my hand to the wound on my leg. But my palm kept slipping off because of the blood.
The air smelled of gunpowder and death.
“You don’t think I knew this was gonna be a set up? Of course I knew.”
“Then why did you let my guy kill two of yours?” I asked, feeling faint.
“Sometimes you have to sacrifice a few for the many,” he stated. His eyes took on a deranged glint in the moonlight.
Spots marred my vision and my breathing was already labored as my heart tried to pump more blood and oxygen to the wound in my leg.
“You didn’t think I knew about your alliance with Flynn Campbell? Or your boys’ meeting with the Jackals. The Jackals would be idiots to pick the losing side in a drug war.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to ask how he knew. But I realized it didn’t matter. He had been one step ahead of me and I was going to die for it.
“I know all, darlin’. I own this city.”
I reached the van and grabbed the door handle as Dev slowly approached from behind, not at all concerned that I was attempting to escape. The door was locked and my hand slid off the metal, leaving behind a bloody trail. I whimpered, even as I felt myself sinking to the ground.
As I rested against the wheel of the van, Dev crouched down to get into my face.
“I admire your balls.” He grinned. “For a woman. Still, you’re just a woman.”
He caressed the side of my face, almost tenderly, almost like we were lovers. Lovers entwined in blood.
My vision was hazy and I refused to let Dev’s face be the last thing I saw before I bled out. I focused on the warehouse behind him, a slight smile curving my lips when I saw the tendrils of smoke curling out from the warehouse.
“Guess you don’t know everything,” I wheezed.
Dev frowned and then looked over his shoulder, following my line of sight. “No,” he whispered, rising from the blood-soaked pavement beneath us.
He repeated the word over and over as he watched the warehouse of cocaine slowly become engulfed by fire.
“How? How did this happen?”
I wanted to tell him. I wanted to gloat. But I was having trouble staying awake. And just before I passed out, I swore I heard the faint rumblings of a motorcycle.
I was being lifted off the ground and pressed to a warm, solid chest. The cotton T-shirt smelled familiar. Like my favorite detergent—and Colt. I would’ve snuggled closer, but everything felt heavy. My head, my limbs, my entire body.
“Fuck.” The voice sounded very much like Colt’s. Which was impossible because Colt was in jail.
And I was dying.
Maybe it was an angel with Colt’s voice escorting my soul to heaven. My internal voice snorted at the thought. If anything, it was the devil shepherding my soul to hell. For the things I’d done. For the wrongs I’d committed. For the life I’d chosen.
I felt something cinch around my thigh.
“Brother,” came another voice I recognized.
Zip.
Why was Zip with the devil taking me to hell? Did devils work in pairs? Deranged thoughts. Thoughts from deprivation of oxygen.
“I can’t lose her.” Colt again.
Bleak.
So, so bleak.
I wanted to tell them that I was still here and I wasn’t ready to leave yet. I wanted to tell them that I had more living to do, more loving. I’d just found my father. I’d just unofficially adopted an eleven-year-old boy that I had no idea how to raise. And Colt. I couldn’t leave Colt.
I finally found the strength to open my eyes and stared into Colt’s intense brown gaze.
And then I died with a smile on my lips.
Chapter 30
Hell looked very much like a hospital room.
I blinked heavy eyelids, staring at light blue walls and a white ceiling. The IV in my arm tingled with pain when I moved my hand.
Colt was sitting next to my bedside, his head lolling to his shoulder as he slept. I thought about calling out to him to wake him up, but I didn’t want to disturb him.
Cottonmouth had me doubting I could even form a word.
I slid my finger back and forth across the sheet that was covering me. My nail on the cheap fabric made a sound, causing Colt to jerk upright in sudden alertness.
We stared at one another and then Colt was out of the chair and at my side. “Darlin’.”
“Water,” I growled through a parched throat. “Please.”
He grabbed the pitcher and poured water into a plastic cup. When I had my fill, he set it aside.
I had so many questions I wasn’t sure where to start. So I began with the most obvious one. “How long have I been here?”
“Brought you in last night. They rushed you to surgery for the bullet wound in your thigh. They dug it out, transfused the fu
ck out of you, and here we are.”
I looked out my window and saw the fading sunlight.
“Gray? He was—”
“Fine. He’s fine. Reap and Boxer found him wrestling one of Dev’s men on the roof. Gray managed to slide his knife into the other one.”
