A PRICE TO PAY: A Dark Bad Boy Romance

by Zoey Parker

  “Yeah,” Snoops groaned. “They were goin' toward I-94. Rafe, whatever this is about, trust me, you don't wanna go up against 'em...not these guys...too much gun...” Snoops sounded like he was fading fast.

  “Don't worry about me, Snoops,” I said, leaping up the steps to the room. I could hear sirens in the background, and Snoops coughing wetly. “Just hang in there and wait for the ambulance to show up, okay? I'm sorry, man. I'm so fucking sorry I put you in the middle of this.”

  “'S okay,” Snoops whispered. “We're...Reapers, right? We...stick...together...”

  I heard a clattering sound, and realized Snoops had dropped his phone. I hoped he'd make it, but I knew I had to act before it was too late.

  I had to head them off on I-94 before they could get to Chicago, grab whatever they'd snatched up, and hope like hell it could help us somehow.

  And I had to dodge bullets from Uzis while I was at it.

  Chapter 25

  Jewel

  I heard Rafe's key card in the lock a moment before he threw the door open. “We need to hit the road,” he said, throwing the duffel bag over his shoulder. “Now.”

  After the past couple days, I'd gotten pretty good at hurrying when he told me to. I gathered up my belongings and headed for the door immediately. “Where are we headed? Milwaukee still?”

  Rafe shook his head as we raced down the stairs. “Too late for that. Whatever the thing is, Jester's people already showed up and grabbed it. They're heading back down I-94 now. We need to stop them before they reach Chicago. You go check out and I'll get the car started.”

  I ran over to the motel lobby, my head still throbbing and now spinning with questions. I was worried that my anxiety and rushing would make the clerk suspicious, but the middle-aged woman's flat, glassy eyes barely left the screen of the lobby's TV set as she took my room key.

  I was about to leave quickly when I heard someone mention Milwaukee on TV. I stopped in my tracks, turning to look.

  The set was tuned into a local news show. A young female news correspondent in a loud blue blazer with wide lapels was standing in front of what used to be a nightclub, and was now a smoking, bullet-pocked wreck. Police cars and emergency vehicles surrounded the front, and huge crowds were gathered behind yellow crime scene tape. EMTs were loading bodies on stretchers into ambulances. The buzzing drone of helicopters could be heard above.

  “The scene outside of the Milwaukee nightclub The Flytrap is one of chaos, confusion, and devastation this morning, in the wake of a shocking attack that happened just moments ago. According to bystanders, two men on motorcycles threw an explosive device through the front window, then entered with machine guns and systematically executed all of the employees, including two waitresses, a hostess, and the manager. Upon exiting the club, the attackers engaged in a brief gun battle with several members of the local chapter of the War Reapers Motorcycle Club. So far, their involvement in this—and the motives of the gunmen themselves—remain unknown.”

  “Crazy shit, huh?” the clerk asked. “Just a few miles away from here, an' it looks like goddamn Beirut.”

  I nodded vaguely in her direction and walked to the Saab, getting in on the passenger's side. Rafe had gotten it started and was drumming his fingers on the dashboard nervously.

  “That took a while,” Rafe said, pulling out of the parking lot and driving toward the highway. “Was there a problem?”

  “Not exactly,” I answered. I felt a lump of fear quivering high in my throat, and it felt difficult to talk around it. “They had the news on, and they were showing footage of what happened in Milwaukee.”

  Rafe glanced at me, eyebrows raised. “Jesus. From the sound of your voice, I'm guessing that looked like some apocalyptic shit.”

  “That would be a good word for it, yeah,” I replied. “Rafe, this seems insane. There has to be someone we can go to about this instead of throwing ourselves in harm's way. I mean, the idea that we're actually driving toward the men who killed all those people instead of going in the other direction as fast as we can...”

  Suddenly, Rafe jerked the car over to the emergency lane of the highway and hit the brakes, making us screech to a stop. He leaned over and grabbed me by the wrists, his eyes blazing into mine with an intensity that was almost blinding.

  “Listen,” he growled, “I know you don't know a lot about me, but here's something you should get straight right now. In the seven years I was in the slam, I survived four different guys trying to kill me. Since I got out, nine more have tried. And guess what? I'm still here without a mark on me. And I don't give a goddamn if Jester comes at me with a fucking army. I'm grabbing whatever those guys are carrying and I'm using it to take Jester down hard, even if I have to take it off their dead motherfucking bodies. Now is there anything about me that you've seen over the past two days that makes you think I'm not serious?”

  I thought of the fights and shoot-outs I'd seen since I'd been with Rafe. They were all terrifying, but every time, he'd handled himself just like a hero from one of my dad's Westerns—keeping me safe, acting fearless in the face of danger, and taking out the bad guys even when the odds were stacked against him. I also thought about the massive weapon in the duffel bag, and how something like that might possibly even the odds a bit.

