Fire Meets Fire: Wretched Soulz MC

Chapter 26

What does a man do when he arrives at a property late in the evening after a long dreary flight? The assumption was that maybe he’d have a drink in the luxurious lounge, but his most predictable destination was probably the bedroom. The master at that, it had obviously been prepared for him.

But it wasn’t just guesswork that leads me to the here and now, which finds me lounging back on the California king-sized bed in the kind of luxury I’ve never enjoyed in my life. I’d been both amused and impressed to see the men from both clubs—once the insults and threats were pushed to one side—come together to work almost as well as any military special forces team I’ve ever been part of. I’d been worried about discipline, but with the burly sergeants-at-arms kicking their men into shape, and Claw and his counterpart enforcing their words, no man seemed to dare take a misstep.

Despite Slugger having had to take off to deal with something in one of the other Soulz charters, the men bonded against a shared enemy. Like a well-oiled machine, obviously taking advantage of the military experience within their ranks, the skeleton staff and minimal security manning the estate, vastly outnumbered, were taken down, and admirably, with minimum bloodshed. All are now securely detained in the basement, with some of the bikers making sure there’s no way they can escape or otherwise raise an alarm. They’d been provided with cushions, blankets, and enough food and drink that they’d decided to co-operate. None seemed particularly loyal to either the owner or the guest who was about to arrive.

From our captives we’d learned that Netherton would be expecting a meet-and-greet man, a typical butler. It had taken a bit of debate, but in the end, it was Fire who was assigned the role. As it was agreed redheads never look “normal” in most people’s eyes, they thought he could pass despite his shock of red hair and matching beard. In a borrowed suit hiding his tattoos, he looked almost respectable.

Legit, and one of Ogre’s men, Squint, were chosen to act as security, believing their muscles would make them look the part, but they were also given strict instructions not to open their mouths.

The absence of the myriad of other staff it apparently takes to keep one man satisfied would be explained by them being off duty due to the lateness of his hour of arrival. The only unknown will be the number of men he’ll bring with him, though Legend has checked the seats booked on the flight and there were no more in his name. There’s no doubt a man like Netherton should be worried about dealing with a group of bikers. Surely, he must consider they could be about to scam him. We’d been on the lookout in the event he’d employed local security, but so far none have arrived.

Perhaps he’s confident in the company of one percenters. Scum does clump together. While I don’t personally know the man, that he’s been hounding me for months is enough to convict him, let alone that he’d go to such lengths to see a woman, who, to my knowledge had never personally harmed him, meet her death. In my mind, he’s earned his place among the bottom dwellers.

“His plane’s landed. He should be here in half an hour.” Chaz looks concerned as he provides that information, his mood confirmed when he adds, “Are you alright?”

The man standing beside him takes a different stance. “She going to play her part?”

Chaz inhales sharply, and I jump in fast to stop the two fighting. “She is going to play her part admirably,” I inform him, then remind him what they should be doing. “Shouldn’t you be finding a place to hide?”

I was perfectly happy to be left alone to confront Netherton, but neither wanted me to face him without backup. Ogre, because he doesn’t trust me, and Chaz out of some misguided sense of chivalry, and concern that something I learn could trigger me, causing me to pass out.

There would be an easy way to end this, a bullet in Netherton’s head, but that wouldn’t get the closure I’m after—the answer to the question of why it’s so important to him that I’m dead. There’s always the chance with him out of the way, others may come after me instead. And shooting him wouldn’t achieve the bikers’ primary objective, the money. Apart from Chaz, I know few are here because of their concern for my health.

So my role is to get the explanation I want, and to get Netherton to open his coffers. After that, I’ve no issue with what happens next, nor that Netherton is unlikely to leave in anything other than a coffin.

Minutes tick by. Chaz and Ogre check out possible positions. A closet with slatted doors seems the ideal place. When word finally reaches us that the unsuspecting senator has arrived on the estate, and, as predicted, is only stopping for an expensive tot of brandy before making his way up the stairs, the two bikers disappear as silently as a discreet fart in fresh air.

