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“Well, fuck what she wants,” Ripper said. “She needs to tell us what we need to know so we can find this fucker who shot up our turf and cut his fucking heart out.”
“Uh,sheis standing right here,” Becca said. “And she knows stuff you want to know, so maybe you should be nice to her if you want her to tell it to you.”
“Maybe she’s going to tell us what we want to know whether she wants to or not,” Ripper said. “Or maybe she’s not going to walk out of here.”
“Ripper,” Boomer said, “I gave her my guarantee that she would be safe here, safe to speak her mind.”
“That’s your guarantee,” Ripper said.
“That’s right,” Boomer said, his voice suddenly getting hard. “That’s my fucking guarantee, and if you’re in the mood to test it, we can sort that out any way you like. Guns, knives, bare hands, whatever you want. Right here, right now.”
“And then me after that,” Griz said.
Becca found herself swallowing hard on a dry throat. This had gone in a potentially violent direction out of nowhere, in the blink of an eye, and she found herself feeling a little fluttery and unsafe, until Ripper held his hands up and spoke again.
“I’m not saying all that,” he said.
“What are you saying, then?” Boomer said.
“All I’m saying, is, we have a situation we have to deal with, and we shouldn’t have to have our ways dictated to us by some random lady who’s an outsider to us.”
“Okay, first off, I am not random,” Becca said, a bit to her own surprise.
There was something about the way Ripper had said it. Dismissive. Off-hand. As if her compliance with whatever he wanted should be a foregone conclusion, that it should happen simply because he said so.
Well, that wasn’t going to fly with her. She was the one doing them a courtesy by being here at all, and to have this biker guy act like she should crawl across the floor and tickle his nutbag just because he snapped his fingers? No way.
“Becca, maybe you should let me…” Boomer began to say, but Becca’s blood was up and she had to keep talking.
“No,” she said. “No. Ripper, is it?”
“Yeah,” Ripper said.
“Well, that’s a lovely name and all that,” Becca said, “but looking at you and knowing that you call yourself Ripper, I’m guessing you haven’t had a lot of experience with negotiation, have you?”
Ripper snorted and leaned back in his chair. “Look, lady…”
“Actually, Ripper,” Wyatt cut in, “you may want to hear what she has to say. She may look to you like some basic bitch, but she mentioned the other day to me offhand that she was working on a deal worth two hundred million dollars. Two hundred million. And she said it like it was a routine, everyday thing for her. She might just have something to say that’s worth hearing.”
Becca wasn’t sure she liked the whole ‘basic bitch’ part of what Wyatt had to say, but before she could decide on whether or not she had to address it, Griz was talking.
“That,” Griz said, “and if you don’t let her talk, I’ll smash your fucking head into the table like a pumpkin.”
“Thank you, Chew… I mean, thank you, Griz,” Becca said. “Look. You say that some ‘random woman’ shouldn’t be able to tell you how to deal with your business. But it doesn’t matter what should or shouldn’t be. It matters what is.”
Ripper frowned, clearly confused. “What?”
“This is Business 101, guys,” Becca said, letting out a frustrated sigh. “You’re not going to get everything you want, exactly the way you want it. It never goes that way. You have to have some give and take. Other people are involved…namely, me. I have something you need. Information. And if you want that information, you’re going to have to give something up. And it’s not going to be what you want. It never is. So the question is, Ripper, are you going to put your big biker boy pants on today, and take a realistic deal that’s good enough and gets you what youneed, or are you going to have a hissy fit about what youwantand end up getting nothing instead?”
Everyone was suddenly quiet. Becca wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing, but she looked around and saw that Boomer and Griz looked impressed with her. Well, Griz always looked impressed with her, but the volume dial on his impressed scale seemed a bit turned up.
“So you’re going to let this Death’s Head asshole get away with killing a pregnant woman, an innocent civilian, on our turf?” Ripper said.
“No. I didn’t say that,” Becca said. “But there are other ways of handling things than punching holes in his head or whatever you guys normally do.”
“That’s our way,” Ripper said.
“Well, here’s your chance to experience some personal growth then, Ripper,” Becca said. “I don’t want to see this Grim Reaper guy…”
