Chapter 8 In the Den #3
Lorelai whipped the iron around with her full body, slamming it against the side of his skull hard enough to crush it on impact.
He dropped to the ground, lifeless, totally missed by his teammates among the rest of the chaos and gunfire.
She had the advantage of approaching the remaining hit team from behind as they moved through the room to the stairs leading up to the office I met the club owner in.
The bartender, still hiding with me, cursed again and glanced over at me, then down at his phone. “You stay back here and try not to get shot. Police and backup are on their way. Hopefully, the backup gets here first. Just keep your head down.”
I didn’t have a chance to respond. He already vaulted the bar and crouch-ran to the table Lorelai had previously hid behind, placing a hand on the shoulder of the other man there and speaking into his ear.
The patron nodded and drew his date closer with his eyes set on the bartender as if waiting for a sign.
He moved around to their other side to allow a clear shot to the front of the club, back pressed to the heavy table, and a hand up in the universal hold sign.
In the brief lull between a barrage of bullets, muffled yells came from the direction Lorelai had stalked to. It seemed like she was moving to secure the stairs up to the office.
The bartender gestured to the couple to run for the door, sliding around the edge of the table in the opposite direction with his gun raised to fire off some well-placed shots at another gunman.
Following his sight, I caught the tail end of Lorelai laying into a prone body sprawled on the floor.
Watching her swing that tire iron so mercilessly, even watching from behind, sent a disturbed chill down my spine.
It was… brutal. And I’ve seen some twisted shit.
Then her torso jerked twice.
“Shit! Why didn’t she shift and get the fuck outta here? God damn it!” The bartender sprang from his cover and moved, shooting at her attacker running from the dance floor. He had already made it halfway up the spiral staircase.
Lorelai was faster.
How she managed to recover so damn quickly after being shot twice—even with a vest—was unreal.
That shit knocks the breath from someone, and she was already sprinting across the floor in a serpentine pattern while avoiding the wild spray of bullets.
If I didn’t come to the conclusion before now, it was obvious she was fucking insane.
The woman had no sense of self-preservation, bringing a literal tire iron to a gunfight.
I wasn’t much better with a switchblade half the length of my hand, but at least I wasn’t running headlong into gunfire with it.
The gunner on the stairs began to visibly panic, watching Lorelai gain ground despite his desperate attempt to shoot her down.
Frankly, he looked very untried, and not for the first time, I wondered who the hell hired this hit crew.
Looking at the other four bodies lying motionless on the club floor, it was obvious they were not very experienced.
Who sent in rookie hitmen to a club with a known association with a mob?
An emergency exit door in the back of the room, painted a bright red to stand out from the dark mural, slammed open, and more men poured through.
Every one of them had a semi-auto braced against their shoulders and masks with vivid red-stitched smiles covering the lower part of their faces, all donned in bulletproof vests as they spread out in an organized formation to assess the scene.
One in particular broke free from the back of the group and headed directly for the staircase as if he knew the club’s layout.
The gunner on the stair, clearly startled, hardly had the time to turn and aim his gun before he was completely annihilated.
His limp body clattered down the metal steps and landed in a heap at the bottom.
Lorelai skidded to a stop to avoid tripping on his corpse. “Really? What the actual fuck, Taylor? I almost had him!” She even had the audacity to toss the tire iron to the ground like a child having a fit.
Her words didn’t register in my brain at first. Was she… upset at being helped?
The apparent leader, Taylor, ripped the mask off his face to reveal a particularly deep scowl.
“You’re telling me what the fuck? I should be telling you that!
Where’s your gun?” It took a moment for my shocked brain to catch up with the rest of what was going on, but I realized he was the same biker who talked to Jimmy when we were pulled over by the Red Riot.
Just another confirmation of their connection to this place.
“You told me you had it behind the bar!”
“Oh, pish posh,” she waved off his concern. “What’s the ETA on the police?”
He didn’t seem willing to let the topic of her being unarmed go. “When are you going to learn you can’t just toss your life away like this? What the fuck do you think would’ve happened if you got shot?”
“I did get shot, see!” Lorelai pointed to the bullets still embedded in her vest. “I turned out just fine!
