Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
AYDA
My ears rang violently. The shot was in close quarters, and Rubin was standing just in front of me, within reaching distance.
To his credit, he’d squeezed off his shot without hesitation.
Rubin heard and saw the fight between Drew and Walsh, turned and raised the gun, pulling the trigger all in the space of a single heartbeat.
He was still standing, legs shoulder width apart, both hands on the gun, and his grip completely steady.
The only difference now was that his trigger finger was lying against the guard and no longer on the trigger itself.
My hands were trembling, and my legs felt weak. My heart was also having a real hard time finding it’s normal rhythm again.
Drew seemed as equally shocked as me, his eyes on the kid and filled with a disbelief I was clearly identifying with.
None of us moved, even with the sound of sirens growing louder and louder, and the mayor writhing in pain, only a foot away from Drew. I gave him a cursory glance, but it was all I was willing to give him after the hateful shit he’d thrown at his son. He was lucky he wasn’t dead.
He deserved to be.
The sound of the sirens continued to get louder, even as we stayed frozen, and it was only when Rubin lowered the gun that Drew and I seemed to find our motor functions again.
If his father’s words or the venom in his tone hurt Rubin, it didn’t reflect in his eyes.
They were still trained on Walsh, his normally smiling mouth now a flat line, and his jaw set even harder.
“We’re running out of time,” I whispered, the sound distorted by the fading ringing inside my ears. “We have to get out of here. Now.”
Drew moved quickly, scrambling to his feet as carefully as he could. Stunned wasn’t an emotion he showed often. I could count on one hand the number of times I’d seen the look he was wearing as he glanced at Rubin and back down at Walsh, repeating the action over and over again.
He took a moment to think, scanning the possible exits before his eyes settled on the window ledge. “Ayda, take Rubin to the bike. I’ll grab Walsh. He has to come with us now.”
I nodded my agreement, letting my eyes move between the two men before tapping Rubin on the elbow to get him moving.
“He keeps the keys to his BMW on the hook in the kitchen. Mom has the Land Rover with her in Dallas,” Rubin said as he pushed the gun into the back waist of his jeans.
He glanced at me with a small nod as stepped out of the shattered window, the glass tinkling and crunching before he hopped over the edge with ease and landed beside me.
He left without a backward glance at his father, and I only stayed long enough to meet Drew’s eyes before rushing to catch up.
“You okay?” I asked, unable to help myself as we slipped through the gate at a slow loping run. I pointed to the house three doors down and let him take the lead.
“I’m fine.”
He wasn’t, but that was something we could deal with later.
Right now, I needed him away from this scene before the cops showed up.
If we managed to get away with the cops not seeing Drew’s bike, all the better.
We moved quickly over the yard, avoiding the main street, and slipped back to where we’d left Drew’s bike.
It was something comforting and familiar for me, but anxiety bled from Rubin as he thought about riding it.
“You know any back roads?” I asked, attaching Drew’s helmet to the back and offering Rubin mine. Rubin took it from me and pulled the standard helmet over his dark hair, still avoiding eye contact as he worked.
“I ride my bike everywhere. I know every back road.” He paused and rested his hand on the bike’s tank, swinging his leg over it and looking more natural than I thought he would. Glancing up, he stared at me. “I’ll try and avoid damaging the bike, but I’ll make sure it’s not seen.”
I nodded, not really needing the assurance. “We trust you. Just be safe.”
“What should I tell the others?”
I glanced down the drive we were standing on and watched as a sleek black car pulled up to the end and idled quietly.
“Tell them Drew will call them if something changes.”
Rubin nodded and kicked the bike below him to life, with a nervous glance at the BMW now crawling to the end of Mayor Walsh’s drive.
I didn’t know where this was leading any more than he did, but I fought the sudden instinct to hug him.
Rubin wouldn’t have wanted that to happen in front of Walsh, I was certain of that.
“Go. Be safe.”
With a twist of his wrist, he took off slowly down the drive, and I followed, noting the subtle nod he gave to Drew as he made a small turn between two houses and disappeared.
Slipping into the car Drew was now driving, I finally found enough air to breathe and glanced over at him.
“He’s taking the backroads so he won’t be seen.”
Walsh groaned behind us, followed by him hissing through his teeth. Drew turned to look at him in the back seat, taking the opportunity to glance out of the rear window while he was there.
“We can’t head back to The Hut. Not with him in the back,” he said, staring at Walsh but clearly talking to me.
“The note I just made this fucker write pleading his guilt should stall ATF for a while, but it won’t be long before they scour every inch of Babylon for him.
The first place they’ll look is our property.
It’s where they know Rubin’s been lately.
We need to take a ride out of Babylon and dump this fucker, once and for all. ”
“What are you gonna do?” Walsh croaked. “Kill me?”
“Tempting.” Drew narrowed his eyes. “Very fucking tempting. I should kill you for disrespecting your son alone, but we’ll discuss the particulars of your fate later.”