The door slams open, Netherton strides in, flicking the light switch and illuminating the scene. I brace but he doesn’t even look my way as he shrugs off his jacket and throws it over the back of a chair. Next, he undoes presumably expensive cufflinks before pushing up his sleeves. He rolls his neck, and winces, and I feel a brief twinge of sympathy for the stiffness that comes from hours spent on a plane, although he was in first class with little to complain about. It”s only then that he turns and spies the strange female lying under the covers.

His reaction is of surprise, but not one of regret. His first words are mumbled under his breath, and I have to strain to hear them.

“Hey, John boy. You certainly came through for me.”

He starts moving in my direction, a smirk on his face, his tongue licking his lips. His obvious thoughts of depravity to come makes me swallow hard, as memories of when I last saw such expressions on men’s faces threaten to shoot me back to the time when my captors knew they had it all their own way. A hard swallow, and a strict reminder that this time I hold all the cards enables me to, for the moment, play my part.

I smile sweetly at him, an expression I hadn’t thought was in my physical vocabulary, and wait for him to get close.

“Well, you’re pretty enough. I’ll give him points for that. Could have done with putting a bit of makeup on though, honey.” He chuckles softly. “Though practical I suppose, your tears would soon wipe that off.”

From his reaction, I take having strange women procured for him is not abnormal in his world. But his reference to making me cry has me wondering just what he does to them. The realisation knocks a dent in my decision to hear him out, to decide whether he’s got a case against me.

At my lack of response, he continues the initiative. “Well, take off the cover, sweetheart. Let me see what you’re hiding under there.”

I can’t resist obeying his instruction seductively, lowering the covering one inch at a time. I see his gaze narrow when the straps of my tank top come into view. Naked was obviously his expectation.

I’m watching him carefully as I reveal the rest, and am rewarded with his loud gasp and the way he staggers back from the bed as I expose the explosive attached to my chest. I’m not worried when he races to the door, one of the bikers will have locked that already. And again, I enjoy his look of distress as he tries the handle, rattling it uselessly, before realising he’s trapped and turning to face me.

“Who the fuck are you?”

I don’t expect the visceral punch in the gut that that question causes. Sure, I already knew that he hadn’t recognised me, but it suddenly hits me that this is the man who wants me dead and he doesn’t even know me. I’d always imagined things like him sticking pins into a voodoo doll impression of me.

He must have given someone else the information to investigate me, and took no further interest himself.

Sitting up, I swing my legs off the bed. He pushes himself back against the door, hands splayed and the whites of his eyes showing.

“Who are you?” he asks again, his voice not quite as firm as before.

I stalk toward him. “You don’t know? Just how many women have you taken a hit out on?”

He looks like he’s just been kicked in the balls. His Adam’s apple works as he swallows a couple of times before he spits out my name. “Queenie May?”

Having no need to confirm it, I don’t. “You want me dead. I want to know the reason for that.”

“Take off that… thing,” he waves his hand toward my chest, “and we’ll talk.”

“It’s comfortable.” I shrug. I’m not lying. For all the time I’ve been wearing it, I’ve gotten used to the weight. “Just start talking.” My eyes narrow. “If you’ve got a good reason for wanting me dead, well, perhaps I can get on board with that.” Inwardly I wince, knowing Chaz will be hurt. But whatever he says, so many things could have been done differently that day, maybe more people left breathing. It might have not been my fault, but why is it me who survived? Why not someone more worthy? “If you don’t give me anything I can agree with, then this bomb explodes, taking us both with it.” My tone is flat. There’s no doubting my words.

His eyes have gone wide, and his chest is heaving as though he’s run a marathon.

My shoulders rise and lower once again. “Or maybe I’m just so fed up with everything, I’ll press the trigger anyway.” I show him a device I’ve been hiding in my hand. It’s the dummy switch, but he doesn’t know that.

His mouth opens. “You’re suicidal.”

“Maybe I am. Maybe I’m not. But I’m getting pretty fucking tired of not hearing any explanation.” My lids half close over my eyes, and I tilt my head. “Perhaps I should just forget it. I doubt there’s anything you can say that’s worth telling.”

That lights him up. “No?” He takes a threatening step forward, and I raise my hand in reminder and warning. “No?” he shouts, but stops a few feet away from me. “You’re a woman playing games in a man’s world. You’re the weaker sex. You shouldn’t be anywhere near a uniform. And the result was just what I’d been cautioning people would happen. You got good men killed, and all for nothing.”

