27. Burn it All Down
Chapter 27
Burn it All Down
Griff
Shit on a stick and poke me in the eye with it. This was going south fast.
The vehicle flipped, and we found ourselves ass overhead. Then the gunfire started.
“Shots fired, one o’clock!” I bellowed, as we scrambled in the opposite direction to get some cover between us.
A fucking ambush. That’s just fucking great. But also fitting, since the first time I met Taz, we took her on a patrol and were ambushed as well. But I didn’t love her back then.
My skin burned, as the bullet wound in my thigh and chest ached, as if it was calling to add to their little roster of pals.
“Baby, you okay?” I reached to my woman.
She pulled a battered, and unconscious Noam out of the front driver seat.
The man was breathing, and sporting a big knot on his head, as she tried to slap him awake.
“I’m fine,” she said, as she roused Noam from dreamland. “Wake up, wake up, wake up!”
“ Unh ,” Noam groaned, his hand coming to his head. He inspected his blood-soaked fingers as his dazed eyes cleared.
“Can you sit up?” Taz asked him.
“I see 4 on the ridge, 300 meters!” Sierra called, as she pulled out a pistol and fired 3 shots. “Fuck!”
Each one was wide. They weren’t exactly in pistol range.
But even from this distance, we could tell they wore the cuts of the Prodigal Sons.
“ Kurva !” she yelled the Ukrainian obscenity.
Noam sat up and pulled a pistol out from his ankle holster. He took a shot, and it hit a target in the distance.
Impressive.
Everything happened fast.
We had to duck down, as they unleashed a fucking blast of suppressive fire that pinged around us.
Noam let out a bellow of pain, as his thigh opened up red blood as a bullet went through his jeans.
A bullet pinged over Sierra’s head, and she ducked down, screaming more obscenities, as she took off her other heel, and was ready to make a break for it on foot.
A shot landed close to my toe, breaking the asphalt beneath my feet, and I flinched away.
Taz screamed.
I swear, I had only looked away from her for one fucking second. But that was long enough for two of those bastards to come out of the woods and grab her by each arm.
She dug her heels into the ground going limp in their hands as they pulled her away from the rest of us.
“Taz!” I cried out as I lunged towards her, only to recoil when a bullet whizzed in front of my nose.
I fell to the ground, ready to crawl to her if I had to, but two masked men were pulling her away, into a vehicle stashed in the ditch.
Fuck it! I ran forward to get her before they could spirit her away into their car. If they got her in their vehicle, there’d be no getting her back.
“Griff!” She yelled, as she fought them tooth and nail.
One of them punched her in the face, her nose bleeding. The other kicked her in the back of the thigh, and she fell to the ground. Still, she kept fighting them. When one of them grabbed her by the jaw to drag her by her fucking head, she bit down on his hand so hard, blood fell down her chin.
I sprinted to her, ready to do anything I needed to - even if I just needed to cover her body with mine, and absorb all the bullets, because she was not going anywhere without me. Not now. Not when we had just figured ourselves out.
The platinum bracelet glinted in the light as she did a haymaker punch to one of the guys, and he screamed when her elbows and knees started indiscriminately striking whoever the fuck got near her.
“Baby!” I said, reaching a hand to her.
She was within reach, almost at my fingertips when heat spread across my stomach. Liquid. Red. And burning pain went through my body as I was knocked off course, slammed into the asphalt and away from her.
“Griff!” she yelled, as they pushed her into the black sedan, the doors barely closed before they drove away.
“Taz!”
The last thing I saw before black rage covered my eyes was my red blood on the road beneath me.
It took three seconds before my phone was out, and I dialed Mack McClanahan.
The bullet graze in my gut ached and heated as the blood slipped down my shirt. I’d staple it and worry about it some other time. I needed to get to her. I needed the team.
“Top?” I said, without greeting as it clicked on. “They took her. I need you guys.”