Page 74 of Painless
“Who the fuck knows?” T-Bone groaned. “Our muscle, our connections to Four Corners’ wealth, probably. All we knew was, we wouldn’t make it home until we fought and clawed our way out.”
“How did you get out?” Reaper leaned forward in his chair.
T-Bone gave a smug little grin at the question. “We had ears in the trees and eyes in the sky.”
Horus clicked his beak. Hades’ ears pricked forward. Us three humans all looked at each other, knowing what that meant without needing to say anything.
“Anyway, we took out our guards and slipped out in the dead of night,” Dyno said. “Found your uncle’s bedchamber, removed that lying tongue of his, and took our parting gifts,” he added with a sneer. “We made it home to the clubhouse after two days. The next day, us three rode out to the Four Corners capitol to report the fuckery to Vance. After that, we rode home to a pile of smoking ashes.”
“Our president, VP…” T-Bone choked up, the muscles at his throat working hard as he swallowed. “All our men, their women, kids. Fucking boarded up inside.” He sucked in a ragged breath through clenched teeth. “I’m just hoping they died quickly.”
Silence fell over the room. Reaper watched the three of them struggle to keep it together. Our loss of one man was a heavy weight in all of us. I couldn’t imagine if we lost the entire club.
“I meant what I said the other day,” I told T-Bone. “You did the world a favor by taking care of my uncle. But he was a minnow, and General Tash is a shark. I imagine you took out some of those troops you escorted when you escaped?”
T-Bone nodded, his gaze down at his shoes. “Grudge here picked off a couple of squadron leaders. He’s good at the silent assassin stuff.”
He jerked his head at the man with the long hair and beard, who’d been completely silent. Come to think of it, he didn’t say anything at the cantina either.
“That’ll do it,” Reaper said softly. “Any slight against the general and you’re living on borrowed time.”
“He was probably hoping to use them after getting my uncle to surrender,” I pointed out.
Reaper nodded his agreement. “We’d been working with Tash, until we fulfilled our usefulness a couple months ago. He turned one of our own against us and tried to take us out. We escaped, but it’s been a shitshow of trying to stay ahead of him ever since. We lost one good man in the attack today.”
“My condolences.” T-Bone actually sounded sincere. He sighed tiredly. “We were hard up trying to figure out what the fuck to do. After meeting Youngblood here, we decided to swallow our pride and see if y’all would offer refuge to some homeless strays.” He let out a bitter laugh. “Just our luck that we’d roll up to find fucking drones bombing your place.”
“How’d you stop them?” Reaper’s knuckles were white on the edge of his chair. Finally, the question we’d all been waiting for.
“Found a few small teams of well-camouflaged asswipes. First waves were close, only about a hundred yards from your wall. They triggered the launchers that tossed the tear gas over. Must’ve buried those things ahead of time in the dead of night.”
“Shit,” Reaper and I breathed in unison.
Our night vision was our biggest weakness, and that fucked us. Horus was a daytime predator, so while we saw every blade of grass moving when the sun was up, there was no way we could catch everything at night.
“Second waves were about a quarter mile out,” T-Bone continued. “They controlled the drones. Pretty fancy setup, too. And so well-concealed, we almost missed ‘em.”
“But you didn’t.” Reaper peered at him shrewdly. “How?”
“Like I said, scythe-man,” T-Bone smirked, noting his patch. “Ears in the trees. Eyes in the sky.”
“Long story short,” Dyno cut in. “We killed them, destroyed the controllers, saved the day. Want to stop treating us like the bad guys now?”
Reaper tented his fingers in thought for a few moments, then stood from the chair. “Take off the restraints, but they’re staying in here for the time being.” As Shadow walked up to unlock their cuffs, the president turned to me. “Bring these guys some food and water, then put people on their door. Twenty-four hour shifts.”
“You got it, Reap.”
As I turned to leave, a snarl and a curse made me pause.
“Fucking Demons,” Dyno hissed, rubbing at his wrists, now free of restraints. “We save your fucking asses, tell you our whole story, and youstilltreat us like prisoners?”
“Easy, Dyno.” T-Bone leaned back in his chair, his posture relaxed. “We had to decide if trusting them was worth the risk. Let them make the same decision.”
“Listen to your sergeant,” Reaper warned.
With that, he followed me out the door, with Shadow bringing up the rear.
Twenty-Four
