Obsession (A Bad Boy's Secret Baby) (33 page)

We turned a sharp corner, stumbling into the raised shotgun of a waiting biker. He was clearly shocked to see us, but that didn't make him lower his weapon.

On instinct, I started to aim Ronin's gun. The other man was too wired not to react. Maybe, if I'd done nothing—looked like we weren't dangerous—he would have left us alone. With everything going down in flames, this biker considered everyone a threat.

That meant us.

I held my breath.
Shit shit shit.
No, we'd been so god damn close to getting out of here! All I could see were those chambers, the place I knew the bullets would eject, puncturing my throat or my skull as they shredded me.

I was in slow motion, praying I'd shoot first, and knowing I would not. The man grinned, the tendons on his bare arms flexing as he crushed the trigger.

On his right, a door slammed open.

Shards of wood dazzled in the air as the hinges gave up on life. Claudine and I jumped back, shielding ourselves. The biker who'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time crumbled under the heavy oak.

Motes of dust filled the hall, blinding me with their white fog. Through the haze, I gazed upon an illusion that I knew couldn't exist. After all, I'd abandoned this string of fate back on the barren roadside.

It can't be.

A shadowy shape rolled over, half-sitting on top of the wooden mess. Another man was clinging on top of him, partially hiding that rugged, familiar face. In my heightened, adrenaline fueled world, every color was saturated. The blood on the walls nearly glowed. It stained his hands, tangled the thick pieces of his hair that I'd once wrapped my fingers in.

“Ronin.”

I breathed the word, almost too scared
not
to. If this wasn't real, it meant I was pegged with bullets somewhere else in the mansion. Alive or dead already, if this was the last thing my fucked up mind would see, then well...

I couldn't think of a better way to go.

Ronin

––––––––

“R
onin, where are you?” Poet asked through the cell phone.

“Approaching The Palace now.” The whole interior of the dump truck rattled. The hell-fire fueled engine beneath me roared like a giant prodded from slumber. I could only imagine that this was what it must be like to surf on an earthquake. I felt like a god.

The Palace's big metal gates loomed before me at the end of the long road. Tully's estate was so massive that, unless personally invited, no one would ever be able to find the place. Even if they didn't have the cops in their pocket, there was probably no reason for them to ever come out this far. No one should live this far into the Everglades.

“That's not a good idea,” Poet said. “We're about to take the fanboats from the Knights and we're lining up to begun cover fire. Don't do this alone, wait for us to catch up!”

Backup sounded great, but I couldn't wait that long. The original plan was that I'd make a hole and the Steel Veins would flood in behind me. It sounded like there was a snag in the Veins' ambush. If even one of the Knights escaped to call Tully...

Flora might already—

I shook the dark thought away.
Keep your head in the game, Ronin.

The Knights were transporting the girls up the river by fanboats, via the docks behind the house, so the front gates were locked up tight. They obviously weren’t in the mood for visitors. The gates looked thick enough to stop any commercial vehicle that came at it, but I wondered if it could stop seventy miles per hour of screaming dump truck?

“Sorry, Rem. I got a hot date inside and she's going to be awfully pissed if I'm late.”

I floored the gas pedal and watched the needle in the dashboard dip past the red line. Thick, black plumes of smoke belched out of the twin exhaust pipes on either side of the cab above.

If I survived, this was getting checked off the bucket list.

Poet sighed, he knew he couldn't dissuade me. He couldn't even order me to stop. “All right, give them hell.” His voice was filled with resignation and a little begrudging amusement. “We'll be there as soon as we can. Try not to die.”

The sentry posted in the guard house, just outside the gates, easily spotted me and opened fire with his assault rifle. I ducked to the side, but only a few rounds punched through the window. The rest just bounced off the truck's thick steel sides or got lodged in an engine that was larger than a few apartments I'd lived in. There was no way the guard could stop me, he might as well have been shooting at a tank.

“I make no promises,” I replied honestly to Remy. “Aside from the hole that we both agreed on.” I ended the call and blasted through the gates like they were made of tissue paper.