Drew spun back to face the steering wheel, his hand curling around it with force. “You okay?” he whispered, reaching out to take my hand.
“That little bastard ain’t no son of mine,” Walsh spat before I could respond. He coughed out a bitter laugh and shifted in the back seat.
If he was stalling for time, it was a pointless gesture.
Drew was already gunning the engine, his free hand squeezing mine as I tried to ignore the barb on Rubin’s behalf.
The moment we saw the flashing lights of official vehicles heading closer, Drew pulled into a drive of a home and killed the engine, waiting as line after line of official vehicles sped past, not so much as glancing at the BMW on their way.
My heart was beating so loudly in my chest, it was a wonder the two men couldn’t hear it.
All it would take would be one of those cops to glance up the drive and see the plate, and they would know who the car belonged to.
They probably knew everything about him as they were heading to his home to arrest him.
As much as that was on Walsh, the fact that he had a fresh hole in him, and he was currently being forced to ride in the back of his expensive car was problematic.
Whether it was divine intervention or pure luck, the last of the cars sped past without so much as a pause, and I pulled in as much air as I could, bracing myself as Drew checked all the mirrors and backed from the drive like it was completely normal.
We hit the road again and pulled from the subdivision like the Devil himself was on our heels, thankful to see that not one cop was sitting, waiting for an attempted escape.
“Where are we going?” I asked, wriggling to sit up in the soft leather.
“I don’t know,” he muttered, his eyes flying in all directions. “I was thinking we could—”
His phone rang in his jeans pocket, cutting him off from whatever he was going to say.
Drew glanced at me and raised his ass, gesturing for me to retrieve it for him as he navigated the roads at high speed. When I pulled it out, Eric’s name lit up the screen.
“Thank fuck. Put it on speaker,” Drew told me, his relief obvious.
I kept my eyes locked on him as he stared down at the screen, and I accepted the call, lifting it between us both.
“Eric! Where the fuck are you? I need you!” Drew barked.
Silence lingered, the tension created in a second before a familiar, sadistic voice filtered through the speaker. “Well, well, well. The big, bad Drew Tucker needs his daddy.”
My eyes lifted from the small handset in my grip where Eric’s name was steady on the screen, and I met them with Drew’s.
My blood felt like it had been filtered through ice.
The voice made my thumb twitch. I’d never wanted to end a call so much in my life.
I was scared but Drew held my gaze before flickering a glance to the road and back to the phone.
“Trigger?” he said in question, his voice low and rough.
“The one and only,” Travis ‘Trigger’ Gatlin answered smugly.
Drew’s hand tensed around the wheel, his eyes glazing over with fire and anger. “Where the fuck is my father?”
“He’s... hanging around.”
Drew glanced at me, his frown deep and filled with worry. “What the hell does that mean?”
“Now, now, Drew. You sound like you’re getting frustrated. Pull the car over. Take a breath. Think things through. I wouldn’t want you crashing that beautiful car you’re in when you have cargo in there that belongs to me.”
I wanted to spin around and look behind us.
I wanted to see if Walsh was in the back seat with a phone, or if there were bikes that would have the Nav’s Reaper and Rifles painted onto the tank.
Not that it mattered. Trigger knew where we were and what vehicle we were in, and that wasn’t a coincidence. We were in trouble.
Unexpected trouble.
My eyes flicked to meet Drew’s, pretty sure I knew what I would see there.
He was going to regret having me in this car and regret that he’d taken me with him to begin with.
Regrets and more regrets. I just had to make sure that I didn’t show him how scared I was and give more power to those thoughts.
We were in this, here and now, and we were in it together. Nothing could be done to help that.
Drew gritted his teeth, his control slipping as his foot seemed to gain weight on the accelerator. “Where’s my father, Gatlin?”
“About ten feet away from me.”
“You bastard,” Drew ground out, knuckles turning white on the wheel as he threw his body back into the leather seat and tore down the road.
He suddenly had a direction, and he was heading there without thought, taking a tight right turn at once toward The Nav’s border.
“If you’ve touched him, hurt him, so much as whispered too close to his face, I’ll—”
Trigger laughed, the tone dripping with sarcasm.
“What? What are you going to do, Tucker? Fuck things up like usual? Lead with the fists and escape death by the skin of your teeth like usual? Kill that stupid motherfucking mayor who’s bleeding all over those beautiful, cream leather seats, and then deal with the wreckage later…
as usual? Get one of your other innocent brothers to take the fall because you’re too loved up to suffer the consequences of your actions like fucking usual?
” He blew out a breath, chuckling on the end of it.
“God, it must be real damn tiring having you as their king.”
Drew’s jaw worked back and forth, the red mist taking over. “Keep talking, Trigger. Keep talking.”
“How about we talk face to face? Deal with this like real men?”
I was staring at the screen, but the moment Trigger said it, I looked up and stared at Drew’s murderous face, already knowing the answer.