At Any Cost Box Set: Books 1 - 3

by K. M. Fawkes

“I told you it was a bad idea to take the tanker,” Steve growled.

  Garrett had called a town meeting, and he’d just finished relating to those assembled what had happened in Las Ramblas that afternoon. He and Alice had come back with an entire truck full of supplies, which had helped to ease the blow. But there was no mistaking the sense of unease that washed through the room as his story ended. And he could see the fear on virtually every community member’s face.

  They were all terrified of what the biker gang might do to them. And honestly speaking, Garrett didn’t blame them. He’d been face-to-face with Kraken and had seen how serious the man was about his threats. It hadn’t taken a genius or even a slightly trained psychiatrist to see that the guy had more than a few screws loose. It also didn’t take a genius to figure out that he wouldn’t hesitate to come after Garrett and the people of Trinity Ranch.

  They had to be ready to either defend themselves or get the hell out of town before the bikers got there. Garrett hadn’t decided which was a better option yet.

  “As if you would have done any differently,” Alice scoffed. “We needed that fuel and you know it, Steve. It was the best move for the community.”

  “And I still say he should have come back and taken a vote on it!” Steve fumed. “At least given us a chance to say whether we were going to risk our lives for it or not.”

  Greyson whirled suddenly on Steve, grabbed him by the neck, and pushed him up against the wall.

  “That’s not how we run raids, got it, Steve?” he growled. “When we’re on the road, we make the decision that we deem best. The one that will protect the community. In this case, Garrett and his crew saw a huge tanker of gasoline, knew our own stores were down, and made the decision to take it. I’ve heard about enough from you in this regard, and I think everyone else probably has too. So I suggest you zip it before things get ugly.”

  Garrett watched, but kept his mouth shut. This was a matter for Greyson and Steve to figure out on their own. Garrett might be the leader, but he didn’t get in the way when two members of the town had a problem with each other. Particularly when one of those members was Greyson, the self-appointed speaker of the people.

  Greyson growled at Steve again, pushing his own face closer to Steve. “You have anything else to say about it?” he asked.

  Steve looked like he had a lot of things he wanted to say about it, but finally shook his head. “Doesn’t change my mind,” he said. “But I know you speak for the people. Still think Garrett’s leading us astray. I vote we elect a new leader.”

  “And the rest of us vote against you,” Julia said, coming up behind Greyson and crossing her arms. “You’ve asked about it before, and we’ve told you that we aren’t going to do anything like that. You’re the only one here who thinks it’s necessary. You’re outvoted, Steve, and if you don’t like it, you’re welcome to leave. Find a new place that suits you better.”

  And now Garrett actually held his breath. He’d never thought of kicking Steve out of the community. No matter how much he disliked the guy, he was still a member of their group. But this was also a moment of truth; if Steve had actually been working with the biker gang when they stole the supplies, this was the perfect opportunity for him to leave gracefully and go to them.

  To his surprise, Steven quickly shook his head. “I ain’t going nowhere,” he hissed.

  Greyson gave him a long, loaded look, but then released him and stepped back. “Then you’ll keep your mouth shut from now on,” he replied.

  When Greyson turned back to the front of the room, Garrett took at as a sign to move forward, and started the meeting again.

  “Either way, we have a decision to make. Well, several decisions,” he said. “We have two days before Kraken and his group expect us to take that tanker back to them. Two days to either succumb to his demand or…”

  “Or get out of here,” Shane said. “If we run, we’ll be able to take it with us. We already know we’re planning to leave for Mexico. Why can’t we just leave early? Leave before they even know what’s happening?”

  “It’s a thought,” Garrett answered. “We would be rushing, though. It would mean packing things up over the next few hours, then getting some sleep, then getting on the road. I don’t know if we’d be able to do it. And even if we could, we’d have to be crazy to think we can leave here in a caravan without being seen. Kraken and his men will be watching us even more closely now than they were. They’d be on us in a minute. At least here in town we’ve got a way to protect ourselves. Some sort of defense. Out on the road, we’d be completely vulnerable.”

