Wild Rider (Bad Boy Bikers Book 2) (22 page)

“Get him up, there. This ain’t no picnic. Stand the man up.”

Inside the apartment was Ivan and four other men, guns already drawn. Prowler was one of them, staring fury with his jaw wired shut. Beretta had been out of it for a few minutes—because in the room with him were Tank and Ace, along with Helen. Everyone was at gunpoint. Two Furnace men were working with the giant pile of cash on the bed; they had moved it in from the SUV and now shoved it into the bags that Wrecking Crew were going to use. Locke was nowhere to be seen.

“Where’s the last one?” asked Ivan, noticing Locke's absence as well.

“He ran off, sir,” said a Furnace guard. “Pretty sure we clipped him in the leg, but he’s gone in the dark.”

“That’s too bad. We’ll get him later, I suppose.”

Ivan had a large automatic rifle in his hands. It was black and long, the barrel the thickness of Beretta's thumb.

“The fuck is this?” exclaimed Ace. “We made a deal, you piece of shit.”

Ivan smirked. “Why don’t you all just go ahead and give up any more guns you got, all right? It would make me much more comfortable. Boys? Pat ‘em down.”

The four gunmen came forward and did as told, patting down Ace, Beretta, Tank, and even Helen, and stripping them of any weapons they had on them. Tank had the most, knives strapped to a heavy vest on his chest, a hatchet holstered on his back, and three guns on his waist and legs.

“One-man motherfucking arsenal,” said Ivan. “I love it. No wonder you’re strong! Just walking around is a weight session, huh?”

“It’s all in the diet,” said Tank.

“Did I say you fucking talk? Prowler, show the man he can’t talk.”

Prowler stepped forward and whipped his fist across Tank’s face. Tank, to his credit, barely bent his knees from the blow. Blood brimmed up in his mouth and he spit it down on Prowler’s feet.

“You guys did great.” Ivan opened up a bag of cash, letting out a low whistle. “Just great. Did even better by distracting yourselves out there with that fight. Didn't you just win a big battle? Come away with cash? The fuck are you so unhappy about? You didn't even know I was going to thieve you, yet.”

“What are you doing here, Ivan?” Ace asked.

“Is that any kind of way to greet your friend? I’m here to congratulate you on a job well done.”

“Fuck off. You’re fucking us over.”

Ivan shrugged, nodding and laughing. “Well, there is the little matter of my payment. Let’s not forget about that, yeah? You promised me fifty thousand dollars. Only, now that I’ve got a good look at what you’ve brought back, that seems a little disproportional, don’t you think?”

“Fuck you,” said Beretta.

Ivan nodded to Prowler, who reared back and smacked Beretta over the head with his gun. That was another hit to his skull. A gash formed on the side of his head, blood pouring down his face.

“Yeah, disproportional,” said Ivan. “That’s my take on the situation. You see, the way I look at it, you wouldn’t have even been able to do this deal if it weren’t for me and my supplies. So we’re going to switch this around here. I’m going to take, oh...mmm, all of it. And I’m going to leave you with your lives. And that’ll be that. And you fucks can stay out of Stockland from now on. You, and all your drugs.”

Ace frowned. “We didn’t have any drugs in Stockland.”

“No, but you were trying, weren’t you? You and that Gallows motherfucker up in the hills. Yeah. That was me who did that. Kinda.” He shrugged. “The Copperheads, really. It's just been one of those
things
. They knew where you were cooking drugs,
I
knew where your headquarters was, so we just
traded
information. And coordinated an attack.”

“You're working with them.” Beretta shook his head. “I thought they killed your man and his woman?”

“Oh, that?” Ivan nodded. “They did. But, well, that asshole and his bitch were stealing from me. So it was a truth and a lie, you see?”

“Lot of that going around,” said Beretta.

“Oh, ain't you fucking clever? Yeah, cocksucker, I've been playing both sides. That's why I'm fucking winning, isn't it?  With that whole warehouse deal, we very nearly wiped you out right then and there, but ma-ha-ha-ha-aan, am I glad we didn’t. Because this?” He patted the stack of money beside him. “This is a
whole
lot of change. How much you think, Charlie?”

