Page 98 of Static

We turned off of I-10 and onto the frontage road. We'd take this for the last few miles until we got into downtown Tucson. I refused to meet Sikes at his office on N. Stone Ave. There was too much of a risk of running into Fremont. Instead, we were supposed to be meeting in a nearby park.

That was the plan. Then it went to shit.

"Fuck!" I grasped my handlebars as tight as I could as my bike jerked beneath me. I hadn't missed the fact that a car had just blasted through an intersection into the end of our pack as we rode. My heart was beating a mile a minute as I tried to get the bike under control. The car had clipped my back tire.

Easing off on the gas, I leaned over the gas tank as much as possible, but I knew almost immediately I was going down. Grunting as I hit my side, I did my best to shield myself as I hit the ground.

Dirt and debris flew as I slid through the desert terrain on the side of the road. Once me and my motorcycle finally slid to a stop, I let out a breath, then coughed out the dirt filling my mouth.

Idaho had been just a few inches in front of me so the bumper missed him. That was the whole reason we rode staggered to begin with. I could see from the corner of my eye he was parked a ways in front of me, looking back my way. He was already hopping off his bike to come check on me.

I could only fucking hope Riptide was okay. He was our tail rider today and was the only person behind me and Idaho. There wasn't time to check on him, though, because the unmistakable sound of gunshots split the air, kicking up dust next to me. I managed to shove my bike off my leg and hot footed it toward the underpass. There was nowhere else to take cover. There was no time to warn my brothers. All I could do was run and hope I didn't catch a bullet. I was going to be sore later thanks to the spill I'd just taken, but I didn't feel it at all now.

Pulling out my gun, I checked around the concrete wall and exhaled in relief when I saw Rip a ways down the road waving for cars to turn the fuck around and get out of here. He must have seen the car coming toward us and missed getting hit. Thank fuck.

I wasn't sure where Idaho took cover, but I wasn't the only one they were shooting at. Stepping out from behind the wall, I aimed in at the car and began firing. I started moving as I shot, making myself a harder target to hit. I wasn't about to let these fuckers shoot any of my brothers. My ears were already ringing from the crash, so I couldn't hear shit. I wasn't even sure if my brothers riding ahead of us knew we were in trouble.

"Oh, you motherfuckers," I growled as I saw the men bailing out of their vehicle. There were three cars. But the one that hit me, that I was filling full of bullet holes, had the assholes who'd tried to kill me once before in it. They were the same assholes who'd tried to kidnap Eva, and who Lock, Idaho, and Butcher had kicked the shit out of. I was pretty sure the rest of the guys with them were off duty cops. That seemed to be a pretty good bet, since it was clear that Fremont had sent them after us.

"These assholes really haven't learned their lesson yet?"

I glanced over and gave Idaho a grim smile as he ran up. We both focused back on the cars and kept covering our advance toward their vehicles. I didn't give a fuck that they outnumbered us. These fuckers ambushed us, shot at us, and wrecked my goddamn bike. Someone was going to pay.

It was obvious they targeted me. Which meant only one thing. Sikes gave us up to Fremont. Fucking pussy. I was going to make sure he went down right alongside his boss. The gun jerked in my hand as the slide locked to the rear. I delved into my cut, taking another magazine from the inside pocket as I dropped the empty onto the ground. Shoving the mag into the gun, I racked the slide and lined my sights up on one of the men who made the mistake of moving from the safety of the vehicle in front of him. My round caught him in the chest. He jerked and dove back behind cover.

This was my only additional magazine, so I hoped like fuck everyone was on their way toward us. I knew Idaho only had his two magazines as well. Most of our additional shit was in our saddle bags. We weren't exactly expecting trouble, but we came prepared for it. We just didn't have all our additional ammo on our damn bodies.

A roar filled my head and I wondered if that was my hearing returning to normal—considering all the firing we were doing, I doubted it—or if it was the club coming back. It only took seeing Butcher, with Toxic on his heels, bulldozing his way behind the line of vehicles in front of us to know the answer to that question.

As one, both Idaho and I stopped firing. We didn't want to risk hitting our own men. We ran toward the cars and I tackled a guy that was about to throw a haymaker at the back of Toxic's head.

His eyes met mine as he cracked a grin. "Remind me I owe you for that one," he told me before sending his fist into the face of the guy on the ground in front of him.

The fire fight had stopped and now it was an all-out brawl. I grunted as someone took me down to the dirt, making me eat it for the second time that day. I rolled him beneath me and made him regret tackling me. My fist was still hitting his face when I was dragged off him and shoved, belly-first, onto the ground, again.

"Quit resisting! You're all under arrest!"

Uniformed cops had shown up. I wasn't surprised, considering the gun fight. My only consolation was that all of Fremont's guys were on their faces, too. They were hollering and barking, trying to let these officers know that they were cops. It wasn't working well for them in the chaos. They were going to end up under arrest just like us. I grinned and let my body go lax.

The cop behind me jerked my arms behind my back and handcuffed me. The dust was puffing out with my heavy breaths as I waited to be sat up. It was going to be a few minutes. I glanced around and saw everyone was right there with me. Butcher's lip was split and blood dripped down from it to the dirt below him. Lockout was doing exactly what I was, looking around to make sure everyone was alright. Hellfire was glaring at the cops as they tried to handcuff him.

"This asshole is a monster. Bale, go grab the fucking leg cuffs for this gorilla."

Toxic chuckled from where he was cuffed next to me. "The fact that they thought they could use regular cuffs on Hell is funny," he said with a shrug when I gave him a questioning look.

"I called Torres," Rip said from a few feet away.

I wasn't sure when he'd made his way into the fray, but he was right here with us. "Good thinking," I told him. "Thanks."

"Not sure he'll even fucking come," Rip said with a wry chuckle. "But it was the only thing I could think of."

We waited there, faces in the dirt, while the cops searched us and put us in the backs of police cruisers. This was a shit show of epic proportions. We were going to have to play it just right if we had any hope of getting out of this without ending up behind bars for ten to fifteen years. Fremont wasn't walking free. I'd already made sure of that. It was the one bright spot in all of this.

It took at least an hour to get back to the police station and shoved behind bars. I groaned and leaned my head back against the wall, staring up at the ceiling. "Sorry, Lock."

He scoffed from his cell next door. "For what?"

They had us three to a cell to make sure there was enough space for all of us. Fremont's guys were down the hall, pounding on the bars and bellowing to be let out. Except the four assholes who weren't cops. They were quiet. They were also locked up right across the hall from us. They knew they were in deep shit. The off duty cops hadn't quite figured it out yet. They didn't realize it was going to be fucking hard to explain why they'd attacked us. Or that Fremont wasn't going to come to their aid. Not now that he knew we had this evidence.

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