5. Seraphina
5
SERAPHINA
T hree large men dressed in black fatigues emerged from the woods that bordered the hotel parking lot, weapons raised.
Another scream—this one feminine—came from inside the minivan.
The man who’d taken money from Stone pulled a handgun from his belt and let loose a few poorly aimed bullets at the three men in black.
One of them fired three tight shots into the man’s chest, and he dropped.
The woman screamed again as the minivan reversed down the drive at breakneck speed.
“Okay, gotta go,” I said, throwing my rifle over my back again and hauling ass across the roof.
The time for stealth was over.
“ No fucking shit ,” Henri hissed. “ Should I call Jericho? I don’t think that’s the MC—those guys look like pros .”
“Not yet.”
The men were shouting at one another.
“Hit the van’s tires!”
“Shooter’s on the roof, headed for the back!”
“I have west side!”
“I’ve got east!”
I cartwheeled off the roof and grabbed the beam I’d used to climb up. After a sweet fireman slide down to the second-floor landing, I immediately swung myself over the railing to dangle over the bushes that lined the first-floor walkway below.
Whoever the commandos in black were, they were coming around the sides of the building, which left both the east and west stairwells unusable.
I dropped into the bushes with a muffled yelp, the tangle of branches and leaves mostly breaking my fall. With no time to waste, I barrel-rolled out and sprang to my feet. My heart beat in my throat as I sprinted around the pool and hurdled the short fence that separated it from the back parking lot.
“Stop right there!”
One of the men came running on my right, cutting off my path to the hole I’d left in the taller perimeter fence.
“Shit,” I swore, darting left and turning on the jets.
I reached the fence and launched myself onto it like a squirrel. I dug my boots into the chain link as I scrambled upwards.
Another voice came from my left. “Grab them!”
Almost there.
I reached the top of the fence and swung a leg up, trying to find purchase between the sharp wire points.
My stomach sank as a hand wrapped around my other boot and yanked.
“Fuck!” I shouted as I was dragged unceremoniously down the fence.
Henri was panicked in my ear. “ Seraphina! What is happening? ”
My boots hadn’t even touched the ground before I was spun around and slammed against the fence. As my back hit, my knife sprang into my hand, and I pressed it against the throat of the man towering over me. The lower half of his face was shrouded in a balaclava similar to the one I wore, and his helmet obscured most of his head.
He froze as my blade kissed his neck.
I froze as my gaze slammed into his, and his scent invaded my nostrils.
Ice-blue eyes and spicy vanilla crack pheromones.
I knew them intimately.
“Loki?”
His eyes widened as he yanked my face covering down. “Sera?”
His buddy butted in closer. Hazel eyes and campfire delights. “Wait… our Sera?” Blaze said, sounding bewildered.
“It is indeed me, the girl you guys fucked into a coma last night,” I replied. “Are you going to hurt me, or can I remove my blade from Loki’s neck?”
Loki set me on my feet and took one tiny step back. Good enough. I stashed my knife back in its spot on my belt.
The two of them lowered their face coverings and stared at me open-mouthed as the third man finally came jogging around the side of the motel.
“The van got away,” he reported between labored breaths in what was definitely Hawk’s voice. “I couldn’t catch the license plate. What’s going on—?” He came to an abrupt halt on Loki’s other side. “Sera?”
“Hi, Hawk,” I said with a little finger wave. “Fancy meeting you here.”
Loki finally found his voice. “Did you just kill our suspect? From the roof with a fucking sniper rifle?”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Your suspect ?”
Not their President .
Now that I wasn’t about to choke on my own lungs, I took a second to examine the guys. Black fatigues, tactical vests, belts loaded with the caliber of weapons used by professionals. A little silver sword embroidered into the uniform on the left pocket, creating the “T” in the word “Sentinel.”
It was all very familiar, since I was dressed almost exactly the same way, though I didn’t wear the Bryce Solutions logo when out on Jere’s special projects.
The realization slapped me, and I let out a scandalized gasp. “You’re not really bikers, are you?”
Loki finally shook off his dumbfounded look and scowled at me. “No, we’re not.”