I breathed a sigh of relief that Gray was alive.
“He feels guilty as fuck, you know. Since he was supposed to pick Dev off.”
“Nothing goes according to plan, right? Dev told me he knew about the set up. Is that true?”
“Yeah.”
I peered up at him, feeling drugged and loopy, my brain and words struggling. “Piece this together for me, because I have no idea how you’re not in jail and I swear, while I was bleeding out propped up against the van, I thought I heard your voice.”
“You did hear me.” He raked a hand through his hair and grimaced at the sudden pain from moving his side and feeling his own wound.
The irony, that we both had bullet wounds, courtesy of one insane MC president.
“Vance—our club lawyer made a call to a high-profile judge, who made a call to the mayor, who called the sheriff.”
“Interesting chain of command,” I murmured, wondering what that conversation had sounded like and how the hell a judge was ordering the mayor to do anything.
“Anyway, Flynn and Ramsey met us at the station with our bikes. On our way to the warehouse, we got caught up in a firefight with Dev’s men. It was an ambush. If it hadn’t been for Knight and the Idaho boys, we wouldn’t have been able to get out of there.”
“I don’t understand.”
“There was a shooting. Knight and his boys took over the fight. Most of them are former military, remember? They covered us while we rode to the warehouse and they killed a few of Dev’s men. The Jackals were supposed to be riding with us, but they had an issue on their own turf. Someone in their club ratted us out to Dev, probably hoping to get in tight with the Iron Horsemen. Dev knew the rest of the Jackals would ride with us against him, so he created a diversion to keep the Jackals close to home. We lost them as backup.
“By the time we got over to the warehouse, we found you bleeding out by a van, the warehouse was on fire, and Dev was gone.”
My breath caught. “He escaped? After all of this?”
“For now.”
“Are you—” I exhaled. “Are you going to track him down?”
Colt shook his head. “Mateo Sanchez has Franco on it already. They’ll find Dev and then hand him over to the cartel and let Alejandro decide what’s to be done with him. He’s no longer our problem, and with the coke all gone, he’d be stupid to ever come back to Waco. Once Alejandro finds out that the coke is missing along with Dev, the entire crew is history.”
I shivered. “What about their wives and children? I know what cartels do. They murder entire families just to make a point. They’ve even killed people’s dogs before.”
“I’ve already asked Sanchez to negotiate for their safety.”
“What will that cost us? The price has been too high already!” I cried, hysteria rising in my tone.
Colt placed his hand on my shoulder. “Easy. Take it easy.”
“I can’t.”
“You need to take a deep breath for me.”
When I felt like I was calm, I had to ask, “Will Alejandro come after me? Us? We were the ones who burned his coke to the ground. It was worth millions…”
“Only after Dev let it slip through his fingers. No. Alejandro won’t come after us because Sanchez’s men are sticking close to Waco to ensure the peace. Even a few million dollars in cocaine isn’t enough for Alejandro to take on another cartel head to head. Especially not in the States. That’s bad for business. It’s better for him to wipe out the Iron Horsemen so his street cred stays valid and leave out the details that we’re now working with Sanchez. It will look like the Iron Horsemen fucked with a cartel and got obliterated, which is true. All the other shit will be swept under the rug.”
I wasn’t sure that gave me any comfort.
“How’s your pain?” he asked suddenly.
“What pain? Morphine is kind of swell.”
He didn’t smile at my light tone and I was instantly on my guard. “You’re going to yell at me, aren’t you?”
“You think I’d yell at you while you were lying in a hospital bed after having been shot because you willingly placed yourself in danger even though you had no business being in danger in the first place?”
I paused, pretending to look thoughtful. “Yeah, I think you’d yell at me.”
“Well, you’re damn fucking right I’d yell at you,” he bellowed. “What the fuck were you thinking?”
“I was thinking,” I replied, tone calm, “that you guys were in jail and I had no idea when you’d be getting out. I knew this stuff with Dev was a time sensitive issue and it needed to be dealt with.”
“What else,” he demanded. “What are you leaving out?”
“This was personal for me, and if I didn’t have a stake in taking him down, I knew I’d always regret it. And I’d never find peace with Shelly’s death. But you knew all that. So why do you seem so surprised?”