  “Agreed,” Alice said grimly.

  “Considering all the drawbacks,” Garrett went on, “I don’t think we can just run. Which brings us around to facing Kraken and his gang in less than forty-eight hours from now. How are we going to handle this?”

  “Why can’t we just give the gas back?” Cora said suddenly. “Just give them what they want? It will make us all safer.”

  “And it could lead to our deaths,” Alice snapped. “We don’t have enough gas as it is, Cora, and we’re running out of places to search for it. If we want to get to Mexico—hell, if we want to continue to survive at all, we need that fuel. Without it, we die. Get it?”

  Cora fell back, chastised, and though Garrett wanted to go to her and tell her it was all right, he agreed with Alice here. They couldn’t give that gas back. It was integral to their plans.

  So what were they going to do to make sure they could keep it—and their lives?

  “We have to find a way to get rid of the bikers themselves,” he finally said. When that caused an eruption of noise, he held his hand up for silence before continuing.

  “Think about it. No matter what happens, they’re going to continue to be a menace to us. They’re very close, geographically, so we can’t count on them just disappearing, or even us being able to leave without them noticing. We know they’re watching us. We know they’re planning to come back and rob us again. And we know they’re not afraid to kill. None of us is safe as long as they’re here. We won’t be able to stay; we won’t be able to go. They’re the problem we have to solve.”

  “They’re the obstruction we have to get rid of,” Alice added coldly. “They have to make peace with us, or die.”

  A deep, terrified silence dropped over the crowd at her words, and Garrett grew tense. There were times when he wished Alice was a little less blunt in her delivery. Not everyone had the stomach for it.

  That didn’t make her wrong.

  He just had to figure out how to get the rest of the community to buy into what she was saying.

  “I have an idea,” he said suddenly, speaking before he’d even fleshed it out in his mind.

  Everyone turned to him, their faces filled variously with hope, disgust, and excitement. And all of them looking impatient.

  He paused, letting the pieces fall together in his head like the parts of a puzzle. He frowned at it, turned it this way and that, and then rearranged some of the parts so that it would lay more smoothly. Once he’d arranged it to his liking, he grinned.

  “We make the plan to leave and the plan to return the gas tank,” he said simply. “Think about it. If we can get in there and… I don’t know, stun them badly enough, or something like that… it gives us the perfect cover for getting the hell out of here.”

  He looked up, saw a range of faces that didn’t understand what he was talking about, and broke it down. His brain was working faster than his mouth—or at least faster than he could explain things. And that wasn’t the way to get buy-in from the rest of the crew.

  “We spend the next ten hours packing everything up,” he said slowly. “And I mean everything. Night’s going to be falling soon and we’ll have cover of darkness. Even if they have people watching us, they won’t be able to see what we’re doing in the dark. We get all the supplies we have—food, medical supplies, blankets, everything—loaded into the trucks. We get everyone sorted. Then we go to
sleep for a bit. We send someone out to do some scouting on Kraken’s gang so we know what we’re getting into, and know how to handle what we’re about to see. We make sure we’re prepared.”

  Garrett looked over at Alice, who nodded for him to continue.

  “The day after tomorrow, we go to their camp. We take the tanker. But herein lies the rub. Instead of the gas, it’s full of water, with just a thin layer of gas floating on top. We have plenty of empties, and we can transfer the gas into those, along with filling up our trucks’ tanks. I take the tanker to Kraken, play like we’re just going to give in. But I don’t go alone.”

  Garrett looked at Greyson to see if the ex-cop was tracking with his ideas. The man was listening intently.

  Garrett continued, “I take a small team with me, and while I’m meeting with Kraken and the rest of the gang, whoever I take with me starts doing a little spy work of their own. Maybe I use one of those flash grenades we found to distract them while the rest of the team slashes the tires on their bikes. They knock the bikers out. Then we get the hell out of there.”

