Page 33 of Jax

Thank fucking God it is four in the morning.

I had given us a lead, and it felt like years passed before I saw the glaring lights and familiar wrought iron gates of the compound. I saw the men gathered in the parking lot, guns drawn, but I didn’t slow, and I didn’t hesitate.

I came crashing through the opening, scraping the car on the side of the metal and its horrifying shriek ending in seconds before the car skidded along the asphalt, and my foot slammed the breaks as I wrenched the hand break. We slid to a stop by the door, burning rubber assaulting my nose, sweat pouring from my skin, and the harsh, panicked breathing of every single passenger in the car.

I turned to look out my window, to see if he’d followed me, but the black Jeep was nowhere to be seen.

I didn’t get a chance to breathe before every door was yanked open and I and the girls were hauled out of the seats and out onto the concrete.

The old men were grabbing their women, and Mint was grabbing the club girls. Pipe had my arm as he helped me to stand, my legs unable to hold me as the adrenaline sank right out of me.

“What the fuck happened?” Wolf yelled to no one in general. “Who the fuck were they?”

I glanced to the dark city, the lights of a few distant homes and divided street lamps being the only thing visible from the compound. It was as if nothing had happened as Fellpeak stood in silence looking back at me.

“No fucking clue. I didn’t get a good look,” I grunted, dropping my ass to the concrete, too tired to stand. I leaned my back against the side of the truck feeling the ridges the fence left in the new paintwork as I tried to calm my heart rate.

“Black Jacks,” Anna breathed, leaning into Wolf’s side. “They were Black Jacks.”

“You saw them?” Wolf looked down at her, hair a ragged mess falling around his face, long beard not even close to brushing the apex of her head.

Anna nodded. “No doubt about it. What they didn’t cover in tattoos they’d covered in scars, Russian military garble.”

“So, they weren’t able to catch you?” Pretty frowned. “Why do you say that like it’s a bad thing?”

“It means they didn’t try to cut me off at all. They were planning to chase me the whole way here, but in our town with so many corners like ours, they had no way of catching up to me, not with the way they maneuvered.”

“Meaning?” Pretty prompted.

“That this is a warning,” Wolf growled, and every single hair on every brother’s body stood on end. Wolf was also our almost seven-foot tall club president. Our forefront man. When a man like that sounded threatened, it did things to the rest of us that nobody wanted to invoke.

“This war isn’t over,” he grumbled, looking at each and everyone one of us in the eye. “Church tomorrow morning.”

His hand wrapped around the back of Anna’s neck and he pulled her alongside him as he headed toward the club house, swinging open the doors and stepping inside, not before turning to look at us, the members without women and yelled, “And somebody move that fucking truck.”

Pipe’s hand squeezed my shoulder.

“Don’t worry, man, I got it.”

“You can’t drive, dip shit,” I grunted, getting to my feet.

“I said I can’t drive. Not legally anyway. I didn’t say I wasn’t able to.” He flashed me a smile and hopped into the driver’s side of the nearly demolished new truck—that I sure as shit wouldn’t be paying Hunter for, not again anyway—and watched him reverse the truck away from the long black skid marks leading from the gate to my amazing parking position and around to the back of the club house.

Motherfucker.

I watched him leave and felt the adrenaline seep out of my body, leaving it tired and exhausted and letting my mind sink into a restless line of thinking that sent shivers up my spine.

“Do you think that Jeep was following me or the girls?” I said.

Mint came up along my side, Baby and Georgia in tow behind him as his pale green eyes looked down the few inches into mine. “Well they sure as fuck didn’t come across either of you by accident.”

That’s what I am afraid of.

Mint took one more look at me before he said, “You got somewhere to be?”

I looked to the clubhouse, where most of the lights had come on like a beacon, casting a luminescent glow on my bike parked just outside the doors. “Yeah, brother,” I sighed, and Mint clasped my shoulder.

I heard a jingle before he tossed something at me. I caught it on reflex, my hand clasping around the group of keys. “Take mine.” Mint nodded over to the blue Harley a few bikes down. “You forgot to fill yours.”

---