by KJ Dahlen
Gunner and Boone both nodded.
“That’s true enough,” Boone agreed.
“We got heat seeking cameras all around the clubhouse,” Gunner told her. “That’s how I knew where the shot came from the morning you shot at Griz. We picked up your heat signature.”
“I need to check out the roof and find my spot then.” She nodded at his statement.
“Come on, I’ll take you up there.” Grizzly took her hand and on the way to the hall, she grabbed her rifle from the table.
They mounted the stairs and when they got to the top, Grizzly opened the door. They could immediately feel the heat as they stepped out onto the roof.
Teddy paused and noted the wall around the perimeter of the roof. It was a low wall but high enough to cover the form of someone kneeling. That would not only give the sniper protection but concealment as well. No one would be able to see them.
She nodded and walked around the area toward the front of the building. She took a knee and peeked out over the edge. She whipped her gun to her shoulder and took aim at the trees below her. Making a sweep, she could fire from this position to any one of the many trees on the other side of the fence she wanted to.
Grizzly simply watched her in silence.
Finally, after a few minutes she got to her feet and nodded. “I can take that shot.” She turned and walked back to where Grizzly stood. “I’m good. I just need to get out here before he arrives and be waiting for him.”
“We will get you there,” he vowed.
“Knowing Levi, I wouldn’t trust him any farther than I can throw him. So be ready for anything come dawn, Teddy warned him. “If there is a way to cheat, he’ll find it and use it. That’s just how he is.”
Grizzly cupped her face between his huge hands and looked her in the eyes. “Sweet Teddy, we got this, all you have to do is take that shot, only this time make it count.”
Teddy growled. “You can bet your ass on that. I’ll make this one count.”
He leaned over and brushed his lips on hers. When she moaned at his action it was all Grizzly could do not to take her right then and there. Instead, he pulled away and led her back downstairs.
Teddy sat alone at one of the tables and cleaned her weapon. She was meticulous in her efforts.
Jett and Gypsy both watched her work. Jett had seen her method only a few times in his life and he just shook his head. Looking over at Gunner he said, “She’s been taught by the fucking best of the best.”
“What do you mean?” Gunner stared at him curiously.
“Whoever taught her how to clean that weapon knew what he was doing,” Jett explained. “He’s spent some time in the service too.”
“My granddad taught me this,” Teddy finally spoke up. “He said a clean gun shoots straight and more to the mark, than a dirty one does.”
“He’d be right about that.” Jett nodded.
When she was done, she put her things away and began loading her weapon. With a full clip, she lifted her rifle and peered through the scope. Then she lowered the weapon to the table and looked at them. “If I miss my shot for any reason, I want you to make sure that bastard is dead.”
Gunner, Jett and Gypsy nodded.
Gunner pushed a small tape recorder towards her, “There’s something on here that you need to hear. Weston was right... your Grandpa Theo left you a message. You need to hear his final words before the shit hits the fan.”
With an unsteady breath, Teddy sat down and stared at the recorder. Then she looked at Gunner. “Have you heard it?”
He nodded.
“Then play it again.” She didn’t touch the recorder but waited for Gunner to hit play.
He did.
'Baby girl, I know if you’re listening to this message, I’m probably gone and your heart is hurting but I wanted you to know that I loved you from day you were born. By now, you know what kind of woman your mother is but I wanted you to know your dad and I love you.
I need you know who killed me and why. Logan Riggs gave the order for my death. He might not have pulled the trigger but he ordered it all the same. He’s sold out to the cartel and is working hand in hand with them to bring drugs and guns into this part of the state. He’s got a special place in his barn where he stores the shit in until they can get it out. I’ve seen it. It’s under the floor and there’s a stairway to the vault through the tack room.
