STRIKE: Storm Runners Motorcycle Club 2 (SRMC) (25 page)

Chapter Two

Jack was already having a shitty night when he spotted the massacre at the Easy Bake. The daughter of a man who pushed heroin for the club had reported a break in at the shop her family owned, and Ace had sent him to check it out.

“It was three men,” Becca said. “I didn’t really get a good look at them.”

“They weren’t violent?”

“I carried Daddy’s shotgun down the steps with me.”

“Why did they target you?” Jack wondered aloud. The shop sold food and wasn’t particularly large or profitable. It was a front for the drugs the family sold and a way to justify the money they made. Now that things were changing for the Storm Runners, it was time to cut ties with Minute Mart, but Jack wouldn’t let them fend for themselves in downtown Detroit. He’d known Becca since they were both kids and her family raised her right, keeping her out of the worst of the drug shit.

She’d looked at the ground then, not willing to meet his eyes. “Dad had a visit recently from a man who wanted money for protection.”

“What? Why didn’t you call the club?” Jack placed a hand on her arm. “You’re our friends. We’re still going to look out for you.”

“He didn’t think it was a good idea. Now that Max is gone…” She trailed off, still not looking at him. “I guess he thought it would be better to consider our options. I’m sorry.”

Jack nodded. The same shit was going on in his head. Since Max, the founder of the Storm Runners, was killed, nothing made sense. He told Becca to call if anything came up and left without another word.

It was cold for a summer night in Detroit and the streets were empty. He drove slowly through downtown, taking his time. He was really just stalling, Jack admitted to himself. He didn’t want to tell Ace, the new president of the Storm Runners Motorcycle Club, what had happened, what Becca had said. Everything was a clusterfuck and he just didn’t feel like dealing with it.

He thought about stopping at a greasy spoon diner for coffee and maybe taking a second look at the waitress who’d served him and cleaned up a wound he’d gotten in a fight a few months before, then rejected the idea. They were probably closed anyway. Besides, driving slow was one thing, but actively stopping was a completely different beast. Ace was having enough problems getting the club under control. He didn’t need Jack creating more. Max would have expected more from his adopted son and Sergeant-at-Arms.

He thought about the waitress, a cupcake of a woman with wavy blonde hair, perky tits and bright blue fuck-me eyes. The week after Max and half the club was slaughtered, Jack had gotten into a knife fight with a low-level dealer downtown. The fucker was holding back information and tried to slice out Jack’s heart when he didn’t like the questions he was being asked. Jack pulled his hunting knife from his boot and dug it into the man’s jugular—quietly thanking the Marine Corps for the training while the man died without time to retaliate—but his arm was bleeding like a stuck pig.

He’d been close enough and the Easy Bake had been open, so he’d gone in to use the bathroom. Instead of screaming and calling the cops, the cupcake had sighed, pushed back his sleeve and gone to get a medical kit.

“I’m not gonna ask what happened,” she’d said, swabbing the cut with something that burned like fire. He gritted his teeth against the pain.

“Best you don’t,” he’d said.

“I am going to recommend you get this to the hospital.” She used some kind of bandaged to hold the wound together. “An infection here could get nasty.” Jack watched her from the corner of his eye, saw the blood staining her hands. His blood. She knelt down to grab something else from the kit and he was struck by just how pretty she was. Nothing like the women who hung around the club. Fresh, clean. Too pure for the likes of him.

Half-formed plans to get her on the back of his bike evaporated. The woman gave him a cup of coffee—on the house—and chatted with him about movies while he gained his equilibrium. No sense in taking off early and crashing, he’d reasoned, staying for an hour more than he needed to just so the pretty waitress with the bubblegum lips could lean on the counter and make small talk with him.

The lights at the Easy Bake were still on, even though it was late. As he approached, he saw Axel, Axel’s enforcer Dominic, and a wiry man he recognized as Alvaro, Axel’s younger brother, enter the building. He sighed and prepared to give them a wide berth. Axel was a piece of shit who hurt women for fun. When the Storm Runners found out what he did behind closed doors, they’d kicked his slick ass out of the club with a warning about what would happen if he ever laid his hands on another woman hard enough to leave bruises. Axel hadn’t ever been patched, but they’d all been embarrassed that a piece of shit like that even made prospect.

