Viper's Pit (Diamondbacks Motorcycle Club Book 1) (8 page)

CHAPTER TEN

Lind’s phone buzzed and rang in his pocket. Cursing, he fumbled for it with one hand as he steadied the car with the other. He didn’t even look at the display before he answered.

“Yeah.”

“Hello, Viper.”

Lind froze. His fist curled so tightly around the steering wheel that his knuckles turned white.

“You son of a bitch,” he growled.

“Yeah, I know. You’re angry.”

“I will find you, and I will kill you.”

“I wouldn’t be so violent if I were you,” Jacob all but purred in his ear. “I’ve got leverage, you know? The sweetest kind.”

Lind’s stomach turned. “Where is she?”

“Right here.”

There was a pause, and then Eve’s voice came to the phone.

“Lind?” She sounded tentative and scared, but at the very least she was alive.

“Eve!” Lind cried, ignoring Alec’s questioning look. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“Did he hurt you?”

“No. I’m fine,” she repeated. “Truly.”

Lind heaved a sigh of relief. “You hang in there, sweetheart, all right? I’ll find you.”

“He’s not alone in this,” Eve said hurriedly. “He—”

There was a smack and a sharp cry, and then Jacob’s voice was back on the phone. “As I was saying, I’ve got leverage.”

“If you hurt her, Jacob, I swear to God—”

“What?” Jacob said. “What are you and God gonna do to me, Viper? Now, you listen to me. You convince Alec of your good faith…by the way, I’m surprised he hasn’t killed you already.”

“You bastard—”

“Shut up,” Jacob snapped. “Listen closely. You convince Alec that you’re on his side and you bring him to me. You get me Alec, and I get you your girl.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Why wouldn’t I do this?” Jacob paused. “Tonight. Eleven o’clock sharp. I’ll text you the address. If you’re even two minutes late, I’ll kill her.”

He didn’t give Lind the chance to reply before he hung up.

“SON OF A BITCH!” Lind roared, snapping his cell phone shut and back in his pocket.

“Well?” Alec asked from the passenger seat.

Lind shot him a sideways glance. His phone beeped. “The good news is we know where they are,” he said.

“And the bad news?”

“The bad news is I have to give you over to him.”

“Or he’ll kill her?” Alec guessed.

Lind nodded darkly. “Yep.”

Alec rolled his eyes. “How original.” He stretched languidly in his seat, as if he were having the most relaxing day of his life. “Well, then, I guess you’ll just have to give me over.”

Lind sighed. They would have a plan, of course. They always did. But this time was different. This time, on the opposite team, was somebody who knew exactly what kinds of plans they came up with. Jacob knew them. He knew how they moved; he knew how they thought. Lind simply wasn’t sure they could swing it this time.

“Don’t worry, buddy,” Alec said, guessing his thoughts. “We’ll save her.”

“We better,” Lind muttered darkly.

Alec’s eyebrows rose in surprise, so high that they almost disappeared into his hairline. “You really care about this girl, don’t you?”

Lind was in no mood to lie; there were already too many games being played. “Yes,” he admitted freely. “I do.”

“How the fuck did that happen?”

Lind shot his friend a sideways glance. Alec had a look on his face halfway between shocked and amused.

Lind shrugged. “I don’t really know,” he said quietly.

And he didn’t, really. He was always so careful. He always made it a point not to get attached. Attachments were dangerous. Attachments meant that somebody could be used as leverage against you…which was exactly what was happening now.

Lind tightened his hold around the wheel, feeling the rage mount within his chest. He didn’t know how it had happened that he would grow so attached to Eve. He didn’t know how she had managed to get under his skin. He didn’t know what made her more than a one-night stand. All he knew was that the thought of her getting hurt made his blood boil. All he knew was that he wanted to protect her from everything and everyone. All he knew was that, probably, he loved her.

All he knew was that, if he was ever to touch her, Jacob was a dead man.  

CHAPTER ELEVEN

An old slaughterhouse on the godforsaken outskirts of town
. Lind couldn’t believe the clichés, the lack of originality. He couldn’t believe this was where Jacob had taken Eve. And yet, he supposed he should have expected it. After all, the whole situation was a cliché.

As they walked, he shot a sideways glance at Alec. His best friend and president of the Diamondbacks MC walked proudly and confident at his side. He wondered how Alec did it, and he envied him. He envied him that confidence, because for the first time in a very long time Lind did not feel confident at all. He had no doubt that Jacob would meet his end tonight, one way or another, but he also was very afraid that he wouldn’t be able to avoid somebody else getting hurt. Lind could not fathom the thought of losing either Eve or Alec, but he had the sinking feeling that he wouldn’t be able to protect them both tonight.