I'd originally planned to stop once I broke through, but with dozens of enemies pouring out of the building and no friends to draw fire from me, I didn't even bother to slow down.

The  truck's massive wheels laid waste to everything in my path. I was unstoppable, until I hit the water fountain before the building's staircase entrance at just the wrong angle.

The dump truck pitched, plowing through the statues, stairs, and front doors like a giant fist. More than half the enormous truck nestled into the main foyer before it stopped moving. The engine almost immediately caught fire. Oil flooded out over the marble floors, sucked up by thirsty Persian carpets.

I had to cut my seat belt straps and kick the front windshield out to escape. I jumped out and stumbled over someone's severed arm from the crash. Who knows where the rest of him was, but by the tattoos he had, I could tell he was one of the Knights. He was still clutching a pistol, which was lucky for me, because Flora took mine.

That girl certainly knew how to raise the stakes in a rescue, I'd give her that.

The unlucky hand had gotten mashed into the trigger guard and firing mechanism. I didn't know if it would still fire, but it was the only weapon I had.

Gunfire whizzed by before I could get the fucking gun free, so I had to take the whole bloody arm with me. I ran through the right wing of the mansion, ducking into rooms and around corners to keep from getting shot.

Rallying cries went out behind me to put the flames out before they burned the whole mansion down. I heard the sprinkler system in that area turn on and several fire extinguishers being used. That was fine by me, I didn't want to set the place on fire until
after
I got Flora out.

I finally managed to pry out the damn fingers and free the gory gun from the dead man's twisted grasp. I heard someone running down the hall. Tucking around a book case, I hid out of sight.

When the man ran by I grabbed his blazer, slamming him into the nearby wall. He had to be one of Tully's guys. No biker would casually wear a suit and tie.

I didn't have the time to play the game, so I skipped to the part where I shot him in the gun-hand first, then asked him where the girls were being held. “Which ones?” he groaned.

That gave me pause.

“All of them.” Shit, I didn't need options.

Shuddering, the man said, “Shipped girls are at the back, near the docks. The others are in the ballroom.”

If Flora was with the trafficked girls, Poet would get Veins in to save her, along with the rest. But if she was elsewhere...

By the time I got to the room he'd described, the one with the big oak tables, the piles of coke and quivering, frightened bodies huddled together in the corner, there was no sign of Flora. I tried asking around, but the women were all too out of it to tell me anything useful. I doubled back, locking the room behind me and left. I must have missed something.

Was she with the others? Could I take that chance?

Where the hell is she?

I entered a large pantry, cutting through into the hallway beyond it. There, I damn near crashed into one of the Knights who had slipped into the room to make a phone call. We stared at each other silently as the voice on the other end of the cell asked what was going on.

Standing opposite one another, our guns were drawn, but lowered “I'll have to call you back,” the Knight said, shutting his phone. It was the kind of tension that required a tumbleweed to roll through the middle of us.

“Beeker, did someone just come in—” said a voice behind me. The man in front of me—Beeker, apparently—dropped his phone and brought up his gun.

Caught as I was, I charged forward. It was all I could do. That, and hope to not get shot in the back. Beeker and I both fired; he missed and my gun jammed. My momentum carried me into him, all the same.

I hit him with so much force that we crashed through the door he was standing in front of. We fell into the hallway beyond, landing on top of some other biker that happened to be in the wrong spot at the wrong time.

“Ronin.”

The word was so faint that I wasn't fully convinced I'd heard it at all.

The shouting was
definitely
real, and the bullets that flew over my head from Beeker's friends behind me, even more so. I grabbed him and rolled us onto my back, just in time for the two other Knights in the pantry to open fire.

I didn't have time to recoil from the pain of a multitude of stabs as the jagged, wooden rubble dug into me. Disoriented, Beeker took a battery of incoming rounds.

I frantically searched for his gun, or a knife, or anything that would help me against the coming Knights. It was no use, between my Beeker-shield and the poor bastard that we landed on, there was too much debris for me to find anything.

