Chiz willed his body to follow his orders. His right arm was burning where the bullet had gouged the flesh, but his hand and fingers were working again, so he ignored the pain in favor of accuracy and drew his backup gun. Two guns were better than one, but his primary was almost out of ammo. He needed better cover. Bullets whizzed over his head, to the percussion of the bangs of the shots and the tinny pings as the missiles bounced off the metal twisted all around them, doubling the danger of getting hit.
The ambush had caught them by surprise, but they were not outnumbered. As he tried to make his way to the Escalade to check that Samuel was still safe, Chiz saw that two of Eduardo’s men were down, but that those that remained were gaining the upper hand, and moving forward. Eduardo’s men were carrying small machine guns. They had better firepower and more ammunition. Chiz was happy to let them lead the sweep.
The shots began to fade out, and Chiz knew that the battle was over. He still kept fast and low as he ran in a crouch to the big, black SUV. Samuel was behind one of the doors, whole, and with his gun out, scanning for targets. The metal was covered in circular dents, dull silver craters in the paintwork. Eduardo had brought a bulletproof car. Chiz wondered if the whole drop hadn’t been bait. He wasn’t too pleased about that.
A few staccato shots followed, and then silence fell like a blanket. The complete quiet lasted moments, before the sound of shouts, curses and scuffling reached them. The brothers of the Priests MC stood and waited for Eduardo’s men to return with whatever they were dragging with them.
“Everyone whole?” Samuel asked.
Chiz had to cough before he could answer; the adrenaline had hoarsened his voice. “Yeah.”
“You’re bleedin’,” Shark commented as he waked over.
“It’s a graze. I’ll live.”
Terry joined them, and prodded at Chiz’s arm, peeling the sticky edges of his hoody and shirt away from the wound. “It’s kinda deep. Needs wrapping, but I don’t think you’re gonna bleed out from it. It’s too wide to stitch. No point riskin’ a trip to the ER.
“Here, use this.” Shark pulled a bandana from the face of one of the dead assassins, and handed it to Chiz.
“Bet it’s full of traitor cooties,” Chiz muttered as he took it, causing Shark to laugh, but he still let Terry tie it around his bicep to stem the bleeding.
Eduardo and his men emerged, dragging one of the would-be assassins with them. The man looked to have been shot in both legs. Chiz could tell from the trail of blood behind him that he wasn’t leaving this place alive. The man holding him tossed the shooter roughly to the ground. The assassin lay, groaning and writhing. He outright screamed when one of Eduardo’s men placed his boot on his mangled knee and started to apply his body weight.
Eduardo crouched down by the prisoner’s head. Chiz could see his lips moving, and heard the sounds of the words, but he was speaking Spanish, which was not a language that Chiz knew. Still, Chiz was in no doubt that an interrogation was underway. There was a crunch as the prisoner’s knee gave. There was some more screaming, some words shouted between agonized gasps, and then one shot as the informant was executed.
Eduardo fairly sauntered over. He was a little scuffed and dusty, he brushed his shirt and dress slacks off as he walked, but the suave fucker did not look like someone who had just been in a deadly gun battle.
“My apologies, gentlemen, for such a rude interruption.”
Samuel sounded about as impressed as Chiz felt. “Eduardo, I’m just gonna ask outright. Was this a setup? Were we worms on a hook?”
Eduardo held his hands up, palms outwards. “No, ese. I assure you. Our reasoning for changing the location was as we said, but it appears we have a leak deeper with our circle than we knew. That puta,” Eduardo barely acknowledged the man he had been questioning, “confirmed that since we are now aware, and watching for impersonators at these exchanges, they have resorted to outright stealing. Unfortunately he was too junior to know where the information regarding tonight had come from. I can assure you Samuel, we will find out before we put your club in this situation again.”
Eduardo held his hand out, and Samuel shook it, but said as he did so, “I’m gonna take that on faith Eduardo, but I really do not enjoy bein’ shot at.”
“Me either, ese. Me either.” Eduardo nodded towards Chiz. “Your man is hurt. Do you need medical attention?”
Samuel answered on Chiz’s behalf. “It’s a scratch. Nothin’ some bandages and whiskey won’t fix.”
“I cannot help with the whiskey, ese.” Eduardo clicked his fingers, and motioned at the Cadillac.
One of his men opened a scarred rear passenger door, and reached inside. When he emerged, he was holding a sizeable first aid kit. Terry accepted it and tucked it into his saddlebags. Chiz hoped that whiskey was still going to factor into his night somewhere.
“Thank you. Now, what do we do about this mess?” Samuel motioned at the guns, bullets and bodies that were littering the dirt.
“Do not worry, ese. I will make a call. The managers of this facility may wonder where the dents in their shiny pipes came from, but there will be no evidence.” Eduardo’s voice dropped to a lower register with both sincerity and caution. “I will call you with the details of the next run, Samuel. If anyone else from our organization contacts you, you must tell me immediately. Accept no other instructions but mine. We will find our traitors, and we will eradicate them.”
“Message received and understood,” Samuel confirmed.