“Relax, will you?” Alec said as they walked. “You’re making me nervous.”

Lind grunted. He checked his gun, just in case. As if he could ever forget to have it set up properly. As if he could ever leave something to chance, tonight of all nights.

The building was silent and still when they reached it. Following the instructions that Jacob had texted them, they entered and headed down the corridors. They found the room fairly easily. The door was unlocked, as Jacob had told them it would be.

“Let yourselves in,”
he had written in his text.

They did. Lind knew that he should probably take in the surroundings first, but his gaze zeroed in on Eve, bound and gagged to a chair in the center of the room. He made to fly to her, but Alec reached out and grabbed his arm, effectively stopping him.

Reining in his instincts, Lind held back. They threw careful, calculating looks around. There wasn’t much to see. A bare room with a metal table and metal shelves, all of which were empty.

Satisfied that hidden dangers weren’t lurking around for the time being, Alec released him.

Lind ran up to Eve, who was watching him with her chocolate eyes wide. He fumbled with her gag and freed her mouth, crushing his lips to hers before she even could draw a breath. He didn’t care what anybody would think; he was too relieved to see her alive and relatively unscathed.

“Are you all right?” he asked, frantically cupping her face with both hands.

She nodded. “I’m fine.” She appeared shaken, but also determined to get out of there as soon as possible. He could hardly blame her.

Alec walked up to them and looked down at Eve, gauging her with his eyes. “She’s pretty,” he said then.

Lind rolled his eyes. “Yeah, thanks. I’m glad you approve,” he said sarcastically.

“Get me out of here?” Eve said, nodding to her binds.

Lind cursed himself for having wasted even one moment. “Sure.”

“Not yet,” a woman’s voice said from behind them.

They spun around to find Jacob and a woman that Lind recognized as Jessica from the file he and Eve had put together over the past few weeks standing past the doorway.

“So
you
’re the club mole,” he said. “I gotta say, I’m impressed.”

She half-bowed in mockery. “Thank you.”

She had her gun fixed on them, as had Jacob.

“Step away from the girl,” Jacob said. “Ge out your weapons and lay them on the floor.
Slowly
.”

“This is very,
very
stupid of you, Jake,” Alec said. His voice was a low growl, his whole frame was taught with tension and anger.

“Perhaps,” Jacob said. “But don’t worry, soon you’ll be too dead to worry about my stupidity.”

They stood still for a very long moment. Finally, both Lind and Alec took out their guns and lay them at their feet on the floor. At gunpoint, they stepped away from Eve, which Lind was happy to do. If bullets started flying, he didn’t want her in the line of fire.

“The cartel is bigger than you, Jacob,” Alec said. “It’s bigger than anybody. You’ll kill the MC if you do business with them.”

“You’re killing the club by
not
doing business with them,” Jacob argued. “The cartel represents a new era.”

“The cartel represents death. We do things on our own. We don’t get mixed up with criminal organizations. We thrive because our kingdom is small.”

“It’s
too
small!” Jacob snapped. “Don’t you see? As it is, we are basically scavengers! I can bring the Diamondbacks more. Make a name for ourselves.”

Alec shook his head. “You’re a stupid, stupid man. And you’re a coward.”

“Perhaps,” Jacob said. “But you won’t be around to judge me much longer, will you?”

Alec stood his ground. “And how to you plan to become President, Jacob?” he asked. He sounded genuinely curious. “Do you really think you will have their vote after you kill me?”

“They won’t know it was me,” Jacob said. “They will never know.”

“And who, pray tell, will you tell them it was?” Alec asked.

“The Cobra’s traitor, of course.”

“
What
?”

Jessica barely had the time to let her confusion show before Jacob turned to her and fired. Shock registered on her face as blood blossomed on her chest and she crashed to the floor.

Behind them, Eve screamed.

“Poor stupid whore,” Jacob muttered to himself.

“You’re a madman, Jacob,” Lind said quietly.

He was only realizing it now. Jacob didn’t have the reins of this. He thought he did, but he had just killed off his only ally. Did he really think he could handle the cartel, the Diamondbacks,
and
the Cobra, all by himself?

Jacob ignored the comment. “It’ll be an easy story to pass,” he said. “And Lind here surely won’t breathe a word to anybody, unless he wants his pretty little secret to become one more skeleton in his closet.”

Lind bit his lip fiercely.

“Fuck you,” Alec growled.

“No,” Jacob said sweetly, with a smile to chill the blood in one’s veins. “Fuck you.”

One more shot was fired. Alec crumbled.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Eve’s mind was reeling. Bile rose to her throat, and she swallowed it back down. It had only been a matter of minutes, and already there were two bodies on the floor, their blood adding to that which had been spilled in the past. Pigs’ blood, and cows’ blood, and lambs’ blood, and now the blood of a man and a woman.

