Chapter Three
Colter
“This is how you travel all the way down to Florida and back?” I asked, shining the reading flashlight onto the map spread open on my lap.
“Can’t use phone apps if you don’t want to get caught,” Raff said from the driver’s seat.
“But after a while, you only need the maps if you get yourself turned around. I could do the straight run from us to the Golden Glades chapter in my sleep. It’s the little stops to all the gun shows and shops that can get me lost.”
“Still not sick of it?” I asked.
It was different, but I’d really enjoyed all the traveling involved when I was deployed. But even all that got old fast.
Raff had been driving the route from Florida to California and back every few weeks for years. He used to do the trek with his twin, but since Riff settled down, he cut way back on his traveling, only going a few times a year. Even then, begrudgingly.
Since then, the rest of us took turns doing the trips with him.
I liked a road trip as much as the next guy, but after the third trip, I was sick of it.
With Raff, though, he didn’t seem to tire of it. Sometimes, he even seemed eager to get back on the road if he’d been parked in Shady Valley for an extended period of time.
When I’d asked about it once, he’d brushed me off, saying some shit about how he loved visiting Florida and partying with the Golden Glades crew.
They were connected to an insanely rich international arms dealer who would bring them out on his yacht or fly them places on his private jet.
And, more recently, Raff also got a chance to stop in at the new sister chapter in Texas and “pretend to be a cowboy” for a few days.
I couldn’t help but imagine there was some deeper reason behind it all. But it wasn’t really my place to demand he dig and uncover what it was.
“It should be the next right,” I said, squinting at the tiny print on the map.
“We’re out in the suburbs, man,” Sway said from the backseat. “Are you sure you got the address right from Slash?”
“I looked up the coordinates that were on the paper he gave me. It looks like it’s getting a little more rural now,” I said as Raff turned down the next street.
Sure enough, slowly but surely, the houses spread further apart until, eventually, they gave way to dense, scraggly trees and more hilly terrain.
We passed a small white sign with bland black font declaring we were passing Lytle Creek, which I figured was the blue blob I hadn’t been able to read in the dark.
“Left, then quick right, and we should be there.”
Raff took the next left.
And for a reason I couldn’t explain, my stomach swooped.
I glanced over at Raff, then back at Sway, trying to see if they had the same sudden sense of trepidation as I did.
Either they were good at hiding it, or they didn’t feel anything off. Which made me second-guess my own.
It wasn’t like this was the first drop I’d been on for the club.
Far from it. We’d done hand-offs with every kind of person or group you could imagine.
Sometimes it was an individual—a suspected hitman, a woman who had a stalker, and even the occasional doomsday prepper.
More often, it was small-time gangs, Irish, Italian, or Russian mob members, and even the rare bike club. Like our own. Like this one.
There was almost always an element of danger, since we so rarely had any sort of relationship with the people we did business with.
This was one of the very few times I felt a pit in my stomach, though.
An argument could be made for the fact that there were only three of us. That since this was another MC, they might show up with numbers.
Or maybe I was just restless and paranoid.
Still, my hand went to my hip, feeling the reassuring shape of my gun in its holster. There was a knife in a special slot in my boot. Sway and Raff were both armed as well.
There was no reason to panic.
“Over by the pull-off,” Raff said, jerking his head.
Sure enough, up ahead, there was a dirt pull-off between trees.
My stomach cramped again.
But it was too late now.
We were pulling up the dirt path.
And there was the club.
There seemed to be only four of them unless others were hiding behind the ancient, wide trunks of the trees that dwarfed the men gathered around.
Four wasn’t bad.
Even if shit hit the fan, we were skilled, experienced, and could all be ruthless. Though maybe a part of me kind of wished we’d brought Crow’s psycho ass with us.
It was too late for regrets now, though, as Raff put the car in park and cut off the lights but left the engine running.
With that, we all climbed out in unison.
I tried to ignore the way unease whispered in my ear, how it fisted around my heart, making each beat feel slow and hard.
Sway took the lead, being the most senior of us.
He strode up to the men, singling out the one he saw as the leader and offering his hand.
“Roach,” the man with stringy black hair and pits for eyes introduced himself.
Roach.
What a road name.
All the men wore denim cuts, but there were no patches on their chests, and no one turned so I could see what their logo or rockers said.
