Knight (32 page)

I wasted a minute circling one block, ducking across an alleyway and through a slimy, puddle ridden path between two factories. It didn’t do anything but delay the bullet to the brain. My only option was to cross the river,
exactly
where I taught my men never to ride.

Thorne hadn’t welcomed me to his territory yet. He probably wouldn’t. Knowing that bastard, knowing the sins he carried and the grudges he harbored, I’d never earn a safe passage through his space. Lyn’s influence only helped so much. He hadn’t killed me for kidnapping Rose. That was the extent of his hospitality.

But I could bargain with him easier than I could Priest.

In this life or the next.

The engine screamed, almost as if it protested scraping the asphalt and diving toward the bridge separating safety from insanity. The rumbling road beneath the tires bumped and clattered as I split lanes and dodged turning cars. I pushed the bike and immediately took a right along the river, skirting the dangerous and twisted roads within the main streets.

It didn’t help.

Almost immediately my luck peeled out and left me burned by cinders and road ash.

I saw the bike fly from my right. I didn’t raise my gun. I was dead if he shot anyway.

But the rider didn’t aim for me. He jammed the accelerator and blasted to my side, pointing me down a secondary street.

Keep Darnell wasn’t a subtle man. If he wanted to kill me, he wasn’t taking me into the shadows to end it.

I followed because I remembered riding beside my former brother. He was Brew’s right hand, but I had his back just as he had mine. If the junk in his veins hadn’t dulled that instinct, neither would time.

He led me to a secondary street away from the howling police that chased over the bridge. Bikes roared a few blocks to the west. Priest wasn’t giving up.

Keep grinned at me. “Looks like you ran out of friends.”

“That obvious?”

“Need some help?”

He wasn’t wearing an Anathema cut. I didn’t trust it. “Since when do you help me?”

“Since we started aiming for the same motherfuckers.” Keep pulled his gun. “You and I got a lot more in common now, Lancelot.”

That’s what I was afraid of. I wondered if Thorne knew where his former secretary rode.

“Lyn’s in trouble,” I said. “Temple. I gotta get to Sorceress. If you take care of these fuckers and get a message to Thorne, I’ll owe you.”

Keep didn’t hear much after the word
fuckers
. He nodded, kicking the bike into gear and charging into the squad of Priest’s men.

Crazy bastard would kill himself.

Maybe that’s what he meant to do.

But good men were rare, and ones willing to die to protect the ones we loved, even rarer. I wasn’t letting another Darnell get hurt as a result of me.

Even if I suspected three of the four Darnells were alive.

I followed, racing west as Priest’s men charged from the east.

A fucking joust of bikes, brawn, and brutality.

My bike didn’t waver, even as a bullet nearly punctured my tire. I answered with a single shot framed to strike a prospect between the eyes. Keep’s round ricocheted wide, but the bike to Priest’s right went down. Fucking Jackal might have been a decent brother if he hadn’t adopted Priest’s taste in drugs and women. Wouldn’t miss him. Two of the four bikes crashed against the street.

That’d satisfy the police. Most of the cruisers weren’t idiotic enough to chase us at full speed. Two arrested members of The Coup would taste better than a donut. They also fit easier in the cruiser with busted teeth and bones from the road.

Sparks flared from Priest’s bike. I took aim, wasting another good bullet on a bad shot just to cripple the bike and pierce the tire. It worked, but it was a round lost to keeping myself alive instead of protecting Lyn. I wasn’t worth the gunpowder.

Keep shouted, crashing through Priest’s failing line. His shoulder bled, but it could have been a hell of a lot worse. Priest abandoned his men, but he turned from us, blasting to the bridge as the sirens wailed a little too close.

I shouted for Keep. He pulled off onto an alley, ripping off his jacket to bind his shoulder. It’d never work, but he wasn’t feeling any pain.

“Go to Lyn!” Keep tightened the sleeve with his teeth and blotted the injury. “I’ll grab the guys.”

“Are you still welcomed at Pixie?”

“Got more friends there than you.”

No shit. I tucked the gun away. “Get them to Sorceress. There’s gonna be trouble.”

“How bad?”

Bad enough I didn’t answer. I turned the bike and rode through town, tearing the engine against traffic and time to beat the highway and race to Lyn.

Too much time had passed.

Lyn was smart, but even she was no match for Temple.

Who the hell knew what I would find when I got there.

I wasn’t a praying man, but I didn’t have much else to do as I sped to reach her.

Christ, I hoped she wasn’t dead.

It was the first time I ever wished to escape from Sorceress.

Seven years of owning the bar. Four years where I actually earned some green. Two years of fun.

Then a year of horror, bloodshed, renovations, murder…

I built the club from the ground up. I’d be damned if I died in it. I wasn’t some patched in, leather-bound meth-head who sought a noble end at the barrel of a gun. And I wasn’t some little princess clinging to a trust fund.

I was smarter than this. Stronger.

For Christ’s sake, I hadn’t eaten over eighteen hundred calories in a day for three goddamned years. No way was I dying to anything but a chocolate overdose.

I abandoned my office. It’d be the first place they looked—where I stored both the surveillance equipment and my money. Temple was opportunistic enough to murder and rob in the same ambush.

The office was the only room I could view the camera feed and watch as Heathen and his men stalked the club. I needed that edge, but I couldn’t risk them storming the office and using the same equipment to spy on me. I unplugged the computer and jammed a screwdriver inside the fan. It wouldn’t fuck the hard drive, but it’d cause problems if they tried to boot it.

I had to run. I’d never make it to my car and hiking through the desert was suicide. My only option was to hide inside Sorceress.

But
where
?

