by Naomi West
“Godddamn!” shouted Grit. “You boys all all right back there?”
The men sounded off, and Grit continued to drive, placing the van behind the car and out of Charlie’s line of fire.
He fucking knows about Honey’s pregnancy, thought Grit, his hands white-knuckled onto the steering wheel. He fucking knows. And he’ll use this to get to me; I just fucking know it.
Charlie seemed more manic than he’d ever been before, and Grit kept clear in his mind just what wild animals did when they were cornered. He knew that if he let this car get away, he might not ever see Honey again.
But before he could do anything else, Charlie stuck his gun out of the window, pointed it downward, and blind-fired every last shot he had. Nearly every bullet went wide, some hitting the front of the van with a hard, metallic “ping,” but one managed to hit the front left tire. The tire exploded with a massive bang, and the car immediately went out of control. Grit kept his hands on the wheel as hard as he possibly could, doing everything possible to keep the van from flying off the road and crashing. The car tilted on its two right wheels, nearly tipping as it spun out of control. The men in the back yelled, and Grit prepared for the worst.
He was able to keep the van somewhat steady, bringing it back down on all four tires. The van spun around and around, eventually coming to a halt in the middle of the road. Grit watched helplessly as Charlie’s car drove off into the distance and disappeared.
“Fuck!” shouted Grit, pounding hard on the wheel and screaming in anger. “Fuck!”
His mind raced as he tried to think of something to do. Part of him wanted to get out of the van and run after the damn car as fast as his legs would carry him.
“Boss!” shouted Stone. “We gotta get the fuck out of here. Nothing we can do now, and the cops are gonna be out looking for whoever torched the club. And this van isn’t exactly inconspicuous, you know?”
Grit looked over the bullet holes in the windshield and knew that Stone was right.
No chance in hell they’d make it more than a few miles before cops rightly figured that they were up to something. Grit pulled the steering wheel hard, pulling off the road and smashing down the brakes hard. He gripped the steering wheel so tightly that he worried he might split the cheap fabric that covered it. The rest of the men knew better than to say a word—they knew by now that dead silence from the boss meant that he was in no kind of mood.
“Goddammit!” he yelled finally, slamming his fist into the steering wheel and causing it to bend just a bit. “God-fucking-dammit!”
The yell forced just enough anger out of him for Grit to be able to focus on the task at hand.
“We gotta get back to the hotel room,” he said. “We gotta figure out the next step before it’s too late.”
“Sounds like a fuckin’ plan, boss,” said Stone, clapping his hand down on Grit’s shoulder.
Grit nodded; he knew that at the very least, he had a solid crew of men who’d have his back until the end. But he knew that they had no idea about the extent of Grit and Honey’s relationship. Sure, Charlie had said that he’d knocked her up, but who the hell knew if they were even thinking about that. He realized he’d have to come clean once they were back in the room.
After replacing the blown-out tire, Grit pulled the van back onto the road. The silence in the van continued for a time, but about halfway back to the hotel the men started letting their pleasure at the successful op show through.
“You fuckers see that place go up?” asked Stone. “Goddamn, that shit was brighter than the Strip.”
“Fuckin’ right, it was,” said Gray. “Those assholes didn’t even know what hit ’em.”
Grit decided to let the men enjoy their victory, but he was in no mood for anything like a celebration. All he could picture as he drove was Honey in the back of that fucker Charlie’s car. He imagined the terror that she was going through, how she had no idea what her boss had in mind for her. And neither did Grit—Charlie had revealed himself to be an unsteady psycho, and now that he was in deep shit with whoever was depending on him for those drugs that were currently buried under tons of burning rubble, he was likely ready to lash out in whatever desperate way was possible.
They arrived back at the warehouse and the men climbed on their bikes.
“Back at the hotel,” said Grit in a stern, no-nonsense voice. “A-fuckin-SAP.”
The men nodded and took off on their rides. Grit approached his hog and looked it over, part of him wanting to jump on that thing and ride through the city until he found just where Charlie was. He imagined holding that fucker’s neck in his hands, squeezing the life out of him for a little bit, then giving it a hard twist. He’d never felt this kind of rage before—it was boiling and raging, but also calm and calculated.
However, the “calm and calculated” part of the anger vanished as soon as he was behind the shut door of his hotel room. His men watching, Grit stormed over to the large, tacky painting of a sunset that hung over the bed, grabbed it off the wall so hard that the nail it was hung on launched out, and flung it against the opposite wall, smashing the thing into pieces of broken frame and ripped canvas. Then, with a roar of rage, he grabbed a nearby bottle of vodka and swung it into the TV, breaking the glass into a thousand pieces and sending sparks flying. His men watched the display in silence, knowing that such an outburst of rage from the boss, while rare, was something that was better not to get in the middle of.
