Blow Out (Steel Veins Book 1)

by Jackson Kane

  Remy had his gun out and firing.

  They were both on the ground before Bones had even entered the parking lot.

  Like a burst dam, the Lobos flooded into the open, gated parking lot. A dozen bikers set up at each exit and shot up the doors when the Veins inside tried to come out and help their fallen brothers. This was a surgical strike. Remy had planned for everything.

  “¿Dónde mierda está la camioneta?” Bones scanned for the van but couldn’t find it. Then he screamed at his road captain and sergeant at arms. No one had any idea. It should’ve been right behind them. Bones called the van’s drivers, but got no answer. Then he checked his voice mail. The Lobos stood by anxiously, waiting for orders.

  Bones closed the phone, crushed it into his clenched fist, wrapped it with his other hand, and pressed them into his forehead, shaking violently for a few seconds. The frustration on his usually subdued face was startling.

  He looked as if he would become unhinged at any moment. Then he calmly relaxed and yelled out something in Spanish.

  Remy and I watched him intently—me not knowing what he said, and Remy pretending not to know.

  “The van stalled out on the highway on the way over. The engine somehow got fucked. The police showed up, and now Flaco and Papa are in custody. With all our fucking heavy weapons!” Bones’s voice pitched slightly, but he brought it back under control, showing incredible restraint. He even took a deep breath before asking, “Do you know anything about that?”

  “News to me.” Remy shrugged, feigning obliviousness. For reasons beyond me, Remy knew exactly what a liter of Coca-Cola could do to a vehicle’s engine. “You had guys on that all night, right?”

  “Yeah. S’what I thought.” Bones’s face contracted in disbelieving acceptance. “Okay. So here’s what happens now. Roughneck!”

  The crowd parted so the leathery warlock could get through. He was short and wiry with long, stringy hair under a faded bandana. He swam in his patch-covered denim vest. One of those patched read “Original,” which probably harkened back to him starting the club. He looked like he escaped from a biker retirement home, if such things existed.

  “Remy is going to take the lead on the way into the clubhouse. Spyder, you and ten guys follow him in. Roughneck, you’re going to take chamaquita here over to the edge of the parking lot, and if anything else—and I fucking mean anything—doesn’t go as planned, you put a fucking bullet into that pretty fucking face of hers.” Bones’s tone was definitive. He wasn’t going to be too careful. Everything led up to this moment.

  This was the moment he destroyed the Steel Veins.

  “Roger that. Be my pleasure!” Roughneck pulled up the back of my shirt and stripped away my gun, then jerked me by my arm toward the back of the parking lot. “Let’s go, tight ass.”

  My skin crawled at the old psycho’s touch. This was definitely not in the plan. Shit!

  “I’ll come back for you,” Remy mouthed the words. There was nothing else he could do for me; they were already breaking off to make the assault.

  I was on my own.

  I had to stay alive long enough for him to get through this.

  “Yer boyfriend there’ll never make it out of this alive.” Roughneck shoved me past all the parked bikes out by the dumpster and then pushed me into the chain-link fence that surrounded the property.

  “That’s not what your boss says,” I spat the words at him, emphasizing that he was no longer in control of the club, regardless of the Original patch he wore. “As long as everything goes according to plan.”

  “Bones says a lotta stuff.” The old bastard waved my words away and offered up a sickly grin. “Sometimes ya gotta read ’tween the lines.”

  “They made a deal.” I ripped his hand off my arm. “You keep your fucking hands to yourself.”

  “Yer a feisty twat, aintcha? Ya see yer boy over there yellin’ in the door?” Roughneck pulled the pistol out of the leather holster he wore on his chest.

  I stayed quiet.

  “The second he disappears.” Roughneck pointed his evil gaze and his absurdly large revolver at me. “You do too.”

  “That’s not what Bones fucking said!” I protested.

  “Tween the lines.” Roughneck shrugged, looking back at Remy.

  “Don’t shoot!” I could just barely hear Remy yell at the men inside his clubhouse. “Deadeye, it’s Poet. You’re completely surrounded. I’ve got an offer for you that makes this whole nightmare go away. No one else needs to die. I just need to talk. Two minutes, that’s all.”

