At Any Cost Box Set: Books 1 - 3

by K. M. Fawkes

  “Ah,” he said. “That makes sense. You were right, Riley. They were directing us toward where I assume we’ll find Kraken.”

  “That was directing?” Bart asked sharply. “These guys are even stupider than I thought.”

  “Stupid or not, they still have guns,” Alice retorted quickly. “And that means you’ve got to respect them, Bart. Remember what I taught you about people who have guns?”

  “They’re dangerous no matter who they are,” he recited obediently.

  Garrett smiled grimly. He knew Alice had been training the younger members of their team on the use of guns and manual defenses, but he hadn’t realized she’d actually been making them memorize lines.

  He probably shouldn’t have been surprised about that, to be honest. He just hoped it worked.

  He pulled slowly forward on the road, heading for the large house, as he went through the plan one more time.

  “Right, I figure I’m going to be able to give us twenty, twenty-five minutes max, and I mean max. It’s going to depend entirely on how much Kraken wants to run his mouth. That means you guys will have maybe ten minutes to get to the bikes and disable them, and maybe ten minutes more to go around and disable as many bikers as you can. After that, get back to the truck as quick as you can. The sooner you can get back here, the better.

  “We figure there are twenty-five bikers around here, so if you personally take out five of them, assume you’ve done enough and get back to the truck. Make sure no one sees you when you’re taking them out. Make sure no one sees you when you’re slicing the tires. I assume they’ll have some guys around or guarding the bikes, so you take them out first, then get to the bikes, then take out anyone else you see on your way back to the truck. For God’s sake, Greyson and Shane, don’t let them see you getting back into the truck. If anyone sees you at all, take them out. We can’t have anyone reporting back to Kraken that we brought more people than he expected. Got it?”

  “We’ve been over the plan about five hundred times, Cap. I think we’ve got it,” Bart said from directly behind him.

  “Maybe the 501st time will be the time where it finally gets through your head that I want to take you back to Trinity Ranch alive, Bart,” Garrett answered. “You guys stay safe out there. I don’t want to be stuck in this situation by myself.”

  Silence was his only answer to that, and thinking that he’d probably said as much as he could say, he stepped slightly on the gas and drove the last hundred yards to the house he recognized as Kraken’s headquarters. He parked right in front of it, and the truck was immediately greeted by five bikers.

  “I’m going to assume that they’re all going inside with me,” he said, trying not to move his mouth. “Or they’re here to disconnect the tanker and wheel it somewhere else. Don’t make any moves until the coast is clear.”

  “My God,” Alice snapped. “This isn’t our first time, Garrett. Relax.”

  Relax. Right. He was about to go into a meeting with a man who would kill him in a heartbeat, and leave his friends out here with a bunch of other guys who felt the same—while his friends were in fact trying to sneak around and disable those men. Relaxing was the last thing on his mind.

  But he’d seen Alice in action before, and knew that if anyone was going to get it done, it was her. So he forced his shoulders down and nodded.

  “I’ll see you guys on the flip side, then,” he said. “Good luck.”

  Alice, Bart, and Riley murmured well wishes back at him and then he was swinging the truck’s door open and hopping out. One of the bikers on his side of the truck walked right up to him.

  “That the fuel?” he asked, nodding to the tanker.

  “Of course it is,” Garrett said, trying to sound casual. “What do you think, I was going to bring the other tanker we just happened to have sitting around? The one that was full of water?”

  He grinned, hoping the guy would buy it, and the other man nodded, his lips quirked up in what might have been the start of a smile.

  “Well you never know, I guess, huh?” he asked. He looked up at the other men around the truck. “Right, get this unhooked and tow it to the garage.”

  After some whining about having to tow the tanker by hand, and an answer that it was the only way to get it moved, and if they didn’t do it, they’d have Kraken to answer to, the four other men finally got down to work. They detached the tanker from the truck and, with some shuffling and more than a little bit of cursing, finally started wheeling it down the road to where Garrett assumed the garage was located.

