Chapter 27
Bolo
“When are you meeting her parents?” Strike asked, staring up at the building we were about to check out.
I frowned at it, looking down at the address on the GPS.
“Is this right?” I texted Ruck to double check.
We’d been searching through warehouses and old factories for another three weeks.
These Collective assholes were hard to pin down.
Now that they knew we weren’t going to be an easy target they were holed up.
They were waiting for the perfect time and place to come at us again.
That was starting to make me nervous. Dev was eighteen weeks pregnant now.
Every day was pretty much the same for me right now.
Go out and search for these assholes. Come home.
Have dinner with my woman and watch a show or we hung out with my brothers.
I was well and truly domesticated. And it wasn’t bothering me in the least. I just wished we could get rid of this threat that was looming.
With the families now living on the compound, we hadn’t been having any parties. Those had started dying down more and more as we got older anyway, but now Ruck was getting more discerning about who came on the property. It was safer that way.
Besides, we didn’t need any bunnies showing up and pissing off the women. And we didn’t need women coming around with their asses and tits out in front of two sixteen-year-old boys. Everyone was still overly protective of those two after what’d happened to them.
At first they’d eaten it up. Now they were starting to get irritated with us treating them like kids half the time.
Not that we also didn’t treat them like the men they were becoming, when the situation called for it.
It was a balancing act and we were doing the best we could, considering none of us have had kids.
Mom and Dad had been really helpful in that regard.
They’d been giving OD and Rue advice often, and that had trickled down to the rest of us.
My phone dinged and I shrugged. “No, this is the right place.”
Relay leaned forward, his elbows on the handle bars of his motorcycle. “So we check it out.”
“It’s an apartment complex,” I pointed out.
“So?” Relay shrugged.
“Civilians,” Strike answered.
“Maybe,” Flir corrected. “It could be empty except for Collective.”
“True,” Strike acknowledged. “So we have to go carefully.”
“Fucking great,” I muttered. When they all looked over at me, I arched a brow and jerked a thumb in my brother’s direction. “He’s not exactly the poster boy for carefulness.”
Strike and Flir looked over at Relay, who looked mildly annoyed, but he had a knife out and was absent mindedly flipping the blade in his hand as we waited.
“Maybe you should stay out here,” Strike said with a grin.
“Fuck that,” Relay replied. “It’s a big place. We should all go in.” He scowled, waiting on Strike’s response, because between the four of us Strike had the most authority, being the secretary.
As the enforcer of the MC I would make the calls in matters of security, but that would happen once we ended up inside and in the middle of a shit storm, though Strike and I would really both be sharing the leadership role. With neither Ruck, OD, or Kilo here, Strike was the next up.
We didn’t always strictly follow the chain of command but if brothers were butting heads it was a good way to come to a decision.
“Fine,” Strike told him. “But we need to be careful. We’re not shooting this place up. There could be women and children in there. I want to make sure the only people we take out are Collective scum.”
“Agreed,” I said.
Both Relay and Flir nodded in acknowledgment.
“And I want an answer before we go in.”
I looked over at Strike, who was staring at me. Chuckling, I shook my head. “Next Friday. Having dinner at her parents’ house. Her sisters will be there, too. Then we’re doing dinner the next night with my parents and brothers.”
Strike let out a whistle. “That’s a lot of family bonding in a short time.”
“Statistically, the faster you get it out of the way, the better it will go,” Flir stated.
I narrowed my eyes. “Is that true? Or are you just trying to make me feel better?”
The look on his face told me he’d never fucking tell me either way. It was Flir’s way of trying to be supportive so I let it drop. Though part of me wondered if he was capable of trying to make others feel better. Did his robot programming have empathy?
“I bet both sets of soon to be grandparents are excited to meet their kid’s spouse,” Strike said as we got off our bikes and double checked our weapons.
I grabbed a shotgun out of the back of the SUV Flir had driven.
We started bringing more weapons with us after searching the first building.
We didn’t need to come up against The Collective with just a couple handguns.
I kept the shotgun inside the SUV though, as we spoke.
Relay was doing the same with his rifle.
Even in an open carry state like Arizona a bunch of men walking around an apartment complex with rifles would garner too much attention.
That was exactly what we didn’t need because then the damn cops would show up.
“I’m not sure if her parents will think of me as a son-in-law,” I told them as I stuffed two more magazines into the pockets of my jeans. “They don’t really know our…ways.”
“Took our parents years to fully understand it,” Relay said with a nod.
“Exactly,” I replied.
“Can we cut the bullshit and do this?” Relay asked, getting bored of the conversation and the waiting.
“As long as we put off our families meeting each other, that’s all that matters,” I said, giving Relay a meaningful look. “This asshole would send my new in-laws running for the hills, their daughter in tow.”
“Fuck off,” Relay muttered.
“Let’s go,” Strike said. “Better to get this done before it gets dark.”
It was late afternoon and the August sun was beating down on us. Sweat tricked down my back as we walked toward the apartment complex. Relay and I did our best to be discreet as we carried our long arms across the parking lot toward the apartments.
We paused on the side of the building when my phone started buzzing. “Hold up. It’s Ruck.” I hit speaker and then turned the volume down by half. That way I wouldn’t have to repeat everything our president said, but the whole fucking parking lot wouldn’t hear the conversation. “Hey, Prez.”