“Surprised doesn’t even begin to express how I feel. I was scared shitless knowing I couldn’t protect you.” He hung his head in near defeat. “You can’t always go charging into dangerous situations.”
“I didn’t charge. I sat down and planned with Gray, Torque, Flynn and the others.”
I closed my eyes, not because I was finished with the conversation, but because the morphine was flowing and I felt myself slipping away from consciousness.
“We’re not done with this discussion,” Colt whispered in my ear.
“You haven’t told me you loved me,” I mumbled.
“I thought that was a given.”
“I told you I loved you after you got shot. It’s courteous to repay in kind.”
His lips brushed my forehead. “I love you. Losing you would devastate me. My life has no meaning without you. There. Are you happy?”
I smiled, my eyes still closed, “Your delivery needs work, but yeah, Colt. That made me happy.”
The next time I woke up, it was late at night and Colt was standing by the window, staring out at the hospital grounds.
He must have heard me stir and turned back to look at me. There was hardly any moon or starlight, and I could only faintly make out the outline of his big, brawny body.
“How are you feeling?” he asked, stalking toward my bedside and reaching for the pitcher of water.
“I don’t know.” I pressed my tongue to the roof of my dry mouth. “Will you flip on the lamp?”
He did as I requested.
“How do I feel,” I repeated. “Like down is up and up is down. Like my emotions are all scrambled and I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel.”
“You’re supposed to feel whatever you want to feel.”
I frowned, taking the glass of water and bringing the straw to my lips. After I had my fill, Colt took it from me and set it aside.
“You haven’t kissed me. You’ve barely touched me,” I said.
“You’re in a hospital bed. Did you kiss or touch me when I was laid up in bed?”
“I think I did touch you. And I think you wanted me to touch you. Why won’t you touch me now? I’m not talking carnal—just gentle intimacy. I know something is going on with you. What is it?”
“I’m fucking livid with you,” he said, his voice dispassionate. “I’ve had hours to think while you’ve been asleep and I just—haven’t figured out how to wrap my head around your actions.”
I watched him pace the room as he vented.
“I can’t believe Gray and Torque didn’t have the good sense to keep you out of this.”
“Out of this,” I repeated. “Where have you been the last few weeks? This was all because of me.”
“It wasn’t all because of you.”
“Fine. I was the catalyst that got it
all moving.” I swallowed. “What’s the opposite of the Midas touch, Colt?”
“I don’t follow.”
“You know, Midas. Everything he touches turns to gold? Well, everything I touch turns to ash.”
His gaze softened in understanding. “Ah, darlin’.”
“No, don’t.” I held up my hand to stop him. “I’m not looking for sympathy. Okay? I was just—I had to help clean up the mess I brought into your life. To the Blue Angels’ lives. For me. For you. For Shelly.”
Saying her name out loud hurt me. Saying her name felt like summoning a ghost. A fissure of emotion erupted in my body shoving away the numbness that had enveloped me.
The tears were gentle at first and then they turned into a cascade. I became a careening, mourning woman who sounded like a deranged animal in pain.
Colt sat down on the bed next to me and held my body as I shook and broke apart.
“He killed her,” I hiccoughed the words, my eyes nearly swollen shut. “He killed her and I couldn’t even make him hurt. I couldn’t even make him hurt one bit of what I feel.”
Colt crooned against my hair, brushing away my greasy locks, not caring that I needed a good scrubbing to remove the smell of hospital, the smell of death.
Would this eat away at me my entire life? Not being the one to end Dev?
When I quieted, I pressed my nose to Colt and inhaled. He smelled like Colt, like freedom and light. Like the air in summer. Like life itself.
“No one asked me to help,” I said when my tears had abated. “I volunteered. No one wanted to involve me. Torque nearly lost his shit when he saw that I didn’t get in the car to head to the cabins.” I pinned him with a stare. “Cabins, Colt. You never told me you had cabins.”
“I don’t have cabins. The club has cabins. And don’t change the subject. How did you get Gray and Torque to let you sit at the table?”
“I asked.” I shrugged. “You have to understand—none of them were okay with using me as bait, but they knew it would get the job done. It was supposed to get the job done, anyway. But we failed. I failed.”
“What is failure, though? You didn’t get to look Dev in the eye and pull the trigger? Okay, so maybe that’s your version of failure. But we succeeded overall.”