Then Axel had gone into Detroit and gotten a gang together. Though the Storm Runners and Axel’s gang had an uneasy peace between them, Jack knew the scum had never gotten over the indignity of being ejected from the club. He may have smiled when they did business together, but he did it with his teeth bared behind his lips.

His gang was well placed to help move heroin and guns in the city, but Jack couldn’t fucking stand being around them. Seeing them would be even worse now that Ace had decided to clean up the operation. Jack didn’t feel like getting his hands dirty if they were pissed about the lost income and decided to turn it into a fight. Especially not when it was three-on-one and the cupcake waitress might get caught in the crossfire.

They entered without seeing him and he pulled over, cutting off his engine and pulling out his mobile. He messaged Ace: Axel +2 downtown. Easy Bake. Jack swiped his finger over the screen and dragged up his email, read through a few offers on aftermarket parts and then opened the response from Ace: Don’t engage. Took it well, but not worth the risk. Come home.

He flipped the switch on his Harley to engage the engine, then took one last look at the Easy Bake. He was just in time to see Axel’s bulky enforcer blow the head off of a man in a cook’s apron.

“Fuck,” he muttered, dialing the police on his phone and reporting the incident. He hadn’t seen the woman who’d helped him in the restaurant, hoped she was off and not a corpse. Jack hung up the phone after making the report and prepared to leave. Before he could move, Dominic pushed through a pair of swinging doors with the woman held tight in his grip. She struggled against him, but it was like watching a kitten try to fight off a rabid dog.

“Fuck,” he said again. Going in to the restaurant was a good way to die, and he wasn’t ready to die today. But the men didn’t shoot her right away, seemed like they were toying with her. He had a chance to save her. He didn’t want to see her die.

He cursed again and turned on the bike, steering it into the alley behind the Easy Bake. The solid weight of the knife in his boot and the gun in his coat were little comfort when faced with three men who were just as heavily armed. He grabbed a stun grenade from the leather bag that hung over the back of the Harley.

After he’d come back from overseas, he’d taken to stocking his bags with shit that probably wasn’t legal—but it had been necessary more than once.

The metal door at the back of the restaurant was cracked open and swung outward silently when he pushed it. Scents of smoke and greasy food combined to make the kitchen almost unbearable, and Jack barely caught the cough before it erupted from his lips.

Axel, Dominic and Alvaro had their backs to him. The two older men were moving the body of a woman across the floor. Alvaro was holding the blond woman, who struggled against him until he backhanded her and she sagged in his arms. She was still conscious though, which was one bright spot in an otherwise dark train wreck of a situation.

Jack waited, peering through the portal window until Axel and Dominic were behind the counter, separated from Alvaro and the woman. He pulled the pin on the flash grenade, said a silent prayer, and tossed it through the door to land in the middle of the three men and the waitress.

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BLACKLISTED OPERATIONS

Prologue

Russia

The screams of the crowd filled his ears while he circled his opponent, ready to knock his ass out.

Rage dodged a meaty fist and then pulled himself upright, making sure to stay light on his feet. Out-maneuvering the competition was how he’d made it to Moscow in the first place. Without his quick feet and fast hands, he’d have gotten stuck in Chicago or Iran and never made it to the big time.

Four years of turning his back on everything and everyone he loved, and it was almost worth it. He could taste victory through the tang of the sweat and copper blood that misted over his face when he cracked his opponent’s nose to the side. The crunch had been loud enough to hear over the crowd, even when they’d surged forward to get a better look at the carnage.

But the ox hadn’t gone down. He’d circled Rage, his eyes darting in search of a weak spot. A place where he could really make him hurt.

Rage wasn’t worried about that. This match was already won, even if his opponent didn’t have the sense to lay down and tap out yet. The bout had gone on long enough though.

When the larger man rushed him, intent on taking Rage down, he sidestepped. The man recovered, came at him with a haymaker. Damn impressive footwork, but it still wasn’t enough. He didn’t know that Rage was straight sprawl and brawl.

Rage attacked his sweating opponent, delivering a knockout. The crowd wailed with satisfaction when the mountain of a man spun around and then hit the ground, blood leaking from his lips and nose.