  He filed away the fact that they didn’t seem to have any vehicles other than the motorcycles, took a shallow sigh of relief, and then turned and followed the first biker into the house, where he assumed Kraken was waiting for him.

  The patio was just as big as it had looked from afar, and Garrett could see that it had been laid out in a sort of classroom fashion, with one chair on one side of an outdoor fire pit and all the other chairs and pads grouped together on the other side. The leader was definitely keeping himself isolated, then, and Garrett wondered how that worked with the other men. Wondered if they were as frustrated at the setup as he would have been.

  It reminded him of something he’d heard in military school about how it was better to be feared than respected, or something like that, and he snorted. Granted, he hadn’t been leading people for that long. But he’d found it to be far more effective to actually include your people in the decision-making process and make them part of the team. Fear wasn’t his game.

  Though it was certainly Kraken’s.

  Once they stepped through the door into the house, he found that it was also just as large and well-decorated as he’d expected. It was also done in the same style as many of the homes in Trinity Ranch.

  “Hacienda style must have been a real hit around here when they were building these homes,” he said, looking around at the red tiling, white stucco walls, and copper ceiling. A wide staircase led up from the back of the foyer, connecting to an open second-floor walkway that encircled this main courtyard. Everything was very open. Airy.

  It also meant that there was absolutely no cover. If anything went wrong, any of the men now standing on the second floor and leaning over the railing would be able to pick him off easily. So he would have to get out of here before the trouble started.

  If everything went according to plan, of course, there wouldn’t be any trouble. He would have this conversation, get back to the truck and the others, and they’d be out of town and long gone before anyone realized that the motorcycles were out of commission and half the crew was unconscious.

  If everything went according to plan.

  “See you’re admiring my new home,” a gruff voice said from behind him. “Bet it’s grander than anything in that little town you guys are squatting in.”

  Garrett turned slowly, well aware that he couldn’t make any sudden moves, and found Kraken standing in a doorway behind him. He was wearing the same clothes he’d been wearing the day they met in Las Ramblas, with the addition of a black handkerchief tied around his neck. Garrett could see from here that it had the bottom half of a skull on it, the white of the skull stark against the black material. One of those scarves bikers wore across their mouths when they rode, he realized, to keep the dust and wind out of their throats.

  The design just made him dislike Kraken even more. The sooner he was out of here and away from that man, he thought, the better.

  “I used to build stuff like this, you know,” Garrett said, going for friendly banter rather than challenge. “In my previous life I was an architect.”

  Kraken’s eyes grew wide and then he turned them to the house itself, running his gaze up and over the large space.

  “Stuff like this?” he asked, as if he didn’t quite believe it.

  Garrett shrugged. “Well hacienda style was never really my thing, so nothing exactly like this. I was more of a modern design kind of guy. You know, straight lines, efficiency, green ener
gy. That sort of stuff.”

  Kraken snorted. “So nothing attractive.”

  Garrett gave a good-natured shrug. “Attractive is in the eye of the beholder. Honestly I did stuff for doomsday preppers a lot at the end, and they want stuff that’s going to stand the test of time and give them the best chance at surviving. Beauty and aesthetics aren’t their prime targets.”

  Kraken gave him a confused look, and Garrett quickly realized that he was probably using a lot of words the other man had never heard before.

  “Functionality over looks, you know?” he clarified.

  Kraken’s face cleared and he nodded. “Some people got no taste,” he answered. “Me, I like the beautify. The… ass-fetics.”

  Garrett bit his tongue hard to keep from laughing. It didn’t matter how friendly Kraken was being right now; there was every chance that he had several guns on him, and that several other guns were aimed at Garrett at this very moment. Now was not the time to let his guard down. It also wasn’t the time to let anyone see him laughing at the head biker.

  “So you brought the tank?” Kraken asked, leaning his shoulder up against the door jam.

