by April Lust
My mouth curled into a smile and I nodded. “Yeah, you mind?” I gestured towards the metal detector.
The man laughed nervously. “Oh, of course. I know, you’re all covered with 'metal.'” He winked awkwardly. “Wouldn’t want to make you, you know, strip or anything!” He laughed heartily, but nervously. It was like he wasn’t sure if he was supposed to let us through with guns or not. I could have told him he would be an idiot to let us through either way, but I didn’t. In the end, he must have decided it was just too reckless to let us go up there with weapons, because he pulled me aside.
In a hushed whisper, he said, “You know I can’t do that. Strict policy. No one with guns goes up, you know. Mr. Jones’s always been like that.”
Silently, I weigh my options. If I leave now, I’ll tip him off. If I do as I’m asked, I’ll be up there defenseless with only half the information. Ultimately, I jerked a thumb back towards the guys. “They’ll stay behind. It oughta be private business anyway, right?”
The rent-a-cop looked relieved and nodded his head immediately in agreement. “Yes, exactly. Um, your firearm?”
I hesitated, then gave it to Blackbird behind me, sending him a sharp look with it. He nodded only once in answer. Forcing a smile, I turned back to the officer. “Anything else?”
“Just step on through.”
I hesitated a second longer, then stepped through. It didn’t go off. I headed the rest of the way to the elevator, not looking back. The guys knew what to do. The place was covered. If anything went wrong, I’d have it taken care of on the outside at least.
Then he waved me off and wished me luck. “You say hi to Mr. Jones for me! Great guy. Real great guy.”
I said nothing, because, if I said anything, it was going to end with a punch to that fat pig’s face. Normally, I didn’t have a problem with the police, but if that rent-a-cop thought Mr. Jones was a great guy, he was a piece of shit by default.
I got into the elevator, making sure no one came in with me. I sent a nod Blackbird’s way before I pressed the button for the seventh floor. As the doors closed, silence settled in for a brief moment—only to be filled by the annoying sounds of elevator music.
# # #
When I reached the top floor—seven—I was met by two guards. Big, beefy guys in sharp black suits wearing sunglasses, despite being inside. I couldn’t see their eyes, so it was impossible to say if they were looking at me or not, but one of them spoke into his cuff.
“Sir, the Slayers are here to see you.”
There was a crackling sound, then the same man said, “Yes, sir.” To me he said, “Mr. Jones isn’t here. He’s already on his way downstairs. I’m afraid you’ll have to reschedule your meeting with him.”
I considered busting through the two guards and ransacking the man’s office, but I didn’t really see the point. He was headed downstairs; that was the whole goal anyway. Although I’d taken seven guys with me—all of whom were now waiting on the ground floor, heading outside to take different positions—I’d left the rest of my guys outside.
Mr. Jones leaving wasn’t a problem; it was a plus.
Smiling, I nodded once at the men. “Absolutely.”
By the time I went downstairs, Mr. Jones was already headed to his car and my men were on the verge of action. I’d have to hurry my ass up if I didn’t want to get caught up in it.
I passed the officer without so much as a glance, even as he called after me, informing me Mr. Jones had just left. Up ahead, I saw a businessman flanked by four men, dressed just like Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum upstairs. I was willing to bet this was Mr. Jones. I stepped outside into the daylight and took a sharp left turn, heading towards a coffee shop that wasn’t even a block down the road. As I did, I pulled out my cell phone.
“That’s him,” I said into it, then slammed it shut.
They would do the rest.
I reached the coffee shop and slipped inside when the first shot fired. Instantly, there was mayhem. It was everywhere, inside and outside of the shop, but I’d found a seat by the window and was staring out at the fray with cool eyes. Bullets were already flying. My guys had been set up around the perimeter of the office building, lying in wait until Mr. Jones came out. We weren’t sure of his schedule, so I was supposed to go up and give him an excuse to come down.
Apparently that part hadn’t been necessary.
Once he left the building, flanked by the guards we knew would be there, the men would take him out as I got clear.
Part of me had wanted to be out in the mess, determined to make sure this all went down the way it was supposed to, but before I’d even declared my intentions, everyone had told me it wasn’t smart.
Who’s gonna lead us then?
What about your old lady? Lucy?
What about the club, man? You gonna leave us hanging like that?
My boys were determined to keep me alive for their own sakes, but as I sat there watching the madness outside, I realized something else about myself: I wasn’t sure I wanted this anymore. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be out in the middle of it.
I thought back to what Lucy had told me just over a week ago—it felt like forever, though—and realized she’d been right all along.
I’m tired of the violence. I’m tired of the fear. I…I want us to be in a better place.
She’d wanted us to go that night, to run away. I knew it, but I wasn’t ready to handle it, not then. And then the Preacher had gone up and it was all shot to hell. I ignored what she wanted, because I wasn’t ready for it.
