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His garage was located down a dead-end side street, an ideal setting because that lack of outlet and the neighboring lots—a Hurricane Katrina-abandoned gas station and an empty lot populated with scrubby pines and spiky grass— gave him space. He could park his day customers’ finished vehicles along the curb when his fenced backlot was full of overnights.
As his gaze coursed over today’s line-up and how fast his crew was working through them, he calculated how to squeeze Nicole in and get her on the road. And goddamn, if a white van wasn’t even now turning down his street to add to the load.
He took care of a lot of contractors. Because their vehicles were key to their businesses, he tried to turn them around pretty fast. He might be able to shift some other jobs to tomorrow to cover both Nicole and this guy.
The van had no company logo, not unusual. However, as it bumped over the curb into the parking lot, the sun’s angle offered Tiger a glimpse of the male driver and passenger.
Their intent looks didn’t say dropping-off-for-service. They said something that spiked his instincts.
Then the guy riding shotgun brought a 9mm up to a ready position, the light flashing over the barrel.
Nicole turned toward the vehicle. Tiger lunged for her, but the side door of the van slammed back. A barrage of bullets peppered out, joining those fired by the front passenger. They punched into Nicole’s body, flinging her against him. As the collision knocked him onto his ass, a burning in Tiger’s shoulder told him he’d been grazed or hit.
Violence wasn’t new to him, but his reaction time was too goddamn rusty. He struggled to get his feet under him just as the van occupants slung a couple Molotovs. One sailed into the garage bays. The other smashed through his front office window.
Aubrey.He had to leave Nicole lying there as he scrambled for the garage, already roaring to his employees,“Get out of there!”
The van was spinning around, screeching away. In the part of his brain that still knew how to think during shit like this, he registered Nicole had been their target. The rest of this chaos was meant to prevent a response.
Maryshka burst out of the first bay, Aubrey in her arms. Red and Larry were on her heels, and that was everyone here this morning. Maryshka looked toward him, spiked hair glaring crimson, piercings in lip, nose and eyebrow flashing from the same sunlight that had telegraphed the front seat gunman.
Her mouth opened on a scream of protest as Tiger passed her, running into the garage. His gaze sought that Molotov, where it had smashed down, if there was time to douse the flames before…
The explosion hurled him through the viewing window between the garage and front office. Pain sliced into him in a dozen places, his skull a balloon filled with too much water, the rubber expanding without breaking, excruciating.
His head hit something, and he landed on the desk, toppled over it. Disoriented, he stared up at the ripped hole in the ceiling, the flame licking across it, sparking wiring. Glass was underneath him, cutting and sharp.
A hard jerk as he was pulled to his feet. Chuck’s ham-sized hands on him. The guy huffed and puffed, but he was souped up on adrenaline, dragging Tiger’s muscled body out of the office like he’d been bench pressing two hundred pounds on a daily basis.
As they emerged, Red and Larry were on top of him, helping him pull Tiger to a safe distance. They sat him down on the stoop behind Chuck’s store. Aubrey was there with Maryshka. The little girl looked like she was crying, screaming, her hands clutching Maryshka’s shoulders. Maryshka kept her hand cupped over her skull, so the child could only look toward the liquor store’s rear entrance. Chuck’s wife Kat held the door, abig-boned woman with feathered silver-gray hair and navy-blue slacks. Her cell phone was clutched in her hand as she seemed to urgently entreat Maryshka to bring Aubrey inside, which the girl did. Tiberius danced around Kat’s feet, white muzzle moving in furious barking, brown eyes frightened.
Dazed and staring around him, Tiger saw what they didn’t want Aubrey to see. Nicole, lying in the parking lot a few feet from her debris-covered Jag, head turned toward them. Eyes staring and fixed, her chest soaked with blood.
The world swam into squiggly lines and Tiger toppled over. Nausea emptied his stomach, and he tried to hold onto his head before it came apart. Blood was on his hands. He tried to form words. Tried to regain control.
People were gathered around him, worried. The vultures were gone. But they could come back. They needed to move Nicole. Needed to keep them away from her. Needed…
He couldn’t think. He could see, he could feel, he could smell the smoke of his garage, his business on fire. But he couldn’t hear any of it.
He couldn’t hear anything.
CHAPTER TWO
Maryshka paused on the blue and gold carpeted steps to the club’s VIP lounge. The brass railing was cool under her clammy palm. Andrei’s hand brushed her lower back, rested on her hip. “All right?”
“Yeah. Maybe this is stupid and I’m overreacting. It’s only been a month, for fuck’s sake.”
“Maybe you find them too intimidating.”
She snorted. “Like they don’t scare the shit out of you, too.”
Andrei shot her a look. “That’s not very respectful to your Dom.”
“But is it true?”
His wry smile answered that, but he crooked an arm around her neck and brought her against him. A tacit permission to wind her arms around his upper body and take reassurance from the strength of it. Though kind of a string bean, he was surprisingly tough.
The gesture, his understanding of where her head was at, reminded her why she trusted him enough to submit to him.
