AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You seem to be using the phone just fine, Stephen,” I pointed out.
“But this needs to be done face to face,sweetheart,” he said, seething on the endearment until it dripped with animosity. “I can’t have you sending secret messages to your biker boys about our private conversation. Meet me at the Route 66 Diner in ten minutes. Come alone or the deal is off.”
Without waiting for a response, Stephen hung up. I threw my phone on the bed, scrubbing my hands over my face. He had me backed into a corner. If I didn’t go, this whole thing would only continue to escalate until someone died. If I went, I walked right into his hands. It was a no-win situation.
A knock came at my door and I flinched.
“Is everything okay in there?” Tank asked.
I closed my eyes and bowed my head. I wanted to spill the whole story to him – the phone call, the meet-up at the diner with Stephen. But I knew if I did that, Tank wouldn’t let me go, and he certainly wouldn’t allow me to go alone. I couldn’t risk Stephen calling the deal off. I had to do this on my own. I got everyone into this mess. I needed to fix it.
“I’m fine,” I called back. I faltered, scrambling for an excuse. “Just…not feeling well. Stomach ache.”
Tank paused. “Can I get you something? Water? Soup?”
“A bath might help. Maybe that will take the edge off.”
“I’ll set aside some dinner for you.”
Guilt gnawed at my empty stomach. Tank had gone through all that trouble to make me something to eat and here I was, preparing to leave him behind and bail on him.
“Thank you,” I said, sincerely.
I moved into the bathroom, turned on the water to prove my story of taking a bath, and yanked the window open. Scribbling a note on a square of toilet paper explaining where I was going, I tucked it under the lamp on my bedside table. Then I braced my hands on the window sill and hauled myself up.
Chapter Ten
Blood dripped from my knuckles in thick splotches on the cement floor. I’d found the hired gun flirting with the Mexico border. I recognized his truck and license plate when he had careened out of the parking lot at Alexandra’s motel after the shooting. One well-placed bullet to the front wheel had him driving straight into the ditch.
Now he was strapped to a chair in an abandoned warehouse, his face swollen and purple, wheezing with pain. I barely registered the ache in my knuckles from pounding his face in. At my back stood two of my MC brothers – Crow and Diablo. They remained silent, keeping watch in case the cops came around. Crow had confirmed from our network of informants that this was man we were looking for.
“All you have to do,” I said, “is give me the name of the man who hired you.”
The gunman spat a gob of blood on the floor and coughed.
“Dude, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m just a trucker from Missouri –”
I cracked my fist into his face again. The jolt of impact rocketed up my arm, sending white hot pain through my hand. The gunman’s head snapped to the side, blood spraying across the concrete. He groaned, letting his chin dip toward his chest.
I placed my hand on the back of the chair and leaned into the gunman’s face.
“Let me put it another way,” I said, my voice low and rough. “I already know who hired you. So I can tell that you’re lying to me. And I will not stop until you give the correct answer. I will break every bone in your goddamn body if that’s what it takes to drag a confession out of your miserable ass. Is that clear?”
The gunman regarded me with drooping, weary eyes. Some hitmen would willingly rat out their employer to save their own skin; that’s why they chose the job in the first place. But the really good hitmen – the psychopaths, the sociopaths, the sadists – those were the ones who did shit like this for kicks, not money. No matter how much pain you put them through, they wouldn’t break. Because in the end, the money was only the cherry on top, an excuse, something to cover the bills and cover their ass. Employer or not, they would do the job for free if they could.
This hitman…he was close to breaking. The pain was grinding him down, steadily plucking at his resolve until he clung to a slim thread.
I held up my phone, my thumb hovering above the red “record” button.
“Start talking,” I said. “And if I don’t get the truth, I’m breaking kneecaps.”
The hitman worked his jaw for a moment. His teeth were stained with blood, his lips busted and swollen. Just as he took a breath to speak, my phone rang, displaying Tank’s number.
I gestured to Crow.
“Cover for me.”
Crow nodded and stepped forward as I moved to the far side of the warehouse, out of hearing range of the hitman. I answered the phone.