“I did my job.”

That my tone lacks emotion seems to incense him. “Your job? You’re crazy. You flew into a sandstorm against expert advice. You crash landed, killed or got your crew captured. You should have stayed grounded, both you and your craft.”

But that’s not how it works. Pilots like me follow orders. Of course we’ve got leeway whether the conditions are too dangerous to fly, but you don’t get medals for being too careful. Anyway, it wasn’t the weather that proved our downfall, but Netherton isn’t impressed when I tell him.

His hand slashes down through the air. “If you’d taken off when those SEALs still had radio reception, you’d have known they’d been captured.”

He’s right. No matter what duress they were under, any message they were forced to send would have included a coded warning. Then the rescuing part would have been planned accordingly.

I turn my back on him, knowing my senses would alert me if he went on the attack, and that even if the device I’m holding is a dummy, I’ve got backup nearby. But I can’t face him while I get my thoughts in order.

The batteries died.

But the SEALs had already been captured.

Should I have taken the lack of radio contact as an indication all was not right?Fuck, I would have done, had the weather not delayed us.

Another thought hits me as I spin around again. “Who told you of the delay? Where did this expert advice come from?” All of our missions are top secret, and no details should have been leaked about them.

“I was on the committee.”

God save me from politicians.

His voice goes hard. “I recommended my nephew for a posthumous commendation. But like they never listened to me about the dangers of having females serving on the front line, they refused to give it to him. They gave you the medal instead.”

“Your nephew?” I frown at him, trying to think of any of my crew who had relatives in government. Or maybe it had been one of the unfortunate SEALs. I can well understand why there would be any number of reasons they’d want to keep their relationship with Netherton quiet.

He swallows hard. “Brendan Scott.”

My eyebrows hit my hairline. “Karen?” Crews have more than enough time to share their backgrounds, and the information he’d shared was about how he’d grown up poor. Like so many, he’d joined the Army to escape going down the rabbit hole of crime. He was the unlikeliest man in my view to have a senator in his family. Surely not one who could fly first class and golf at expensive mansions.

“Karen?” Netherton repeats. “Even now you won’t do him the courtesy of calling him by his name and insist on using that ridiculous and demeaning handle.”

I don’t bother answering. I don’t know exactly when he’d gotten tagged, but it was before I knew him. None of us chose our call names, and some certainly didn’t win that lottery. But once given, it stuck. I’d feel more disrespect if I called him a name that he hadn’t earned, and one which had been used with affection.

“Brendan went over your head to your major, but he backed you instead. Told him to follow his chain of command, and that any objection had been noted. And look how that ended.” He sneers.

Back Stateside, Major Harper had been one of the many to take our debriefings after we were rescued. We’d hashed out every detail, and while there were future lessons to be learned, he hadn’t apportioned blame to me. He’d recommended me for commendation instead.

There’s so much I don’t understand. Trying to keep my voice even, I give an explanation in order to prompt him. “People who serve know they might suffer physical injury up to, and including death when they sign up. Karen,” I refuse to call him any other name, “knew that as well as any of us. He also knew we all follow orders.” I brush my hair back with my free hand. “He was an excellent co-pilot, one I was proud to have by my side. But he didn’t get promoted because of his doubt-saying. I took his advice on board that day, as normal, but the situation was urgent, and I knew when we’d be able to fly safely.” As he snorts and his mouth opens to object, I add forcefully, “And it wasn’t the weather that brought us down.”

“You wouldn’t have had that missile fired at you if you hadn’t flown.”

“Karen wanted a delay. Not a cancellation.”

“When contact was lost with the SEALs, you should have aborted the mission.”

“And left them to die?”

“Half of them did.”

And he’s on our defence committee? I speak my next words carefully, reading the expression on his face. “And if it had been me who died, would Karen be standing here being berated? Would he have a two-million-dollar price on his head?”

He doesn’t need to confirm the negative answer that’s the only one he can give. Instead, he again spits at me, “If the Army hadn’t let women fly, then the decision would have been taken logically.”

Thoughtfully, I keep my eyes on him. “It doesn’t add up. Why are you so worried about your supposed nephew now? Where were you when he was alive, as I’m pretty damn sure you weren’t in his life?”