And he wasn’t done. Grit picked up the coffee table in the middle of the room and, with a heave, launched it against the full-length mirror that hung in the large hotel room’s hallway. The coffee table hit the mirror with a deafening crash, sending the thing down in shards. Grit stood in the center of the room, the men still gripped with silence. He took in full, deep breaths as he stood hunched over like some kind of berserker beast, his large hands balled into tight fists.
He wanted to kill.
But the destruction had taken the edge of the most out-of-control side of his anger, and his thoughts shifted back to the more controlled, constrained rage that he’d felt before.
“First things first,” he said. “We gotta find this asshole. He’s got the girl, sure, but he also connects us to the fire. If he wanted to, he could report us to the fucking cops and get us all tied up in arson charges.”
“You think he’d pull some shit like that?” asked Razor. “Sounds pretty fucking low, even for a goddamn drug slinger.”
“It’s low,” said Gray, “but if he got the cops on our tail, it might take the heat off of him enough to be able to get the fuck out of the city. Even a day of cops questioning us would be enough time for him to take the girl and go God-knows-where.”
Grit nodded, Gray echoing his thoughts completely.
“We gotta find this guy and find him fast,” said Grit.
He made his way over to the bar, snatched out a bottle of whiskey, and took a long drink.
“Just one thing, boss,” said Stone. “I don’t wanna, you know, step on your toes or some shit, but just what’s been going on with you and this girl? She’s fucking pregnant?”
As the whiskey burned in his belly, Grit realized that part of him wanted to tell his men that it was none of their goddamn business, that all they needed to know was that he was their fucking president and that they had direct orders. He hated having his personal life on display like this, but he knew that keeping his men out of the loop would be an easy way to make them resentful and untrusting of his leadership. That was the thing with being president, he knew—you didn’t get to forget that you were a leader just because things had gotten tough; that was actually when it was most important to remember just how to act.
“Here’s the fucking deal,” said Grit. “Honey and I had been meeting up to exchange information for cash, just like the agreement. She was meeting with Razor and Pitt, but she eventually started insisting that I meet with her personally. I should’ve known that was a bad fucking idea, but oh fucking well. Yeah,
shit happened between the two of us, and things got serious. More serious than I was expecting.”
Grit stopped, realizing just how uncomfortable he felt sharing this information with his crew. But he took a deep breath and another belt of whiskey and went on.
“Then I found out she withheld some serious fucking information from me—information that could’ve gotten this shit off the streets sooner than tonight. I was fucking furious, but now I see that she was just a scared kid afraid of betraying her boss. But I didn’t at the time. I flipped the fuck out and told her to get lost.”
He took another swig of booze.
“And now she’s fucking pregnant. So now I got all that shit to deal with.”
Grit looked around at his men and saw that they were right there with him.
“Shit, boss,” said Razor. “No one here blames you for losing your goddamn cool. I don’t know what the fuck I’d do if some girl carrying my kid had just gotten fuckin’ abducted. I’d be doing more than wrecking a fuckin’ hotel room, that’s for sure.”
The men said their agreements, and Grit realized just how lucky he was to have a crew like this. He had no doubt that they had his back to the bitter end.
“Just one thing, boss,” said Gray. “And I don’t want to speak out of turn here, and I hope you don’t, you know, take this the wrong way, but are we sure that this girl’s on the level?”
Grit snapped his gaze over to the rookie brother, his eyes narrowed in anger.
Is he really suggesting that Honey’s doing me fucking dirty? he asked himself. This guy’s got a lot of fucking balls on him, that’s for goddamn sure.
“Explain,” said Grit, his voice lined with razors.
“It’s just that this all seems a little strange, you know? You said yourself that this girl held out information on you that would’ve made the difference between us moving in now, and us moving in a week ago. Hell, we only moved in now because you felt fine with rolling the dice and hoping the lab was there; if you’d wanted to be more cautious and shit then we’d still be hanging around with our thumbs up our asses, hoping that this girl would be dropping us something a little more, well, actionable to work with.”
“Just saying,” he continued, “that it’s possible, just possible, that this girl was working with her boss, trickling you just enough information to keep you at bay until they got this shipment off. Think about it—they were planning on moving this whole operation out somewhere in the middle of the fucking desert, and once they pulled that shit off there’s no chance in hell that we’d be able to find them. I mean, how sure are you that you know this girl, you know? She is just a stripper, after all. I mean, how sure are you that she’s even pregnant? This could all be some story to make you go easier on her.”
Grit said nothing. Part of him wanted to strangle this little asshole right then and there for daring to say shit like this right to his face. And looking around the hotel room, he could see that the men were thinking the same thing. They all had the same shocked expression on their face, like they were about two seconds from witnessing this kid get tossed out of the window and onto the Strip.
