Page 63 of The Biker's Second Chance
“I know,” Jayne murmurs, already there, laying a blanket over her naked body, touching her cheek like she is made of porcelain and not bruises. “You are safe. You are safe.”
A guard charges me with a rebar hook. I meet him halfway. The hook glances off my shoulder with a thunk that numbs my arm. I ram my knife into his throat and feel the cartilage part. Hot blood hits my face, salty metal that coats my tongueand burns my eyes. He gargles and claws at the blade, blood pumping between his fingers. I shove him back and he collapses, feet drumming a fast, stupid rhythm. It slows. Stops.
“Contact! Catwalk left,” Virus calls. Three more appear high, rifles up. Tella lays down suppressing fire with the truck’s mounted AR while Lash belly-crawls under a forklift and comes up behind a stack of crates. He fires three times. One man’s jaw disintegrates. Another spins off the rail and hits the concrete hard enough to pop like a dropped melon. The third dives and vanishes into the dark.
“Clear the office,” Leo orders.
I kick the door and it splinters. Inside is a cheap desk, a green banker's lamp, and a wall of whiteboards covered in shipping numbers and initials. A battered filing cabinet sits open with folders labeled in block letters. On the desk, three burner phones and a book of ledgers and invoices.
Bingo.
I pocket the phones, rip the invoices free, and snap pictures of the whiteboards with my cell. A cheap fan chops the air, pushing the stink of cigarettes and sweat around the room. Someone left a tuna sandwich open on the blotter. It is crawling with flies.
Behind me the fight thins out into groans and whimpers. The warehouse echoes with the drip of blood and the soft command of my brothers clearing corners.
“Spike,” Jayne calls, breathless. “We need more blankets. And clothes. Anything.”
“On it.” I slap the phones into my kutte, shove the ledger down my waistband, and step back into the light. I grab Rumble who is still bleeding from his nose perfusely and tell him to get Jayne what she needs.
The women are moving now in a broken river. Jayne is everywhere at once. She tears sheets into strips. She pressesgauze to a cracked lip. She wraps a shaking girl in my kutte without thinking and I feel oddly naked seeing my patch on a stranger’s shoulders. The girl clings to it like it is a life raft.
“Load them,” Leo orders. “Trucks in and out. Now.”
The first wave files into Rumble’s truck, shadows in blankets. Rumble grins red and puffy through his broken nose and gives them a thumbs-up that somehow makes two of them smile back. Tella keeps his AR across his knees, eyes on the door, jaw clenched.
I duck behind the office wall and pull a burner from my vest. The plastic is greasy with someone else’s hand oil. I thumb it on. The contact list is short. One entry is a single X. I hit call.
It rings twice.
“Whoever this is just bought a grave,” Xavier says. Calm. Bored. A razor wrapped in velvet.
“You have a staffing problem,” I say. “Chrome Creed solved it.”
Silence. I can hear him breathing. I can almost hear the gears turning.
“Spike,” he says finally, savoring it. “I wondered how long it would take.”
“We have your girls. We have your paperwork. We have your phones. If you want any of it back, you are going to cut us in.”
“To what, exactly?”
“Your little enterprise. You deal. We distribute. We take a piece. See what you fail to understand is this is our town. Our territory. No one does business here without our say so."
A low chuckle. “You expect me to believe a biker club wants to be my business partner?”
“I expect you to believe I like money,” I say. “And that I like hurting people who make me bleed even more. You are not the first snake we have skinned. But you might be the most profitable.”
Another pause. He is weighing it. Or pretending to. “You have my attention.”
“Good. Then listen. We set terms. We set a meet. Neutral ground. You bring a taste to show good faith. Cash. We bring proof of life. You get your property back in batches when the first wire clears.”
“Property,” he repeats, amused. “I see you are learning the language.”
“I am learning what will get you to sit down.”
“And if I decide to come take them?” His voice dips, lazy and cold. “If I send a hundred men to your little clubhouse and turn your women into lawn ornaments?”
I glance out through the doorway. Jayne is kneeling in front of a girl with a bandaged wrist, holding both of the girl’s hands like prayer, whispering into her hair while the girl shakes silently. There is blood on Jayne’s cheek and dirt under her nails and she has never looked more like a queen.