Chiz and his brothers returned to their bikes. Having not been used for cover, they’d fared better than Eduardo’s vehicle, but they were not completely unscathed. Crash’s bike would fit right in with the collection of dents and scratches now, rather than standing out like a sore thumb. They all fired up just fine, though, to everyone’s relief.
Samuel led their group away from the compound, leaving the dead and carnage to Eduardo to clear up. Samuel headed east, towards home, but pulled off the highway at the first sign for a motel that they passed. Chiz was relieved. His arm was agony from his shoulder down to his fingers now, from the radiated pain of the wound. He was not in the condition, or the mood, to try and push on for home. He wanted whiskey first, and sleep.
After they’d checked in at the motel, they congregated in the room that Chiz and Shark would be sharing. Samuel dispatched Sinatra for some liquid anesthetic. The bleeding had stopped, but Chiz’s clothes were soaked with blood, which was sticky and uncomfortable, so he stripped to his jeans. Sinatra, showing the initiative which had earned him his patch, returned with a fresh hoody and t-shirt, along with the alcohol, and several bags of fast food. Chiz decided to give him a pass the next time his mouth got smart.
Chiz didn’t let anyone tend to his arm until he had three swallows of bourbon in him, and then he didn’t pay any more attention to it until Terry had finished cleaning the blood away. Even then Chiz was mostly bothered about the damage to his ink. The tattoo on his right arm was his club ink, and now there was a wide gouge running through most of the detail of the rosary twisted around the praying hands. Quaid, the guy who did most of the ink for the club members, was a true artist, and had wrought some miracles with ink over scars, but Chiz feared this was past saving. But as much as he mourned the original, he felt a thrill at the idea of getting Quaid to design him something new. He was plotting ideas for a full back piece, even as Terry started wrapping cotton and gauze around the wound.
Shark dug into the sacks of food, and handed burgers and fries around. They didn’t last long. As a nod to the brotherhood, once Terry was done playing nurse, Chiz relinquished the Jack so that everyone could have a drink. He passed the bottle to Samuel first. Samuel took a swallow, and passed it to Terry.
“I want radio silence on this until we get back,” Samuel instructed. “There’s no one at home gonna benefit from knowin’ we had a close shave. We’ll tell ‘em when they can see that we’re whole.”
“You think Eduardo’s on the level b
oss? You think we can trust him not to use us as bait again?” Chiz asked the question that was making his head noisy.
Samuel did not look happy. “I ain’t gonna lie, I’m not happy about what went down tonight, and I don’t trust anyone in that organization farther than I can spit ‘em, but him I have trust for. Only him. We do nothin’ that hasn’t come as a direct instruction from Eduardo. I think this mess is gonna get worse before it gets cleaned up, brothers. And I’ve got a feelin’ that by the end of it, we may no longer have an association with the Rojas family.” Samuel sighed heavily. “But that’s a discussion for the table. For now, sleep. I want to be on our way at dawn tomorrow.”
No one disagreed with their president. Samuel, Terry and Sinatra left for their rooms, and Shark and Chiz finished what was left of the Jack between them before they turned in.
Chiz tried to sleep, but his head was buzzing with thoughts about the situation that the club was in. He wasn’t a long-term strategist. He trusted Samuel and Terry to see a way out of the tangle they were in. Chiz could only fight what was in front of him, and when the threat wasn’t immediately presented, ready and waiting to be found and shot, Chiz got antsy.
~o0o~
The next morning when he woke, the buzzing was less, but still there. The whiskey had helped some, and blood loss and plain old tiredness had taken care of the rest. He’d slept, eventually.
Chiz didn’t like the buzzing of the riotous angry bees in his head. Normally he would’ve found a whore, and fucked his head quiet, but that was almost guaranteed to land him in trouble. And he had Elmo now. He’d have to find a new way to cope. He didn’t want to stick his dick in some rancid, used-up cunt when he had a woman like that waiting for him at home. But that didn’t mean that the need to find relief in some form wasn’t riding him hard.
He had hoped that the long ride to Absolution would even him out, and it did, to an extent. But then they went to the table as a club, and rehashing the events of the day before got him wound up tight again. He couldn’t even ask Shark to go a few rounds in the ring. The moment the meeting was declared over, his brother had disappeared back to his wife and daughter. There was no one else around who could give Chiz the fight he was looking for, the challenge he needed.
He knew he should have stayed away, maybe tried to drown his head in whiskey, but he wasn’t that noble. And at the end of the day, he’d missed his woman and the feel of her body coming alive in his arms. Knowing it was a bad idea, one of his worst, Chiz swung onto his bike and headed to Elmo.
Chapter Twenty-Five
When Andy heard the roar of a Harley engine, she ran to the widow to check the street. Sure enough, she saw Chiz pulling into the spot by the curb that he favored. She was surprised at how anxious she’d allowed herself to become while he was away. He’d only been gone one night. They’d spent much longer periods apart in the short time that they’d known each other.