“Ugh, seriously?” I unstrapped my helmet and ripped it off, shaking my hair out in irritation, and then I stomped my boot on the ground for good measure. “That was, like, a top-two bucket list item for me! And now you’re telling me I didn’t have dirty sex with a bunch of hot bikers?”
Blaze snorted and Hawk’s pierced lip twitched, but Loki was unmoved by my distress. “Sera, what the fuck are you doing here?”
I raised my chin. “Completing a job for my client.”
“What client?” Loki asked. “Who do you work for?”
“Who do you work for?” I fired back. “What the fuck were you doing cosplaying as criminals in an East Texas motorcycle club?”
“Believe it or not, we were also completing a job for a client,” Blaze replied, frowning at me. “But now our only lead is dead.”
“Stone was your lead?
“He was, Little Flame,” Hawk said softly, his caramel-brown gaze roving down my body and back up again. “We’ve been undercover at the MC for nearly three months.”
I almost felt guilty. Three months investigating this guy, and I’d just dropped in and blown his head off.
But no, fuck that.
“Well,” I said, holding Hawk’s gaze with authority, “your lead was also a rapist.”
Hawk cringed, and the others blew out some frustrated breaths.
“Not fucking shocking,” Blaze muttered.
“He targeted the wrong girl,” I went on. “My client’s beta daughter thought she’d see how the other half lived by partying in another MC’s bar down on the border with her friends. Stone had stopped there for the night, picked her out of the crowd, and didn’t take no for an answer.”
They were silent for a moment. “Is she okay?” Hawk asked.
“Physically,” I replied tersely.
Hawk scrubbed a gloved hand down his face. He must’ve been wearing contacts tonight, and I missed his adorable glasses. “Right, of course,” he said.
“It took us six months to identify him,” I continued. “He wasn’t wearing his cut that night.”
Loki’s glare had softened the slightest bit, but it was clear he was still frustrated by the evening’s turn of events. “So, you’re a hit woman?”
I shrugged. “When I need to be.”
“Who do you work for?” he asked again, inching closer to me and leaning down to my level, the tall bastard. His yummy pheromones pulsed, and my stomach flipped. “Your kit is professional, and you put that shot straight through his skull. I know some of the big-name outfits run this sort of hit-for-hire stuff off the books.” He took a little sniff right below my ear and whispered, “Which one are you from?”
“I don’t have to tell you that,” I replied breezily even as my body gave a pleased little shiver at his nearness. Not that it was any big secret that Bryce Solutions might dabble in this sort of thing—our client had known to come to us, after all—but I preferred that my specific role in it all not get back to my other dads.
Or, God forbid, my mother.
Blaze nudged Loki. “Dude, as much as I also want to know every little detail about our princess’s situation, we probably need to clean up the mess out front and figure out where we go from here.”
Loki sighed and shifted away, giving me back a small bubble of personal space. “You’re right.”
My comms crackled in my ear. “ Um, I assume everything is under control? Since you are all familiar with one another? ”
“Yes, stand down,” I replied. “You better not have called my dad.”
“ I let him know that the job had been completed but that you’d been held up and would be late meeting him. I can’t control what he does with that information .”
“Fine.”
I glanced up at the guys, who were staring at me.
“Who are you talking to, Lamb?” Loki asked casually.
“Just Henri,” I replied with a dismissive wave. “He’s my best friend.”
“ More like your hostage ,” he muttered.
Since I was already delayed and feeling the tiniest twinge of sorry that my job had messed things up for the three hot Alphas who’d given me the best night of my life, I decided not to run off just yet. “I watched the exchange,” I told them. “Stone gave the man he was meeting a stack of cash, and the man gave him a key. It’s probably still in his pocket, if you guys want to see if it helps your investigation.” I grabbed Hawk’s hand and began to drag him back toward the hotel. “Come on.”
Hawk came willingly, tossing an amused glance over his shoulder at the others as we walked. “Sure. Lead the way, Little Flame.”
