19. Maddoc
“Where?”I demand, my whole body tense with the need to act as I wait for Payton to spit out the intel.
“We’re… near Cliffton.” Her harsh, panting breath is punctuated by the rapid-fire sound of footsteps. “Heading north on… on Masters.”
I make eye contact with my seconds and they both nod. They heard her too, and Dante is already calling for backup while Logan’s fingers fly over the screen of the tablet I was using earlier, no doubt pulling up details that I’m not even thinking to ask.
Because I still don’t know what the fuck is going on.
“We?” I bark into the phone, my forehead creasing. Pretty sure I’d asked Payton to track down some specific information about a few suppliers last night. Not ones she’d find over in Cliffton, or anyone Luis—a newly vetted Reaper who’d been with us less than a year—would have been involved with.
“Luis is with me,” she answers, her voice fading for a moment before I hear a muffled “shit” followed by a fuck-ton of yelling.
“Payton?”
“Here,” she gasps. “Jesus, tell me you’re close.”
I grimace, hating the fuck out of the lack of intel I have right now but my mind already firing on all cylinders.
I glance up at Dante and he nods.
“Isaac’s taking some muscle and heading there now,” he tells me in a low voice, slipping his phone into a pocket and then sliding open a particular drawer under the counter and tossing Logan one of the weapons we keep there. They both arm themselves as I reassure Payton that help is on the way, then demand more answers.
“Why the fuck is Luis with you?”
“I… I got word that someone from West Point was spotted outside… outside their territory this morning,” she pants. “I convinced Luis to come with me so we could… take him for you. Find out what he knows. Tit for… tat.”
She means for Troy. She wanted to, what, grab one of McKenna’s people and interrogate him the way they took out our boy? It’s fucking stupid without the kind of planning I know damn well she didn’t do and I didn’t authorize. Not to mention, like I said when we found Troy, shit like that sends a message. A message which should have come from me.
I clench my jaw so hard it spasms, but getting pissed off has to wait.
“Did you get him?” I ask, pretty fucking sure I know the answer to that since shit obviously went south with this little unauthorized vigilante plan of hers. But I’m wrong.
“Fuck yeah, we did,” Payton gasps out, surprising the hell out of me.
Dante jerks his head toward the door, indicating we’re ready to roll, and I shove the stool I was sitting on out of the way and follow him to the garage with Logan and Riley on my heels.
“Did he know anything?”
“Yeah,” Payton says, followed by a clatter that sounds like she dropped the phone. Then I hear a whole stream of curses as we pile into the Escalade, Dante behind the wheel, followed by the sound of down and dirty street fighting.
Something cracks.
My phone case.
“Hey,” Riley whispers quietly, her fingers prying mine off the phone and squeezing them once my grip finally loosens.
I didn’t even realize she’d slid into the back seat with me.
She gives me a tiny smile, then pats my hand before dropping hers back to her lap. “Maybe don’t break it? We need to keep them on the line to find them, right?”
I give her a jerky nod, then refocus, because Luis is talking. Yelling at Payton to get the fuck up, followed by a grating sound before he obviously snatches up her phone from wherever it fell.
“Boss? Maddoc? Fuck. That you?”
“Get those fuckers off your tail and find some cover,” I bite out as Dante takes a corner fast enough that my shoulder slams into the door and Riley slams into me. “We’re almost there.”
“There is no fucking cover,” Luis wheezes. “This shit went all to hell. Every time we turn another corner there’s another fucking weasel.”
“How many?”
“Payton said just the one, but… shit, fine, take it.”
The last part is obviously to Payton because she comes back on the line, breathing hard. “If we stop running, we’re going down. They’re… they’re boxing us in.”
The girl is normally tough as shit, but I can hear the fear in her voice. Obviously, whoever tipped her off about there being “just the one” was fucking wrong.
And I hate going in blind… but not as much as I’d hate losing two more of mine to Austin motherfucking McKenna.
“We’re coming,” I grit out. “Isaac’s on his way too.” I make eye contact with Logan and he holds up four fingers, so I tell her, “Four minutes out.”
“Okay,” Payton gulps before repeating it like she’s trying to make herself believe it, “okay. We can… we can… hold them off. There’s at least… six.”
Shit.
Payton sounds either winded or hurt, and another quick pop of gunfire in the background has my gut clenching, worry filling me up faster than the busted pipe that flooded our basement two years ago.
I shove it aside and refocus.
