Gunpowder (Gunpowder #1)

1. GAUNTLET

1

GAUNTLET

Blair Kennedy figured he would get shot eventually, but that didn’t mean he had to be happy about it.

The roll-up bay doors of the warehouse stood open on either end, letting in a rare breeze for a humid July night. It blew through the otherwise empty space, tickling the locks of auburn hair that stuck out of his beanie. It was a great night for a stoop party at Ricky’s place. He was probably cooking already, which was all the more reason to wrap this deal up quick.

Incindious, the gang to which Blair belonged, had entered from one side of the warehouse and Phantom from the other. The two gangs now stood a few feet apart with a briefcase full of firearms between them.

“That’s all of them and not a serial number in sight. Just like you wanted,” Felix said with a note of warning in his voice, daring the other man to make a fuss.

Chink, chink. Chink, chink.

Spencer stood on the other side of Felix, their leader, and Blair didn’t have to look to recognize the sound of Spencer flipping his lighter between his fingers. Blair didn’t take his eyes off the three members of Phantom standing before them but still listened closely to that flicking, the telltale sign that something had Spencer on edge.

It came a little faster now. Chink, chink, chink. Chink, chink, chink.

Blair had been present when Spencer voiced his trepidation to the boss about selling guns to a rival gang, but Felix had shrugged him off and said it made more of a statement that they weren’t intimidated enough by Phantom to turn down their business. Felix was stubborn, prideful, but Blair didn’t think that small disagreement was the reason for Spencer’s current restlessness.

Phantom’s leader, Isaac, inclined his head and the tall one on his left picked up the briefcase sitting between the two groups. Blair’s jaw tightened. Based on the rundown Spencer had given them about the higher ranking members of Phantom, that person was Jinx, a lunatic in lipgloss. Jinx inspected the weapons and nodded to Isaac. In the dim lighting, their eyelashes threw long shadows down their face like tear tracks, and Blair could have snorted at the absurdity of the thought. Everyone in Phantom had their screws loose and not only was Jinx no exception but probably the greatest example. Little was known about them, from their age to their gender but there was a consensus on the streets that few people had lived to see Jinx twice. It only furthered Blair’s anxiety that Issac had brought them along to this meeting.

“You made quick work of this, Felix,” Isaac said. “You must have quite an impressive team. I suppose there’s something to be said for doing things the old-fashioned way.”

Blair almost broke his resolve of watching the other gang to roll his eyes. Just because Isaac had a special techy wheelchair and knew how to hack a computer, he thought technology was the answer to everything. Blair held his tongue. Isaac was always spouting nonsense and it was a waste of everyone’s time to start conflict over it. Blair was the front line of Incindious’ defense but they hadn’t had more than a few petty scuffles with the newly reformed Phantom, so he wasn’t going to drag this deal out by picking a fight. Going by the sound of Spencer’s Zippo knocking between his fingers, Spencer was getting tired of all the chitchat, too.

“The best in the business,” Felix said. He slipped a cigarette between his lips and felt his coat for a lighter.

The third member of Phantom smiled—Adrian, the only one who had yet to speak. His too-long black outfit and jovial smile put Blair uncomfortably in the mind of a priest. Adrian looked to be the oldest of the three, with his face showing lines and his mousy brown hair was going grey at the temples, but he wasn’t to be taken lightly. None of them were.

Adrian raised his hands in an infuriatingly placating gesture. “I’m just glad we can all get along.”

The flipping of Spencer’s lighter was constant now, raising the hair on Blair’s arms.

Felix patted his pockets to no avail and grumbled a wordless request to Spencer. He turned his head for the blond haired man to give him a light. Spencer did, but Blair would bet if he could see over the tinted lenses of Spencer’s glasses that he never took his eyes off the group in front of them. The cigarette crackled quietly as the paper burned away.