  Garrett, horribly conscious that he had been left standing in this wide-open space, his back completely exposed, nodded once. “Didn’t see how we could do anything other than that. You didn’t exactly give us a lot of choice.”

  Kraken’s face began to grow dark, and Garrett quickly added to his story.

  “Besides, as you said, I didn’t realize at the time that you and your gang had marked it as your own. I simply thought there’d been an accident, and we’d stumbled on loot that no longer had an owner. Once you explained things to me, I saw that I was wrong about that.”

  It was an out-and-out lie, and it galled him to have to say it. To have to play nice with this man who had gone out of his way to bully Garrett’s people. Who had cut off Bart’s finger, and had the nerve to say he’d do worse, given the chance! If Garrett had had any choice in the matter, he would have been flying at Kraken, fists clenched and stun gun in hand, ready to break the man’s nose.

  But his job right now was to distract. Keep this man’s attention on him so that the rest of the team could do their jobs. And then get them out of there safely. Attacking Kraken wasn’t going to achieve any of that. So, he bit the inside of his lip hard enough to draw blood and kept on smiling as if this was the most natural thing in the world.

  Kraken grunted and turned when another man entered the room.

  “He’s telling the truth, Kraken,” the man said. “We’ve got the tanker unhitched and in the garage already. It’s full—just as full as it was when we saw it before.”

  Kraken dismissed the man with a wave, and the biker took off with a look of relief on his face.

  Kraken gave Garrett a quick grin. “You chose wisely, boy. Honestly, I thought you’d give us a bit more struggle than you have. But I’m glad to see you’ve got some smarts in you after all. That you know how to play fair.”

  At that moment, explosions sounded outside, followed by screams and gunshots.

  Chapter 24

  Garrett ducked instinctively, and then realized what the noise meant. Explosions. The flash grenades. Something had gone wrong—and the gunshots and screams just confirmed that.

  Suddenly one of the bikers appeared in the front doorway of the house. “There’s more people than he told us about!” he shouted. “They’ve been going after the bikes, looks like they’ve taken out some of our group as well! And they’ve got bombs!”

  The biker disappeared before Kraken could ask him any questions, but the leader simply rounded on Garrett. He started rushing toward him, his face a mask of fury.

  Garrett didn’t wait for the other man to arrive, but started forward himself, his fingers already flexing into a fist, his shoulders bracing for the impact. He registered the next details slowly. Kraken had a gun in his hand and was pointing it at him, but Garrett was the faster of the two, and he was going to reach Kraken before the man could get a shot off.

  Garrett also had a gun in his hand. He’d grabbed his 9mm from under the seat before he got out of the truck and shoved it into his waistband. Now he had it out and at the ready, but he’d also reversed it, so he was holding it by the nose. The safety was on. And the best part of the weapon in close quarters was at his fingertips.

  He brought the heel of the gun smashing down on Kraken’s head the moment he was within reach, and Kraken grunted and went down, his legs folding underneath him. Two kicks right to the face and Garrett thought the man would be out of the game, but it turned out the biker was stronger than Garrett had accounted for. He jumped back to his feet, his nose gushing blood and one eye already swelling shut, and jerked his gun up, pointing it at Garrett’s chest.

  “You lose, boy,” he growled. “Looks like I was wrong about you being smart enough to play fair. And that’s the end of the game for you.”

  A split second later a gunshot sounded out, then another. Garrett took three steps back, positive that he’d just been shot, and waited for the pain to catch up to him. To his surprise, he heard one thud and then another as the two men on the second floor fell over the railing onto the foyer below. Bright red bloodstains spread on the floor.

  “What the hell!” Kraken snarled. He turned toward the doorway where the shots had come from.

  Garrett did too. To his surprise, Alice was standing in the doorway, the butt of a rifle up against her shoulder, the gun aimed squarely at Kraken.

  Not wasting a second, Garrett shot forward and knocked Kraken in the back of the skull with the butt of his gun. The leader of the biker gang crumpled to the floor.

