22. Mack
22
MACK
W hen I get the text from Gigi, the first thing I do is lean over and heave my guts out.
The second thing I do is call Fury.
“They’ve ambushed Gigi and the prospect!” I shout into the phone, already running for my bike. “Where are you?”
“At the clubhouse!” he yells back. “What the fuck’s going on?”
“I’ve got the address. I’ll text it to you! Get all the men, now! We’ve gotta get her out before it’s too late!”
I hang up and almost fumble the phone as I screen shot Gigi’s text and send it to Fury, then to Magnus, Norse, and Elmo. I crank up my bike and get moving, calling Elmo with one hand and driving with the other. “Get a drone to the address I just texted you!” I shout. “Gigi and Tramp are being ambushed at that location. Need to know who’s there, how many of them, anything you got! I’m headed there right now! The other Bastards are right behind me!”
Elmo says he’ll call back. I fly through town, burning through intersections and ignoring traffic lights. The minutes seem like hours. Elmo calls me back. “Not much movement outside, but there’s a bunch of Harleys and a van outside the building. Looks like whatever’s happening is happening inside.”
“Call Magnus, tell him what you see. I’m almost there, tell him that, too. I’m not waiting for the other Bastards. I’m going in alone if I have to!”
I can’t wait. God knows what’s happening to Gigi right now. A dozen scenarios play through my mind, each one of them worse than the last. Rage burns low in my gut, climbing steadily higher. If Blaze has hurt her — if any of them have hurt her — I will burn that entire motherfucking club to the ground.
I’m the first to arrive at the scene. I can’t tell what the building is, but it looks like some sort of abandoned industrial building. I’m off my motorcycle and running toward the building, gun drawn. I’m half-expecting to be shot by a hidden sniper but I don’t have fucking time for caution. I have to get to Gigi. Behind me, I hear engines, and I know that the Bastards have arrived. Someone shouts my name, and I slow down enough to look back. It’s Fury.
“Mack! Hold up!”
“Catch up!” I turn back around and keep running. When I get close to the building’s door I try it, expecting it to be locked, but it’s not. The footsteps are close now. I turn. “They’re in here!”
“You sure?”
I set my jaw. “They have to be.”
Magnus, Norse, Reed, and Money are here now. All of them look determined and ready for war. Magnus looks at the building, then at me. “What do we know?”
“Not much. She’s in there. We gotta get her out.”
“We’re going in blind,” Magnus says to the others. “Watch your six.”
I go first through the door, followed by Fury. All the lights are off inside, bathing the interior in a gray half-light. From here we communicate with hand signals. There are noises inside the building, doors slamming, metal against metal. No voices yet. Norse signals to me that he and Reed are taking the first floor. I signal to Fury for us to make our way up to the second. It’s fucking driving me crazy that I can’t be everywhere at once, but we gotta make choices. My brothers have my back. I gotta believe that. They want to find Fury’s sister safe and sound as much as I do.
There’s an elevator to the right of the entrance, but the electricity might not be on and besides, it’s too risky. We head for the stairs instead, leaving our brothers on the ground floor. As we climb, voices reach us from above. I freeze at the second floor, cracking the door open just wide enough to listen for the source of the voices. I glance back at Fury, and he shakes his head and points up. I nod in agreement. The voices are coming from one floor above.
We keep climbing. Just as we’re about to reach the third floor, the stairwell door crashes open. A guy with a gun pushes through. He aims at us and fires just as we leap back down half a floor. I fall backwards, catching myself with the railing. Three bullets fire into the wall where I was just a second ago.
“Shit!” Fury shouts. He drops back and aims his gun, waiting for the guy to chase after us, but he doesn’t appear.
“You motherfuckers are fuckin’ toast!” the guy yells. “This place is surrounded. You’re fuckin’ done!”
“Where is she?” I yell back.
The answer is another volley of gunfire into the wall.
Fury grabs my sleeve and pulls, gesturing at the second-floor door. We drop back through that door. There’s gotta be another stairwell on the other side of the building. We clear the floor as we go, backs to each other with our guns drawn. Down below us, the crack of gunfire tells us that our brothers have met some of Blaze’s other cronies.