He looked down at his opponent and pushed the hair out of his own face. His body was covered with purple and blue bruises from bouts earlier that day, but he didn’t feel them. While someone shoved a robe into one hand and another guy pumped his other fist in congratulations, Rage looked up to the top of the soaring arena, intent on finding the man he was here to kill.

Bartek sat in a private box with three guards around him. He was separated from the fighters by thick bulletproof glass. His lips quirked in a smile as he nodded to Rage, satisfied with the outcome of the match. Two more hours, and Rage would be in that box—there was just one more man standing between him and the Russian.

The announcer spoke to the crowd and declared an hour intermission. Rage and his next opponent—Bick, whose teeth were sharpened to points—would rest before facing each other. The next fight was to the death.

Finally, finally, Rage would be able to get close enough to Bartek to take the man’s life.

“Aidan?” The voice that came through the phone was not unexpected, but it was unwelcome.

“What do you want, boss?” Aidan wiped the other man’s blood from his face and held the phone between his shoulder and his ear. There was little time left before the final match, and he didn’t have time to hear about the problems that his boss wanted to discuss.

“Dima’s in danger.”

“What do you mean?” The man Aidan’s boss spoke of worked in a lab outside of Moscow.

“He found a way to,” the phone crackled and he couldn’t hear what his boss had said.

“What?”

“Dima found a cure. But he said there’s someone following him. He’s trying to get to you, to give you the paperwork. He doesn’t have a damn Internet connection.”

“Tell him I’m at the arena. There’s only the championship match left now—and Bartek. Just make sure he waits til the fight is over.”

“Aidan, there’s no time for that. If someone really is following him, they could get the only copy of the cure for the Synthesis virus. Damn it!”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Go to him. He’s by the canals. Find him. Keep him safe if you can. Get the cure no matter what you do. That’s our top priority.”

“Fuck you,” Aidan said, crisp and final. “I can’t leave now. I’m less than an hour away from finally getting to Bartek.”

“Is your vendetta worth the lives of millions?” His boss’s clipped tone broke through the anger that swelled in his veins. “Millions. That’s how many people will die if Synthesis gets loose without a cure.”

“Fuck,” Aidan said again.

“You can’t be Rage right now,” his boss said, conciliatory. “You have to do what you were trained to do.”

Aidan slammed his fist into the wall and tore the already-abused skin. “I’ll never get this chance again if I walk away.”

“I’ll help you get to Bartek, Aidan. I swear, I will. But right now, this isn’t about you.”

“I’m on my way.” Aidan closed the phone with a snap and left the room. If he hurried, he could get to Dima and make it back to take down his opponent. He didn’t have to lose everything over this.

The night was cold and cloudy. The moon barely broke through the clouds, but the streetlights lit the way well enough. Aidan ran, cutting through traffic without a care for his own safety, determined to get to Dima and get back to the fight before it was lost to him.

He approached the canals, his eyes scanning them for the man he was tasked to retrieve. At first, there was nothing. Then the moon broke through the clouds and he saw the body in the dirt next to the glittering water.

“Fuck,” he cursed, assessing the area for potential threats. No one was there. Aidan slid down the hill to Dima and checked for a pulse. Nothing. His body was still warm, but he was gone.

The papers that he’d been carrying were gone, too.

Buried in his chest was a dagger. Aidan wrapped his jacket around his hand and pulled it out, examining it. It wasn’t familiar to him, but his boss might have a better idea about who used flashy black hunting knives with a mother-of-pearl inlay on the handle.

Part of him mourned for Dima, but there was nothing he could do. Aidan ran back through the cold night, desperate to reach the arena in time.

He stepped through the doors just in time to hear the announcer scream out that the match was forfeit and Bick was the new champion.

Everything in him went hot, then cold. His hand clenched on the bloody knife wrapped in the jacket. Whoever killed Dima didn’t only assassinate a good man and steal something that was desperately needed to keep people safe—they took away the one goal that had driven Aidan for years. The one thing he’d given up everything else for.

Killing Bartek. The man who killed his sister.

Aidan threw back his head and screamed until his throat was raw. Then he took a picture of the knife, sent it to his boss and waited for further instructions.