No goodbyes were said between the gangs as they parted ways. Jinx turned to leave first and Isaac followed with a buzz of his wheelchair. Blair was glad, since he didn’t like the idea of putting his back to them. He was also relieved to see Adrian lower his spread hands and make to follow his other two members.

Spencer closed his lighter too hard.

Clack.

The lighter hit the cement floor of the warehouse.

The sound took a too-long second to register in Blair’s mind before instinct kicked in.

Spencer must have seen Adrian’s hand disappear under his long shirt, because the blond haired man was already in motion by the time Blair recognized the glint of silver. Almost in sync, he and Spencer rushed forward, blocking Felix with their bodies. Spencer seized Adrian’s wrist and forced the gun to the side, his other hand already moving in to knock it from Adrian’s grasp, but Adrian wrenched his arm away before he could be disarmed.

It only threw Spencer off for an instant. He didn’t have a large enough opening to draw his own weapon but he struck Adrian in the ribs with his elbow. Adrian wheezed as the air rushed from his lungs, his hand flying to his side. Though Blair couldn’t tell that Adrian’s weight had shifted, it must have done so just barely—and that’s what Spencer seemed to be counting on. Spencer hooked his foot behind Adrian’s ankle and swept his feet out from under him. He followed Adrian down with a knee on his chest and the other on his shoulder, pinning Adrian’s gun arm to the floor.

Blair’s hand hesitated on the pistol in the back of his waistband. Adrian was putting up a hell of a fight against Spencer, and they were way too close together for him to take a shot. He could disarm Adrian by hand but that would mean leaving Felix unguarded. Blair glanced at their leader.

Felix spit his cigarette onto the ground and sighed. He reached under his long coat, his movements unhurried.

“Leaving one man to take us all on?” When Felix took his hands out of his pockets, he had the MAC-10 in one and the magazine in another, and he connected them in one fluid movement. “That’s not very nice, Isaac.”

Blair should have known the boss didn’t really need their protection when it came down to a fight.

He pulled out his own Beretta 92 and brought it to bear, hearing Jinx’s booted footsteps outside and the mechanical hum of Isaac’s wheelchair. Then both sounds were drowned out by the rapid popping of Felix’s gun. In the direction they could hear Isaac and Jinx retreating, Felix littered the thin metal walls of the warehouse with .45 caliber sized holes. The Incindious mark embossed on the leather grip of Blair’s gun danced like a live flame in those pinpricks of light. Felix stalked towards the bay doors to pursue the others and Blair turned his attention back to Spencer.

Adrian had reversed their positions. In Blair’s moment of distraction Spencer had knocked Adrian’s revolver away but the other man was clearly proficient at fighting hand to hand. He had strength that rivaled Spencer’s speed. Blair’s grip was firm, but there was sweat beading on his forehead that he couldn’t hope to blame on the humidity; he had spent hours at the range, blown out windows, shot out tires, but he’d never shot a person before.

Don’t think of him as a person, think of him as the enemy. It’s him or Spencer. Shoot him.

Felix was shouting something. He must have found Isaac and Jinx, but Blair could hardly hear anything over his own racing heart and the struggle of the two men in front of him. He cocked the Beretta.

Blair’s mind screamed at his body to move. He had to end this so they could back up the boss. Jinx was even more dangerous than Adrian, and Isaac could have called in reinforcements by now.

“Kennedy!”

Spencer’s voice, brimming with urgency, woke Blair up. It was less like a dousing of cold water than being suddenly engulfed by fire. He jolted and his finger steadied on the trigger. The next time he inhaled, it was even and calm. What am I doing? Blair was the vanguard of Incindious, it was times like this that they relied on him most.

He steadied his aim. “I’ve got him, Spencer!”

“He’s got my—”

—gun.

Blair didn’t hear the word but he saw it.

His ears rang, and rather than the warehouse, Blair found himself in the shooting range.

