Midnight Obsession: A Midnight Riders Motorcycle Club Romance Part 4

by Olivia Thorne

  I felt my chest constrict.

  “Jack, I’d get the hell out of there if I was you. Otherwise I don’t think I’ll be collectin’ on the deal we made.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t thank me – HURRY. If I’m right – and I’m pretty goddamn sure I am – you don’t have much time,” she said, and hung up.

  69

  Fiona

  I hated Jack Pollari.

  I was lying in the guest bedroom thinking about last night. Thinking about his hands on me… about his mouth on mine… about the feel of his cock in my hand, between my thighs, inside me…

  But then I’d flash back to what he’d said to Fordham, the DEA Agent: What about paying him to cover up a shooting?… the murder of Fiona’s cousin.

  And then I wanted to put a gun to the side of his head and pull the trigger.

  I hated him…

  …and I wanted him. And I couldn’t help myself.

  The best man I’d ever met, and he was still no goddamn good.

  But then I’d hear Sloane (that fucking tramp) and her stupid Southern drawl: Whatever he might have done to you… he’s a good man. Trust me when I say that.

  The worst of it was, I knew she was right.

  But there was no way I could forgive him.

  And so I lay there in hell, caught between wanting to feel him beside me, on top of me, kissing me, inside me… and wishing he went to jail for the rest of his life.

  Suddenly there was a loud banging on my door. Wham wham wham!

  I jerked upright, automatically grabbing for my gun on the nightstand. “What the fuck?!”

  “Get dressed, we gotta go,” Jack’s muffled voice came from the other side of the door.

  “Why?!”

  “Sloane called. She thinks Lou’s sending a hit squad.”

  Oh shit –

  I scrambled out of bed and pulled on my jeans, boots, and a jacket, grabbed my ID and credit cards and stuffed them in my back pocket, shoved my phone in my front pocket, and picked up my .38.

  There was something else… something I was forgetting…

  My photo album, over on the dresser.

  I reached out to take it, then stopped.

  I couldn’t very well go running around carrying it with me.

  Even if someone breaks in, nobody will take it, I reasoned. Eddie had only taken it because it would have told everybody who I was. But now they all knew.

  As I left it on the dresser, I said a silent prayer: Keep it safe for me, Ali.

  And keep me safe, too.

  Then I opened the door.

  70

  Jack

  I was on the phone with Kade when Fiona came out of her bedroom.

  “I can be there in ten minutes,” he said.

  “Stay at the bottom of my street, unless you hear gunfire. Hopefully we’ll already be on our way down in my truck. But stay hidden – if they see you, they’ll kill you for sure.”

  “You got it,” Kade said, then hung up.

  I heard Fiona’s heels on the hardwood floor and turned around.

  The sight of her took my breath away. Wifebeater, no bra underneath, tousled hair, long legs.

  Jesus, she was gorgeous.

  But I couldn’t think about that now.

  “Here,” I said, and pushed a Glock and several clips across the kitchen table.

  She held up her .38. “I already got one.”

  “That can be your backup, but it’s a bitch to reload fast, so take these.”

  She put the .38 in her jeans at the small of her back, stuffed the clips in her jacket pocket, and grabbed the Glock.

  “Alright, let’s go,” I said, and turned towards the front door.

  That was when the machine gun started firing.

  71

  Fiona

  Jack was headed for the door when the front windows shattered.

  Bratta-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat!

  I screamed as the walls splintered with bullets.

  “GET DOWN!” Jack shouted. He wheeled around and tackled me to the floor, covering my body with his.

  Chunks of wood blew out of the kitchen island just inches above our heads.

  He rolled off me so I could move. “Head for the back!”

  I started crawling across the kitchen floor, the way you see soldiers belly through the mud in war movies. Bullets whizzed over my head, and bits of plaster rained down on my body. My heart was beating so hard it felt like it was going to break through my ribcage.

  Suddenly, there was the sound of a shotgun.

  BOOM! BOOM!

  The front door disintegrated around the doorknob, and someone kicked it in.

  An alarm started blaring.

  It was strange how in the midst of all the chaos, a single thought formed clearly in my mind: Lot of fucking good that security system did.

  Jack rolled over onto his back, pulled out his .45, and started firing.

  There a scream, and whoever had been in the doorway fell backwards with a thud.

  Suddenly an object on fire soared through one of the shattered windows, leaving a blur of orange and yellow in its wake.

  Crash!

  A Molotov cocktail. The bottle broke as it hit the wall, and a sheet of liquid flame engulfed the den.

  “GO, GO!” Jack screamed.

  I was already at the sliding door that led to the deck.

  “I CAN’T STAND UP!” I yelled at him.

  “BACK UP AND COVER YOUR HEAD!” he roared.

  I shimmied backwards, lay down flat, and pulled my jacket over my head.

  Jack aimed at the sliding door – Blam blam blam! – and the entire thing shattered.

  I knocked out the last few jagged shards still stuck in the bottom of the frame. Then I crawled over the broken glass, using my leather jacket to keep my arms from being cut to shreds.