But the better part of Grit admired just how ballsy it was for Gray to speak up like that. And Gray was right to think that way; he was right that Grit should be a little more skeptical about some girl who he barely knew, that was all of a sudden telling him that she was pregnant, that was withholding just the information that he needed to know to move in on the drug lab.
The entire room was still and silent as Grit looked Gray up and down, sizing up the young man who’d said such things to the president.
“I see what you’re saying,” said Grit, finally.
He could’ve sworn that all of the men in the room besides him and Gray let out their held breaths at that moment.
“And all I have to say is that I need you guys to trust me. I know this girl, and I know that she wouldn’t pull anything like that. Maybe all I got to go on is a gut feeling, but going with my gut and trusting myself that I know what the fuck I’m doing is how I got to where I am. That, and having the best fucking crew that anyone could hope for. So if you guys want to sit this one out, fine, that’s your call. But if you’re ready to finish what we started and put the asshole who killed Pitt in jail or in the ground, then let’s fucking do this.”
“We’re right there with you, boss,” said Razor.
“Till the end,” said Gray.
Killian and Stone stood up and nodded. None of the men needed even a moment to figure out if they were going to stand at the boss’s side.
Grit chided himself a bit for it, but he couldn’t help but feel his heart warm a bit.
Fuck that, he thought with a smile.
The men got their gear ready to move out, and as they did, Grit poured himself another drink and stood out on the balcony. As he let his eyes drift into the distance of the Strip, the purple and yellow and green neon of the place melting into a bright blur, all he could think about was Honey. He thought about how beautiful she was, how her eyes looked when they made love, and how he’d do anything to keep her safe. And the fact that she was carrying his kid made the urge to crack some fucking skulls even more pressing.
Grit was ready to act. The time for screwing around was over.
Chapter Fifteen
Honey
Honey bumped around in the trunk of the car as Charlie tore down the road. The darkness was overwhelming, and Honey couldn’t even see her hands in front of her face, let alone any way she could escape from the tight, confined area. Aside from the rumbling of the engine, all Honey could hear were the sobs that slipped out of from her mouth, pitiful little whimpers that made it clear to her just how hopeless her situation was.
She’d heard the gunshots before and knew that it could’ve only meant that Grit was in hot pursuit. But after some wild driving on Charlie’s part, the car was steady and back on the road, and Honey knew that it meant that Charlie had lost Grit. She could only pray that it meant he’d outdriven him and not that he’d hurt him … or worse.
Grit. The man appeared in her mind in the darkness. He’d shouted out that he’d come for her, that he’d save her from Charlie. But she wondered if he’d actually be able to follow through on his promise. Charlie was out of his mind, and Honey didn’t have the slightest idea what his plans were with her. Fantasies was burnt to the ground, and the drug lab was currently buried under the rubble of her old job. It was clear from Charlie’s behavior that he was at the end of his rope, and anything that he would do next would be the actions of a desperate man.
“Oh God,” thought Honey. “What if he’s planning on driving this car over a ditch or something? What if he’s planning on committing suicide and taking me with him?”
She’d never seen Charlie act this insane before. She wondered if this part of him had been always lurking there underneath his cool exterior, or if this was just the result of being outplayed by Grit at every turn.
But before she could give the matter too much thought, the car lurched to a halt and silence overcame Honey. Her stomach tightened in fear as she heard the driver’s side door open, followed by the crunching of gravel under Charlie’s boots. She half-expected Charlie to pop the trunk, point the gun at her, and end it right then and there. Tears formed in her eyes, and all she could think about was the safety of the baby inside of her.
Then, the trunk popped open, revealing Charlie.
“Get the fuck out of there!” he shouted, grabbing Honey by the wrist and yanking her out of the confined space.
Honey shrieked as he pulled her out of the car and onto the ground. She fell to her knees and scraped her skin against the gravel. Charlie gave her another pull and brought her to her feet. Looking around, she saw that she was at some property in what looked like the middle of nowhere. It was a small, nondescript house surrounded by desert on all sides, a few outdoor lampposts the only light to be found.
“What the fu—” she shouted.
But she was
cut off by Charlie clamping his hand down over her mouth and silencing her. Holding her in place with one hand, Charlie fished a piece of fabric out of his pocket and wrapped it around Honey’s mouth, tying it tight. She screamed and shouted, but any noise she made was muffled and indistinct.
“Fucking finally,” said Charlie. “Some goddamn silence. You know, I could’ve really used gags whenever you fucking girls at the club would complain nonstop about stupid bullshit. Would’ve really made my life a lot easier.”
He grabbed her by the wrist again and dragged her across the property and up to the front door of the house. He pulled it open and tossed her inside. Honey’s eyes darted around the darkened interior of the place and she looked for something, anything that she could use as a weapon. She spotted a small dish nearby that was likely used to hold keys and such, and she grabbed it without hesitation and brought it towards Charlie in a downward arc. But he easily grabbed her wrist and stopped her before she could actually hurt him.