It wasn’t that she was scared to be on her own. She felt safe in Absolution. She knew that if anything happened she could call one of the numbers that Chiz had programmed into her phone, at any time of the day or night, and someone would be there with her in no longer than the time it took to ride across town.
It was Chiz that she’d been worried about. He hadn’t given her details of this ‘run’ that he’d been on, but she’d gotten the sense that he wasn’t entirely enthusiastic about it. Knowing how much he loved to ride, that struck her as odd. She reasoned that if it wasn’t the riding that he didn’t want to do, then it was the business at the other end that the ride necessitated. That was the part he hadn’t elaborated on, the part she didn’t want to know about, so she hadn’t been sure how to help him at all.
For now, she did as much as she could to make him comfortable. She already had beers chilling in the refrigerator, next to the steaks that were waiting to be broiled, and a bottle of Jameson on the counter. He was earlier than she’d expected. She hadn’t expected to see him before nightfall. Still, she wasn’t going to argue about him being back early. If he was back, he was safe.
Chiz let himself into her apartment. She’d given him a key on the day she’d moved in. It seemed such an inconsequential thing to do, given that she’d moved hundreds of miles to be with him.
“Hey, doll.”
Even before he spoke, Andy knew something was wrong.
It had been years since she’d had to be on her guard against the smallest change in expression, attitude or tone of voice, but the disquiet was rolling off Chiz in waves. She’d have had to have been blind, deaf and dumb not to notice it. Externally, the signs were limited to maybe a touch of stiffness when he moved, a certain tightness around his eyes. If she had to explain to someone who didn’t know, Andy knew that person would think her mad. But she knew she wasn’t mad, or wrong.
“Hey, baby. What do you need?”
“Huh?” Chiz seemed surprised, not by the question, but that she’d known to ask it.
“Something’s up. You tell me what you need and I’ll try to help.”
“Just you, doll. That’s all I need.”
“There’s beer in the fridge. If you want one, I can get one.”
Andy would have thought twice about getting Chiz drunk, but a certain amount of alcohol could be useful. A small amount was relaxing, a large amount would allow him to pass out. It was the space in between that she knew to avoid. That space was where danger to her lay, when the alcohol warped thoughts, emotions and decisions, but didn’t sufficiently slow a body down. That was the danger zone.
Chiz considered her offer, then shook his head. “No. Just you.”
Andy slipped her hand, in what she hoped was a casual gesture, into the back pocket of her jeans. What she was really doing was checking that her phone was still there. She wanted it close by. It would be no good to her if it was in a different room. Satisfied that she had a means of communication, a way to escape or call for help, at hand, she caught Chiz’s fingers with hers.
“Okay, baby. Let’s go to bed.”
This was something she knew, too. The endorphin rush following an orgasm was a powerful relaxant. If a body could be pleasured enough, it would almost be debilitating.
Andy hated that she was thinking of Chiz in terms of ways to ensure her safety, but her alarm bells were clamoring, and she would be a fool to ignore them. Nothing good had ever come of ignoring them. What she should have done was gotten the hell out of the apartment, and let Chiz drink, rage and tear up the furniture, or do whatever he needed to in order to be able to find his center, but she wasn’t that sensible. He’d come to her. If he wanted to drink himself stupid, she was sure he would already be in a puddle by the clubhouse bar. He’d come for her, and she wanted to be there for him.
Andy led Chiz to the bedroom. He followed, almost dumbly. When they got there, he dropped her fingers, and began to strip. He hadn’t even kissed her. Andy was about to shed some clothes, too, but she was distracted by the hiss of pain that Chiz made as he pulled his hoodie off. He’d taken his t-shirt with it, and as he tossed the garments to the corner of the room, she saw the source of the problem. His right bicep was wrapped in gauze. There was lump that looked like cotton padding on the outside aspect of the muscle.
Initially she wasn’t sure which route to take, which role to play. Should she ignore it? Would noticing call attention to a weakness that would be an affront to his masculinity? Or would ignoring it be callous disregard? Was she expected to play nurse? Andy wondered momentarily if normal people ran through these mental acrobatics for every interchange in their relationships, but she let that thought fly. She wanted to be with Chiz, and if that meant she had a few protocols of mental assessment to complete occasionally, than so be it. They were still new to each other. There were going to be times of the month where he would have to make the same considerations about her moods and responses.
She opted to go with the path of concerned lover. That was what she was, after all. “You’re hurt.” She went to him, and laid he
r fingertips under the bandage. “Can you tell me what happened?”
“Someone tried to shoot me. They didn’t quite miss.” He was looking at her hand on his arm, as if surprised to see it there.
“Does it need stitching, or cleaning? I can…”
“No.” Chiz interrupted her, shaking his head. “Thanks, doll, but it’s good. I think it’s stopped bleedin’. I’ll wash it, and change it later.” Now his blue eyes found hers. They were flashing with the sparks of his intentions.
“Okay.” Andy gave Chiz a smile and reached down to the hem of the beater she was wearing. In one move she pulled it up and over her head. She tossed it in the same direction that Chiz had thrown his clothes.
Breath on the Wind Page 26
