Saving Axe (Motorcycle Club Romance, Cowboy, Military) (Inferno Motorcycle Club) (29 page)

Benicio nodded.  "Which is why my men weren't tracking you very well, just checking on you every so often."

"It was your men who got picked up in West Bend," Cade said.

Benicio nodded.  "I instructed them to keep their distance.  They were picked up before we knew about the Inferno members in West Bend.  My intel did not indicate Mad Dog knew."

"Who - you knew we weren't killed in the warehouse?  How?" Cade asked.

"My investigators," Benicio said.

"But the other bodies - " Crunch said.

Benicio shook his head.  "There were no other bodies.  I suspected this was some type of power play by Mad Dog and I had promised Blaze to keep an eye on you.  When we saw that it was members of your own club who were responsible, I needed to buy you some time."

So Benicio faked their deaths.

"How?" Cade asked.

Benicio waved his hand dismissively.  "I have warehouses in Vegas, a route through the southwest.  It's in my best interest to have certain people on payroll.  And journalists aren't difficult to bribe."

I looked at Blaze, whose jaw was set.  "Mad Dog was stealing from you, but we obviously want to take care of this ourselves."

"I would expect no less," Benicio said.  "But my men are at your disposal.  You would be wise to use them."

Axe nodded.  "But Crunch and I will be the ones to kill them.  It will be our hands that do the deed."

"As
is your right," Benicio said.

I looked at Axe, his
hands clenched, his jaw set.

Could I do this?  Coul
d I follow him into the abyss?

I guess the better question was, how could I not?

Outside Benicio's house, Blaze and Crunch and Cade talked.  I caught snippets of the conversation.

"Benicio can provide the muscle, but we need to take it to the club.  Take it to the brothers we know are loyal," Blaze said.

Cade shook his head.  "None of this goes to the club.  We can't trust anyone."

"It was Mad Dog, not the whole club..."  Blaze said.

Dani turned to me, her expression grim.  "It's not always like this," she said.  "All of the...bad things happening."

I nodded, but I wasn't sure I believed her.

Axe

“You’re a hundred percent sure you don’t want to leave?”  I asked.  “You can still turn around and head back to West Bend, forget about all of this.”

June’s face looked somber
, and she smiled wanly.  I was afraid she would be eaten alive by this.

“I’m not turning around, Cade,” she said.
 She said it slowly, deliberately, but her tone was emotionless, detached.  She had been that way since my dad and April were killed.

Three days ago.

It felt like a lifetime.  I felt like I’d aged a lifetime.

We interacted like a pair of robots, numbly going about the business of what you do when two of the closest people in your life are killed.
 Jed, the prick, had the balls to actually tell us not to leave town, to call us “persons of interest” in the investigation.  If June hadn’t hung on to me, I would have killed him.  That was three days ago.  That’s the last time I remember actually feeling anything.

Right now, I felt
blank.

I only knew I wanted blood.

“Axe.  They all call you Axe here.”  June’s voice broke me out of my thoughts.

I nodded.
 “It’s been my name for years, June.”

“Axe,” she said again, her voice flat.
 I wasn’t sure I liked how it sounded when she said it.  “It suits you."

“Things won’t be the same after we do this,” I said.
 “
I
won’t be the same.”

“
You're not the same now."

“I’ve been down this road before, June.”
 I needed to warn her.  What this did to me, it wasn’t good.  It wouldn’t be good.  Killing people wasn’t good for me.

She nodded.  "Cade. 
Axe.
  Things won't be the same again."

My voice cracked.
 “You might not like who I become.”

“You forget,
Axe.  I’ve been through dark places.”

“And you chose light.” I said.
 “You chose to walk the straight and narrow.”

“Not always,” she said.
 “And not now.  I know what I’m choosing.  I’m choosing you.  Whether it’s to walk in darkness or in light, I’m choosing to do it with you.”

“You migh
t regret that choice,” I said.

“Then it’s mine to
regret.”

“This is the place?” Crunch asked.
 We sat out of sight, in an alley around the corner from the building in one of Benicio’s cars, a dark SUV that branded us immediately as dealers.  Not that there were many people around here to notice; this wasn't exactly an area you wanted to be out in, not at night.  Benicio's muscle was with us, silent as usual.

“This is it," Blaze said.

“Do we know Tink will show up for the buy?” Crunch asked.

“If yo
u’re a meth-head and the shady dealer you're buying from on the down-low, outside the MC, tells you he has a sweet score, what do you do?" Blaze asked.  "You get your little crackhead ass down to your dealer’s shithole of a place.  He'll fucking show."

"You ready to do this?"  Crunch looked at me, his expression made all the more menacing by the
shadows darkening his face.

"Let's go."

Benicio's men were trained well,
I thought, watching them work.  It wasn't exactly difficult to get inside the dealer's place, since the dealer opened the fucking door up like he didn't have a care in the world.  Tink's dealer wasn't the sharpest tool, either, and he'd obviously been sampling his own merchandise.  But Benicio's men moved with the kind of precision and bearing that said they were ex- special forces of some kind, not American.

