Chapter 15
DIESEL
I dove for Callie and Cody, wrapping one arm around them and spinning all of us around before the second shot cracked through the air. I didn’t have time for subtlety, but I went for careful as much as possible as I shoved them behind a truck and covered them with my body.
Fuck. I’d checked the roofline, the alley, and the broken windows already. Twice. I did it again, even though I knew I wouldn’t find anything. Whoever took a potshot at us would do so from outside of my view.
My hand landed on Callie’s shoulder and stayed there. She wrapped Cody up in her arms and turned so he remained completely shielded. Her breaths came out hot and fast, the weight of them on my neck a reminder of what I still had to lose. Not again.
I raised my head enough to check the roofline again. First the hardware store, then the feed store twenty yards away and on the other side of the street. Dark windows. No movement.
I tracked the trajectory backward from where the first shot landed high in the brick wall. It had to have come from the south. That was the only explanation for the echo I’d heard.
The other men who’d ridden in with us spread out in a clean, practiced formation. No one crossed another man’s line.
Even the deputies who’d come to check out the fire fell into formation with us. Years of running our crew meant he’d put in a hell of a lot of hours with the locals for situations just like this. Instead of stripping our guns and immediately calling us guilty, we had a fair shot of being heard.
Hawk stood ten feet from me, his phone at his ear and his back against the ambulance. He glanced my way, eyebrows going up.
I held up two fingers and pointed south, at the only building that gave even a prayer of offering a line of sight to make that shot.
Hawk nodded and spoke into the phone.
Colt crouched near the rear of the truck, one hand on Cody’s shoulder and his body angled outward, putting himself between the kid and the alley. Just like Callie.
I hadn’t needed to hear Callie’s admission to know the truth. The two were mirror images of each other. All the way down to the crooked grin and tousled hair.
Colt was a father.
Damn. It shouldn’t hurt. Happiness for him overtook the ache in my gut, but it lingered.
With a look at Colt, I ducked away, running the forty feet to the alley. I turned sideways and shuffle-stepped when it narrowed, avoiding chunks of broken asphalt and the dumpster rusted to the point it looked like a bad wind would turn it to powder.
I rushed in low along the right wall, checking the blind spot the dumpster created first before moving on to the far end of the alley.
It opened up onto an empty service road. I tilted my head to hear better, but no engines or voices cut through the soft crackle of wind in the trees.
Whoever fired must have taken off. It’s what I would have done. The question was whether they’d shot to kill or to warn.
I ducked into the alley and double-checked the trajectory. I’d never been wrong, but there was a first time for everything and I refused to let Callie take the hurt for my screwup.
The angle confirmed it. Though the shot had come close, a shooter positioned in this area would have had a clean line to the cluster we’d made next to the ambulance. They could have taken the shot then. They’d waited. And they’d shot a hell of a lot higher than necessary.
Who? My hands fisted. I curled my fingers and walked the alley slowly, taking in every square inch. On the other side, a glint of lighter colored wood on the utility pole caught my attention. I turned on my phone’s flashlight and knelt for a better look.
Carved into the wood at knee height were four shallow cuts. Three straight lines and a scythe-like curve overlapping them. The same fucking symbol I’d found on Callie’s apartment right before she left.
Fucking Hellhounds. They’d put that mark on anything they considered interesting, signalling territorial interest without all out war.
I took a picture then stood and crossed to the group.
Hawk ended his call when I stopped beside him. “Perimters secure.”
I grunted and showed him the picture. “Found this.”
His face went still, a coldness I’d not seen in years settling over his features.
“It’s fresh.” I pocketed my phone.
“They knew you’d find it.” Hawk eyed the alley, the darkness in him shifting to a cold, brutal anger that matched the hardness settling in my chest.
No one fucked with us. And no one was going to bother Callie again. Not under my watch.
“Talk.” Hawk’s fingers twitched.
He didn’t order me around like that often, and the single word came with a barking command I’d heard so often as a soldier that I responded on instinct. “If they set the fire, it looks like they didn’t intend on an escape. But if that’s the case, a warning shot makes no sense.”
“Could be the door jammed on its own. Like Callie said.” Hawk rubbed a hand over his cheek and then around the back of his neck. “You think they wanted to see if we’d show?”
“Maybe. Might be curious to figure out if we’d come for her.” A light, boyish laugh from Cody unknotted some of the tension riding shotgun on my shoulders. “Or they wanted confirmation it was really Callie.”
Seven fucking years and someone still thought that Callie could be used as leverage over us. Or it was all a coincidence.
Right. I snorted at myself.
Hawk turned toward the truck. I followed, keeping track of every movement around us.
Colt looked up when we reached them. Cody sat between his knees with his back curled and his bandaged arm in his lap. He studied the firefighters continuing to do their job and the line of men circling the lot with hands close enough to weapons to draw attention.