We made our way around the pool deck and toward the side of the motel, which was still eerily dark and silent. Hawk interlaced his fingers with mine, a cute way for him to make sure I didn’t run off. Loki and Blaze plodded silently along behind us.
“So, what prompted you guys to make your move on Stone tonight after the months of pretending to be visiting members of his club?” I asked Hawk. “You were about to blow your cover, right?”
“We were,” he replied. “The difference between your job and ours is that Stone was not our primary target. We suspect he and his VP have been taking jobs as paid muscle for a shadowy benefactor, unbeknownst to anyone else in club leadership.”
“Ah,” I said. “You’re looking for the guy with the money.”
“Right. We believe Stone was paid to break into our client’s highly secured office and make off with one of their most valuable products. One of our men, who was working security at the time, was killed in the process.”
Shit . “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said softly.
“Our other employee lived,” Hawk added. “And while Stone hadn’t been wearing his cut, he has the Texas Knights logo stamped on his boots. Our guy was able to identify the MC and give us a vague description of the assailant, so it didn’t take us long to narrow it down.”
“How’d you manage to pass yourselves off as members of the club, though?” I asked. “Surely they have a roster or something?”
He laughed. “The President of the Pecos Chapter owed our boss a favor. And he fucking hates Stone, anyway.”
“Oh,” I said, and a frown began to tug at my lips. “Your name isn’t really Hawk, is it? You guys had to make up road names for this charade.”
The fact that I’d told these guys my real name and then let them do things to me when the names I’d known them by were total fabrications suddenly didn’t sit super well with me.
“Well, no, it’s not my actual name,” he replied. “But Hawk, Loki, and Blaze are the call signs we’ve been using since we started working for Sentinel. So, they are names we actually use, and it was easy to keep doing that while we were undercover.”
“Oh. Okay, then.”
We rounded the corner and trudged into the front parking lot. Blood pooled around Stone and the man he’d met here where they lay on the ground next to the sedan Stone had swapped his motorcycle for.
“Do you know who the other guy is?” I asked as we all came to a stop next to the bodies. They examined the scene with clinical detachment, and I did my level best to do the same.
Two years at this had hardened me, but not that much. I usually shot and split.
“No,” Loki replied. “We don’t know this guy. When we finally managed to tap Stone’s burner phone—which we didn’t even confirm he had until about three weeks ago—we caught a suspicious conversation about picking up merchandise at this location tonight, and we thought we finally had our break.”
“We’d planned to follow him, or at least conduct an interrogation of all parties,” Blaze added with a wry smile.
“Oops,” I said. “Don’t blame me—blame that dead asshole for being a disgusting predator. They so rarely face any consequences, and he only got what was coming to him because the girl he thought was from one of the poor, marginalized groups that frequent the biker bars was actually the daughter of one of the richest men in Ciudad del Sol.”
“Is that where you’re from?” Hawk asked casually, throwing in some innocent puppy-dog eyes for good measure. “Down south?”
“Maybe,” I replied, grinning at him. “And I’m not the one who popped Pearl Snaps over here”—I gestured at the other dead guy—“so you can’t blame me for that either.”
“Yeah, that one’s on me,” Blaze replied. “We don’t really tolerate people shooting at us.”
Mmm, hot.
Loki knelt to rifle through Stone’s pockets, and he found the key in about three seconds. He held it up so we could all examine it. It was a simple brass key attached to a ratty nylon keychain that had a faded “203” printed on it.
“Is this hotel even operational?” I asked. “Because that looks like a room key.”
“It sure does,” Hawk agreed. “And we have no idea. There are no security cameras, and the door is locked that leads to the lobby where the front desk is. I tried to cut through there when we were chasing you.” He winked at me.
I resisted the urge to boop his nose and call him a sexy tattooed angel.
“ Um ,” Henri said. “ Incoming. Sorry, babe. I’m out—call me when it’s over .”
Gravel crunched under tires as a black SUV appeared from beyond the towering pines, cruising down the motel’s short driveway. The guys pulled their pistols from their belts in one synchronized motion and aimed them at the incoming car.
I sighed dramatically. “Chill out, guys. It’s just my dad.”