The club wasn’t exactly built to have nooks and crannies were girls could disappear with guys. Our back rooms had no secondary windows or doors.

But the dressing room did.

I had to sneak backstage, except the only way there was through the hallway. Unprotected.

Christ.

For ten years—before I was even legally allowed to dance—I spent my life in the spotlight, trying to earn the attention of any man who crossed into my club. Dancing wasn’t just a means to pay the bills. I excelled at it. Earned a living, a reputation, and a hell of a lot of powerful friends.

And now? I wanted nothing more than to be forgotten.

Who knew ballet would save my life? I tip-toed through the halls, picking my steps and creeping through my home-away-from-home. Being flexible, graceful, and quiet had its advantages. It’d also become the one consequence of my profession.

If Heathen grabbed me, Temple wouldn’t just kill me. Not while I stalked my office in leather pants cradling a thousand dollar ass. The men who joined Anathema and The Coup knocked over convenience stores and knocked up slutty girls looking for a man with a cock bigger than his wallet. Men from Temple? They were cartel-motherfuckers—criminals who punished the family members of the assholes who crossed them. Psychos who tortured for fun.

Men who profited from rape.

I pressed against the wall as cracking footsteps echoed from my main floor. The doors closed. A table scraped, low and steady against resistant floors.

They barred the entrance.

No—they blocked my escape.

“Lookin’ for a dance, bitch!” Heathen’s words punched with barbs.

Every inch of my skin prickled. I sweated. Trembled.

“Get that cunt out here. We want a show.”

Hell
fucking
no. That voice was too sober for me, laced with all the threats that a man in a leather cut stained with dried blood promised.

I measured my steps. The backstage was a dangerous area. It looped to the main floor—close to the men but offering a second exit, cabinets, and my only chance to hide. I could duck inside the cubby under the stage.

I built my club with efficiency in mind. Extra chairs and supplies were stuffed under a hollow stage. I hoped Anathema’s prospects hadn’t repacked the closet tight or I wouldn’t have much room to get inside.

The men moved. So did I. My shoes kicked off in my office, but even the slap of my bare feet against the hardwood revealed exactly where I was.

I never thought I’d hear anything louder than the click of my heels storming through my assumed palace, but my heartbeat pounded like the club’s usual rolling bass.

A bottle shattered from my bar. I slammed myself against the wall and waited with a straining, held breath. They broke through my office—locked, to give myself some time. The crashed echoed with their profanities. My desk cracked next. Then the closet.

I forced myself to stay calm. I heard only two men. That meant one was still at my car. If they were in my office, I had an opportunity to bolt.

I sprinted down the hall, slid to my backstage door, and resisted the urge to slam it shut behind me. The click of the latch was loud enough. I tossed the deadbolt over the lock.

This was it.

Locked in.

I could either find my place to hide around the stage, or I could take a chance and leap out to the main floor. I’d have to move the tables, fight my way outside, deal with the asshole watching my car, and then…

Christ.

I didn’t even have a gun.

My only weapon raced on a bike five miles away. Luke wasn’t anywhere close yet.

Neither was Agent Greene, and it didn’t take a partnership with the Anathema MC and sleeping with a traitor to realize when someone deceived me.

Something went wrong with our plan.

Meet at seven. Clean up the floor so it didn’t look like a murder scene. Get out so the ATF agents could set up the surveillance equipment.

Then sell out another club to save Luke’s ass.

But Temple wasn’t supposed to show until ten. Something went wrong.

Sorceress wasn’t a strip club. It was a magnet for bullets and blades.

Heathen shouted from a private room. “Come out, Princess! If you play nice, we’ll play nice…”

A door crunched. A gun fired. They ransacked another room.

It wasn’t safe in here. Too many places to hide where I’d never escape a bullet. Backstage was too clean, too organized. They’d find me, and, judging but the crash of their boots against the doors, the nicest thing they’d do would be knocking me out before they had their fun.

I darted for the stage. I unlatched the trap door.

No!
It was packed
full
. The chairs and equipment would clatter if I forced my way in. It’d echo. I’d be found.

Out of options. I struggled against the panic. Could I hide in my office where they already looked? Except then I’d cross their path. I considered crawling under the bar, but that was the first place they’d throw a match if they wanted to destroy the club.

I blinked frustrated tears. The crimson silks knotted behind the curtain, away from the stage and unused since the shootings. I saw only their streak of red in the darkness.

Why not hide
above
Temple?

There wasn’t time to think. I unraveled the silks and grabbed the bundle. My sweaty palms were too dangerous with the material, but I had enough core strength and adrenaline to propel me to the top. I nestled into the dark shadows above the stage and furiously wound the silk up after me.

I should have bound the silk into a harness, but the metal rigging connected to the lights already squeaked. I couldn’t make any more noise. The silk had to bundle around me, piled between my torso and the metal skeleton looping the material.

My lungs seized as I hooked my legs over the bars of the frame. I held onto the rigging with slipping fingers.

I wouldn’t let go.

I stilled and kept silent.

Hidden.

And the men swore in a violent rage.

A table overturned. Then a second. Heathen broke a chair. His buddy clattered every last bottle of liquor to the floor.

At least they took it well.

Where the hell was Luke?

My stomach flipped. I wasn’t afraid of heights, but the only time I ever climbed into the rigging of the aerial silks was to unkink the material. Never in the dark. Never with loaded guns and hard cocks poised to take their revenge.

Sorceress’s door creaked open. The table barricading the club shuddered. I couldn’t see the entrance, but I listened for the pop of gunfire—just as I did every night when I hopped onto the pole to dance.

I prayed it wasn’t Luke leaping into danger.