Caymen (Golden Glades Henchmen MC #12)

Chapter One

Noa

“Shit.”

Shit, shit, shit, shit.

I tossed my phone down on my bed and rushed into my closet, trading my silky pajama set for black skinny jeans and matching ribbed tank. Because you couldn’t wear baby pink pajamas when you were going to stop people from breaking into a building at two in the morning.

I shoved my feet into a simple pair of black sneakers—the kind that tied up because the last thing you wanted when you were in the middle of dealing with something wildly illegal and dangerous was to lose your damn shoe.

You learned a lot of interesting tips and tricks when you’d been in my line of work as long as I have.

I moved back out of my closet, ignoring my phone on the bed.

It had to stay home. I liked modern technology as much as every other average overworked and overwhelmed person with mild mental burnout and no desire to actually shop for their own groceries or venture out to get their own take-away.

But that shit brought down eight out of every ten criminals.

Which was why I yanked my smartwatch off my wrist and connected it to the charger on my bathroom counter.

I stepped in front of the mirror, reaching up and back, gathering up my wavy brown hair, and pulling it back into a high ponytail. Off next went my diamond studs and my necklace. My bracelet, though, stayed in place.

I pulled off the little golden under-eye masks I’d gone to bed with.

With that, I moved through my place, pausing just inside the door, weighing my options when it came to weapons.

In an ideal world, a gun wouldn’t be necessary for my job. But nothing about my work was ideal. Stupid-ass, selfish fucking assholes were always trying to get one over on me. Which probably had a lot to do with my gender, age, and the fact that they were all much taller and heavier than I was.

They didn’t take into account that my smarts were my real weapon. Just behind that in attributes was a fearlessness instilled in me at a young age. Followed closely by the confidence that came with being very, very well-trained.

I didn’t need brawn to stake my claim in a traditionally male-dominated world. I didn’t—usually—need to go hand-to-hand with anyone. And I’d only ever needed to actually discharge a gun twice in my whole career.

But I grabbed the gun.

Mostly because if these guys were still there, I knew exactly how many weapons were in their possession. And they weren’t going to like me thwarting their plans.

I wasn’t literally taking a knife to a gunfight.

As it was, the small handgun strapped to my ankle might not be effective enough if they all got trigger happy. If that went down, I’d have to hope my quick draw and good aim would be enough.

“Stupid fucking assholes,” I mumbled to myself as I made my way down the road.

Was it the smartest idea to walk down a less than stellar area of Miami as a woman alone at two in the morning? Maybe not. But anyone who came across me in this mood was going to regret getting in my way.

No one liked being double-crossed.

I especially hated it when it interrupted a hard-won REM cycle.

For someone with as debilitating insomnia as me, good, deep sleep was rare and precious. And absolutely unacceptable to interrupt. Over some stupid, petty shit like money.

“Hey, mama,” a voice called as I passed the diveiest of dive bars. The kind of place where the beer was warm, the floor stuck to your shoes, and the wrong kind of men felt right at home.

“Fuck off.”

“Well, I liked one of those words,” he said as he pushed off the building.

He carried with him the scent of cheap beer, weed, and cigarettes.

My nose curled.

“Yeah? Two blocks over, there will be three girls on the corner. Have fun.”

“Why would I want to pay them when I can have you for free?”

He was close enough that I could feel the way he loomed over me, could feel his hot breath, could smell the body odor that said he had worn the same clothes for more than a few days and hadn’t bothered to clean them or himself.

I didn’t have time for drunk losers.

And my patience was teetering on a knife’s edge.

So I leaned down, grabbed the gun, and turned.

Was it smart to pull a gun on the street where anyone could see and call the cops? Probably not. Was it always heartwarming to see the way a would-be sexual assaulter went wide-eyed, slack-jawed, and raised their hands in surrender? Absolutely.

“What part of ‘fuck off’ is so hard for troglodytes like you to understand? It was all of two syllables.”

“Crazy fucking bitch,” the man mumbled, moving back a step, keeping his gaze on me.

I always loved an accurate nickname.

I waited until he ducked back into the bar, re-holstered my gun, then took off at a run before he decided to come back with his friends. Because when it came to survival, it was important not to just be a fighter. You had to know when to get out of Dodge too.

By the time I closed in on my destination, I was not only tired and annoyed, but good and sweaty.

“Assholes,” I mumbled to myself as I wiped my forehead before sliding into the shadows as I drew closer to the strip of warehouses.

Most of them acted as temporary housing for items pulled out of shipping containers at the port.

And that was exactly what the one I’d temporarily borrowed for storage was usually used for. But thanks to a greased palm, I knew that the usual customers were away for three months to visit family in Greece. So the whole building was just sitting empty.

One set of security cameras set on a loop so the owners wouldn’t be any the wiser, and a picked lock, and the place was mine for the week.

