Torched (43 page)

Thank. You. Milo.

Knowing full well he was in a bind, I pull up my pants and stood back up. “I didn’t do anything, it’s doing it on it’s own. Kind of like a snake slithering through the accounts and transferring money out as it goes. He’s a quick little fucker. A thousand dollars every second. Sixty thousand by the hour, spread over fifteen accounts. You’re losing just short of a million every sixty minutes and there’s
nothing
you can do to stop it.”

“Move the money,” he barked into his phone.

I shook my head. “You can’t, I disabled all the account controls.”

The person on the other end must have told him the same thing, Mitch was practically breathing fire by now. “You fucking call the banks, every single one… I don’t fucking care that they’re not open, fucking fix this shit!” He slammed the flip phone shut, so hard I thought it might go flying out of his hand.

Once again, I found myself on the wrong end of a gun. Nevertheless, I still had the advantage. “The bank can’t do anything either. Sorry, Mitch, I commandeered your cash.”

“Yeah? Let’s see how good you are against a professional hacker,” he mumbled, opening his phone again and scrolling through his contacts.

I couldn’t help but laugh again. “I
am
a professional, you moron. You’re wrong, Mitch, I know plenty. I haven’t stayed a step ahead of you for eight years without some skills of my own. Go ahead and call your hacker, but you should know I also buried encrypted code that might be problematic. One mistake in the twenty-or-so step process to stop the transfers will only speed them up. But seriously, try it if you still think I’m bluffing.”

His phone rang. “Yeah,” he answered. Without saying anything else, he hung up.

“No luck with the bank managers?” I asked mockingly.

“This is your bargaining chip? You’ll stop it if I let you live?” he seethed.

I shrugged. “You’re the one with the gun. What do you care about more, Mitch? Revenge or money?” I already knew the answer to that. I also knew how he’d try to get me to stop the transfers and kill me anyway.

But all I was going for here was getting access to a computer and giving the club some time.

Mitch buckled his belt, grabbed my arm, and pulled me out of the room. We passed by the bathroom again and went up a flight of stairs at the end of the corridor. When he opened the door, I couldn’t believe my eyes.

Oh, they were cooking here alright.

It looked like we were in some kind of old factory. A conveyor belt ran through the middle, but everything else had been emptied out, replaced by rows of tables and lab equipment. My heart sank at the realization that this was an explosion waiting to fucking happen. Shit. I had to get another message out.

I saw Hess and counted five others working away. Along with good ole Buzz, I figured those were probably the same masked men that had grabbed me earlier. All of them looked up as Mitch dragged me across the expansive room, but no one said a word.

He pulled me into a hallway that led out into what looked like a cluster of back offices, and shoved me into one of them. “There’s a computer. You fucking stop whatever the hell you did, or I fucking swear I’ll gut you right here on this desk. You hear me?”

I nodded and booted it up, while Mitch stood behind me and looked on.

After five minutes of watching me, he started getting antsy. “Hurry the fuck up,” he huffed.

I rolled my eyes at him. “Jesus Christ, Mitch. This took weeks to write, you’re gonna have to give me at least an hour to reverse it,” I lied.

He scowled, walked around the desk, and sat his ass down across from me. I seized the opportunity and started dropping more messages to Biff. I explained what I’d noticed of the layout, where I was in relation, how many men they were up against, and warned him that shit was likely to start exploding if they just came in guns blazing.

While I waited to see if he responded—fuck, I really hoped he’d gotten the first one—I sent another to Milo and gave him remote access to the computer I was on, so he could make it look like I was slowing down the money transfers. Within seconds, he’d done his part and I turned the screen around to show Mitch.

As soon as he gave his approving nod, I turned it back around and clicked back over to the dump site. Nothing, no messages except for the usual game cheats and anonymous lines of code.

Fuck. Maybe I was on my own after all.

Twenty minutes later, idly typing away and staring at the screen while new plans of escape churned through my brain, I finally saw something. A message from user BMan, that simply said:
Take cover.

A few seconds after that, all fucking hell broke loose.

: 27 :

Those fuckers were outnumbered, outgunned, and about to be surprised by a biker army from all sides.

Getting the hand signal from Grimm, who’d managed to climb on the roof and get a look down through a skylight, Torch, Zed, and Mace rushed in through the rear dock doors. Liv’s last message said that she was in some kind of office, and according to blueprints Biff had pulled from public records, there were a few at the front end of the building, but the majority were in the back. The rest of his brothers were funneling in through the other doors.

As the three of them ran down the nearest hallway trying to find her, he could hear yelling and gunfire from inside the factory. All he could do was hope to hell his guys were being careful enough in their aim not to blow the entire fucking place up.

He didn’t have to think about that.

Just as they’d cleared the fourth office, he was looking ahead when he heard glass shattering and saw Liv’s body flying out into the hallway about fifty feet up from the left, the shards cascading over her like fucking snow.

“Liv!” he screamed out.

But he couldn’t get to her fast enough before Henslow popped out. Seeing them, he started shooting.

They all ducked and kept moving, but he pulled her up to her feet and held the gun to her temple. “You move and she’s
dead
!” he thundered.

They stopped in their tracks and watched as he dragged her away, kicking and screaming. He had nowhere to go but the main assembly area or an emergency exit on the side of the building. Torch knew what option he’d choose.

“He’s going out the side!” he yelled. “Mace, follow. Zed, hit the front.”

No time to waste, he ran back the way they’d come in, hoping to cut Henslow off on the side he was most likely to go. His legs burned as they moved faster than he’d ever had to push them. Nothing had ever been this fucking important before.

Seconds later, he was on the dock.