“Sway. We have your shit if you have our cash.”
It was rare that a drop contained any pleasantries.
It was strictly business, with everyone involved knowing just how risky the items we were transferring were if we got caught with them.
No one was in the mood for small talk. Everyone wanted to get the contraband somewhere safe as quickly as possible.
“Yeah, it was, what, five grand?”
That gentle tap-tap-tap of dread at the back of my mind grew louder with each passing second.
My gaze scanned the trees, looking for human-shaped shadows, wondering how fucked we were if this went from a misunderstanding to a fight.
“Nice try, man. It was five grand for the handguns alone,” Sway said.
If he was churning with unease like I was, he didn’t show it. But that was just the guy’s nature—laid-back, easygoing, hard to rile.
“But you also wanted three semis at two grand each. Which brings our grand total to, do the math with me here, boys, eleven grand.”
“That’s not what the other guy said,” Roach insisted.
“That’s exactly what the other guy said.”
“It’s not what I heard.”
“Then you weren’t fucking listening.” Still, Sway’s voice held no real malice.
Because sometimes shit went like this. Everyone wanted to haggle. No one wanted to pay full price. We were even given a little leeway to make deals like that if they were reasonable. But wanting to take the full crate of weapons for half what we were owed? That shit wasn’t going to stand.
“I only brought five grand,” Roach said with a shrug. Take it or leave it.
“Then you can take the handguns or the semis, but you’re not getting both.”
“I think I’ll take whatever—” Roach started, taking a step toward Sway that anyone with eyes would call threatening.
But just then, something off in the trees snapped.
And so did the band of tension between both our clubs.
“You surrounding us?” Roach roared, shoving his hands into Sway’s chest, sending him back a step.
It was fucking instantaneous.
One second, all seven of us were just standing still, waiting to see how the negotiations would go. The next, we were all on each other.
My fist landed hard on someone’s jaw, sending pain shooting up my hand and through my shoulder. Even as a fist caught me just under the ribs, stealing my air for a long second.
But there was no time to catch your breath in a street fight.
The air erupted with the sounds of bodies crashing together, of hisses of pain, and seething threats.
My lip split open, blood slipping into my mouth—copper, hot, thick.
My knuckles split too, even as the crunch of someone’s nose breaking filled my ears.
The man fell to his knees, cradling his face, blood spilling out from between his fingers.
This was the place where your morals told you to back off, that you couldn’t kick a man when he was down.
But there was no such thing as morality when you were possibly fighting for your life.
I leaned down, gathering the front of the guy’s shirt, already wet with his blood, yanked him up slightly, then landed a hard uppercut under his chin.
His body flew backward, landing at an angle that looked painful—legs splayed underneath him in a W that probably twisted, if not broke, something.
I straightened, sucking in a few quick breaths, trying to decide if I should rush to Raff’s or Sway’s aid first.
Both were locked in close-contact fights, grunts of pain and anger filling the quiet night air.
I saw it.
Just a metallic flash under the moonlight.
But before I could even call out a warning, the knife plunged into Raff’s leg and pulled up brutally.
The roar that filled the air had my stomach twisting hard as I took a step forward.
Then it rang out.
Loud enough to stop all the fighting.
To make a bird lift from the trees ahead, letting out a startled cry.
A gunshot.
From behind me.
I whirled around, sure I was in shock, that I was hit and just didn’t register the pain yet. Because the shot was too close.
It had to have hit me.
Only, it didn’t.
Because the person who was hit was all of two feet behind me.
I hadn’t even heard him.
Hadn’t known someone was breathing down my neck.
No.
Not even breathing down my neck.
Because as his body wobbled and fell to the ground, I saw another flash of metal.
In his hand.
He had a gun.
He had a gun, and he must have been aiming.
But Raff was stabbed.
Sway was still fighting with Roach.
Who… who had shot him?
My gaze lifted, catching what I thought was a shadow. Until my eyes adjusted. Until I made out their shape.
Her.
Her shape.
There were the unmistakable curves of her hips and chest.
I couldn’t make out much—dark hair, a gorgeous face, a gun still lifted, the haze around it suggesting it had just been fired.
At the man who’d been ready to off me.
Seeing me, she lowered her hand, turned, and disappeared.
“Go, go, go,” Roach roared.
Then we were moving too.