“I think we finally caught a break.” he told us.
“You mean we finally get to bust some heads?” Relay asked, cracking his knuckles. He looked almost fucking delighted, with a hint of deranged, at the prospect.
“It’s looking more and more like this is the place,” Ruck told us. “Glitch is narrowing it down as we speak. Though I have to say, we need our own computer nerd. We can only use the Wyoming guys’ on a part time basis.”
“Well, it’s not going to be me,” I said with a laugh. I’d sooner use a computer to beat a man to death than use it to find someone. I could use it, just to be clear, but I hated to.
“I volunteer Hype,” Strike said.
“Why him?” Flir asked.
“You’re too…” He made a face when Flir’s eyes narrowed. “Distractable to do it.”
“That’s not tru-”
“See?” Strike insisted, cutting him off. “Hype is young enough to learn—but not quite as young as Code—and he has some semblance of patience, which the rest of us don’t. Except Ruck and Drifter.”
“I’m not doing it,” Ruck’s voice floated out from the phone. “Drifter is busy enough keeping all you assholes patched up. We can discuss this later. I just wanted to warn you. It’s a high likelihood you’re going to step into the middle of a shit show in there. Want me to send more back-up?”
“No way,” Relay growled. “That’s less for us to kill.”
There was silence from the phone, then, “...I’m sending more back-up.”
Relay swore. “Not Kilo or OD.”
“Why?” Ruck asked, sounding suspicious.
“I want to hold it over their head that they missed this,” Relay said, sounding smug.
“I’m sending Merc, OD, and Drifter.”
“Fuck.” Relay’s tone was resigned.
“Does that leave enough of you there at the clubhouse?” I asked.
“That leaves Kilo, Hype, Code, and myself. The Collective shouldn’t be expecting this hit. There’s no reason to beef up security here any more than that. Not this time.”
No way Ruck was going to have Kilo helping out unless he really needed him. Camila had her baby a couple weeks ago and they were catching sleep wherever they could while living in what Camila called the Newborn Bubble. OD and I were going to figure out what that was all about soon enough.
“We’re not going to wait on back-up,” Strike told Ruck. “We need to get moving.” We all watched as an older lady pulled in and parked a few spots down. She started hauling bags of groceries out of her car. Sort of answered the question about whether civilians lived here.
“The longer we stay here, the more likely we’ll be spotted,” Flir added, looking down at his watch.
“I know. Go in. I’ll send the others now and they’ll be there in about thirty minutes. Be careful and don’t fucking shoot them when they show up.”
“Ten-four,” I said in acknowledgment of his order. “Tell Glitch to send me any intel he finds on this place. Straight to my cell.”
“Will do. Watch your sixes.” Ruck hung up with that.
I grinned at my brothers. “Ready?” That old familiar feeling was creeping over me.
It was a…preparedness. I didn’t know how to describe it.
Like my muscles were tightening. My nerves were settling, ready for whatever was going to come at us.
I wasn’t nervous, or anxious, I was ready.
Focused. Prepared to do whatever was necessary to make sure all my brothers and myself came home.
I knew, from talking with the others, that they all felt something different when this happened.
Relay had admitted it swept over him like a backdraft of fire.
Lit him up from the inside. So much so that his hands would shake for the first couple of minutes while adrenaline raged through him.
It made sense considering this was like a reward to him. It hit him like a dopamine rush.
My phone buzzed and I stared down at the text.
It was a blueprint and info on the building.
I shoved it back into my pocket as we stacked up along the back entrance to the apartment.
It was a twenty unit building, two stories.
That alone would be a pain in the ass, but with the risk of civilians in here, we had to be extra careful.
Due to that, we were changing our normal tactics a bit.
I was running point, breaching the rooms with a shotgun.
Only instead of using slugs or buckshot, I was using riot rounds.
Hard rubber balls that were non-lethal, but hurt like hell.
I still had my nine millimeter on my hip, but this way I could be a little less discriminate about who I shot.
Granted, I didn’t want to shoot a civilian with rubber rounds either, but there was a good—no, guaranteed, chance this would devolve into a shit show.
Breaking some innocent dude’s ribs was better than him getting mowed down in the cross fire.
I just hoped like hell everyone would stay put once the shooting started.
Panicked civilians were a whole new level of chaos that we didn’t need right now.
Relay was behind me with his rifle. The plan was I knocked Collective shitheads down, he pumped them full of lead, then on to the next apartment.
If I shot a civilian on accident, he wouldn’t pump them full of lead.
At least that was the hope. Strike and Flir would watch our sixes for the first couple minutes, in case any heard the commotion and came up behind us, then they’d need to split off to search more rooms. This was going to go fast. I just hoped it went smooth as well.
We all pulled black ski masks over our heads. It wasn’t exactly original, but it would keep us from being identified. We’d left our cuts back at the clubhouse for that exact reason.
I glanced at Flir and nodded, he looked at his watch, silently counting down.
I watched his lips. Three, two…He opened the door for me and I went in, taking position at the first apartment.
He kicked the door right at the doorknob, splinters flying then stepped out of the way so I could enter, followed closely by Relay.