The Marshals will find it if you show them the video, I left for you. It doesn’t matter when, but you need to stop him. He sold his soul to the cartel a long time ago and his daughter did as well. She’s nothing more than a whore but your daddy won’t leave her because he’s afraid she’ll take you with her. And that’s something he couldn’t take but one day, she’ll turn on him. He knows it same as I do. So you have to be ready for anything from her. I know she never loved you as a mother is supposed to, she’s only really ever loved one person, and that was herself.
But me and your daddy loved you enough for both of them. Take care of yourself and to yourself always be true. That’s really all that matters. We are only on this earth for a short time in the overall scheme of things. Remember, I love you and we tried to raise you right.'
The message ended there and Teddy couldn’t seem to say anything. She got up, grabbed the recorder, and put it in her camo case. She then picked up her gun and walked down the hall to the bedroom she shared with Grizzly.
The men all heard her close the door quietly and they didn’t have anything else to say.
At something like four a.m. the door to the roof opened and a shadow slipped through the opening. Teddy made her way to her spot near the front of the building and she settled in for the duration. She was dressed in black and as she waited, she remembered her grandfather’s words. “Be true to yourself.” That was top priority in his books. She vowed that she would try.
An hour later, the door opened again, and this time two shadows came out. When they got close to her, they weren’t surprised to find her there. No one said a word as they too, found their positions.
As the dawn’s light began chasing away the night shadows, Teddy turned and began searching the area in the front of the clubhouse for intruders. That’s when she saw him.
She looked through her scope and saw the badly beaten man with his hands tied to the lower limb of the tree. She knew right away it was her father and he wasn’t moving. What she hadn’t heard was Levi placing him there.
She looked down at her phone. She’d had Rigger download his cameras to her phone, so she would be able to detect Levi’s heat signature when the time came. At that moment, she could see a faint heat coming from her dad but not one coming from Levi.
She was patient and she looked again. There it was. A heat signature high above in the tree her dad was tied too. She raised her rifle and looked through the scope. Taking a deep breath, she studied the area well before she picked him up. She had a feeling she would only get one shot at this and she had to make it count.
Exhaling, she moved her finger to the trigger. She adjusted her scope and looked again. She could see his face and it was just as ugly now, as it ever was. She could even see him sweat. Looking into his glazed eyes, she could tell the man was higher than a kite.
She wrapped her finger around the trigger and engaged the safety. Her rifle was the kind that had a double click to engage. Everything else faded way. It was just her, the rifle and her target. With a calm she hadn’t felt in days, Teddy snuggled the gun into her shoulder and gently squeezed the trigger.
The shot echoed loudly in the predawn silence.
With that same calm, Teddy watched as the bullet entered Levi’s head and it exploded upon impact.
His body fell to the hard ground with a thud and her nightmare was over.
Men rushed outside from the front doors of the compound and over to the tree. They cut down Ethan’s body and carried him inside.
Jett and Gypsy got to their feet but before they could go to her, the door to the roof opened
up and Grizzly came through it. He went straight to her and helped her to her feet. Then he simply held her.
Teddy breathed in his scent and held onto him for a long moment.
When she would have moved away from him, Grizzly growled as he leaned in and kissed her silly.
Chapter Ten
“Can you just hold me for a moment?” Teddy whispered as he broke the kiss.
“I plan on holding you for the rest of eternity, sweetheart.” He growled.
She buried her face in his chest and sobbed for a moment. She had a bad case of the letdowns right now and she just needed to borrow his strength for a moment. When the moment passed, she looked up at him. “I need to see my dad.”
Grizzly nodded and escorted her to the door. They went down the stairs together, and headed straight for the infirmary. When the got to the doorway, Teddy walked in slowly. She laid her rifle on the table just inside the door and moved forward. Gunner, Boone, Weston and several of the others were lined up along the wall but she ignored them as she made her way to the bed where her father laid.
Patriot was working on him and Teddy waited and watched for a moment. “Is he still breathing?” she had to ask.
Patriot looked up at her briefly. “Yeah sweetheart, he’s still breathing. But he’s hurt really bad. He took a hell of a beating.”