“Do that,” I tell Payton grimly, knowing damn well it’s not the kind of order she can promise to follow even though two Reapers are worth more than six weasels any day. “We’re coming.”
It feels like both an eternity and way fucking faster than the four minutes Logan gave me until that’s true, but when we roll up to the last location Payton gave us—an intersection with a liquor store on one corner and an empty lot surrounded by chain link on the other—it’s empty.
“Fuck,” I bite out, not surprised since my people are clearly running for their damn lives, but still pissed at the whole fucking situation. “Update?”
I’m asking my seconds, because somewhere along the way the call with Payton dropped
“Isaac’s three blocks west,” Logan tells me. “He says there’s no sign of them.”
“Company coming yet?” I ask as we throw open the Escalade’s doors and all three of us pile out.
No, all four of us.
“Get the fuck back in the car,” I snap at Riley, which gets her back up for all of two seconds. Then, shocking the shit out of me, she gives me a small nod and actually fucking does it. Without even arguing.
It’s the first thing that’s gone right so far.
Logan telling me no on any incoming police presence is the second, but that’s not gonna last forever. Not with as much gunfire as I heard in the background before I lost touch with Payton. We’re right on the edge of West Point territory here, so it’s not like that shit is uncommon, but Cliffton is close enough to areas that the cops actually do pay attention to that it will still draw attention.
We just need to find our people before that attention comes with sirens and lights.
Another spate of gunfire sounds, and Dante uses the fob to lock down the Escalade as the three of us take off in a dead run, heading toward the problem.
Logan is still on his phone and confirms that Isaac heard the shots fired too. Then he tosses me the phone, the call still connected.
“Head up Jefferson,” I bark into the phone, naming a street Isaac and his crew should be close to. If I’m right and he hauls ass, we might be lucky enough to cut off the six West Point fuckers Payton noted and get her and Luis out.
We’re not that lucky.
I hear Luis shout something from up ahead and shove the phone into my pocket as the street in front of us turns into a motherfucking shooting range. Looks like the fucking weasels are working together to box Payton and Luis in.
“Shit,” Dante shouts, pulling his weapon as he ducks for cover and opens fire.
The West Point shitheads scatter, diving for cover of their own as they realize we’ve flanked them and that our people aren’t quite the easy pickings they’d assumed.
Payton shouts that she’s out of ammo, and Luis lays down some cover fire when I direct them toward an alley off to the side. It would be a deadly place to get trapped if we let McKenna’s people get to them, but we won’t. Isaac has finally shown up from the west with two more Reapers in tow, and a couple carloads of extra bodies I called in for additional backup made it here, parking down by the Escalade and pounding up the street toward us.
The odds are now in our favor. Odds aren’t enough, though. Not during a shootout with lead flying in all directions like this.
“Isaac,” I shout, giving him some hand signals to coordinate going on the offensive.
He nods, turning to call out my instructions to the men behind him, and we all advance on the alley Payton and Luis ducked into.
The narrow street fills with the deafening echo of gunfire, filling with enough smoke to make visibility a fucking problem for a moment. It gives a few of the West Point fuckers the chance to make a break for it.
I wouldn’t mind taking them out, but it’s enough to drive them away. All I care about today is getting my people out of this alive, and for that, we need to get them away from that fucking alley so we can extract Payton and Luis.
It’s a deadly dance as we all work together to rout the pieces of shit who dared to threaten my people, but they’re starting to turn tail and run when I finally make it to the head of the alley.
I round the corner, staying low. It’s boxed in at the other end, trapping Payton and Luis in the narrow passage with nothing for cover but a metal dumpster and a stack of wooden pallets. It means the only way to get them out is the way they got in.
“Logan, Dante,” I call out, jerking my chin to indicate what we need to do.
They move into position, and I beckon Payton and Luis forward while my seconds lay down cover fire. Payton’s got a length of broken pipe in her hand—smart girl, since she’s out of firepower—and Luis advances with his weapon at the ready, knowing damn well that it’s not over until we’re out of here.
One of the last West Point holdouts opens fire from across the street, shooting the gun out of his hand.
“Motherfucker,” Luis screeches, stumbling into the pile of pallets behind him.
“Get up,” I shout as bullets start tearing chunks out of the concrete next to my head, driving me away from the alley and cutting off their exit. “Come on!”
Payton drops her pipe and scrambles across the alley, snatching up Luis’s gun from where it’s fallen. She hisses, no doubt from the hot metal, but doesn’t hesitate as she moves in front of him and takes up a protective stance, weapon raised, as he extracts himself from the broken pallets.