I pressed
my nine millimeter to the dealer's temple.  He was shaky, pale, sweat beading on his forehead.  "You hear anything from Tink yet?"

He put his hands on the air. 
"Come on, man, you guys said all I had to do was text him and get him over here.  I told you he's coming.  Why you gotta be all crazy with the guns and shit?"

I patted him down, handed his piece to Crunch.  "You got anything else on you?"

The dealer sighed.  "My ankle, man."

I nodded toward one of Benicio's man, who finished the pat down, and
removed the knife he had strapped to his ankle.  "At least you're honest.  Sit."

We didn't have t
o wait long before Tink knocked on the door.  "Hey, man."  He poked his head just inside.  "You didn't answer.  You here?"

When he saw the weapons trained on him, a look of realization registered on his face, followed by terror as he looked b
ack and forth at Crunch and I.

I smiled.  "Hey, Tink.  Remember us?  You've be
en looking for us, haven't you?  Well, here we are.  It's like a goddamned reunion."

Two of Benicio's men grabbed him roughly, pulled him across the kitchen,
and pushed him down into a chair at the filthy table.

Almost immediately, he began whining.  "Mad Dog said you betrayed the club.  He ordered
us to find you.  I didn't want to touch your wife!  Mud was the one who killed the old man - "

B
efore I could move toward him, Crunch punched him, square in the face.  Tink made a gurgling sound and doubled over, clutching at his neck.  I grabbed Tink's hair, pulled his head back.

"Hand me that rag," I said
, shoving it down his throat.  I didn't want to hear anything else from him.

I heard the dealer say something, protest
ing.  "Shut him up," I ordered.  One of Benicio's men put a round in his forehead, the sound muffled by the silencer on his weapon.

I should have
been completely enraged in that moment, but instead I felt the same familiar sense of calm descend over me that I had felt when I was a sniper.

That fact alone should have terrified me.

It was the feeling I'd become addicted to over there in the sandbox, the rush of being in the zone, simultaneously detached and completely aware of your surroundings.  It was like meditating- my breathing would get deep, my heart rate would slow, and my senses would become hyper-focused.  Time would stand still in anticipation of my blotting out a life.

I felt the same
thing now.  A feeling of calm.

Completely at peace with what I was about to do.

Vengeance was mine.

We took Tink back to the warehouse, a place Benicio used for things like this. 
There, a side of Crunch emerged that sent a chill down my spine.

I don't think Crunch had ever killed someone like this.  Not up close and personal, anyway.  Killing someone like this was different than shooting someone.  With a gun, you had some distance.  Guns were efficient.

This was in no way efficient.

It was messy.

Crunch broke Tink, piece by piece, slowly and methodically.  With a hammer, he smashed his fingers, one by one, taking his time.  I had never seen Crunch like that.  He laughed when Tink cried, said he'd been fantasizing about the sound of his bones breaking.  When he took the hammer to Tink's hands, he breathed in deeply, satisfaction written all over his face.

I broke Tink's knees with a
crowbar.  By then, he'd passed out once already from the pain. 
No stamina.
  But we revived him.  I wanted him to suffer.

When Tink screamed his apology, it sent Crunch into a frenzy.  He grabbed a sledgehammer, and I nearly tried to stop him, to keep him from passing over that cliff, for his own sake.  It wouldn't bring April back, what he was about to do.

But I think he'd already passed over the edge, descended into madness.

I
watched while he beat Tink into oblivion.  The sight of it would never leave me.

When it was over,
I should have felt something, but I didn't.  Satisfaction eluded me, but once the others were sent to Hell, then maybe I would get what I was looking for.

Then it was
Fats' turn to die.

Benicio's men pulled him right off his sofa, right out of his fucking house.  He had no idea we were coming for him, the stupid
lazy bastard.  They drove him out of the city, and we met them in the desert sometime after midnight.  Out in the middle of nowhere, where his screams wouldn't be heard.

Fats pleaded, protested.  Blamed everything on Mad Dog and Mud.
"I didn't touch the girl.  It was Tink who wanted her," he screamed.

He was a stupid fuck.

He didn't realize that we had already killed Tink, that his response would only fuel Crunch's fury.  And mine.

Crunch wrapped chains around Fats, leaving his gag off so
we could hear him scream.  I wanted him to plead.  To beg our forgiveness.

He did, the entire time.

I talked to him, explained how we would drag him behind the car, that the last thing he would see in life would be our faces.  I wanted him to know.

Crunch took the wheel of the SUV and slowly picked up speed.  We could hear Fats screaming in agony as he was dragged through the dirt, the sand grinding against his exposed flesh.  Then Crunch stopped the vehicle, walked back to Fats, and stood over him while he pleaded, whined like a distraught child. 
Crunch bent down toward Fats, said something in his ear. 
Whatever it was, it had an immediate effect on Fats, who began wailing.