“Can I sit here for a moment without being in your way?” she begged.
“Yeah, go ahead.” Patriot nodded.
Teddy sat down and tears ran down her face when she looked at him. His face was swollen and bruised, his nose and cheekbone were broken, and his skin was covered in dried blood. Even his hair had dried blood crusting it.
His right arm looked broken as it was laying there and the bones were so close to the surface but they hadn’t broken through. His wrists were raw and still bleeding with grooves from the zipties. His chest and belly were covered in bruises from the beating.
She reached out tentatively and took his hand in hers very carefully. His skin was cool to her touch and her thumb rubbed across the space between his thumb base and his fingers. She leaned closer and whispered in his ear, “Daddy, I got him. I took the shot. I couldn’t kill the man he wanted me to kill but I did get Levi. You told me not to take the first shot, you said your live wasn’t worth the life of an innocent man but I had to try. You were right daddy, I couldn’t do it. I did as you and grandpa taught me, I looked into his eyes and I couldn’t kill him. But I could kill Levi. I read the evil in Levi’s eyes. So I took that shot. He won’t hurt anyone else now.” She laid her head on his hand. “Please come back to me daddy. I still need you so much.” She smiled slightly. “I found myself a guy daddy. I really want you to meet him. His name is Grizzly and he’s part of an MC. But you would like these guys. They’re good people. Please daddy, don’t leave me, I couldn’t bear it, the world wouldn’t be a better place without you in it. I still need you.” Her words faded into silence then finally she lifted her head to look at him again. After a few minutes, she got to her feet and leaned over him gently kissing his forehead. Looking over at Patriot, she whispered, “Please save him.”
Patriot looked up at her and nodded. “I plan too, honey.”
She turned to Gunner and said, “I need to see Levi’s body.”
“It’s not a pretty sight.” Gunner warned her with a frown.
Teddy snorted. “I don’t expect it is. I had an up close and personal peek when his head exploded, but I still need to see it. I have to know he’s really gone.”
Gunner nodded and glanced over at Boone.
Boone pushed away and motioned for her to follow him.
Grizzly fell into step beside her as they went out to the main room then out the front doors. They traveled to one of the outside sheds and when they entered, they could smell the blood in the air. Someone had laid the body on a worktable and covered him with a sheet.
Blood stained the cloth at one end of the table.
Boone stayed back and let her moved forward on her own.
She grabbed Grizzly’s hand as she walked toward the table. She took a moment then pulled the bloody sheet back. She looked down at him and couldn’t recognize the man he once was. Half his head was just gone. He did have one eye left and it was wide open while staring at nothing. Blood pooled around his head and it still looked fresh. The lower half of his face was still intact but his skin was waxy looking.
Finally, she lifted the sheet again, and covered his face.
Grizzly pulled her to him and held her, one hand behind her back and the other behind her neck.
Teddy held on to him but she couldn’t cry. They stood like that for a couple of minutes.
Finally, she stepped away. She looked up at him and nodded. “I need to see Reva.”
“You sure you want to do that?” he asked with doubt in his voice.
Teddy nodded. “Yeah, I’m sure. I want her to know her boy toy is dead and I’m still alive. I want her to know she failed and that I saved my dad, despite her hopes that Levi would kill him.” She paused as her gaze went hard. “It’s the least, I can do for her. I want to see her face when she finally realizes she’s going to face the consequences of her actions.”
Grizzly nodded and together with Boone, they walked back to the clubhouse. They escorted her back to the cell area where Reva and Justin we sitting in separate cells.
Reva looked up at the sound of their footsteps and actually looked shocked at the sight of her daughter. “How are you still alive?” she screamed harshly. “Levi told me you would be killed for sure after you took the shot!”
Teddy shook her head. “Hello, to you too, Mother.”