  Part of me still wanted to run to the nearest state trooper and tell them the whole story so they'd take me away from all this, but what if what Rafe had told me before was true? If even half the cops were in on this, how could I be sure I'd run into the right one? How could I be sure that even the right one wouldn't turn me over to the wrong one without even realizing it? I imagined being marched behind the state police barracks and shot through the head before I'd have a chance to tell my story to anyone who could help.

  Rafe scared me, especially the way he was looking into my eyes at that moment. But pretty much everyone and everything else was scaring me a lot more, and deep down, I was certain that Rafe would be able to protect me.

  There was something else I had to consider too, though. Rafe had said he'd do whatever it took to “take Jester down hard.” Not to protect me, because clearly, this wasn't about me—or at least, not as much as Rafe wanted me to think. There was something going on between Rafe and Jester, something from before Rafe watched me witness a murder and swooped in to take me away from all that. Something Rafe still wasn't telling me.

  I thought about the feel of his big hand around my wrists—secure but a little painful. I thought about what happened the night before, and how much I'd wanted to go even further with him.

  I thought about the fact that in spite of everything, I still wanted that.

  “Okay,” I said. “I'm still pretty freaked out, but I'm in.”

  “Good,” Rafe answered, getting back on the highway as fast as the speed limit allowed. “We all get a little freaked out the first couple times someone hands us a gun and we find ourselves deep in the shit. That's natural. But it's important to keep your head. Like right now, every cell in my body's telling me to floor it, but the last thing we need is for a cop to stop us, so I have to stay under the limit, even if it feels like we're fucking crawling.” He banged on the steering wheel to emphasize the last two words, and I realized how nervous he was, even though he was trying to hide it.

  “How will we know who we're looking for?” I asked. “The news said it was two bikers, but...”

  “I'll know them when I see them,” Rafe said. “My guys back in Chicago told me what to look for. They're called the Chayner brothers. Apparently, they're hard to miss.”

  That certainly sounded ominous. My mind conjured up images of a pair of inhuman brutes loaded with guns and bombs, riding motorcycles with mounted chainsaws and flames shooting from their engines. From the destruction I saw on the news, it wasn't hard to believe.

  “So who are they?” I asked. “Some kind of super-assassin commandos?”

  Rafe glanced over at me. “They're men with guns,” he snarled. “They'll bleed when they'r
e shot and they'll shit their pants when they die, just like anyone.”

  Chapter 26

  Rafe

  I knew it had been a mistake to get so intense about Jester when talking to Jewel. She'd already proved plenty of times that she was sharp enough to pick up on clues, like the fact that my determination to see this through had a lot more to do with my feelings for Jester than my feelings for her. I was pretty sure that if I'd frightened her any more, she'd have bailed out of the car and gone running for the first cop she could find, never mind my bullshit about how they were “all in on it.” Maybe she was even still thinking about doing that.

  So yeah, I'd fucked up. But the truth was, my frustration was starting to eat me from the inside like battery acid. Time seemed to stand still in Potawatomi, and while I was in there, my rage was like a bug preserved in amber—frozen in time, a perfect specimen to be studied from every angle. But ever since I'd been released and rode out to take Jester apart, I could feel the rage shaking loose and flowing through me, filling me with volcanic fury I could barely control.

  Part of it was the time I'd lost thanks to his frame-up, sure. But the more time I spent with Jewel, the more I felt anger on her behalf, too. I was grateful for the information she'd been able to give me about Jester, but she should never have had to deal with any of this bullshit.

  She'd just been some lady on her way home from a job, with no reason to expect anything bad to happen to her. And because Jester and his nimrods couldn't be bothered to do their business somewhere quiet, Jewel had been forced to watch something most civilians never wanted to see, and since then she'd been hunted like some kind of fucking animal.

  The Reapers were far from saints, and I'd done plenty of nasty things when I rode with them. But we always did everything we could to keep the shady stuff we were into away from regular folks. We had no desire to fuck with innocent people's lives—it's not what we were about.

  But Jester and his kind of gangster had always felt like they ruled Chicago from top to bottom, and it made them brutal and sloppy. They were nothing but a pack of swaggering pimps who pushed people around, killed anyone who got in their way, and didn't give a fuck. They liked to puff themselves up, dressing in slick suits and talking about honor and respect.

  But the truth was, they were parasites, and they had neither.

  Also, I knew my plan was every bit as flimsy as Jewel had pointed out earlier, and I was pretty pissed at myself for not being able to come up with a better one. Even if I could take down the Chayner brothers and searched them for what they'd ripped off from The Flytrap, how would I know what I was looking for? It probably wouldn't be in an envelope marked “Top Secret Shit Jester Wanted Us To Grab.”

  Still, it was all I had to go on. And a big part of me wanted to make those Chayner pricks pay for what they'd done to Snoops and the other Madison Reapers. Since I was the reason they were staking out that clusterfuck, avenging them felt like the least I could do.

  I drove to an area of I-94 that was just across the Illinois/Wisconsin border, then took the exit and looped around so we'd be on the side of the road the Chayners were headed down. When I used to do interstate runs with the Reapers, this had generally been a fairly quiet stretch of highway in the late mornings and early afternoons. After seven years, I hoped it still was. I needed a place where the risk of engaging the Chayners around civilians was minimal.