I send up a silent prayer that Gigi is still here and unhurt as we run for the stairs and fly down to the first floor.
The second we get down there, chaos erupts. While we were upstairs, the Scorpions have arrived in force. It’s a fucking war zone. Bullets are flying everywhere. Shit is exploding around us. I can’t tell how many of us there are versus them, but the odds aren’t with us. I dive behind a dumpster in the corner and get my bearings, catching sight of a Scorpion in my line of vision. Pulling back a little, I aim and fire, catching him in the shoulder. He cries out and goes down. His gun skitters across the floor away from him.
Across the room, I see someone lying on the ground not moving. It’s Reed. I can’t be sure if he’s unconscious or dead. Rage fuels me as I crouch low and run toward him. When I get there I see he’s bleeding from his forehead. He groans as I drag him by the armpits to cover, holding his head. “Fuck,” he hisses.
“You good to hold on?” I ask him.
“Yeah. Motherfuckers were shooting at me, and I hit my head when I dove for cover. I’ve got a couple mags left. I can hold my own here.”
Just then, a scream makes my blood run cold.
Gigi .
I turn just in time to see her being dragged away by one of the Scorpions, who’s got a gun to her head. It’s Blaze. She’s fighting him, but Blaze pulls back the pistol and cracks her across the jaw with it. She stops fighting and crumples against the pain. “Gigi!” I yell, starting toward her. Aiming my gun at them, I silently beg her to break away from him so I can get a clear shot.
But before I can fire off a round, there’s a loud crack, and then my leg goes out from under me.
“Mack!” I hear Gigi scream as I fall.
The pain seems to come from somewhere else, muted and confusing. But all the same, I can’t stand up, can’t seem to make my leg do what I want it to do. My gun is still in my hand, and I lift it, but Blaze is using Gigi as a shield, dragging her away. I shout obscenities and try to get up. Out of the corner of my eye I see a body hurtling toward me. I turn to see a Scorpion barreling toward me. I shoot him at close enough range that a bloom of red instantly flowers on his chest. He falls to his knees, clutching at the wound, then onto his face.
When I look back over, Gigi is gone.
After that, nothing matters.
We get out of there somehow. We leave behind three dead Scorpions, and none of our men.
Back at the clubhouse, Wishbone tends to my leg. I barely feel it. I’m half-fucking-delirious from the pain of losing Gigi. The physical pain doesn’t even seem real. I stare into nothing, seeing only her face everywhere I turn.
I couldn’t get to her in time.
How could I have let this happen? How could I have let them take her?
I failed. She’s out there somewhere, with Blaze. He’s doing God knows what to her right now. And we have no fucking idea where she is.
At some point, Fury comes in with Elmo, who tells me he’s finally got intel on Blaze.
“Fucking took you long enough,” I snarl. I want to kill Elmo. I want to kill everyone.
“You’re gonna want to shut the fuck up and hear this,” Fury tells me. If he’s still pissed at me about fucking his sister, he’s not letting it show. “I think we figured out who Blaze is.”
“What do you mean, who he is?” I snap.
“Listen, for fuck’s sake,” Fury snaps back. “Elmo, tell him what you found.”
“The reason it took me so long to find anything out about him is that Blaze just fuckin’ appeared out of nowhere. It’s like he didn’t exist. The name he goes by on documents doesn’t exist. No social security number, nothing.”
“Then how did you find out anything about him?”
Elmo pulls out the tablet he’s carrying. “Facial recognition. Biometric software is getting better all the time. So even if you as a human don’t recognize someone, the tech probably can. Even if they’ve aged. Or if they’ve got scars. Or a beard.”
He taps a couple of things and turns the tablet around to show me a head shot of Blaze, with his characteristic thick beard, scarred skin, and ever-present bandana. Then, next to that image, he pulls up another. A man a few years younger. Clean shaven. No bandana.
“These two shots are the same guy,” Elmo says.
“So, who is he?” I ask, confused.
“This is Dylan,” Fury says quietly. “The guy Gigi dated way back when. The one who beat her up.” He waits a beat. “The one I killed. Or so I thought.”