It was supposed to be an easy freaking job.

Child’s play, really.

Until I got that damn alert on my temporary security system I’d set up.

Then got to watch as those morons cut my lock and made their way inside.

They hadn’t even bothered with masks.

Like I wasn’t going to track down every single one of them and teach them why I had the reputation I did in this business.

To be fair, they truly were just… idiots. A group of early twenty-somethings dressed like skaters and reeking of coconut after-sun lotion and extra skunky weed. They might not actually be in the know enough to realize who they were screwing with.

Not just me.

But the men on the other side of this deal.

Which meant not only a notorious outlaw biker gang but an international arms dealer who might have a sunny outward demeanor, but had one of the most ruthless souls I’d ever met.

And that wasn’t even mentioning his bodyguard, who was the kind of man who burned off his fingertips so his past couldn’t be traced to him.

These guys would be lucky if I could stop them before they got themselves on the radar of any of those guys. What I would do to them might hurt, sure, but it likely wouldn’t be of the deadly kind of retribution. Unless they shot first. I couldn’t say the same of the bikers, Zayn, or Daniyal.

The one downfall to these damn warehouses is there are rarely convenient ways inside.

They were just big cinderblock boxes with a garage door and a single door.

The windows were long rectangles, but placed up near the ceiling so no one could peek inside.

Convenient when you were hiding crates packed with guns.

Not so convenient when you were trying to sneak in unseen.

Oh, well.

It was what it was.

I rolled my neck, reached for my gun to stick it in my waistband for easy access, then reached for the door.

The inside was cavernous—just a long, wide space with absolutely nothing inside save for the metal shelving along three walls… and the rows of crates near the back of the room.

They were custom-made ones with false bottoms and a top layer full of cheap drop-shipped clothes that I’d dump off at a local shelter when the job was done.

Under all the clothes, though, was where the guns were hiding. Several million’s worth. In the States. But depending on what market Zayn was unloading them in internationally, they could go for millions.

That part was inconsequential to me. I got my flat fee, no matter how much everyone else made or lost in the deal once the goods were out of my hands.

Hell, the goods themselves weren’t usually ever even in my hands. This was a rare concession I’d made because these skater idiots didn’t want to deal directly with the bikers or Zayn. And the only reason I needed to store them at all was because there was a scheduling issue.

Now my ass was on the line if those jackasses came into my warehouse and took back the guns they’d promised to the bikers. And by extension, Zayn.

I had no idea how many bodies the bikers had to their name, but I got the impression that all the gators in a twenty-mile radius of their clubhouse were well-fed. And Zayn, well, there was a reason he was wanted not only by the law but by many criminal organizations in several countries.

I didn’t love the idea of being eaten by the local wildlife. I had tickets to a really good movie that weekend, for fuck’s sake.

I crept along the wall, knowing not to trust the silence inside the warehouse. There was a small hallway behind the main area that led to a tiny, tidy office and a bathroom that, well, wasn’t so tidy. Would it kill men to actually aim?

But the office was as empty as it had ever been. And aside from the toilet perpetually running in one of the two bathroom stalls, there was nothing amiss in there either.

Heart thudding, I made my way back to the warehouse itself. And the boxes.

For a moment, I took comfort in the neatness of the clothing nestled inside them.

Until I lifted a crate.

And it was way, way too empty.

The skater guys had moved the clothes, taken the guns, then spent the time to fold the damn clothes again before heading out.

“Ugh!” I grumbled, tossing a polka-dotted bell skirt that only flew an unsatisfying two feet away and floated gently to the floor.

It was right then that I heard the door.

My back stiffened.

My stomach tensed.

Were they back?

Was someone worse?

But it was just then I heard it.

The burst of static—sharp, sudden—then voices all tangled in distortion.

I knew a police radio when I heard one.

I didn’t try to escape. There was no escape.

And I damn sure didn’t waste a second to think.

I turned and ran back to the hallway, using the edge of my shirt to wipe my gun clean, then stashed it in the office drawer under some old junk.

The holster was wiped clean and chucked in the trash.

Then I rushed back out to the front warehouse.

There was no avoiding being discovered and likely arrested.

So I lowered myself down to my knees and placed my hands behind my head.

I wasn’t giving a cop any excuse to shoot me.

If I couldn’t talk my way out of this, they would haul me in and book me for breaking and entering. It was a petty charge. Even if it stuck, I wasn’t going to do any time since nothing was damaged and they wouldn’t find an unregistered weapon on me.

But when I was cuffed and brought out to the cruiser to be set in the backseat with the window halfway open, and then the damn cop walked his ass back into the warehouse, well, I figured I didn’t have to get booked after all.

Not everyone could shimmy their handcuffed ass out of a police cruiser window.

But I wasn’t everyone.