Page 89 of Savage Hunter

Security floods the basement and the armed enforcers open fire.

I turn for the door and don’t check who’s falling in behind me.

I take the stairs down to the sub-basement and fly out of the door in time to see the taillights of a Mercedes car speeding out of the exit, the gate wide the fuck open. The security Cassius called in nowhere to be seen.

“Looks like your house has been compromised,” I tell Harlon and Santi as they barrel out of the staircase behind me. My hands are shaky as fuck.

“Where the fuck is Mace!” I seethe with rage and pray the man is still alive so I can kill him myself for letting them through the gate. Reigning in control over the darkness pouring through my soul is nearly impossible.

“They took her. My God. They took her.” Santi can’t seem to take a deep breath.

I smell the blood before I see the body. He’s dead, face down. This day just went the fuck sideways.

Harlon kneels over Mace’s body. We lock eyes. That one look tells me a lot. “They took them.” There’s almost disbelief in his voice. Like he thought doing business with men and women with no souls could never end badly. It was only a matter of time.

My voice is low, weighed down with forced control. “I guess this fight just got personal.”

He rises, and with him Harlon brings the force of hell. Black washes over his expression.

“You need to make this right. You let the wolves in your doors, and our women are the ones paying for your crimes. Ares gave you all you need to take them down and now you know who the snake is.”

“An error I’ll see right. But watch your tongue. One wrong word and I will end you here. I don’t take being talked down too lightly.” The pulse point at Harlon’s neck bulges. “You’re the one who kept this from us. Far as I am concerned this is on you just as much as it is on me.”

I think about raising my gun, but I need every bullet I have.

I step into his face. “See that you do. And the next time you threaten me you better put a fucking bullet in me. Or I’ll do it to you.”

Santi laps his hands against our chests and forces us apart with brute force. “Get your heads out of your asses and move!”

He’s right. I don’t know who’s bike I’m taking, but if they didn’t want to share, they should not have left the keys. I rev the motor to life just as Ares takes the one next to me.

There’s the promise of death in my friend’s eyes.

Good. He’s going to need it. If it’s one thing Primrose does well, it is train her killers to not stop until the other guy is dead.

We haul ass out of the sub-basement and tear into traffic, weaving and dodging cars. The rest of the men are behind me and we ride like a pack of demons hot out of hell. I spot the back end of the Mercedes taking a hard left. Ares pulls alongside me and we open our throttles. But it’s not enough. She’s too far ahead of me.

He gives me a stiff nod and pulls in on the left while I take the right. Cars cut us off, separating us from our target. Red lights don’t get a second glance as we play chicken with oncoming traffic.

Down this throughway, there’s only one car and thank God for that. I’m not the kind of man who worries about casualties.

I pull my gun, and sink one between a dumbass stupid enough to put his head out the window and try to shoot at us first. He slumps forward, dropping his weapon making me swerve.

From the other side, bullets spray the road in front of Ares and he gives the guy the same treatment I gave his friend. I put several into the back glass of the car. Glass cracks and another Primrose enforcer kicks out the back glass, sending the remnants into the passing street.

He gets off a couple of rounds before Ares takes care of him. I’m too busy trying to reach for the phone buzzing in my pocket and not getting sideswipes at an intersection we blow through.

Horns blare and Chicagoans let me know what they think of my riding skills in an array of languages.

Fuck ’em. But it won’t be long before the cops take notice of us tearing up the city. This needs to end now.

I aim for the tires, praying like a mad SOB that the driver knows how to handle a car. I sink a round into the back tire on my side and Ares takes out the back tire on his side. Two flats make the back end of the car fishtail down the road. One wrong jerk of the wheel is all it takes to send the Mercedes into a nearby utility pole.

Please God, let her be okay. I will give up anything you want if you let her be okay.

I don’t have the right to ask for favors, but I do anyway when metal crunches and the force of impact sends the five hundred pound V8 engine into the front seat. I rev my bike and roar up beside the car. I’m off my bike and popping the trunk. I don’t bother checking to see if the driver is alive. The blood, dead stare and the lack of moving on his part feels more like a job well done than anything I should worry about. But the guy beside him didn’t have the same luck of an instant death.

I pull the trunk lever and join Ares at the back. Black smoke pours into the air. We don’t have long before this fucker blows. I round the end of the car to find Ares staring at a large empty cavern.

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