  The townspeople seated in front of him were leaning forward in their seats now. Hanging on his words, their faces a mixture of concern, questions, hope, and fear.

  “While the group is knocked out, we come back to Trinity, gather everyone up, and get the hell out of here. Run for the border. The trucks will be gassed up and ready to go. Everything will be packed. It’ll take us ten minutes to get out of town. And they’ll be unconscious. They won’t be able to follow us.”

  He stopped speaking, his breath coming fast and heavy with excitement, and waited for the cheer he was positive was coming.

  To his surprise, his words were met only with silence. Then people started asking questions.

  “We don’t have that much water to start with, bud,” Greyson noted. “We’re going to waste most of it on filling up that tanker, you realize that, right?”

  “We can get more water easier than we can get more gas,” Garrett answered. He’d thought about it, and agreed with Greyson, but this was the right move in the end. He was sure of it. “Besides, if we’re moving out of this area we’ll be able to hit new towns and hopefully restock on the way. And if everything goes right, we’ll be in Mexico before we know it.”

  “You’re sure we’re going to be able to get to Mexico?” Cora asked.

  “Positive,” he said quickly. That question wasn’t really worth a longer answer, and as far as he could see, they had a lot of work to do.

  “How exactly are we just going to knock them out?” Bart asked. He was looking better today, Garrett noticed, and even had a glimmer of excitement in his eyes.

  “Alice and I found a house yesterday that must have been owned by a cop or something,” Garrett answered. “We took ten stun guns from his closet. They’re in the schoolhouse now. We’ll just set them to their highest setting to make sure that whoever is hit is out of it for at least a couple of hours.”

  “And then what?” Greyson asked. “We just get in the trucks and… run?”

  “Exactly,” Garrett said. “If we time it correctly, we’ll be heading out in the evening, and driving during darkness. It might make it harder for us to figure out where we’re going, and we might have to slow down, but it’ll also make it a hell of a lot harder for them to follow us. By the time they wake up, it’ll be full dark and they’ll have to wait until daylight to try to track us. We’ll be all the way across the border by then. With any luck, we’ll already be safe in this Mexican town.”

  “How do we even know where this town is, though?” Elisa asked. “We don’t have coordinates or anything, do we?”

  Now Garrett paused. That was true, and honestly he’d thought they would have more time to research the place before they tried to get there. But there was something he still hadn’t told anyone else. Not even Alice.

  “I’ve been looking at the map,” he said. “I took what we’d been told about this miraculous town and started doing some measuring, and I’m not positive, but I think I have a good idea of where we need to go. I didn’t want to tell anyone because I didn’t want to get your hopes up.”

  “And what if we end up in the wrong town?” Greyson asked.

  Garrett could see that he was already starting to get on board with the plan, though. That the wheels in his head were already turning.

  “If it’s the wrong town, then we ask any survivors we meet where the right town might be,” he said logically. “I speak Spanish, and I’m sure some of you do as well. It might not be the right town, but it’s a town, and any town might offer us shelter. If nothing else, they can give us information about where we need to go.”

  “Even if we get there in the middle of the night?” Bart asked.

  “Bart, if it’ll make you feel better, we’ll sleep in the trucks until the sun is up,” Garrett said, grinning.

  And just like that, it seemed he had them. People were grinning and nodding, starting to call out suggestions and ideas, and volunteering for this duty or that.

  A second later, Alice was at his side, bumping his arm with hers and looking up at him, her sharp bob—longer now than it had been—curling around her wide smile.

  “I think you’ve got them on your side, Cap,” she said. “And it’s a good plan. Might even work. You sure you’re ready to leave this place behind? No regrets?”

  His mind went back to Las Ramblas, and the body they’d found there. One more girl that he hadn’t been able to save. One more child that he had to leave behind. And a room full of people that he thought he could save.

