Evil’s Price: Devil’s Outlaws MC: Book One

by Dark, Raven

  We cut the engines and dismount, and Striker hops out of the van. I put Pip on the front door and have Cap watching the rest of the place while Striker and Reaper follow me inside.

  Pip isn’t assigned to the door only to watch for cops. He might be a prospect, but after two years, he’s been with the MC long enough to know the authorities aren’t the only risk when dealing with the Bastards. Even if Gunner doesn’t have men lying in wait here, he could be planning to call in more of his pals the minute we’re inside.

  One look around Ricky’s barroom, and I’m reminded why I hate dealing in this place. There’s more window than wall, leaving the place wide open and exposed. There’s a back door, but there’s also a bouncer posted there. The guy gives me a respectful enough nod, and doesn’t look twitchy when he sees my cut or the men at my back, but I don’t know him from Jack.

  At this early hour, most of the tables are empty. A tired looking couple sits at one table, and a few men sit at others. In Vegas, most joints are open twenty-four hours, so it’s almost impossible to find a place that’s empty of patrons. But at least there’s no sign of anyone with a Bastard’s patch.

  Through one of the windows near the back, Cap’s head swivels as he surveys the rear lot. He catches my eye and gives a nod.

  It’s safe, but that still doesn’t mean we’re in the clear. Another bouncer, with a goatee and lip piercing, is standing at the double doors I know lead to a kitchen. Since it’s the only area of the bar that isn’t wall to wall windows, that has to be where Gunner is waiting.

  Three bikes outside, and one of them is Gunner’s. As long as he doesn’t have more men waiting somewhere, this’ll be a good day.

  “Spidy.” Striker nods to the bouncer in warning.

  I put out my hand, a silent command for him and Reaper to take it easy.

  When I catch the bartender’s eye, he gives the smallest inclination of his head toward the kitchen doors.

  So Gunner must have a similar arrangement with the staff here as what I have at The Crow.

  So far, so good.

  I make my way to the kitchen door, Reaper and Striker close behind. The bouncer there puffs out his chest, trying to look important. I shake my head. He’s one of those guys. One of those jerkoffs who thinks that getting close to a biker is going to make him look cool. He probably thinks that guarding the door for us will give him something to brag about with his pals and turn him into a pussy magnet.

  “Beat it, dickwad,” I tell him, pushing past him for the door.

  His face goes white and he scurries for the bar.

  Wouldn’t want him thinking we’re gonna be pals.

  Striker claps me on the back. “I think he was hoping you two would be sharing war stories over a brew by tonight.”

  I laugh and walk into the kitchen.

  My laughter cuts off when I hear a click beside my ear.

  “No sudden moves, Spiderman,” an unfamiliar voice warns.

  Fuck.

  7

  Lighting the Match

  “Son of a bitch. This is going to a shitty-ass day.” Reaper’s voice filters through the rush of blood in my ears.

  He’s always had a gift for understatement.

  This is hardly the first time I’ve had a gun pointed at my head. When I was fourteen, I made the mistake of trying to stop my dad from laying into my mom. My dad chose to settle the matter by putting his revolver to my forehead.

  The asswipe turned it into a game. One bullet, six chambers. If he fired and the chamber was empty, my mother got a pass.

  I remember shaking with terror and squeezing my eyes shut. I remember the way the click of the chamber sounded, like a firecracker in my ears.

  The chamber was empty. Didn’t get shot. Instead, I ended up with a black eye, not because I tried to save her, but because, as my father had put it, I’d acted like a pussy while his gun was in my face.

  I learned a lesson that day. A man never ever shows fear to the enemy.

  I wouldn’t show these men I was afraid, but anyone who tells you they aren’t scared shitless with a gun pointed at their head is either a fucking liar or a damn fool.

  My heart bangs against my ribs as if it’s trying to beat its way out of my chest. Every drop of moisture leaves my mouth.

  In the precious seconds after the voice speaks, I take stock.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see the owner of that voice; he’s got his gun raised, trained at my head. With him standing to the left of the door, there was no way I could have seen the fucker until I was in the room.