“We’ll have to weigh it to be sure, boss.”

“Best guess?”

He took a look at the different bags and shrugged his shoulders. “Close to ten million.”

“Ten
million
dollars. Did you fucking
hear
that? God. Even that
number
gets my dick hard, yeah? Ten
million
. What do you think I should do with it, huh? I think—I think I’ll buy like, ten million Twinkies, a dollar a piece, huh?”

Ace spat at his feet. “Twinkies are a buck fifty, asshole.”

Ivan smacked him, hard, with the butt of his rifle. Then he hit him again. And then again.

“Then I’ll buy six million,” he hit him again, “six hundred and sixty-six thousand and so on! You fucking
ingrate
cocksucker!”

Helen cried out, watching this, and tried to go to Ace. But a Furnace man shoved her against the wall and told her to stay still. Beretta, seeing this, felt his temper flare. He was going to tear that man's head off.

But Tank took a hold of his wrist, shaking his head.

Not yet
, the look said.
Be smart
.

Smart, sure. Be smart about how he was going to decapitate that motherfucker for touching his woman. Sure.

Ace was motionless, bleeding profusely from his skull and head. Ivan took a moment and breathed and then calmed down.

“Now, you see? I was going to be polite about this. Much more polite than you cocksuckers were about
your
robbery. An explosion! A machine gun! Good god! The police are not gonna like it when they find out it was a rogue group of the Wrecking Crew doing that, are they?”

“So you’ll snitch on us too?” Beretta sneered. “You’ve got no honor at all, do you?”

“Snitch? Boy, I have
ten. Million. Dollars.
The fuck are you talking about,
snitch
? I will fucking
own
the police, just like the Copperheads do. Give me a few weeks and I’ll be the goddamn
governor
of this town, and that ain’t even constitutionally possible yet.” He drew himself up, sniffing elaborately. “Your blood smells. I’m leaving. Charlie, keep ‘em here and make sure they get out of town, yeah?”

––––––––

“I
don’t get it,” said Helen. “Why not just kill us?”

All around Helen was blood and loss. Ace was still unconscious and looked to be getting worse by the second.

The man left behind—Charlie—did not allow Helen to help. He had a thick handle-bar mustache and a heavy gut that seemed to be at least seventy percent muscle. His shoulders and chest were as broad as the doorway. He held a shotgun, waiting for the group to pack their things and leave.

“Robbing you. Beating you up.” Beretta bled too, but not as bad as Ace. He looked very much conscious as he spoke. “That’s just the cost of business in a new town. We don’t even own this place.”

“So what? They think you won’t care?”

“They know
we
care,” said Beretta. “But they know our back-up won’t. Especially not now when the Furnace has a fucking fortune backing them up. This is the end of Stockland for the Wrecking Crew. And, I suppose the end of the Wrecking Crew for us.”

“Shut up and pack your shit,” said Charlie. “Or I’ll just send you as is. How about that?”

“We’re moving,” said Beretta.

Helen remembered, not for the first time, how much Beretta had distrusted Ivan. He had been right all along; the way he was right about a whole lot of things. It was infuriating, his ability to be right.

It was infuriating too, thinking that he may be right about the relationship between her and him. Infuriating and terrifying. Her rage had cooled now, and she was left mostly with fear. She didn't want to be without him; she didn't want to be without him and
still
want him so goddamn bad like she did now. To be without his body, his strength, his lifestyle, and everything else. His compulsions, his constant plans, his need to organize every last detail. She wanted that in her life and it scared her that it might not be.

It had been so wrong to leave him, to hurt him. She would make it up to him for the rest of his life if she was able.

Ace groaned heavily on the floor, mopping the carpet with his blood.

“You really ought to let me help him,” said Helen, banishing her fear for the moment. “If he ends up dying because of that head wound, that
is
murder. And that’ll be on you. Won’t that start a war?”

“Lady,” said Charlie, “the second you get out of here, you can do whatever the hell you like. Until that point,” he lifted his shotgun and pointed it at her, “you fucking do what I say, all right? Now—”

He stopped talking, hearing someone yelling outside. He put his ear up to the door.