Then she asked for the cabin. It was another way to tell me she needed a way out, an escape. She was done with this life, but I thought, A cabin, of course. That’s the answer. A home away from home where we can be normal.
But it didn’t work. I was a fool to have thought it ever would.
My eyes were drawn back to the scene unfolding outside. I was losing people, my friends, some close enough to be like family to me. I saw Blackbird take a bullet to the chest, crumpling to his knees. He spit blood from his mouth, struggling to stay up, but he couldn’t. He fell the rest of the way to the ground and didn’t move. I clenched my jaw, wishing I could look away, but unwilling to at the same time. The least I could give these men was my undivided attention.
More bodyguards had come out of the office building—as had the rent-a-cop, his fat wiggling around him—and they took aim at my guys. People I knew were dropping, some only wounded, others dead. Thus far, though, Jones’s body guards were losing their lives, but not failing. Jones had yet to be injured. I gritted my teeth as I watch the massacre, trying to remind myself why I was sitting here while my friends were being murdered and gunned down.
Endgame, I reminded myself, but I kept my jaw shut so tightly, I thought it might break.
Danny went down with a cry. He lay on the ground clutching at his leg where he’d been hit. There was blood. I could see it begin to pool around him, even from here. He screamed and wailed like a banshee, clearly in pain.
I heard sirens. Someone had called the police, as I knew they would, and that was the signal for my guys to try to get the fuck out of there. Jones was almost to the car. He was uninjured, far from dead. My guys were torn between backing off and continuing with the pursuit, desperate to kill this bastard. But they were out of time. I could see the sirens now and heard the squealing of tires as they tried to get as close to the shootout as possible.
Get out of there! I thought, my hands clenched into tight fists on the table. They’d be arrested and it didn’t matter that they were doing the good thing or the right thing if they were breaking the law. They’d go to jail for a long time and I didn’t want to see that.
Jones made it to the car—armored, so the chances of getting a shot in after he slammed that door shut were few and far between—and just as he was about to pull the door closed after him, a figure sprinted across the street. He moved quickly, wearing a black t-shirt and jeans. There was no way to make out his features be
yond the general build of his body and the shine of his bald head, but I didn’t need to squint to try to figure it out.
I knew it was Bills. This was his last favor to me.
He dove into the car and grabbed the door to slam it shut behind him. The car peeled out of there only to come across a road block of police vehicles cutting off street traffic. The car was already going too fast. The driver swerved to avoid the blockade, but it was too late. The car tires squealed loudly as the car skidded across the pavement to slam its side into the row of cop cars. The Crown Victorias handled it just fine and I was surprised the black car did, too.
There was a lot of yelling as police surrounding the vehicles. More officers swarmed around the building and the courtyard where most of the shooting had taken place. Bodies littered the floor along with shell casings and blood. But the shooting had stopped. There were still a few bodyguards standing around, searching for assailants, but there were none.
The courtyard had cleared out. My guys were already out of there.
The cops finally got into the black car. The hauled out the driver who was still alive, and arrested him, but they didn’t haul people out of the backseat. They hauled out bodies. Two of them. One was a bald man in a t-shirt.
Bills had agreed to do this knowing it would be his last hurrah. This was it for him. Death was waiting for him either at the end of today or at the end of six months, but it was coming either way. This way, at least he got to choose how to go out.
They wouldn’t find anything on him beyond his driver’s license—a quick way to ID him—but nothing that would link him to the Sin Reapers. There would be rumors and people would notice that this seemed a lot like “gang violence,” but when the police started asking questions, no one would pin it back on us. We were loyal to the end, and they wouldn’t find any evidence that this had been a planned assault.
The police would never know.
Chapter 29
Lucy
I was hauling my suitcase down the stairs, glancing at the clock on my phone. It was getting late and I was actually surprised Thunder hadn’t come back to check on me. I had a feeling it had to do with my mother. She was probably doing her best to keep him there, to give me more time.
I felt a pang rattle my heart at the thought of her. It was going to be a strange, lonely world without her in it, but what choice did I have? She wouldn’t come with me and I couldn’t stay.
Starting over was the only way out I could see and I was finally ready to do it.
Guess I should thank Blade for that, shouldn’t I? I thought darkly. But it was sort of the truth. What had happened to me had been brutal. Terrible. So awful that I wasn’t sure how long it would take me to get over and away from it. But something good had come of it. I finally realized who I was and who I wasn’t.
I was Lucy Gilles, daughter of Marcus and Mary Gilles, two perfectly good people from the wrong side of the tracks. I was a sometimes shy, often vulnerable woman who got put in bad situations, because she let herself. The kind of woman who fell in with the wrong kind of crowd even though everyone knew she wasn’t supposed to be there, didn’t belong there, and yet had somehow never managed to climb her way back out.