  I pulled the Saab over to the emergency lane again and turned to Jewel, cutting the engine. “Okay, here's the plan. The Chayners should come riding through here in about twenty minutes. I want you to open the hood of the car and then hang out in the driver's seat. That way, we'll look like our car broke down and we're waiting for a tow truck or something. I'm gonna hunker down in the back with the AK.”

  “The what?” Jewel asked.

  “The thing in the duffel bag,” I said. “When I tell you the Chayners are coming, I want you to twist these two wires together as fast as you can.” I pointed out the right wires to get the car started again. “I'm hoping I can take them down with the first burst, but if I can't, we may have to ride them down. That means you'll be behind the wheel while I shoot. How good are you at defensive driving?”

  “Um, not great,” Jewel said. “I usually just obey the traffic laws and try to stay out of everyone's way.”

  “Well, now's as good a time as any to learn,” I replied. “When the bullets start flying, you'll probably find daredevil moves you didn't even know you had.”

  Jewel tried to force a laugh, but she was shaking and tears were starting to stream down her cheeks. I put a hand on her shoulder and tried to sound as gentle and encouraging as I could, given how little practice I'd had at that sort of thing.

  “Hey,” I said, “you've got this. You're a lot tougher than you think. You just drive like our lives depend on it, leave the shooting to me, and we'll get through this in one piece. I guarantee it.”

  “Okay,” Jewel said, nodding and wiping the tears away. She took a deep breath and got out of the car, lifting the hood.

  I climbed into the back seat and carefully removed the AK-47 from the duffel bag. Then I stretched out on the back seat with the rifle cradled on my chest and covered it with the duffel again like some kind of half-assed blanket. I positioned my head carefully so it would look like I was napping if any passing motorists peeked in, but I kept my eyelids open just a sliver and kept watching the road behind us. I knew I'd almost certainly hear their bikes coming before I'd see them, but I couldn't afford to take chances.

  Five minutes went by, then ten. I heard Jewel in the front seat, trying to keep her breathing calm and even, but every exhale sounded shakier than the one before.

  Suddenly, a state police cruiser pulled up behind us.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck, I thought. Not now. You can't do this now.

  The driver's side door opened and a huge state trooper pulled himself out, straightening the front of his uniform.

  “Shit,” Jewel murmured, trying to stay casual-looking. “What do we do?”

  “I can't move without him seeing the AK,” I mumbled. “I need to keep pretending I'm asleep. You just stay cool, pretend everything's fine, and do what you can to get rid of him fast. If he's still here when they show up...”

  “Yeah, yeah, I get it,” Jewel said. She quickly tucked the exposed wires back behind the dashboard panel. Then she opened the driver's side door and got out.

  Through my squinted eyes, I watched her walk up to the trooper before he could get too close to the car. “Everything okay, officer?” she asked.

  “Well, ma'am, I was about to ask you that, actually,” the man answered with a deep, gravelly voice. “I saw you were stopped and figured I'd see if there was anything I could do to assist. Are you having engine trouble?”

  “Something like that, yeah,” Jewel said. She was doing a good job of keeping her voice level and her body language calm. “The truth is, my husband and I don't really know that much about cars. I mean, I took a look under the hood and I couldn't make heads or tails of it, so we called the repair service to come out and take a look. They should be here any minute, so my husband's taking a little nap in the back until they show up. He hasn't been sleeping too well.”

  The lies rolled off her tongue effortlessly. I was impressed.

  Jesus, I hope no one's reported her missing or anything in case this cop asks to see her ID, I thought. I had no idea what I'd do if that happened. I couldn't open fire on a cop for obvious reasons. I wouldn't be able to close the hood, twist the wires, and make a getaway without him stopping me, either. And I certainly wasn't about to go back to prison, especially knowing that Jester was still out there drawing breath.

  “Maybe I can help you get to where you're going and save you a little money, too,” the trooper offered. “I'm pretty handy with old cars myself, actually.”

  “Oh, we couldn't ask you to go to all that trouble,” Jewel insisted.

  I heard the roar of a motorcycle engine coming down the h
ighway toward us. My hands tightened on the rifle helplessly. I prepared to watch the Chayner brothers ride right past us.

  Instead, a woman in her late forties sped by, wearing head to toe Harley Davidson merchandise to match her bike. I breathed a sigh of relief and allowed my hands to relax. Still, if Jewel couldn't get rid of the cop soon, we'd be screwed.

  “No trouble at all, ma'am,” the Trooper replied easily. I could see that he was already starting to roll up his sleeves and my heart sank.

  “But R-R-Ralph! My husband!” Jewel blurted out. She'd almost said my real name, then stopped herself at the last minute. I was glad she had, but I mentally added the whole “Ralph” thing to the list of items I sincerely hoped the other Reapers would never find out about.

  “He's a very light sleeper, and he gets cranky when people wake him up,” Jewel continued. “It'd probably be best if we just waited for the service people, so he won't have to wake up twice.”