Burning It All (7 page)

“Revenge.”

“I guess.”

“Ah.” He pauses, reading something on the screen.
“‘I’m off the airfield road. They blew my tires. Must have known my schedule. My money’s on Val, since he can’t keep his fucking mouth shut.’”

My chest feels like it’s sinking in. “Like I said. He’s just an asshole who sold me out.”

“Yes.” Red Eye draws in a long breath, as if he’s so fucking weary. “But it’s a problem when people can’t keep their mouths shut. A problem with an easy solution—and a lesson for others. You need to teach your boys that lesson, Sherlock.”

Fuck. I close my eyes when they start stinging. Such fucking bullshit. This asshole was going to teach them all a lesson whether they found the phone or not. To make sure they always knew the price of crossing him in any way.

They drag Val outside but I can still hear him pleading. Red Eye cocks his head and listens. He smiles faintly when a pistol cracks and Val goes quiet.

“There,” he says. “Problem solved. And you, gorgeous girl, are going to be fine. We’ll see you heal that ankle up, grow that hair out. You’ll be well taken care of…as long as you keep winning.”

“Winning what?” What the hell kind of competition do sex slaves enter? “The Rape Olympics?”

He grins. “The Cage. You just have to fight.”

Or die. And hold on. Hold on until Jack finds me.

Red Eye waves one of the goons over. “You need to take this now, because you probably won’t enjoy your mode of travel. No spitting.”

A pill. To put me to sleep, most likely. So I can’t see where we’re going…or bring attention to myself as we’re getting there.

I take the tablet, swallow it dry. I keep quiet as a goon comes back with duct tape and seals my mouth shut.

Red Eye smiles at me like I’m a good little girl. Just keep thinking that, asshole.

“Now,” he says and stands with the phone in hand. “Let’s say good-bye to your Jack.”

• • •

Jack

I hit Black Butte Road and don’t know whether to go north or south. Gunner’s just behind me. Two dozen other Riders are heading this way, riding toward Black Butte from all directions, using other side roads. No matter the route these fuckers take, a brother will come across them.

Reception’s shit. I roll into the road, trying to get a bar or two. There’s nothing out here but cows and barbed wire and trees.

The phone buzzes in my hand. Lily’s picture pops up on my screen.

Hoarsely, I answer it. “Lily?”

“No.” A male voice. Not Sherlock. “I’m sorry to inform you that Lily has been in an accident.”

My chest fills with cold lead. “Let me speak to her.”

“That’s impossible, I’m sad to say. She’s dead.”

Bullshit. “Send a picture.”

The laugh on the other end of the line blasts away my fear. Rage fills the hollows left, pounding like a burning heartbeat in my ears.

“Who are you, Jack? I can tell this isn’t your first time playing this game,” he says.

A game? “Fuck games. Let’s talk an exchange.”

“Jack. I have everything you want. What could you possibly have left to give?”

“You let her go,” I tell him. “And I don’t tip off the feds about the Winnebago traveling north on Highway 97.”

Silence answers me.

My heart’s thumping through my chest. I don’t want him to end the call. He’s using Lily’s phone. I need to keep him talking until Stone can see where she is.

I keep my voice level. “Not interested?”

“I’m suddenly interested in many things, Jack. But I’ll pass on that deal. If this route is tainted, then that cargo will be lost, eventually. Better to keep the sure thing.”

“You take her, I swear to you that you’ll lose everything.”

A smooth chuckle is followed by a sigh. “Her last words were that she loved you. Hold onto that, Jack. In an hour, she’ll be out of your reach. There will be no use looking for her. So, for your sake, you should give up now.”

“You don’t
ever
want me to give up looking for her. Because that’s when I’ll come looking for you.”

My burner vibrates. Stone. With a location for her phone.

“Good luck,” the bastard responds. “And good-bye, Jack. I’m sorry we couldn’t meet under different circumstances.”

We’ll be meeting again. Real fucking soon.

I end the call and look to Gunner. “How far?”

“Ten miles,” he says.

Almost ten minutes on these roads. Too damn long. “He said she’d be out of reach in an hour—I figure that’s the airport in Bend. So they must be moving out soon.”

And they have no fucking idea we’re almost on them. I ride hard, looking ahead through every bend in the road for a sign of them.

We blow past her on a curve. Not a van or SUV. Two armored cars. California plates.

Those cars don’t belong to the Hangmen. But they fit the voice on her phone.

I almost roll my bike on the one-eighty. I see the indecision on Gunner’s face as I ride back past him but I don’t have one fucking doubt. She isn’t where her phone is. She’s in those damn cars.