I was not a biker’s old lady. No matter how much I loved Max or how familiar I was with the ins and the outs of the club, I was not an old lady. I just wasn’t made for it.
Blade’s little escapade had taught me that I wasn’t willing to be a part of this world anymore. If I had to give everything up for the chance at a new one, then I’d do it.
Even Max, I thought, and that pang in my heart grew until it felt like a burning hand gripping inside my chest. It hurt. I had a feeling it would always hurt.
I got my suitcase down the stairs and out of the house. My car was parked in the space in front of the garage, the trunk already propped open. I threw my suitcase into it eagerly, suddenly feeling shaky.
Time was running out. I didn’t know why I felt that way, but I felt like it was absolutely the truth. I could feel it in my bones that if I didn’t make my getaway now, there would be no other options.
I slammed the trunk closed, my hands shaking, and went around to the driver’s side door. I dug down into my pockets, searching for my keys, but came up empty.
Dammit! I thought. I know I just had them!
I’d used them to unlock the trunk, because the lever in the front to pop it was busted and I’d never bothered to get it fixed, so I always had to use the car keys. I worried for a second that I’d put them in my suitcase and now I was absolutely screwed, because I’d have to call someone to open the damn thing and that would take too much time, but then I remembered.
Upstairs. On the dresser. Next to my purse. And the only picture of me and Max I’d take with me. The one where we were young—I was seventeen and he was just out of high school—and he had his arm around me. He was wearing a white t-shirt and his hair was longer, pulled back into a low ponytail with wisps falling out of it, dragging themselves into his eyes. He was grinning like a maniac. I remembered telling him to stop goofing around and be serious, but he told me he was being serious. That he was so deliriously happy to have me that he couldn’t smiling like a fucking clown.
We’d laughed about it a lot that day. Then we’d made love.
I hurried into the house, mind still fixed on that picture, and ran up the stairs. I found the picture, the keys, and my purse all right there. I had a small stash of money bundled up in my purse—not a lot, not enough to keep me going for long, but maybe enough that I could find a place to stay for a few days until I got on my feet. Enough for gas to get out of this town, too.
Right now, that was good enough for me.
I grabbed the lot of it, scooping up the picture last. My fingers clutched at it tightly as I looked at the happy couple in the picture. It had been too many years ago, I decided, so I stuck it into my purse and tried not to think about it, though I knew I’d pull it out a thousand more times as I drove far, far away from this place.
Heading back down the stairs, I hurried out the door and to the car. Just as I was pulling open the driver’s side door, I saw the headlight and froze. It was a single beam in the growing darkness and the sputtering rev of a bike accompanied it. I prayed it was Thunder, but I knew better.
It was Max.
He pulled to a stop along the curb and slid off his bike. For a moment, we both stood there frozen. He knew what I was doing and I knew he was going to try to stop me, but we were both hardheaded on this point. There would be no winning, only a draw, and I couldn’t afford that.
Max started toward me and I shook my head. “Don’t,” I told him, desperate for him to understand that this was already so hard for me.
I saw his jaw clench, but he didn’t stop and he didn’t say anything.
“Please, you have to understand.”
He reached me—I still hadn’t moved—and when his hands came up to cup my cheeks, I didn’t stop him. When he leaned down to press his lips against mine, I didn’t stop him. When he pulled me closer, his hands at the small of my back, our bodies pressing tightly together, I didn’t stop him.
I lost myself in that kiss and knew this was the end. I’d never get away now.
When we broke the kiss, he leaned his forehead against mine and whispered something I never thought I would ever hear him say. “I know what you mean. I know why you have to go now.”
I blinked rapidly as though trying to clear my vision or wake up, because this couldn’t really be happening, could it? “You’re…you’re letting me go?” I asked, still unable to believe him.
He winced at my words, but nodded his head just the same. “Yes, but I want us to go. Together.”
Together.
Less than two full weeks ago, I would have cried with joy. This was exactly what I’d been dreaming of desperately. But things had changed in those two weeks and now I wasn’t sure if I could do this with him.
Was Max the kind of guy who could want the same
life I did?
“You’re leaving,” he told me, seeing my hesitation, “and I’m telling you I’m going with you. So please, just…say something.”
I opened my mouth and said the first words that popped into my head, “Are you sure?”
He nodded with complete conviction. “Yes. Yes. I’m tired of this life. I’m tired of the whole thing. I’m tired of the violence and the death and the backstabbing. I’m tired of looking over my shoulder to figure out who my friends are. I want to settle down in the suburbs somewhere, raise a bunch of noisy little kids, and live happily ever after. I want to spend my life with you and I’ve already fucked up so much of it. I can’t fuck this up, too.”
I bit my lip. I wanted so desperately to believe it. “Can you even do that? Is suburbia even possible for you?” I said it half as a joke, but neither of us were laughing.