“Are you vigilanties?” Cody glanced back at Cody. “They’re good guys too, but they don’t follow the law. Mom doesn’t like them.”
Callie made a noise that almost brought up a smile. Course she wouldn’t like vigilantes.
She pushed to her feet and crossed to me, lifting her chin with every stride. “What did you find?”
I hesitated just long enough to make her eyebrows go up.
“Do I need to go look for myself?”
She would too.
I showed her the picture, one hand ready to steady her when she went pale and wobbled. She batted my hand away, her inhale quivering before she locked her spine.
Hawk crouched beside Cody. “Hey. You doing okay?”
Cody shrugged, a tiny, barely there wince twisting his lips when he moved his bandaged arm. He pointed at me. “He’s fast. Like Flash.”
“Yeah, he is.” Hawk held the kid’s gaze. “We’re going to move you and your mom somewhere safe. That okay with you.”
Cody shifted to look at Callie.
She shook her head. “No.” straightening to her full height didn’t give her much of an advantage but it probably made her feel better. “We’re not going anywhere with you. I’ll call…” Her lips rolled together and she pressed her hand to them. “I’ll figure something out.”
“Callie.” Hawk managed to keep calm, but the vein pulsing in his temple showed a break in his facade.
“I said no.” Her eyes cut to me, then back to Hawk. “I’ve been keeping us safe without any help from the club. I can keep doing it.”
Colt stood, bringing Cody up with him. “Your shop is burned to soot.”
“Thanks, I noticed.”
“Someone shot at you.” Colt pushed forward a step, both hands on Cody’s shoulders.
“Or at you.” She crossed her arms and leaned forward.
Her braid fell over her shoulder, and moonlight danced on the wrench tattoo beneath her ear.
“There’s no proof that had anything to do with me.
You all were here long enough for word to get out and someone to try a lucky shot.
I’m not going to your property. I’m not putting Cody in the middle of club business. ”
“He’s already in the middle of it.” Colt shifted his weight to compensate for the way Cody leaned into him. Poor kid.
The way his gaze shot back and forth said he didn’t know what to do. He pressed his back into Colt but his hands trembled and he kept lifting them, almost reaching for Callie.
Colt took a breath. “Whether you like it or not, whoever did this made him a variable. That doesn’t go away because you want it to.”
A charge burned the air between them and lifted the hair on my arms.
The deputies finally decided they should do something and moved toward Hawk. He moved to intercept before they reached Callie.
Cody tugged Callie’s jeans. “Mom. Maybe we should go with them. Vigilantes keep people safe too.”
Her lashes fluttered, and she rubbed a hand back and forth over her neck, her fingertip tapping the notch there.
“It’s okay if we do.” Cody gulped air, and for the first time tonight he looked his age despite the wisdom coming from his mouth.
“He’s tall and fast.” He pointed at me, then swung around to Colt.
“He’s funny and makes me laugh.” He glanced at Hawk, and his voice went reverent.
“And he knows what he’s doing. They seem like good guys. ”
Callie’s throat moved in a hard swallow. She raised her head to the sky and blinked several times. The kid didn’t understand what he was asking her, but we did.
“We can go home after.” Cody left Colt and moved to stand in front of Callie. He wrapped his arms around her waist and dug his chin into her belly button.
“We don’t have to.”
“Please. Just for now.”
If she said no to this kid, her heart had gone harder than I ever dreamed possible. We should be reassuring her that it would all be okay. I didn’t say a damned word. I wanted her at the clubhouse where I could make sure no one came within a hundred yards of her.
Seven years ago, she’d asked me if she was a problem I wanted but couldn’t keep.
I hadn’t answered fast enough, and I’d taken too much time after to come up with a proper explanation.
I’d answered with protocol instead of a promise, and that silence had helped drive her away.
I needed to apologize but the situation was too volatile for me to risk opening my mouth and letting the wrong thing come out.
Then again, maybe she needed a reminder with her favorite word. “Unsecured targets become leverage.”
Her jaw shifted, the grinding sound telling me I hit the mark.
“Someone cut that mark tonight. They were here, and they watched the fire. They gave us a warning shot. There won’t be another.”
“I know what it means.” Her body kept stiffening. She squeezed her arms, then lowered her hands to Cody’s shoulders. He hadn’t moved from in front of her, and she bent to kiss the center of his forehead.
“Then you know staying loose is not an option.”
“What I know is that last time I was on your property, I ended up regretting everything.” She smoothed both hands over Cody’s cheeks. “Everything except this.”
“I know.” And I did. I wasn’t going to even try and dress up our mistakes as anything but the biggest fuckup in my life. “Please, Callie. We can’t force your hand, but we’re the safest bet you have right now.”