He’s on my tail again a minute later. I catch sight of the vehicles and hang back. It’s not going to do any damn good to ride in, guns blazing. Not against armored cars—and not with Lily in one. And we can’t get on their ass. I got a look through the windows as we blew past, and I’m not mistaking the muscle sitting in the front seat of both vehicles. They can use their doors as shields. If we’re too close, they only have to stop and start shooting. They’ll pick us off easy on our bikes.

We just have to stay close enough not to lose her…and keep picking up numbers.

Widowmaker and Scarecrow come in off the reservoir road, falling in behind Gunner. The prez and Thorne must have detoured away from the Eighty-Eight’s old place when Stone picked up her signal the first time. They’re riding toward the new location with four other brothers, but pull one-eighties as we shoot past. In five miles, we pick up ten brothers. By the time the armored cars turn off Black Butte Road, heading toward the airfield way, we’ve got nineteen following, our engines like the roar of a thundering horde.

And we’re strong enough to ride in closer. I still can’t see her. Just two in the front of each car. One in the back of the second car. That’s not Lily. That’s the fucker I’m going to kill.

Soon. Because this’ll go down easy, or it’ll go down real bloody. We can stay on their ass forever. We’ll never stop; we’ll just have more brothers joining in. As soon as we get off these back roads, that’s going to attract a shit ton of attention.

The Riders can afford that attention. Red Eye can’t. And he has to decide how much Lily’s worth to him.

Not as much as she is to me. Because I’d never have ordered my drivers to stop. But the brake lights are flashing ahead of me, the cars slowing. I hold up my fist and the Riders slow, too.

The road’s narrow. Just two lanes with a deep ditch on either side. We’re in a straight stretch when the cars stop. I ease to a halt about twenty five yards behind.

There’s a lot of scenarios where this goes to shit. In all of them, someone does something stupid. Like shooting Lily and shoving her out the door before trying to run. Or four guards trying to take on almost twenty armed bikers.

Red Eye didn’t strike me as stupid. So it means he’s letting Lily go.

At the front car, the doors open. A guard shouts back, “You come and get her! Put your weapons away and walk forward with your hands on your head!”

I’ll do that. After pulling off my kutte, I hand the vest and my harness to Gunner, then bend to remove the knife from my boot.

Ahead, the trunk of the second car pops open. The trunk. They stuffed her into the fucking
trunk
.

Slowly I straighten and tuck the knife into Gunner’s saddlebag, where I pick out one of his toys, a grenade small enough to fit in my palm. I glance at him. “The guards on my signal.”

He looks down at the grenade. “That your signal?”

I nod and tuck it into my palm. With fingers locked behind my head, I start forward.

I thought she’d be moving. Kicking the trunk lid open a little more. Even if she’s tied, she could do that. But I can’t even see her. The guards don’t step away from their posts behind the doors of the first car, their guns trained on me with every step. My throat’s a solid lump as I move in close enough to lift the trunk lid.

My heart stops for a long second. She’s curled up, unmoving. Her eyes are closed and swollen as if she’s been crying. They’ve taped her mouth. It looks like she’s sleeping, then the light hits her eyes and her lashes flutter, slitting open.

My eyes burning, I reach in and rip off the tape, then cup her face. “Lily?” My voice is scraped raw. “I’m here. I’ve got you.”

She lifts her head, blinking. “Jack?”

Disoriented. Drugged, maybe. I can’t even drum up the rage now. There’s just relief and the painful hitch in my chest. “Easy. Let me pull you out.”

“These fuckers.” She slurs the words. “Killed Val. He helped me.”

“I’ve got something for that,” I say, sliding my arms beneath her shoulders and knees, and scooping her out. The trunk lid’s up, concealing us from the guards. I show her the grenade in my hand.

“That’ll do.” She gives me a sloppy grin. “I love it when you carry me.”

“Then I’ll carry you everywhere.” I pull the pin, throw the grenade into the trunk, and slam the lid.

Holding her, I walk away. An armored car is designed to withstand attack from outside. It’s just as good at containing explosions within—and that bastard Red Eye is sitting just one partition away from the trunk.

I count down and hit the ground with her when it goes. No hot blast, no fireball. Just the shriek of metal and shattering glass—then I drag her back against the shelter of the car while the brothers take out the last two guards.

“Boom,” she says before her eyes close.

And I can finally breathe again.

Lil
y

Jack’s still holding me when I wake up, but we’re not huddled against the twisted wreckage of a car. Instead we’re in my bed, and Jack’s wearing his jeans and T-shirt, with his big body practically wrapped around mine.

Jesus, he looks bad. His eyelids are rimmed with red, like he hasn’t slept in days. Or shaved in days. Or eaten much. He looks fucking
good
…but like he’s ridden some rough damn road.