  “Bastard,” Alice snarled at Kraken. Then she looked up at Garrett. “Things are bad,” she said bluntly. “We’ve got to go.”

  She turned on her heel and disappeared, and Garrett rushed to follow her. Alice had been in charge of things out here. Whatever had happened, she would be the one who could tell him. No matter what it was, they had one goal now: get out of town, with everyone still intact.

  When he raced through the front door, his stomach dropped as he took in the sight in front of them. The truck, ablaze.

  Before he could ask Alice what had happened, a shot rang out in the distance, and instinctively the two started running, sprinting down Main Street and taking cover in an alleyway a few buildings down.

  Breathing heavily, Garrett turned to Alice. “Where are the others?” he asked.

  She couldn’t meet his eyes. “Lost or dead, I’m not sure.”

  Fighting the nausea that rose in his throat, Garrett asked the question he didn’t know if he wanted an answer to. “What the hell happened?”

  “They found us,” Alice said. “We cut the tires of all the bikes and were starting to split up to go after the individual bikers, but they must have realized something was up because a group of them came in, guns blazing.”

  Another shot sounded, then, and at the sight of a group of bikers approaching from the other end of the street, the two ducked down a side street and picked up the pace, Garrett trying desperately to remember the route out of town.

  They rounded a corner, and Garrett raised the gun and lowered it just as quickly as he took in the sight of Shane and Greyson, both of them bleeding, but whole.

  Four out of six. The kids still missing, and shots getting closer with every second.

  “Shit,” Garrett breathed. He turned to the others. “We leave on the desert side and head for the canyons,” he told them. “Run zigzag, and don’t stop, whatever happens.”

  With that, they took off. Garrett didn’t think he’d ever moved so fast, leaving the cover of the buildings and diving from one patch of cacti to another as they covered the first half mile outside of Helen Falls, every second fully expecting to feel the sharp sting of a bullet in the back.

  Only when he reached the patch of prickly pear from which they’d scoped out the town did Garrett allow himself to look up and see that they were all still
with him.

  Alice, Greyson, and Shane. But no Bart and Riley.

  Garrett bit back a curse. Of all the people to have been left behind, they’d lost the two kids he’d sworn he would protect. Goddamn it!

  “Are they dead?” he asked haltingly.

  “We don’t know,” Shane answered, his voice hard, his breath coming in gasps.

  “They could still be alive,” Alice cut in. “If they are, though, the bikers have them.”

  Shots rang out again, and they sounded closer this time.

  The others were looking at him, and Garrett knew what they were asking. Would they go back for the kids?

  The mission had been a disaster, but they were outnumbered, and if they attempted to go back now, there was every chance that not only would they not find Bart and Riley, but none of them would survive to return to Trinity Ranch. None of them would return to warn the others that the bikers were coming. It wasn’t just their lives that were at stake.

  And all Garrett could hope to do now was not get the rest of his crew killed.

  “Let’s go,” he said, as firmly as he could manage. “Through the canyons and back to Trinity Ranch. As fast as we can.”

  Alice looked as though she might protest, but she didn’t voice it. Silently, the four of them took off, Garrett’s heart tearing in two at the thought that he was leaving Bart and Riley behind.

  He’d known the plan was dangerous. He hadn’t thought it could go so bad in such a short span of time.

  Chapter 25

  The four of them didn’t speak for quite some time, and Garrett knew that he wasn’t the only one kicking himself for the loss of the two kids. He should have known better than to bring Bart and Riley along. Should have known that he was putting their lives in danger and that he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if it all went to pot.

  And now it was far, far too late. Sure, they could still be alive, but for how long would that be true? If they weren’t dead, they might be wounded, and might at this very moment be hostages of a violent and extremely angry biker gang. Even worse, that gang was well aware of what Garrett and his crew had just done, and would be looking for payback. Before long they’d realize that the tanker was full of water rather than gasoline, and then...