  Gunner stands on the far side of a stainless steel island in the middle of the kitchen. Assfuck has one of his men standing at his shoulder. Two heavy wooden crates sit on the island, both padlocked. I assume our guns are inside them.

  The only entrance to the kitchen is the door behind me, where Striker and Reaper are standing.

  One exit, and if any of us try to make a run for it, I’ll end up with a bullet in my skull. If I go for my gun, same result. I can draw fast, but not fast enough to beat a bullet.

  Keeping my face deadpan, I raise my hands slowly, locking my eyes on Gunner. “So this is how you wanna play it? Five years of good business between us, and you’re gonna throw it all away?”

  Gunner cocks his head. His teeth flash inside his thick black beard. “You think that’s what this is? We’re going to walk away without giving you what you paid for?”

  I scrunch my brows at him. What the fuck is going on here?

  “If we were here to fuck you over, you’d be dead already.” He nods to the ginger-haired man with the gun still pointed at me. “Take their weapons.”

  As soon as Ginger comes within reach, I grab his gun, twisting it out of his fist. By the time he realizes what’s happened, I have it pointed at Gunner’s mug.

  “What the fuck?” Ginger sputters.

  I hear my men muttering in praise and surprise.

  “Jesus Christ.” Gunner’s protective detail backpedals until he’s two steps behind him and raises his hands. Unfortunately, Gunner has his own pistol drawn and pointed at me.

  “Drop it,” Gunner orders.

  “You first, asshole,” I say.

  “Neat trick. Where’d you learn that?” His casual tone is at odds with the anger in his eyes. He doesn’t lower his pistol.

  I smirk. “Trade secret. Unless you want to see who can fire first, I’d drop the piece.”

  No idea if I could fire first. If I can’t, I’ll be six feet under before the day is out, but I have to do something to shake him.

  Gunner starts around the island toward me, his pistol aimed for the spot between my eyes. Anger wells up, but I channel it into the floor, where the energy disperses. I keep my Glock trained on his head.

  Before I can fire, I catch movement out of the corner of my eye. I fire at it, and Gunner’s bodyguard twitches and drops.

  It’s all the distraction I need.

  Gunner’s aim falters, and his gaze darts toward the dead man. I fire a second shot, catching Gunner in the temple. He convulses once and drops.

  Another shot goes off, and by the time I turn around, Ginger is sprawled on the floor. A spot of crimson pools on the chest of his white shirt and soaks his cut while he gasps for air. Striker lowers his firearm. There’s a pistol lying beside Ginger, one he must have drawn before Striker took him out.

  I can always count on Striker to have my back. I clap him on the shoulder.

  “Trust a Bastard to turn traitor,” Reaper mutters, kicking Ginger’s pistol away.

  I stride over and aim my gun at the redhead, watching him gasp like a fish too long out of water. His eyes lock on me, huge with fear.

  “No one points a gun at me.” I squeeze off two shots. Holes appear in his forehead. He twitches, and goes still.

  “You think Gunner was telling the truth about not killing us, Spidy?” Striker asks, nodding to Gunner, who’s lying on his stomach in a pool of blood.

  “If he wasn’t fucki
ng us over, then what was this all about?” Reaper adds. “He was lying. He—”

  The door to the kitchen bursts open and a young man with peach fuzz for a beard strides in. “Gunner, I hope I brought enough tarps to—” He cuts short and the rolls of black tarp in his arms drop to the floor. “Aw shit.”

  Striker is on him in an instant. He grabs the kid, spins him around, and slams him up against the wall by the door so that his back is to us. He yanks one hand behind the young man’s back, pinning it up high.

  “Hey, take it easy, man!” His voice shakes with the kind of high-pitched fear only a prospect would show. The bottom rocker on the back of his cut is a prospect patch. He bucks uselessly in Striker’s grip while Reaper pats him down for weapons.

  My men know the drill.

  “Little late to the party, aren’t you, boy?” I ask the prospect while I take the two pistols Reaper hands me, one from inside the kid’s cut, and another from the pockets of jeans, pants that are halfway down his ass and so baggy that he’s swimming in them.