My throat thick, I touch his face. His eyes fly open like he wasn’t sleeping, but just waiting for me to wake. His dark gaze locks right on mine, brimming with so much emotion it seems to spill over and fill me up, tightening my chest.

“Lily fucking Burns,” he says hoarsely. “I love you. I love your laugh, and the way you throw shit on the floor, and how you always fall asleep right at the end of a goddamn show so I have to tell you what happened. I love how fucking hard you fight, and how hard you fuck. And I love—”

I yank his mouth down to mine shut him up, because I’m about to start bawling, and maybe he loves that, too, but I can’t right now. But he starts to fight me, fucking fight me, lifting his lips from mine to tell me what else he loves, and between kisses he lists them, adding my tits, and how I never take shit from the brothers, and how the world’s so much fucking better since he started holding me.

God, it is. So much better. But I have to stop him, so I cover his mouth with my palm and bury my face in his throat, maybe crying a little but that’ll pass. My breath hitches as I say, “I love you, too,” and that seems to settle him.

He tips my face up, kissing me deep and long. Finally he draws back with a shuddering breath. “I can’t ever lose you.”

“You won’t,” I say. Because he would come for me. Fight for me. Just as I would for him. I smooth my fingers down his rough jaw. “How did it go down? I remember
Boom!
but not much else. Do the Riders need to worry about the cartel now?”

I’m not surprised when he shakes his head. That’s what Jack does—make sure that shit doesn’t blow back on us. “We scrubbed the site. The bodies are gone, the cars are gone. No one came by asking questions, and the Hangmen never knew we were coming that way. So they have no idea we followed the cars out.”

“So it’ll be like Red Eye vanished. No reason.”

His mouth curves. “In a cartel, there’s a thousand reasons he might vanish. And all of his higher ups will be wondering which of the others did it.”

“They might think it was the Hangmen. A deal gone wrong.”

“And that won’t be our problem.”

Maybe not a problem at all. “Did you go after them—after Sherlock?” When he shakes his head again, this time I
am
surprised. “Why?”

“We won’t need to. With Red Eye gone, the cartel won’t be using this pipeline, because they won’t be sure whether they can trust it. The Devil’s Hangmen will be out a lot of cash. And when the mother chapter takes an accounting of what went down here, Sherlock’s going to be out, too. I doubt even his daddy will save him.”

“So you don’t care how he’s gone, as long as he’s gone.”

He nods, his gaze searching my face. “Unless you want it—or to do it yourself.”

Sure, I’d love to pound Sherlock’s goddamn face in. But he’s just a dumb, greedy fuck. He’s not worth my time.

This
man, however, is worth all my time. I tug at his shirt, then pull off mine—and I don’t even want sex yet. Just to feel him against me like this, skin to skin. “They were going to put me in the Cage.”

A frown creases his forehead. So he’s surprised by that as I was. “To fight?”

“Yeah. So I guess there probably really are patchholders disappearing from other MCs. So even though we don’t need to connect that to the Devil’s Hangmen, maybe it’s still something worth looking at. Are Gunner and Stone still heading down to talk with the Butchers this weekend?”

Jack nods. “And I’ll be heading to Vegas the next.”

“Hmm.” I trace the mouth of the screaming demon inked on his left shoulder. “Want company?”

His grin is a sexy kick that gets my motor going. “Yes.”

“Good. And I am all in, Jack. So maybe while we’re there, we can go
all
the way in.”

He stills against me. “You talking one of them chapels?”

Slowly I nod. I don’t do shit by half measures. If Jack is mine, then he’s going to be
mine
. “We can keep it quiet. No one needs to know our damn business. But you’ll know and I’ll know—”

“Yes,” he breaks in roughly, then grabs my face, pins me down. “And don’t you think of getting out of it.”

“You think I’m going to back down? Fuck that. I said I’m all in. Maybe we’ll even get a goddamn dog.”

A hard laugh shakes through him. “No dog deserves that.”

Probably not. Grinning, I pull him down for a kiss. The best damn kiss I’ve ever had—until the next, when Jack groans and licks deeper into my mouth, tasting me, his hands like fire everywhere they touch. Hotter and hotter.

And together, we burn the fucking world down.

• • •

Want more Hellfire Riders? This summer, Gunner will be BREAKING IT ALL as part of a special Motorcycle Clubs crossover event! More details are coming soon at katiwilde.com. Keep turning the pages for a list of available and upcoming titles from Ruby Dixon, Ella Goode, and Kati Wilde. The Motorcycle Clubs series — for readers who want all of the heat and emotion, but who don’t have all of the time.