  “Positive,” he said. “We just have to get through this meeting with the bikers, and out the other side. I’ll need my best people with me. Are you in?”

  “You know I wouldn’t let you do it by yourself,” she said simply. “I don’t trust you not to get yourself killed.”

  He allowed himself a small smile at that, then got to planning how they would do this in the quickest, most efficient way.

  Chapter 19

  They spent the hour after the meeting making up a list of what they needed to get done and who they thought would be the best at the various tasks. Elisa proved to be a genius at this particular endeavor, much to Garrett’s surprise. She quickly took the entire group in hand and started handing out responsibilities.

  “Greyson, Alice, Manny, you’re on the weapons,” she said, jotting something down on a piece of paper in front of her. “You know them best, and are the most skilled with them. Take stock of what we have and decide what Garrett and his people are going to take with them to the Helen Falls meeting. Everything else gets loaded up. Make sure you’re using whatever cases we have. Those weapons are going to be traveling in the same trucks as children, and we don’t want the kids getting their hands on anything they shouldn’t touch. In fact…”

  She paused and frowned for a second. “Come to think of it, let’s make sure they go into a vehicle that isn’t transporting children. But make sure each driver has at least two weapons at their disposal, just in case. Yes, yes, it violates the no-guns-in-the-kiddie-truck rule but we have to have protection.”

  After one look at Garrett for confirmation, which he duly gave with a nod, Greyson, Manny and Alice headed out, going in the direction of the house they’d set up as an armory.

  “Cora, Kristy, Riley, you’re on food,” Elisa continued, barely pausing. “I want you three in the storeroom itself, organizing things and sending them out by category. If we’re on the road for longer than a few hours, I want us to be able to find things easily, and that means we have to have them organized. Take care of the water, too. Make sure to spread that out across the trucks—we don’t want one truck to have all the water in it and drive off a cliff or something. We can’t afford to waste water like that.”

  No mention of the people that would also kill, Garrett noticed. He’d never realized Elisa was so cold-blooded and clear-minded. She would have been very good in the military.

  “Bart, start sk
etching out routes to the Mexican border,” she continued. “Chances are good that one of them will be blocked, and I want to have an alternate route available to us, just in case. Garrett is planning for the gang not to be able to follow us, but there’s nothing wrong with anticipating that they might. We might need to split up, and we might need to take evasive action. Give me two routes at the very least. Three if you can. From there, give me another two routes to the nearest city in Mexico, and another two to the town we’re aiming for.”

  She cast Garrett a quick look. “Garrett, did you mark the map?”

  He nodded. “The town we’re heading for is circled in blue. Let me know if you need any help figuring it out.”

  Bart, his eyes big and shining with responsibility, nodded once and headed over to the corner of the schoolhouse where the map was kept, straightening his shoulders and lengthening his strides as he went. Garrett watched the boy go, his heart growing several sizes as he thought about how much the kid had matured since he’d first met him. He’d never had a little brother, but if he had, he could imagine him having been a whole lot like Bart.

  Elisa wasn’t finished. “Shane, John, you’re on fuel. Get every gas tank filled up and siphon the fuel out of the tanker and into the empties. Fill the tanker with water after you’re done. Make sure you fill the tank of the truck Garrett and his crew will need for recon and for the actual mission. Keep a full tank out to refuel that truck before we go. We don’t want to have to search for fuel in the midst of trying to leave.”

  She paused, looking down her list and evidently trying to figure out what she might have missed. Then she nodded once and looked up at the crowd.

  “Everyone else, start packing. Bring only the barest essentials—nothing more than you can walk with, if it comes to it. If you need anything, I’ll be around here, ready to answer questions, until everyone is finished with their tasks.”

  She set her list down and watched as everyone filed out, and then turned to Garrett.

  Garrett stood at attention and looked at her. “And what am I supposed to be doing, General?” he asked.