Page 6 of Lord of Debauchery

“Yeah, I’m sure.” I watched the side-view mirror carefully. Almost at the same time the driver slowed, as if he or she knew what speed we were going.

“It looks like your instincts were right. Shit.” Jeff slammed his hand against the steering wheel three times.

“Don’t break the rental car,” I grumbled. “Get ready just in case. I have a bad feeling things are about to get dicey.”

Everyone had a weapon in their hand and within seconds, the vehicle behind us was speeding up again. And wouldn’t you know it? Shots were fired.

“What the fuck?” James exclaimed.

Jeff swerved back and forth on the road, narrowly avoiding driving into a ditch. At least the bullets hadn’t penetrated the hull. The one real advantage of using our own vehicles was that a solid portion of each one had been made mostly bulletproof. That prevented a random strike in the middle of a beautiful afternoon. But getting a rental car was dicey as fuck and not something I liked to do.

Being shot at was something our family hadn’t experienced in a long time. Why now? We weren’t suddenly getting into the political arena. We were simply good folks trying to make a living. I was able to grin at the thought.

“Par for the course.” I unrolled the window, studying how fast the unwanted visitors were going. “Allow them to gain on us.”

“You like rolling the dice, boss man,” Jeff teased.

Yeah, I often did. The fact whoever the assailant was had managed to tail us meant they’d been watching us every step of the way. It was quite possible they’d been at the bar.

I shoved half my body out the window, pointing not only my weapon but the flashlight beam toward the driver.

Pop! Pop! Pop!

At least one bullet hit their vehicle, maybe two. The driver swerved as we’d done, and I noticed at least three people in the vehicle. Thankfully, the odds were in our favor. I fired off two more rounds as Jeff sped up then slowed down, just as he’d trained himself to do.

When I popped off three more shots, one hitting directly in the windshield, I hissed. But that’s the moment one of the bastards appeared from the passenger window. He had something in his hands.

I shifted the beam of light and groaned. “Speed up, Dale Earnhardt. Drive like the wind. When you manage to lose them for a second, find a place to pull over. Fast.”

“What?”

“Do it now!” The fuckers had a bazooka-style weapon, which would blow the SUV into a million pieces.

Jeff careened around a corner, flooring it to get some distance then heading off road. When he slammed on the brakes, there was a collective moan from two others in the vehicle. He went off road onto a gravel driveway. How the hell had the man seen it? I was just grateful he had.

“Get out. Get out. Get out!” I yelled, not wasting any time to throw open the doors. As soon as we all jumped out, I heard the whistling sound as the launch ensued.

We’d had not a second to spare, the missile hitting its target.

The explosion was immediate and powerful, pitching all four of us into the surrounding trees. I rolled several times, the flashlight flying from my fingers, before being slammed against a tree, jarred but completely in control of my senses. Thankfully, my weapon was still firmly planted in one hand. When I heard a screech of tires as the driver slammed to a stop, I did what I could to jerk to a standing position. “Kill the motherfuckers.”

Pain racked my body, but I refused to be held back, stumbling into the road along with at least two of my other men. The vehicle with the wretched bastards had flown past, skidding to a stop, their engine idling. I wasn’t in the mood to waste a single second. I held the weapon in both hands, taking long strides in the dark toward the assholes, not hesitating to fire at will.

So did Jeff and Camden, both my soldiers flanking my sides.

Camden was even more of an expert marksman than I was, firing off enough shots that within seconds the windshield had been completely shattered, the vehicle itself riddled in bullets.

There was no movement inside the vehicle from what I could tell but that meant shit to me. You never walked away from a man with a gun until you saw the whites of his eyes.

Refusing to back down, I advanced. As soon as I reached the oversized SUV, I threw open the driver’s door. That’s when I noticed blood covered the windshield, a large hole in the head of the man in the driver’s seat.

Camden threw open one of the other doors, checking the two men’s pulses.

“They’re dead,” he said. He had a flashlight of his own, shining the beam from one side of the vehicle to the other. “Same branding as the others. What the fuck is this shit?”

“What the fuck is that ticking sound?” Jeff asked.

This was likely just another lure to a fiery death.

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