Two seconds later, Locke crashed through the door, smashing it to the ground and flattening Charlie beneath it. Tank rushed forward, lifted the door up—with Locke still on it—and knocked Charlie out with a heavy blow to the face. Then, he let the door fall back down on Charlie, no doubt crashing against his skull again.

“Ah,” said Locke, stumbling off the door. “There. That was easy.”

He got up slowly, staggering against the door frame.

“Helen,” said Beretta, “Look to Ace. Make sure he’s okay.”

There was no need to tell her twice. She already had her emergency bag out, placing gauze down on the wound hard to stop the bleeding.

“I can help him some,” she said, “but he’s going to need a hospital. Really. This is
massive head trauma
, and we can’t help him here. Tell them he tripped or something, but he needs to go there now.”

She watched Beretta look through the nearby cabinet, searching the litter there for any sweets he may have left behind. But there was nothing. He sighed and shook his head, shrugging.

“Right,” said Beretta. “Okay. Locke, Tank, you’re on that with Helen. I’ll meet up with you when I can.”

“Meet up with us?” asked Helen. “Where are you going?”

“I’m going to go kill that motherfucker and get our money back.”

“With
what
?” Locke and Helen said simultaneously.

Locke continued, ticking off fingers. “He took all our guns. He took our fucking money to
buy
guns. We’ve got nothing. We’re lucky if he left us our rides at all.”

Even terribly mad at Beretta—kind of
furiously
so, in fact—she still could not stop her wonder at his ability to just suddenly make decisions. It was the most impossible thing in the world for her, and yet here he was, his entire world just unraveled, a plan completely gone to shit, and he was already acting again.

For the first time, she considered how hard it must be to be caught in a prison of action. To not feel right unless you were doing something. How did you sit still? How would you ever feel right? How would you ever be able to reflect and just enjoy what you had?

“He’s gotta die,” said Beretta. “For doing this to Ace. For doing this to
us
. We stole that money fair and square, and he can’t just take it from us.”

“Listen, I want him dead just as much as you do,” said Locke. “But the fact is that we got this far—we stole
all that cash
—by working together. If we start splitting apart now, we’re as good as dead. We ride together, and we die together. But if you go off on your own, now, you’re just confirming every goddamn shitty thing Ace ever thought about you, man. You gotta man the fuck
up
.”

“All right,” said Beretta. “What do we do?”

“There’s a stash not far from here,” said Tank. “We set it up when we first got here. It’s not a lot. A couple of guns, some ammo. But it’s a start.”

“Good enough,” said Beretta.

“Wait,” said Helen.

She grabbed him. It was the hardest thing in the world to resist the urge to kiss him.

“Be careful, okay?” She swallowed hard. “I don’t
entirely
want you to die, all right?”

He smiled small. “We’ll see.”

––––––––

H
elen and Locke carried Ace’s prone body into the SUV and they headed toward the hospital. He was losing a lot of blood, and Helen worried about him. Night approached fast and the street lines hummed on as they sped down the road. Cicadas sang loudly, their chorus louder in some places than the sound of traffic.

She didn't like Ace very much, but she didn't want him to die. He had fought for her during the heist when he didn't have to; he wasn't anything like a good man, but that didn't mean he deserved to die bleeding out in the back of a van.

Locke was some help, but not a lot. She suspected he had a heavy concussion of his own from breaking through the door. His eyes were glassy and his words slurred, like he'd had a night of heavy drinking.

“Sorry again,” he said. “Sorry. For you know, for my miscue the other night. I really didn’t think you and Beretta were together, otherwise...otherwise I never would have hit on you.”

His language was thick and syrupy. “On you” was pronounced like “onnou.” 

“I’m not that kind of guy. I know I have, you know, I've got a reputation. But,
but
, I go for
single
women. I don’t need the complications of other people’s attachments. I mean, mostly. Unless she's really attractive. And she's advertising herself.”

They stopped at a red light. Helen briefly considered running it until she recalled that, Ace bleeding or not, the van was carrying three outlaws who had been involved in a military-grade shootout that day.

God, she was an outlaw too, now, wasn't she? Her anger with Beretta in insisting that she come along had blinded her to that fact. There was a line that had been crossed.