  I couldn’t hear what Deadeye was saying, we were too far away.

  “Dammit, I’m trying to help you! Lobos have your fucking daughter, man! I’m coming in, unarmed so do not shoot,” Remy lied, he was thinking on his feet. Kidnapping wasn’t part of the plan.

  I clenched up. At least not the plan that Remy outlined.

  With his hands up, Remy walked into the clubhouse, then abruptly dove to one side and was out of sight. There were gunshots, and the rest of the Lobos charged in. Then there were a lot more gunshots.

  God, I hoped he was all right.

  And now out here I was completely alone. No help was coming for me. I needed to handle this myself regardless of what Remy did. Before Roughneck could turn back to me, I charged him.

  When we collided into the side of a nearby dumpster, Roughneck’s revolver fired over my shoulder. It was unbelievably loud. My world was nothing but that constant “eeeee” noise. I could still see, but the sound was so jarring that I became disoriented. We toppled to the ground. Then somehow he was on top of me, his hands around my throat.

  His grip was shockingly strong for a man in his mid-seventies. I couldn’t breathe. The more I thrashed and clawed at him, the more he squeezed. My vision started to go fuzzy and white around the edges. I tried to knee him in the groin, but he laid on me sidesaddle, and I couldn’t get the right angle. I reached for the gun but had no idea where it ended up. My God, I was going to die, strangled by an old man in a parking lot.

  What would Remy do? Frantic and desperate, I jammed my thumbs into each eye. My nails punctured them as easily as if I pushed them through soft-boiled eggs. Blood and liquids ran between my fingers, down my palm and forearm. I still couldn’t hear anything, but I saw him screaming, and I knew I must have been screaming too, or I would have if he let me breathe.

  Roughneck still wouldn’t let go, so I pushed harder. As my fingertips bottomed out, my nails scraped against the bones behind his eyes. Only then did he finally let me go.

  I gasped, taking in only as much air as I could scream out. I kicked and slid myself away from him. I rolled onto my stomach and just tried to breathe while frantically wiping whatever I could off onto my jeans. My hands were slick and disgusting; I could feel the pulp under my nails and fought the urge to throw up. I wanted to tear my own fingers off. It was the most disgusting thing I’d ever been forced to do. I couldn’t stop shaking.

  Then I realized I wasn’t shaking. The ground was shaking. Everywhere. What the hell was that? Was this area prone to earthquakes?

  Roughneck had a hand over his face and was blindly sweeping the ground for his gun. He found it a moment later and immediately fired it in whichever direction he thought I was in. He was insane!

  The bullet missed me, but only barely. This man would not stop until I was dead. I only had two options, run away and hope for the best or finish it right now.

  I kicked the gun out of his hand into the fence. I ran over and picked it up.

  The realization hit me like a speeding bus. I wasn’t a bystander or an accident or in the wrong place at the wrong time. Roughneck wasn’t trying to hurt Remy. This psychopath was trying to kill me.

  Me, Star Keller, no one else.

  My mind replayed the image of Rio tumbling off the truck bed after I shot him in the stomach at Muse’s place. I didn’t have the strength or resolve to finish off the dying man then, so Remy did it for me. Remy wasn’t here this time.
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  It was just me, a gun, and a man who wanted me dead.

  I decided something that Remy probably decided for himself at one point in his life. The epiphany was the most obvious thing in the world. Everything just made sense. All the pieces fit. This was what you did to people who tried to kill you.

  I would never be a victim ever again.

  “No one gets to kill me.” I pushed the gun barrel into Roughneck’s back. “Not you. Not anyone.”

  Calmly squeezing the trigger like Remy taught me, I watched the front of the diseased old biker’s chest explode. And felt nothing beside the recoil.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Star

  My ears were still muted from that constant “eeeee” sound. I put two more rounds into the old biker just to be sure. There wasn’t any noise, so I barely flinched. The gun barrel smoked for a second from the rapid firing before being cleaned away by a gentle breeze.

  So, this is what I’m truly capable of.

