Page 43 of Damron
“Thank you, Damron.”
“For?”
“Forgiveness.”
I shrugged. “To honor, love, and protect,” I said.
She nodded and checked the slide on her own piece—a tiny Sig that looked like a toy in her hands—and moved to the kitchen. I wanted to drag her by the hair, but there wasn’t time.
I joined Nitro at the window. “How many?”
He flicked the blinds, eyes hard. “A dozen bikes, three cars. They’re staging by the school playground. Full colors.”
The engines got louder, a rising wall of thunder that felt like it was coming up through the foundation. I heard shouts, the sound of glass breaking, and then the world turned red-white as the first Molotov hit the front of the house. The window by the entryway went up like a barbecue pit—fire everywhere, oily black smoke already roiling into the air. Nitro kicked the coffee table over for cover. I yelled for Augustine and the prospects to take the side windows. Nitro dropped to a knee and started shooting through the mail slot, because Nitro never did subtle.
Bullets started tearing through the siding, shattering picture frames, chewing drywall into powder. I caught a glimpse of the street: bikes parked like cavalry, headlights aimed at the house, shapes moving behind the flare. I counted at least fifteen menin cuts, two with rifles, the rest with pistols and bats. Someone tossed a flashbang through the busted living room window.
“Down!” I shouted. Nitro ducked behind the overturned table. The grenade rolled into the middle of the room and went off, not with a Hollywood boom but a white-out crack that erased sound and light together. My ears filled with sand and blood. I fumbled for the pistol, blinked until my vision reset, and crawled for the front hall.
More shots. Then the back door caved in, two Dire Straits bikers storming through with pistols up, faces painted in black stripes like football goons. I put a bullet through the first guy’s eye, watched him jerk and spin. The second fired wild, took out a cabinet and part of the refrigerator. I crab-crawled forward, wrapped him by the knees, and tackled him onto the tile. He was bigger than me, but not smarter. I drove my thumb into his windpipe, felt it collapse, and rolled off just as Augustine put two more rounds into his chest.
“Got the back!” Augustine screamed, voice already raw.
The kitchen filled with smoke. I staggered to my feet and saw Carly crouched by the island, gun shaking but pointed true. She was bleeding—a slice down her arm from flying glass—but she didn’t even blink.
“You okay?” I barked.
She nodded, then looked past me. “They’re coming around the side.”
I didn’t ask how she knew; her place, her rules. I grabbed a shotgun from a dead man’s hand, racked a shell, and took position behind the stove. The window over the sink shattered, a Molotov arcing in and splattering flames across the granite. Carly ducked, dropped to her belly, and I fired through the window. I heard a yell, then a gurgle. Another silhouette ran past, then dropped as Nitro, now outside, picked him off from the yard.
Nitro was an artist with a rifle. He never fired more than twice in the same spot, and he always aimed for the joints. I saw him take out a guy’s knee at fifty yards, then calmly reload and wait for the next target. I covered him as best I could, blasting away at anyone who got too close to the windows. For five minutes, it was pure fucking chaos—gunfire, fire, the smell of burning insulation and the copper tang of blood. Every few seconds, I yelled to check on the club. Augustine was still up, moving between cover, herding the two prospects like a sheepdog. Seneca was already wounded, dragging one leg, but he kept his shotgun tight and his head lower.
Then everything went quiet.
I pressed against the wall, breathing fire, and listened. The bike engines had died. No more shooting, just the crackle of flames and the sound of glass dropping out of window frames. I moved to the foyer, checked the hall. Carly was gone.
“Carly!” I bellowed.
Nothing.
I felt the dread then, the old cold beast in the gut. I kicked through the debris, shouting her name, checking every room. Smoke was filling the house, pouring through the vents, and the carpet was already on fire in three places. I heard a scream from the upstairs, but it wasn’t hers—just a dying man from the other club, choking out his last. In the garage, I found the bodies. Four Dire Straits, one still twitching. Nitro was there, blood on his face, a knife in his left hand and a pistol in the right.
“They got the girl,” he said, breathing hard. “Ghost himself. They went out the back, toward the school.”
“How many?” I said, already moving.
“Two, maybe three.”
I tossed him a nod. “Put out the fires. Or don’t. Nobody needs to remember this house.”
I sprinted through the backyard, past the burning pool shed and into the alley that ran behind the subdivision. There was a trail—a bloody smear on the concrete, and a strip of torn fabric caught on a fence. I followed it, lungs burning, feet pounding. At the end of the alley, in the shadow of the school’s chain link, I saw Ghost. He was older than I remembered. The years had thickened him, given him a gut and a limping gait, but his arms were still roped with muscle and his eyes were pure ice. He had Carly by the wrist, dragging her toward a waiting van, the Dire Straits prospect covering them with a sawed-off.
“Let her go!” I yelled.
Ghost grinned. “You got the balls to say it, St. James. But I always knew you didn’t have the sack to finish.”
I raised my pistol, took a breath, and shot the prospect in the throat. Ghost spun, using Carly as a shield, then hauled her behind the van. I closed the distance in a dead run. Ghost fired at me through the van’s rear window, shattering it but missing by a mile. I ducked left, hit the ground, and came up shooting. The van was a shitshow—bullet holes, blood spray, the stench of sweat and panic. I could hear Carly screaming now, raw and animal. She was fighting him, biting, clawing, doing anything to get free. I rounded the van, gun up. Ghost waited for me, crouched behind the rear tire, knife in one hand, pistol in the other.