  Jack followed close behind me as the gunfire kept chattering and the flames spread throughout the interior of the house. Once he was out he hissed, “Crawl to the edge of the – ”

  Gunshots rang out, and the wooden floor of the deck splintered just a foot away from my face.

  Jack rolled over, aimed through the space between the slats of the railing, and shot.

  Blam blam!

  There was a scream and a thud.

  “Come on, come on!” Jack shouted as he got to a crouch, reached for my hand, and pulled me to my feet.

  We ran down the steps to the scrub brush behind his property, then headed into the hills. As we crested the closest ridge, he turned back to look, and I did the same.

  His house was one giant ball of fire. Black smoke billowed out of every broken window, and flames flickered behind every intact one.

  Not only that, but his truck, motorcycle, and my car were all engulfed in flames. The fuckers had Molotov’d them, too.

  But that wasn’t what mattered to me. Instead, I choked back a cry when I realized what I’d left behind in the house.

  The photo album.

  I thought about going back, but that was suicide.

  I glanced over at Jack, and suddenly I realized I wasn’t the only one sick with loss. He was staring at the house with a stunned look on his face. Everything he had in the world, he was losing at that very second.

  “Jack,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

  He looked at me blankly like a sleepwalker – and then pulled himself out of the dream.

  “Come on,” he said, took my hand, and led me into the wilderness.

  72

  Jack

  I stumbled through the underbrush, holding Fiona’s hand, trying not to think about how my life was burning up back there.

  I’d thought I’d lost everything two weeks ago.

  Apparently God or the Devil or somebody had decided I didn’t know shit and needed to be taught a fuckin’ lesson.

  At least Fiona was safe – and so far I was okay, too.

  All I knew is that I was going to kill Lou Shaw if it was the last thin
g I did.

  We were maybe a quarter mile into the hills when my phone rang.

  I was using the flashlight app on my phone to light our way. The starlight was too dim, and the moon was less than a quarter full. So my phone was in my hand when suddenly it starting ringing.

  I nearly dropped the damn thing, I was so startled. Fiona let out a little cry.

  I checked the screen.

  “Hold on, it’s Kade,” I said. I shut the flashlight thing off – no need to drain the battery – and answered the call. “Hello?”

  The reception was so scratchy, I could barely make out Kade’s voice on the other end. “Jack – are you alright?”

  “We’re alive,” I said grimly.

  “Where are you?”

  “In the hills behind my house. Where are you?”

  “I just got here. Jesus, man… your house…”

  “Be careful!”

  “I am. I don’t see anybody.”

  “I dropped two of them – there might be more.”

  “Yeah, I see one body on the porch. Don’t know who it is – fire’s got him.”

  GOOD. Motherfucker.

  “They snuck up on us – we didn’t hear any motorcycle engines.” Now that I was thinking about it, I realized I wasn’t hearing something else. “And I don’t hear any sirens, either.”

  “That’s ‘cause nobody’s here,” Kade confirmed. “No fire engines, no cops, no ambulances.”

  “God DAMN it – Lou probably told Peters to hold off until he got word I was dead. Look, you better get out of there. When the cops show up – and they will – they’ll arrest you for sure, if they don’t outright kill you.”

  “What about you?”

  “We’ll meet you on Highway 57, on the other side of the hills.”

  “Can’t you just come back?”

  “I’m worried there might be another shooter. And if the cops show up, we’re all screwed.”

  Fiona looked at me fearfully. I squeezed her hand. It’s okay – we got this.

  “Alright… see you in, what, an hour? Two?”

  “Two at least. Be there as soon as you can, but it might take us more than that in the dark.”

  “Alright. Keep safe, man.”

  “You too, brother,” I said, and hung up the phone.

  “You think it’s better to keep going than go back?” Fiona asked.

  “Lou’s backup plan is probably to have the cops shoot us ‘accidentally.’ No way we should go back.” I turned the flashlight app back on, and the ground flooded with light. “Not only that, but if there’s another guy, we might run into him.”

  As though to prove my point, I heard the crack! of a gunshot.

  73

  “He’s aiming for the light!” Fiona screamed.

  Holy shit, she’s right, I thought.

  I pushed her away from me, into the darkness, then threw my phone in the opposite direction as I dove for the ground.

  Crack crack! came two more shots. The sand jumped around my phone, and the dust swirled through the search beam shooting up into the air.

  Mother FUCKER –

  I pulled my .45 and waited, belly against the ground. I strained my eyes into the blackness, trying to see where the shots had come from.

  Even though my eyes started to adjust, it was impossible to see anything. Just vague shapes of bushes and rocks and cactuses in the darkness.

  Nothing. No sound, no movement. The shooter wasn’t about to give away his position.

  Unless he had night vision goggles, one of us had to make a move. But neither of us was going to.

  And then suddenly, my phone rang again.

  About a hundred feet away behind a bush, I saw the muzzle flash twice.

  Crack crack!

  Both the white light and the ringtone died as my phone blew apart.

  But I didn’t care about that. I only cared about the sparks of yellow in the darkness.