  I exhaled, feeling the last of my timidity blow away with the dry, late-summer wind. I was calm. I truly belonged in Remy’s world. It just took me this long to realize it.

  Only then did I remember where I was, and I dropped into a crouch, booking it behind the dumpster. I had just murdered one of the founding members of Los Lobos! Angry bikers with guns would be shooting at me any second now.

  I turned the heavy pistol over in my hand. I had no idea how many shots had been fired from it, and even worse, I didn’t know how to check. I tried to remember how many shots were fired, but that was useless. Too many other things were going on to keep an accurate count.

  I rubbed my ears to work out the ringing from the damn monster handgun, and after a few seconds, I realized that no bullets were landing near me. No one even ran up to check on the fallen biker.

  Was no one actually coming after me for killing Roughneck?

  Peeking my head out from behind the dumpster gun first, I was ready to fight back against anything that came my way. What I wasn’t prepared for was what I saw next.

  Having temporarily lost my hearing, I didn’t hear the new bikers pull in. There must have been dozens of Steel Veins that had rode in, maybe a hundred or more!

  Of course, none of the Lobos came for Roughneck, they were all too busy trying to save their own asses. The tail end of the firefight was brutal; the Lobos outside had been devastated. Almost every one of them had been, or was currently, being slaughtered. There were a few Lobo holdouts hiding behind bullet-riddled cars trading shots with the Veins, but in the face of such overwhelming firepower, it was only a matter of time.

  With two clubs that hated each other this much, there would be no surrender on either side, everyone knew that. The few Lobos left fought with the tenacity of men who didn’t expect to turn the tide. They just wanted to die on their feet.

  Remy had Tee secretly contact all the other Steel Veins chapters and set up a different location for the annual, rather than their Leslie clubhouse. When I texted Tee, he took the rest of his chapter to that new location to meet all the members from all over that had already arrived. I had no idea what he told Deadeye to keep his crew at the Leslie clubhouse while they were gone, but whatever it was… it worked.

  Despite Remy’s double-cross, the Lobos plan mostly worked. They came in while everyone was away and killed Deadeye’s crew. It was afterward that everything fell apart.

  Instead of having hours to deal with Deadeye, they had minutes.

  I still couldn’t believe Remy’s plan worked!

  Tee had all the Veins reinforcements come in and cut off the Lobos escape routes.

  I hoped that most of the poisonous decision makers in the Steel Veins were wiped out by the Lobos, thus cleaning the cancer out of Remy’s club, but we’d have to count the bodies to know for sure.

  We were not out of the woods yet, I reminded myself. Remy still had to convince the Veins not to kill us. They sent a kill team after us for killing Rio. What would the MC do to us for wiping out the entire mother chapter?

  Where was Remy? I started making my way back toward the clubhouse. I didn’t see him anywhere. He should’ve been out by now.

  My throat tightened up. A million things could’ve gone wrong in that clubhouse. Remy was brilliant, but some things just couldn’t be planned for. Like him, I thought, passing Roughneck’s corpse. I resisted the urge to spit on such human trash.

  All the gunfire outside had stopped. Not that I cared. All that mattered was that I got to Remy, gunfire be damned! I ran through the throng of bikers, the Steel Veins, and the dead and the dying Lobos to get inside the clubhouse.

  Right before I reached the door, it was kicked open by a bloodied and beaten-up Spyder wielding a shotgun. He wore the fearful expression of a man trying to run. Seeing the army of Veins waiting just outside, the angry, vindictive Lobo knew it was the end and switched gears to take as many people down with him as possible.

  And I was running right at him.

  Spyder looked at me with hate boiling out of his sunken eyes and leveled his shotgun. He had me dead to rights. I raised my gun, but Roughneck’s revolver was heavy and clunky. I’d never get him in time.

  Just before the shotgun went off, a massive hand clamp down on my arm and jerked me so hard to the side that I lifted off the ground. My arm immediately popped out of its socket, and I slapped against the pavement like a slab of beef knocked off a meat hook.

  A gigantic form stood over me while I cowered, covering my ears to protect my slowly returning hearing from all the gunfire. Glancing up, I saw that it was Remy’s brother, Top, who saved me.

