Page 58 of Warrant
The fuckwads shooting at us were crouched behind an old tractor that looked like it hadn’t run in twenty years. “Shit.” I took aim at a foot. It was all I could see. Squeezing the trigger, I grinned when the guy dropped to the ground howling in pain. I continued shooting until the dumbass stopped rolling around. One down. Who knew how many to go.
My cover fire had made the others hiding behind the tractor stop long enough for Riggs and Scythe to crouch behind some barrels. Nothing in this fucking place made for good cover. The only good thing about it meant these bastards had nowhere to go either. I met Scythe’s gaze and watched as he motioned to his right, toward the tractor. I shook my head.
Bad fucking plan.
He was already moving before I could do anything. He was drawing their fire so that I could come in behind them. But he was much closer to their location than I was. Which meant I had to fucking hustle before they shot his dumb ass.
Sprinting from behind the hay, I made my way toward the tractor while they were focused on Scythe. Riggs was stuckwhere he was unless he wanted to catch a stray bullet, but he was laying down suppression fire to keep our targets from having a free shot at Scythe, or from noticing me.
As soon as I stepped around the back of the tractor, the two men left alive swung their pistols my way. Two shots and silence descended on the old shed. I stared down at the four men who were laying there dead. Either Scythe or Riggs must have taken out one of them because I’d only shot three.
“Could’ve left one of them for us,” Scythe grumbled as he walked up.
“Don’t do that again,” I told him in a low tone.
“What? It worked, didn’t it?”
“You could have gotten shot, Scythe,” I snarled, pissed off at him.
“I knew you could handle it.” He smacked me on the back so hard I nearly pitched forward into the tractor.
“What are we doing with the bodies?” Riggs asked, meeting up with us in the middle of the room.
This thing was an old storage shed, but it was big. Not the size of the huge barns you usually found on old ranches like this, but a damn good size.
“We’ll take care of them after-”
Scythe broke off as the door swung open. All of us swung our weapons that way, but it was too damn late. Three more men came through the door.
Riggs landed a shot that brought down one of them right there in the doorway as we all broke into a run and scattered to make ourselves harder to hit.
My steps faltered as I recognized the man on the right. There was the same recognition in Forge’s eyes. “What the fuck are you doing here?” he asked.
“Told you we were looking for the kid,” I told him, my eyes straying to the man on his left who was about to take a shot in Riggs’s direction.
Forge sighed, held up his pistol and pulled the trigger. Silence again as his ‘friend’ dropped to the ground. Blood poured from his head where the bullet had entered. “Wasn’t staying here much longer anyway,” Forge said with a shrug when I arched a brow at him.
“Where the fuck is my son at?” Riggs bellowed, rushing toward Forge.
The man watched Riggs—pissed as fuck—come toward him and snorted. “You weren’t kidding. Heisa big fucker.”
I stepped in front of Riggs and put a restraining hand on his shoulder. “This is the guy who helped Aella. Kept her safe.”
Riggs paused, then scowled at Forge. “Why? Why would you do that?”
“Signed up for this gig to make some money,” Forge said. “No one said anything about kidnapping kids. And certainly nothing about…” He let that last part hang, allowing Riggs’s imagination to fill in the blank. “Couldn’t let that happen.”
“What did you think you were doing?” Scythe asked as he walked up.
“Something to do with drugs. I’m good with moving drugs. Once they brought those kids in, I was going to fucking leave.”
“Why didn’t you?” I asked.
He sighed and scrubbed a hand through his hair as he holstered up his weapon. We all slung our rifles over our bodies so they pointed down at the floor. “Was on my way out, late at night. Didn’t think anyone else was awake but…” He paused and eyed Riggs.
“But what,” Riggs insisted, fist clenching.
“One of the fuckers was creeping around. Going toward the room your daughter was in. He didn’t have the best reputationwhen it came to women,” he said. “I doubted he could be trusted around a kid either. So I killed him, buried him out back, and stuck around so no one else tried anything.”