  I aimed at where I’d seen them and pulled the trigger.

  Bang!

  Now I was basically blind from my own muzzle flash, but I moved the gun a millimeter every time I pulled the trigger, aiming at slightly different spots until I emptied the clip.

  Bang bang bang bang bang bang bang!

  There was a scream, followed by a long string of shots and muzzle flashes.

  Crack crack crack crack crack!

  I hugged the ground. Even though the shots seemed desperate and haphazard, I kept my head down.

  As I eased another clip into my .45, careful not to make a sound, there was another bang bang bang! over to my right.

  Fiona.

  Another scream from the darkness, then nothing.

  I lay there waiting for the ringing in my ears to die down. As it did, finally, I could hear a gurgling, raspy sound from the darkness… then a wheeze and a rattle, followed by silence.

  “Fiona, cover me,” I called out, then edged forward in a crouch.

  I found Eyeball’s body behind a creosote bush. I could tell it was him by the shaved head and the one white, one black eye staring blindly up into the sky. The sand beneath him was stained black in the moonlight, like motor oil was soaking the ground underneath him.

  “He’s dead,” I called out.

  No response.

  “Fiona?”

  Nothing.

  “Don’t shoot, it’s me,” I called, and backtracked through the darkness.

  As I did, I saw the remains of my cell phone on the ground. The screen was splintered into a thousand pieces reflecting the dim starlight above.

  I picked it up and tried clicking the button. Nothing. Deader than Eyeball.

  Lucky shot, asshole.

  Too bad it was your last.

  I found her on the ground, the Glock I’d given her in her right hand, her cell phone in her left, as she stared into the darkness.

  “You called my phone?!” I asked. “That was fucking genius.”

  She looked up at me, and I could see tiny glints of light reflected off the tears running down her cheeks.

  “…I killed him?” she whispered.

  Shit.

  She’s probably never even hit somebody before, much less killed them.

  I dropped to my knees and put my arms around her.

  “No, no… I did,” I lied. “It wasn’t you, it was me. It wasn’t you.”

  She didn’t believe me. I felt her tremble, sobbing, as I rocked her in my arms.

  74

  Fiona

  I’d killed someone.

  I knew he was trying to kill us, and that everything I’d done was justifiable – morally and legally –

  But I thought it would feel different than this.

  I thought I would feel like he deserved it. Like he’d brought it on himself. That it was his bad luck to fuck with the wrong person, and I just happened to be that person. That it was us or him – one of us was going to die, so it had damn well better be him.

  You don’t feel bad when a scumbag dies in a car crash, right?

  But I was the one who’d killed him.

  And it felt awful.

  I kept hearing his death rattle… the last breath leaving his body.

  Jack cradled me soothingly in his arms, whispered to me, lied to me. It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t even hit him.

  Suddenly I started to cry. This man I’d hated just an hour before was comforting me. He would have done anything for me. He’d done everything he could to protect me back in the house.

  He would have taken a bullet for me. He would have died for me.

  There was no question in my mind about that.

  Suddenly all my anger and rage seemed so pointless. I could have lost him just now. That could have been him dead on the ground. It could have been me.

  Why had I been trying so hard to push away the one good thing in my life?

  The voices in my head started to argue.

  He did something horrible.

  Jack did something he shouldn’t have… b
ut he didn’t cause Ali’s death. That was the only important thing.

  He shouldn’t have lied to me.

  That was true. But I’d done my fair share of lying to him.

  If he hadn’t paid off the police, I would already know who killed Ali.

  Wrong. If Jack hadn’t gone along with paying off the police, Lou would have done it all on his own. That’s all there was to it.

  Had Jack taken anything from me? No. But I was at least partially responsible for him losing his house back there. None of this would be happening if I’d just told him the truth.

  And yet, once he’d started to come around to forgiving me, I’d decided I was going to shut him out forever.

  Maybe that was what felt the worst. I’d had something amazing: I’d fallen in love with an incredible man, who also fell in love with me. That’s something most people only get once, and that’s if they’re lucky.

  And yet I’d been actively trying to throw it away. It took pulling a trigger and killing somebody to see that not only was life fleeting and fragile… but the things that make it worth living are fleeting and fragile, too.

  I couldn’t stop crying. I just buried my head in his chest and sobbed.

  Far away, I could hear the sirens of fire trucks. And probably police cars.

  “Fiona,” Jack whispered. “Fiona, we have to go. Can you walk?”

  I nodded.

  “Here, give me your phone…”

  He swiped up from the bottom of the screen and tapped an icon. White light spilled out on the ground in front of us. Then he helped me to my feet, put his arm around my waist, and led me into the darkness.

  75

  Jack

  We walked for a couple of hours through scrub brush and wasteland. Neither of us said a word, although Fiona stopped crying, so that was something.

  As the phone was starting to die – the picture of the battery in the top right of the screen had turned red, and was almost gone – I saw the highway at the bottom of the hills. It stretched across miles of sand, from one end of the horizon to the other. Everything else was a jumble of different shades of darkness; the road was the only thing that was both pitch black and a straight line.