“Madd, incoming!”
The warning comes a split second before a fresh wave of gunshots ring out, and I spin to the side as Luis and Payton both dive behind the dumpster with a string of curses.
“Get those fucking weasels out of here,” I shout to my people, turning back to face the street and help make that happen. My men step up, finally driving the last few stragglers back, and I duck back into the alley. “Now, Payton. We’ve got to go. You good, Luis? Let’s move.”
Payton stands up, taking me at my word, and starts toward me. “Maddoc, are we—”
Whatever she was gonna ask cuts off as she suddenly flies backward, her body slamming into the brick wall behind her and her chest blooming with red.
“Payton!”
Luis is closer, but I’m already moving and I get there first, vaguely aware of the last West Point shithead—the one who just took her down—racing away up Jefferson. I press down on the wound, shouting for my brothers, vaguely aware that Logan’s opened fire on the shooter but that both of them are staying close. Covering me instead of chasing him down.
“She’s breathing. She’s still breathing,” Luis repeats, stabilizing her head and keeping her airway clear.
But it’s the kind of wound that’s gonna take more than the two of us to keep it that way. My hands are instantly soaked in hot blood, my nose assaulted by the metallic tang of copper, and the only thing keeping me from losing my shit is that we haven’t lost her.
“Logan,” I yell, refusing to take my eyes off Payton but trusting that they’ll do what it takes to help me get her back to the house. “Get the car! Call Shane! Get him to the house!”
Shane’s not a doctor, but he’s a Reaper, and hands-down I’ll trust that over credentials any day. And he definitely knows his way around a bullet wound.
Payton’s breath is nothing more than a shallow, painful-sounding wheeze, but her eyes are open, slowly blinking up at me, and her fingers scrabble loosely at my wrist.
“Hold on,” I order her, silently cursing when I hear sirens in the distance. The kind that would make our lives a whole lot more difficult.
Then my brothers are there, Logan and Dante lifting Payton while I keep pressure on the wound. And somehow, we get her into the back of the Escalade, Riley scooting all the way over with eyes as wide as saucers before she whips off her shirt and stuffs it under my hands, helping to slow the bleeding.
Logan’s behind the wheel this time and he peels out, followed by a few other cars from the Reaper members who showed up to help us end this shit. They follow us, knowing that if either the cops or West Point gets on our tail, it will be their job to get them back off.
“Come on, stay with me,” I tell Payton, focusing a hundred percent of my attention on her since I fully trust my people to handle the rest right now.
Payton slow-blinks at me again, her eyes seeming to have trouble focusing and her skin deathly pale. She’s barely hanging on, and it pisses me off to no end that this all came down for something so fucking useless.
There’s no way I would have authorized her to go after that fucking weasel, and she knows it.
“Why’d you have to do that?” I demand, guilt swamping me. She tries to answer me, her whisper is so faint I barely make it out. “I just…”
“What was that?” I lean closer, and she takes a breath that rattles like death.
“Just… wanted to make you… proud. Show you… show you I… can hold… my own.”
I grit my teeth, that guilt all but choking me. She was one of the first to ever swear allegiance to me. She’s been with the Reapers since the beginning. I was never gonna give her what she wanted from me, not on a personal level, but I damn sure appreciate and value her loyalty to what I’ve built.
“I am proud of you, Payton,” I tell her. “Always have been.”
Her smile looks more like a grimace, and she reaches for my face, her fingers sticky with blood and as cold as ice. They tremble, dragging over my cheek, and I grip her hand and hold it there.
She’s weak as shit, but when she tugs against my grip, obviously wanting me to come closer, I let her pull me down to murmur in my ear, telling me what she and Luis found out from the guy they went after. Telling me like she thinks she has to, like I’ve gotta know before she goes.
I don’t want selfless last words from her. I want her to hold the fuck on.
I shush her, pulling back and smoothing her blood-matted hair back from her face, pressing even harder on her chest wound. “It’s okay. Don’t worry about that now. Just stay with me, and we’ll get you to Shane. It’s all gonna be okay.”
I keep repeating it, but when I meet Logan’s eyes in the rearview mirror, I see the truth we all know reflected in his bleak gaze. None of this shit is gonna be okay. And Payton—
“Oh god,” Riley whispers, her voice thick with emotion and her hand, resting on my shoulder, the only warmth in the whole fucking world. She’s staring down at Payton, and Payton’s staring up at the roof of the Escalade, eyes open and lifeless.
She’s gone.