He heard Liv screaming and followed the sound to his left, Henslow had her by the arms, rushing away from the building under the cover of darkness. All he could really see was their silhouette.

He stayed low and close to the wall as he jogged across the dock, keeping an eye on them below. As soon as he got close enough, he took a shot at the ground a few feet from them.

Liv did as he knew she would, taking advantage of the quick distraction to pull out of the fucker’s grasp.

He took another shot, sending the piece of shit stumbling backwards. “Run!” Torch yelled at her as he rushed at Henslow. Mitch fired at him twice, missing both times. Either he was out out of ammo or the gun jammed because he threw it down and tried to run off.

Torch was faster and jumped him from behind. He slammed a fist into his head, but Henslow was a fighter and managed to roll out from under him. Fists flying, legs kicking, heads smashing into the concrete, they went at it like hyenas, Torch getting most of the blows in. Predator versus predator, only one could come out alive.

Zed and Mace rushed over, but he already had the asshole pinned down and was crushing his skull with repeated blows.

As Henslow’s life drained before his eyes, he saw three of his brothers rushing out of the building from the corner of his eye.

“Move, move, move!” Squid yelled. “It’s gonna—”

Blow.

: : : :

“Move, move, move!” I heard Squid’s distinct voice call out.

I turned back around to see what was going on, but only managed to catch a glimpse of Torch on top of Mitch. Next thing I knew, debris and flames were blowing out windows and doors as the building exploded from the inside, sending bodies flying and sliding across the ground. I covered my face with my arm as a blast of hot air and sand came at me.

As soon as it passed, I opened my eyes and spotted him on the ground.

“Torch!” I screamed out. Ignoring the pain from being tossed through a pane of glass, I ran as fast I could toward him.

Jesus Christ, he wasn’t fucking moving.

I heard Squid—the only man still standing—grunting at me to stay back and saw him coming at me from the side. He reached out to grab me.

“No!” I shrieked, shoving back on his chest and ducking down under his arms to get away.

I slid across the gravel and down to my knees next to Torch. I took his bloodied face in my hands, careful not to move it in case his neck was broken and checked for a pulse. It was faint, but it was there.

“Baby, wake up… I love you… Please… Please, just wake up… I can’t lose you,” I begged him, a flood of tears streaming down my face.

I heard sirens a short distance away and looked around at the commotion. The rest of the guys were rushing over from around the building, Buddha frantically trying to count heads as they tried to help the fallen.

The scene was pure chaos, but to me it was all playing out in slow motion.

Torch’s moans snapped me the fuck out of it. “Baby? Baby, open your eyes for me,” I pleaded, combing my fingers through his hair. “Come on, Torch.” His eyelids parted halfway and I grinned at him through my tears. “There you go, honey. Stay with me. Don’t move your head, okay?”

Just as Buddha and Elf descended on us to get a look at him, he opened his mouth, making some gurgling sound.

“Shh, it’s okay, don’t talk. I’m right here,” I told him. But he did it again. Not wanting him to start moving that stubborn head of his, I brought my face closer to hear him.

“Love… you,” he croaked, before his eyes rolled back into his head and closed again.

A second tidal wave of emotion and tears hit me like a fucking freight train. “No… baby, no,” I whimpered. “Wake up… Wake up… Wake the fuck
up
!”

“Come on, sweetheart,” Buddha murmured, hooking his arms under mine and pulling me back as paramedics rushed over. “Let them do their jobs.”

I turned to him and started pounding on his chest with what little strength I had left. “I told him! I fucking
told
him!”

He wrapped his arms around me and held on tight. Pretty soon, I gave up and just sobbed into his chest. “This isn’t your fault, sweet girl. He’s gonna be alright,” he insisted.

I heard a thump and turned back to see the paramedics wheeling him away, I peeled away from Buddha and ran after them.

As they loaded Torch into the ambulance, Agent Rhodes came walking around.

“I need to ask you some questions, Chlo—”

“It can fucking wait,” I spat at her. “I’m going with him.”

“Let her go,” Buddha said as he approached. “Your questions are for us. She’s got nothing to do with this. Wrong place, wrong time.”

Rhodes glared at him dubiously, but waved me by. The last thing I heard as I climbed in was her yelling, “Unless you’re on a stretcher, you’re all being detained for questioning.”

I took a seat and glanced over at Buddha, who gave me a stiff smile and nod before the doors closed.

: 28 :

I followed the paramedics into the ER and stopped outside Torch’s room as a handful of doctors and nurses jogged over.

It was surreal. This whole thing was like a bad acid trip.

One after the other, I saw Zed, Mace, Gauge, and Scrap wheeled in. Thankfully they all had their eyes open. Four Linwood cops followed in and waited in the hallway. I leaned against the wall to take some pressure off my throbbing back, but it was short-lived.

“Liv!”

I turned around at the sound of my name and heavy boots running toward me. It was Lump and Bird barreling down the hall. They pulled me into a bear sandwich and squeezed so hard, I let out a pained groan.

“Jesus Christ, darlin’ you had us fucking worried,” Bird muttered.

“You alright?” Lump asked.

“I’m fine, just a bruised back,” I insisted. “Tell me Jet and Toto are okay.”

“They’ll both make it. Gonna be a while before they get back on their bikes on account of all the broken bones though.”

“I’m so sorry, guys. I don’t—”

“Knock that shit off. You got nothing to apologize for, darlin’,” Bird huffed.

A doctor came out of the room before I could argue, followed by nurses wheeling Torch out in the other direction. I tried to step around him to follow, but he held his hand up. “He’s going to Radiology. You can’t go with him.”