Feeling that this was the end of the line for me, I almost laughed at how close I'd gotten to saving Flora, just to be shot to death.

“Connor!” shouted a dream that was too good to be true.

I turned my head so hard in disbelief that the tendons strained. For a fleeting second I thought I'd died.

Flora, the girl who'd robbed me of everything I held dear.

The girl I was willing to die for...

And she was only a few feet away.

“Here!” She tossed me her gun—
my gun
.

I snatched it out of the air right as the first Knight came through the door's threshold. Gun raised, he turned towards Flora. I put a bullet through his ear. The man's speed toppled him forward, allowing me to get a bead on the second, and now very surprised, Knight behind him.

The second biker unloaded, but I was too buried beneath his dead companions for him to hit me. When he ran out of bullets I nudged the bodies to the side, carefully aiming a few well placed shots into his heart.

I pushed all the bodies off me and crawled to my feet with a grunt. I stood before Flora covered in blood, dust and mayhem, like Lazarus risen from his grave.

Without a care for the filth, Flora threw herself at me. “I'm so sorry,” she said between kisses, so hard and fast that any doubts I'd had about her or us vanished. “I'm so, so sorry.”

Gunshots and the screams of the enraged and the dying echoed down every hall. I pulled away. We were far from safe, but I needed to look at her. Her beautiful shining eyes, upturned brows and soft features struck me harder than any blow I'd received.

With Hell around every bend, I squeezed her into a hug that was too tight for the devil himself to pry open. I almost said something to her I shouldn't have. It was on the tip of my tongue, words that could never be taken back once uttered.

Hesitating, I backed off and whispered my relief into her ear, instead. “I missed you.”

Flora's arms loosened so she could look at me, her eyes searched mine for proof that I wasn't some fever dream of dying hope. Her eyes told me that she'd never thought she'd see me again.

If I had stopped to think about the staggeringly high odds of us both surviving long enough to share in this moment, I'd have thought the same. Yet here we were, wrapped in bodies and tragedy, held together by the spite of a love that defied logic and fate.

She buried her face into my chest and struggled to take in air. “I missed you so much. I didn't think I'd see you again, not after everything. How is this happening?”

The uncaring chaos of reality set in abruptly. In the distance, past Flora and the doorway I'd smashed through, more of Tully's guys stormed in after us.

I grabbed Flora and spun us both out of the doorway, right as a hail of incoming gunfire whistled by. Our backs against the wall, I ran a hand over her cheek. I just wanted to keep touching her. “What do you say we get out of here?”

Flora still couldn't find any words, so she just smiled and nodded.

“It's Claudine, right?” I called to the woman who was trapped on the other side of the doorway. She nodded.

Dulled, emaciated, hauntingly pale... It was amazing how hard of a toll the drugs had taken on her. She only faintly resembled the picture that Flora carried around.

“On the count of three I want you to run over here, okay?”

Again, Claudine nodded.

I held up one finger, then two. On three I dropped to the floor, leaning into the doorway to lay down cover fire as Claudine quickly shuffled across the opening to the other side.

I didn't think I hit anyone, at least not enough to stop them from coming after us, but I did buy us a few seconds. “Bus is leaving, ladies. Follow me.”

“Wait!” Flora grabbed my arm, stopping me. “I can't leave the other girls. We have to get them out, too.”

I regarded her with amazement. In the face of a life-threatening situation, Flora still managed to muster up a staggering amount of selflessness. She never ceased to impress me.

Renewed sounds of the fighting and gunfire came from the room that held Tully's men. Using the black mirror face of my phone, I peered into the room.

Tully's guys were down, the men who'd done it were already leaving the way they'd come in. They all wore the same patch—two downward crossed fists with black wings behind them
—
and it brought a smile to my face.

The Steel Veins had finally made it inside.

We were winning.

My smile broadened when I turned to face Flora again. Finally, some good news. “Don't worry about them, Saint Flora. Those girls are in good hands.”