  “Fuck you,” he spits.

  Ah, the impetuousness of youth. He hasn’t been in his club long enough to learn not to poke the bear. He isn’t completely stupid though. He won’t rat on his brothers.

  I set his guns down on the island.

  “He only had those two,” Reaper reports, glancing at me over his shoulder.

  “Good. Striker, get these crates open. Make sure all the hardware is there.”

  Striker walks around the island and hunts through Gunner’s pockets for the keys to the crates while I focus on the boy.

  At a signal from me, Reaper releases him, and I take over, holding both his arms behind his back and pinning him against the wall with my frame.

  I saw his face for a second before Striker had taken hold of him. He’s probably no older than twenty, close to Stephanie’s age. I mentally kick myself for letting the stray thought seep in and keep his back to me.

  There’s no way the kid can be allowed to leave here alive. If I don’t look at his face, I won’t have to think about it. About the fact that he’s no more than five years older than I was when my dad put his gun to my head. That he’s the same age as Pip. That he looks about as young and innocent as the thief waiting in my bed.

  The kid knew what he signed on for when he chose this life. Anyone who’s been in a club long enough to act as part of a cleanup crew would know he’s got a good chance at meeting an early end with a bullet. And his wearing a cut means he isn’t innocent.

  He struggles violently, but I don’t give him an inch.

  “Tell me how this was supposed to go down,” I order.

  He licks his lips. “I’m no rat, old man.”

  It would be easy enough to put my gun to the back of his skull. Instead, I wrench his arm up higher on his back until I feel the muscles stretch to their limits. He hisses in pain, and I pull a little harder.

  One more tug from me and his shoulder will pop out.

  “Ah, fuck. What kind of a fucking animal are you?” he cries out.

  “You’re a dead man walking,” I tell him, adopting a fatherly tone, pausing while he goes still as if letting that sink in. “You won’t be getting out of here alive, son. Be smart, tell me what I want to know, and I’ll make it quick. Fuck with me, and I’ll break your limbs one at a time until you spill. Understand?”

  “He’ll do it,” Striker tells him while he and Reaper check over the guns behind me. “I’ve seen him shatter a man’s kneecaps.”

  The kid’s frame is stiff, but he doesn’t fight. “Yeah, I got it.” It’s a begrudging surrender.

  “Good boy. Tell me why I had a gun in my face.”

  “The cops showed up at The Red Crow.” The boy huffs as if the pain in his arm is making it hard to breathe. “I heard Gunner say that jerkoff Briggs was there before he messaged you to meet here. He thinks you called Briggs in so that he and his pigs could bust in in the middle of the deal and take us down.”

  Briggs. My fists clench at the name. He’s the same cop Dragon’s predecessor had in his pocket for years. The same cop he’d once called years ago, resulting in the arrest of five Satan’s Bastards while the feud between our clubs still raged, and the death of one of them while in lock up. In that bust, Bones had a deal with Briggs that he’d still get his guns, while the Bastards rotted in cells.

  There is an unspoken law that no self-respecting member of an MC would deal with police, but the truth is, few outlaw MCs can do business for long without having a badge in their pocket. I have one, but it isn’t that shithead. And even if it was, I wouldn’t have done anything to jeopardize the truce between us. Shame I can’t say the same for Gunner.

  I exchange a look with Striker over my shoulder. The same question registers on his face as he sets down an AK-47, listening.

  We didn’t call the cops, so who did?

  I’ll have to put a call into Rat later and have him look into it.

  “So Gunner thinks I was taking a leaf out of Bone’s book,” I growl at the kid.

  “Someone did,” he squeals.

  I glance at the rolls of tarp on the floor. There’s also twines of rope with them. If things had gone differently, my men and I would be wrapped up in those tarps and buried miles from here, six feet under the sand.

  “Let me guess. You’re the cleanup crew. You were supposed to come in here as soon as you heard gunshots and mop up the mess. You came in expecting to find me and my boys dead and Gunner taking the cash off of my corpse.”

