Page 10 of Kilo's Edge

I looked over my shoulder and found Kilo staring at me. He didn’t even try to make it look like he wasn’t. “Um…nothing. It’s stupid, but a branch went through our window and…” I trailed off, not wanting to tell him that none of us had slept for the rest of the night as we cocooned ourselves in the relative safety of Mom’s bedroom. He’d think I was dumb. Maybe I was. Then again, maybe he’d understand. He’d been there for us since the beginning. Knew what we’d been going through.

“Do you need us to come fix that for you?”

“No. Thank you though. Really. We appreciate everything you’ve done.”

“I’m just a phone call away,” he told me. “Even if it’s midnight during a monsoon,” he joked. “My house is twenty minutes from yours.”

“Thanks, Dustin. Really.”

“Alright, well, I took care of the alert and you’re all set.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

I hung up and turned around, letting out a little squeak because Kilo was right behind me now. I hadn’t even heard him move. His massive arms were crossed over an equally muscular chest. The fabric of his t-shirt strained against his muscles.

“A branch wentthroughyour window last night? I thought it banged on the window?”

That answered whether or not he’d been listening in. “Yeah. It’s in our backyard and-”

“You have someone coming to fix it?” he asked, his eyes dropping down to the cell phone in my hand.

“Oh. No. Um, I was going to try to call someone later today.”

He nodded and motioned for me to come back to the case that acted as a counter. “Background check went through just fine. Faster than usual,” he told me as he ran the credit card I handed over.

I wasn’t sure what to say to that. Thank God? No, that would make him suspicious. So I settled for staying quiet.

“Case comes with the purchase,” he told me, placing my new gun inside the black plastic gun case and handing me a key.

“Thank you.”

He’d already set aside things I would need, like bullets, and packed those into a brown bag.

“Is…is that it?” I asked. Seemed like this should be a harder process or something.

He shot me another grin. “That’s it. I recommend you practice with it. Won’t do you any good if you’re rusty and miss.”

That would imply I knew what the hell I was doing with it in the first place. Dad had never bothered to show me how to shoot. He probably never thought I’d need to know. That he’d be there to protect us. I didn’t tell Kilo I didn’t know what I was doing, though. I just nodded and held onto my new purchases. “Okay.”

“This is an indoor shooting range, too,” he told me. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “It’s back there. We have eyes and ears that you can use if you don’t want to buy them. But you’ll have to purchase the inner ears. No one wants to reuse those.” He laughed at his own joke.

Eyes? Ears? He may as well be speaking another language. I gave him a weak smile and started backing up. “Thank you so much,” I stammered as I beat a hasty retreat.

“Are you okay?” he asked, his eyes narrowing.

“Um, yeah. I just have to get home. Thank you again.” It was cowardly, but I rushed out of there as fast as my legs would carry me. It wasn’t even him I was running from this time. Not really. It was just that buying a gun made this all too real.

The next time they came for us, I was going to fight back, or die trying. And it scared the hell out of me. My first order of business was to go home and look up videos on how to use my new gun.

CHAPTER 5

Kilo

“Brother,” I said as I bumped Drifter’s fist. It was early and most of my club was already at the compound. Ruck had gotten a wild hair up his ass once he got a chance to see the Tucson clubhouse. He loved it.

Now we were spending most of our days off building one that was similar. The existing building would still be used for parties and get togethers, but there would be a second building with apartments.

“Remind me what we need apartments for?” Code asked. He wiped his forearm across his brow. It was already hot as balls and it was only seven in the morning. That was what July in Phoenix got you. Heat stroke.

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