He was watching Spencer fire his long gun with the silver barrel. The protective goggles weren’t all that different in color from Spencer’s tinted sunglasses. Blair found that funny for some reason. He inspected the revolver in Spencer’s hands, so unlike Blair’s own Beretta that Spencer had helped him choose. He was kind of obsessed after getting his own gun—his badge of office, so to speak—so he was always comparing other ones to his, noticing every similarity or difference. In this case what caught his attention was that Spencer’s gun didn’t seem to kick as much.

He asked why, and Spencer said, “ These are twenty-two caliber rounds, they’re smaller and less powerful than yours.”

Blair looked down at his Beretta that chambered nine millimeter. “Why would you want a less powerful gun?”

“ This is a Smith that was much better. There were still doctors but there were much longer pauses between their words. Blair was a talker, himself, but they were too much all at once like that. He closed his eyes again. Finally, he could get some sleep. Maybe if he got some rest he would remember why he was there.

There was a pinch in the crook of his arm, and the lights went off.

It was hard to distinguish between his dreams and when he was awake. His thoughts blurred at the edges and ran together. He could have sworn he was in the back of Felix’s car but then he wasn’t, the leather upholstery turning to crisp, clean smelling sheets before turning back to cement. There was blood on the concrete and he could taste the coppery tang of his wound.

The ground turned back into sheets and he found them clenched in his fists. Stay there , he thought, just stop changing . They were coarse against his calloused fingers and most importantly they were real.

This is a Smith Blair would hate to have to call someone back in here to change them again just because he wanted to poke and prod at his boo-boo.

On the other side of the curtain, the door slid open again. He sat as straight up as he could.

Isaac wasn’t reckless enough to send someone to finish him off in a public hospital, right?

Even if he did, Blair knew there would be a couple of his own people close by in case he tried that very thing.

Still, he felt around on either side of him without taking his eyes off the door and settled for resting a finger on the red call button when he couldn’t find a makeshift weapon; he didn’t want any of the hospital staff to try and get involved, but hearing them coming might spook whoever entered his room.

“Blair?” said a small voice.

His body unwound with a long sigh of relief. He let go of the call button and as a wide grin broke across his face. “Hey, Marie.”

Her bland surroundings made the girl look even more ethereal. With platinum blond hair falling to her waist and a natural grace to her movements, she crossed the space between them like a tiny ballerina that escaped from her music box. Her presence soothed away every trace of his nerves from a moment ago. She took his hand in both of her small ones.

“How are you feeling?”

“They have me on some painkillers but the doc said it came out clean, and didn’t hit anything major.”

She nodded, sending some of her curls past her shoulders to tickle his arm. “Isaac and Jinx got away.” She must have seen the guilt cross his face, as her hands tightened around his. “We can always flush them out again but if you had bled out, there wouldn’t have been another Blair. Saving you was worth letting them escape.”

Marie wasn’t the newest member of Incindious but she was the youngest at a tender sixteen, and that might have been the reason he made an exception for his hatred of his first name when she said it. If Spencer was their brain then Marie was their heart. She could read them all like open books, even Felix’s bitter ass. It was hard not to feel calm around her and right then, she was a better remedy than any amount of morphine they could pump into him.

“Thanks for coming, Marie.”

“Felix wanted to come in, too, but that wasn’t going to work.”

Blair cringed. “Is he mad?”

“No, he just got kicked off the grounds for smoking,” she said with a small smile.

“How’s Spencer?”

She sighed. “He got kicked out for smoking, too.”

He laughed at the thought of the boss and his right hand, above the law and bound by no rules, getting kicked off the property by a couple security guards. It was just ridiculous enough to suit this jacked up night, or day, possibly. He didn’t know how long it had been.

Her smile waned as she rubbed circles into the top of his hand. “Blair.”

“Yeah?”

Her fingers stilled. “They declared war in that warehouse,” she said, looking down at his leg.

“I know.” He knew better than anyone.

“Get better, and get ready,” she said solemnly. “Felix has already given the orders. He wants them all dead.”