Now, Taylor looked like he was a second away from having an aneurysm.
Even in the low light, I could see his face turning impressive shades of red bordering on purple.
Lorelai, on the other hand, was unfazed by the whole ordeal.
She sighed and put her hands on her hips, turning in a slow circle to take in all the damage.
“Man, what a feckin’ mess!” Her head tilted down to the dead shooter at her feet, nudging his head to the side to get a better look at his face with the toe of her boot.
“Get some IDs on these assholes first. I wanna know who thought they could fuck around and not have to find out what shootin’ up the club brings them.
” The longer she spoke, the more that lilting accent from before wove through her words.
If I had to guess, she was Irish. How she covered it so well before was impressive.
“Yes, ma’am,” Taylor responded with a snide tone. “Anything else, princess?”
The camaraderie between them spoke of a sibling relationship.
Lorelai was a good head shorter, but their facial structures were eerily similar—tall noses with heavy smatterings of freckles across them, high cheekbones, heart-shaped faces tapering into narrow chins, and the same emerald eyes. They were a striking pair.
Lorelai snapped and pointed at him with a finger gun. “Actually, yeah! Did you bring your bike?”
Taylor ground out, “Yes, I did. How else was I going to get here fast enough?”
“Sweet!” she chirped. “Imma need to borrow it. Call Jerel and have him give you a ride."
“Why don’t you call and ask him to pick you up?”
Lorelai rolled her eyes. “Because I’m not leaving right this second.
I’m gonna have to talk to the police, and get the club put back together, and talk to the staff, etcetera, etcetera.
But you,” she jabbed the center of his broad chest with her pointer finger, “are gonna start making some calls to the other bosses and see if anyone knows about this. Got me? I wanna know who’s trying to start shit. ”
“This would have been easier if you’d left someone alive,” he grumbled, casting a disgruntled look at the aftermath.
“You’re the one who shot the last guy! Don’t be bitchin’ at me for making more work for yourself. Now, git, I have shit to do.”
With that, Lorelai stepped over the dead shooter and took the stairs up to the second floor, leaving Taylor and me to stare up at her with varying degrees of awe and annoyance. Then his gaze fell down to glare at me. “And who the fuck are you?”
I tried to exude nonchalance where there was nothing but barely contained panic.
“No one special. Just a customer who got caught up in all this.” I waved my hand around to gesture at the mess.
Now did not seem like a great time to mention I was working for another mob boss’s underling.
“I’m happy to get out of your hair while you deal with the cleanup. ”
“Oh, fuck that!” Taylor’s beefy hand gripped almost all the way around my biceps before I could turn away. “You’re staying right here ‘til we get some answers out of you.”
“Really, there’s no need–” I began.
“I got this one, T. You start rounding up the staff and catch the police at the door until I get up there.” Lorelai came traipsing down the stairs with a red helmet tucked under her arm and a black jacket similar to what she wore before, covering her arms once again, this time without the Kevlar vest. A helmet with a logo I’d seen only a few days prior.
As she walked up to Taylor, she shoved the helmet into his chest to catch it from barely hitting the ground and began to unravel the mess the braid in her hair had become.
He cursed bitterly. “Feckin' brat. Can you at least wait so you’re not riding off on your own?”
The sweet smile that spread across her pink-glossed lips did not match the feral spark in her green eyes. “Will it get you off my ass if I do?”
“Forgive me for trying to keep you alive.”
“Tick tock,” she tapped the top of her wrist with a finger. “Do as I asked, please. I got shit to do tonight.”
Taylor passed the helmet off to me. Shocked that I got dragged into this, I almost fumbled it too.
Lorelai was busy running her fingers through the snarls in her hair, wincing on a particularly brutal knot.
She leaned to the right to scrape it all over a shoulder, fingers deftly weaving the three pieces together to redo the braid and tying it off.
And the whole time, her eyes never left mine.
“So tell me your story.”
I tried to keep my face blank. My expertise was not really in espionage, and my ability to come up with a believable lie was even weaker. Andrea was pretty clear that it wouldn’t benefit me if the Red Riot found out I was here under his order. And obviously, Lorelai was deep in the ranks.