  “You got lucky,” he says. “Get it over with, old man.”

  Fuck. It makes it harder to do this when he isn’t a complete coward, but there’s still one question nagging at me. Years of trust down the drain out of the blue after all this time? Gunner’s actions today are grounds for war. It doesn’t add up.

  “Gunner wouldn’t have assumed I’d turn traitor just because Bones chose to call a badge years ago. What got his back up?”

  The young man deflates. “There’s been a guy asking questions about the Outlaws’ business.”

  I tighten my grip until he winces. “What guy?”

  When he says nothing, I bend one of his fingers back until it cracks. He howls in pain.

  “Who’s the guy?”

  “He was another buyer! Gunner met with him earlier this morning!”

  “What’s his name?”

  Tears stream down the kid’s face. I ignore them, focusing on a scuff on the wall. I do what I have to in order to protect the club.

  “His name,” I repeat, preparing to break another finger.

  “He calls himself Abel Adamson…” the boy squeals. “Asked a whole lot of questions about Dragon and what other stuff you’re into besides guns. Said Gunner shouldn’t trust you. That he should look into what other shit you were up to.”

  Abel Adamson? The name isn’t familiar. If Dragon’s been dealing with a guy with a name like that, I’d know. Dragon would need to know about this. Whomever Adamson is, his being up in our business hasn’t just destroyed a hard-won truce between our clubs. We hadn’t had a choice but to shoot Gunner and his men, but Wolf, the Bastard’s prez, won’t see it that way. He’ll see it as a betrayal of trust. We could have a war on our hands. I need a word with Adamson, preferably with him at the business end of my Glock. No one fucks with my brothers.

  “Who is this Adamson? Where do I find him?” I start bending his fingers back.

  “No, don’t! He’s just another buyer! That’s all I know, I swear!”

  It’s probably true. This boy is just a grunt. He probably only knows as much as he does because he caught it in snippets of conversation. Besides, he has nothing to gain by holding back except a handful of shattered digits.

  Which is why I step back, draw my gun, and fire two shots into his skull.

  I turn away before he hits the ground and don’t look at the body.

  “We need to get the fuck out of here.” I holster my piece and nod to the boxes on the island. “Stri
ker?”

  “They’re all there.” He shows me the guns and then slaps the crates shut.

  “Good. Let’s get them loaded.” Allowing a single glance at the bodies, I imagine them as always having been that way, without life, without worth, then head for the door. “Have Pip call in the cleanup crew. Tell him to stay here until they show up, then head back to the clubhouse.”

  We’re loading the guns in the van when Striker turns to me.

  “Look at the bright side,” he says, shutting the van door now that the crates are squared away. “We got the guns, and the money.”

  But there’s no real pleasure in his voice.

  “Yeah.” I clap him on the back when he heads for the driver’s side of the van. And all of us now have targets on our backs.

  “The Bastards prospects just keep getting younger, don’t they?” he says, crushing a smoke under his boot.

  I shake his shoulders bracingly. “There’s always casualties in war, man.”

  A million questions fill my head while I put in the call to Dragon. Wolf’s going to use this to declare war on the Outlaws. There’s no stopping that now. I’ve had a feeling the Satan’s Bastards have been waiting to set fire to the truce between us. And whether or not I had a choice doesn’t matter. Fact is, I just lit the match for him.

  My fists clench. If I was back at the clubhouse now, I’d be taking my frustration out on that thief’s gorgeous body.

  My mind drifts to the panties still stuffed into the inside pocket of my cut. I resist the urge to take them out and breathe them in. Have to stay focused on club business, and I won’t be able to do that with my head full of my little thief’s scent. Instead, I light up and take a long drag, letting the hit of nicotine calm me.

  Yesterday, she called me an animal. Wait until I get back to the clubhouse. When I do, she’ll see what an animal I really am.

  I wait for Striker to get in the van and then I slam the door shut. Whoever this Abel Adamson is, when I find him, I’ll make him wish he never fucked with my club. And then I’ll send him to hell myself.