Reva sneered at her. “Let me out of here! I haven’t done anything wrong and I have places to go. You have no reason to hold me.”
Again, Teddy ignored her rants and demands. “I want you to meet someone. This is Grizzly. The man Levi sent me to kill.”
Reva snarled as she glared at Teddy. “You little bitch! He’s supposed to be dead. You’re supposed to be dead. Why are you both still alive?”
“I took the shot but I missed,” Teddy revealed with a shrug.
“How the hell did you miss that shot?” Reva screamed. “He’s a big enough target. How could you miss something as big as him?”
Teddy glared at her. “I closed my eyes at the crucial time because I knew that shot was wrong.”
“Well, that’s just fine then isn’t it?” Reva sneered. “Levi is gonna kill Ethan now, and you know it. You couldn’t even do it to save his life. Nooooo, now you’ll lose him and his death is on your hands.”
“Not quite,” Grizzly informed the older woman.
“What does that mean, not quite? Not quite what?” Reva demanded.
“Ethan is still alive and being given medical attention right now,” Grizzly told her.
Reva frowned at his words while looking from him to her daughter, she asked, “How is that possible? Levi would never give him up. He was our ace.”
“I took another shot,” Teddy told her. “And my second shot didn’t miss.”
“What does that mean?” Reva paled. Here eyes darted around the cell as if she was looking for an escape route.
“Levi is dead.”
“No!” Reva shrieked. “I don’t believe you. You murdered him?”
Teddy didn’t have to say a word. She just listened to her mother rant.
“You little bitch, you killed him. You murdered your own brother.”
“He wasn’t my brother. Ethan is my father and you lied to me,” Teddy informed her. “I look just like my grandmother on dad’s side.”
Reva sneered. “Levi was your brother as he is also my son. I gave birth to him two months before my sixteenth birthday. My father never knew he had a grandson but he did. I’ve been with Darren since I was fifteen. Levi was my son so yeah, you murdered your own brother.”
Teddy just shook her head. “How could your own dad not know you were pregnant at fifteen?”
�
�That’s none of your business you bitch.” Reva snarled. “But you better look out because once I get out of this cell, I will see you dead.” She switched her glare to Grizzly. “And I’ll see you dead as well.”
“What makes you think you’re going to go free, lady?” Grizzly growled. “You are up to your neck in a plot to kill a US Marshal and the attempted murder of your husband.”
“You can’t prove anything.” Reva sneered. “You need evidence to take me to court and my father will never allow that to happen.”
“We got Levi’s own words and your dad’s gonna have his own legal problems coming up. He’s not gonna be worried about your dumb little ass.”
“You mess with my daddy and you’ll be buried before they even know you’re gone.” Reva snarled. “He’s got friends that watch his back.”
“That’s true he does.” Grizzly nodded his eyes like cold steel. “But don’t worry, they will drop his ass in a hurry when we bust his whole operation. They will scurry back through their tunnels, go back to their side of the border, and just wait until the hoopla settles down. Then they’ll stick their noses out again and have to take the time to reset up their business again. That gonna take time and money that they’ll lose when we take your dad down.”
“You’ll never take Logan Riggs down. He’s too big a man down there.” Reva snorted. “He’s got high class friends too.”
Grizzly scoffed at this. “When his high class friends find out he’s nothing more than a drug lord, they won’t want to be around him for long. When they find out, he paid someone to murder a man, the likes of Theo Alexander they will run away from him so fast, he’ll just be standing in a breeze. Theo was more of a man than your father will ever be no matter how rich he is. His money is dirty money and people will know the truth. About him and about you.”
Then he turned and glared at Justin. “You’ll be facing charges of your own. You betrayed your oath and your office when you allowed them to use you for information on raids and our movements. You put our lives on the line time and time again, every single time we went after these bastards you risked our lives, And don’t think I forgot about the two officers we lost in the raid in Durango either. They died because you told the cartel we were coming. You are a disgrace.”