  Top started at Spyder’s groin and walked his gunshots up the Lobo’s midsection. Then the rest of the Veins with a clear shot opened up on the poor bastard as well. Bits and chunks were blown off the man as he was torn to shreds.

  It was too gruesome even for me. I had to look away.

  The giant loomed over me until Spyder’s corpse finally fell. I prayed Top didn’t recognize me. But how could he not? If I could have melted into the asphalt, I would’ve. Top terrified me since the second he forced himself into my life.

  “You all right, Star?” He looked down at me through his massive beard and extended a hand to help me up.

  I recoiled at the sound of my name, then again at his movement toward me. This time when he said my name, there was no sarcasm or malice in his voice. It sounded like genuine concern.

  “Don’t be afraid. I won’t hurt you.” His features softened considerably from what I remembered back at the gas station and at Muse’s. He grabbed my waist and helped me up gently.

  I pulled away reflexively. This was the man who killed my aunt and uncle, tried to rape me, and then have me killed. Yes, he had just saved my life, but I couldn’t shake all the other stuff he did to nearly end it.

  “Your arm needs settin’, will you let me?” Top asked, deep lines of guilt and shame across his face. He knew what he’d done to me as well.

  “Remy!” My laser focus snapped back on. He was still in there!

  “Easy, I got good men in there. They’ll pull him out. You goin’ to let me set that arm?” Top extended his massive hand again.

  Hesitantly, I nodded through the agony shooting up my arm. What else could I do? I was no use to Remy like this. I needed help. I just hated that I needed help from him.

  With a quick jerk, Top popped my shoulder back in. It hurt like hell, but I was able to stifle the scream. Top stepped back to give me some space. He even looked impressed at how I was able to deal with the pain.

  “I know it don’t change anything, but I want you to know. I am sorry. I’m sorry about everything that went down at the gas station. About what I did to you at Muse’s. My brother’s death fucked me all up, and I was out of my mind. I don’t expect forgiveness, but I just needed you to know that.” Top struggled through the words, but the real remorse was there, as plain as day.

  This was never a conversation I imagined would ever happen. I was dumbfounde
d.

  “I… don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive you.” I frowned and averted my gaze a moment before meeting his eyes again. It was a harsh realization, but some bridges were burned so badly that they could never be rebuilt. I could deal with damn near anything these days, but this.

  Top exhaled and nodded solemnly.

  The door swung open again. Several Veins dragged Deadeye out. I was surprised to see him still alive. Between the Lobos and Remy, I was sure he’d be dead, but there he was, beaten and with a few holes in him, but still alive.

  A few seconds later, Remy walked out too. He was covered in blood, but I didn’t think much of it was his.

  I dashed over and wrapped my arms around him. I pressed my lips into his. His mouth was bloody from a hit he must have taken, but I didn’t care about the rusty, metallic taste on his teeth.

  All I cared about was that he was alive.

  He laid both arms over my shoulders and embraced me like he hadn’t seen me in years. I never wanted him to let me go. If this was a fairy tale, all the Steel Veins would’ve been clapping and cheering.

  But this wasn’t a Disney movie. Over Remy’s shoulder, I saw only the aftermath of bloody, violent carnage. Friends had been killed, bad injuries would destroy a few lives, and occasionally, gunfire would ring out to finish off wounded Lobos. This was Saving Private Ryan.

  “Rem,” Top cried, approaching with his arms extended. “Brother, it’s damn good to see—”

  “Lawrence!” Remy called out to his brother, but it wasn’t a cry of reunion or even one of anger over everything he’d done. There was terror in Remy’s voice. He threw me to the ground and lunged for his brother, but it was too late. “Down!”

  A bullet jerked the big man toward us slightly. There was a look of confusion on Top’s face like he wasn’t sure what had happened.

  Bones had been hiding behind a car in the back of the parking lot this whole time. Knowing he’d be spotted eventually, he stood up when no one was paying attention and fired at Remy, hoping to finish what he started in his clubhouse so many weeks ago. Top had walked in the way at the last second and taken the round.