It all felt too surreal. Her wide eyes looked at Lind, but he had his back to her. He was kneeling next to the body of the one who she had learned was his best friend, cradling his head in his lap.

“You son of a bitch,” he choked out, voice broken. Eve’s heart broke right alongside Lind’s voice.

Jacob remained cold, impassible. It was horrifying to see. “It had to be done,” he said.

“I will get you for this,” Lind promised. “I don’t know how or when, but you will pay.”

“Maybe,” Jacob conceded. “But not today, and certainly not tomorrow.” He kept his gun pointed at Lind, as if he somehow didn’t trust him, even if he was clearly unarmed. “I’ll leave you to it now. Make sure you do a clean job in disposing of the bodies. We’ll tell the others tomorrow, and you will back me up. I’ll have your vote. Or else.”

Lind didn’t say anything. Even if Eve couldn’t see Lind’s eyes, she could still feel his hatred. She didn’t know how Jacob could remain so calm. Because one thing was certain; Lind’s had not been an empty threat. He would kill Jacob for this. Chances were, he would do it in a very painful, very horrible way.

Jacob stepped away carefully, walking backwards. He disappeared past the doorway into the corridor, and a moment later his running footsteps could be heard echoing off the walls of the empty building. A few more minutes, and the roar of his bike filled the night air as he rode away.

Eve’s head was spinning. She could not believe this was how it ended. She could not believe the bad guy was getting away with it. In her perfect daytime life, they had always taught her that the villain would lose. But this was nighttime, and fairytales ended in nightmares.

She wanted to ask Lind to untie her, but she was terrified of breaking the horrid spell of him hunched over his best friend’s body.

There was a grunt, low and guttural and growly. “Son of a bitch,” he grumbled. “Fuck. That hurt.”

Eve frowned at the choice of words. Then, Alec’s body moved, and she screamed.

She watched in shock as Lind helped him sit up. He was massaging his chest and grimacing.

“Fuck,” he said again.

“What the hell…?” she murmured, appalled.

They both turned towards her with matching grins on their faces, looking like kids who had just scored the best prank of their lives. In a way, they probably had.

“Bulletproof vest,” Alec said, opening his shirt to reveal it underneath.

“The blood…”

“Fake blood,” Lind said. He stood and finally began to untie her. “We thought we’d give Jacob what he wanted, get you out of harm’s way, and then deal with him.”

“Do I want to know how you’re going to ‘deal with him?’” Eve said, hissing and grimacing in pain as circulation came back to her limbs.

Lind grinned. “Probably not.”

“Let’s just say it’s going to be painful.” Alec grinned. It was a wolf’s grin, and it chilled Eve to the bone. There was a fire in the man’s dark eyes that scared her more than anything she had seen so far.

She stood gingerly on her feet.

“Can you walk?” Lind asked.

She nodded. Her eyes fell upon Jessica’s body near the entrance of the room, and she couldn’t stifle a sob.

“I’m sorry,” Lind said darkly. “She should’ve known better than to trust the likes of him.”

Alec looked from the body and then back to Lind and Eve in confusion. “Are you crying?” He seemed shocked at the tears that ran scalding hot down Eve’s cheeks. “Are you really crying for her? She would have killed you.”

Eve glared at him. “Normal people still feel sorry when someone whom they thought was a friend dies. Especially if she dies of a violent death.”

Alec shrugged. He didn’t get it, and the fact that he didn’t get it also chilled Eve to the bone.

Uncaring what these two strong, stoic men would think, she clung to Lind. “Take me home?”

Lind nodded readily. “Sure. We’ll go to my place for now. Tomorrow, when all is said and done, I’ll take you back to your house.”

Eve nodded, although the notion made her lightheaded. The end of the ordeal was finally near, and she wasn’t sure she was entirely happy about it. She wasn’t sure she was ready to leave Lind just yet. She knew she had to. She had to leave him and this life of danger, excitement, and death that she had caught a glimpse of, and she had to go back to her old, plain life. To her loveless marriage. To her unrewarding job.

That prospect filled her with dread more than anything that had happened so far.

They had left their bikes home and come in Lind’s car, and Eve slumped in the backseat as they drove. The men in the front seats were quiet and relaxed, and Eve envied their peace. She felt exhausted and emptied. Her brain tried to process the recent events, but she came up blank. There was a fog in her mind and a heaviness in her heart.

She was judging Alec for not mourning Jessica’s death. But was she any better than him, when she was already missing a life that had brought death to her doorstep? Was she any better than him for already missing a man like Lind Addams, otherwise known as the Viper? Was she any better than him for already missing the Viper’s bite?