“Hopefully he’s watching over the women and not drunk off his ass,” I replied.
“No shit.”
“If something happens—”
“Don’t,” he said, cutting me off. “You don’t have to ask me that shit, and if you go into this with your head in Eugene, you’re a fuckin’ dead man.”
“Fuck,” I mumbled.
“Looks like Slider’s loading up, better get to your rig. Feels fuckin’ off not being on my bike. This whole fuckin’ thing feels off.”
I tapped the hood of the car as I started around it, but before I could climb back into the van, I heard Grease calling out behind me.
“Head down, little brother.”
“You too,” I called back.
The warehouses were less than a mile away from where we’d met up, and before I knew it we were parking in a shitty little strip mall only a block away from the front gates. The night had grown dark, and as we climbed out of our rigs, I couldn’t shake the feeling of someone watching us.
Jesus Christ.
“You feel that?” Slider asked quietly.
“Yeah,” I mumbled back.
If it hadn’t been so dark, I doubt we would have seen anything. We would have walked into a goddamn trap.
“The fuck?” Slider hissed before moving quicker than any man I’d ever seen. His knife was out and sliding into Ramon’s lower back before I could even process what was happening. As Ramon’s phone dropped to the ground, the screen lit up his face, and I had to look away from the desperation there.
Fuck. Fuck.
“The fuck is wrong with you?” Slider asked, holding Ramon up by his hair as the rest of the men came running.
“Daughter’s at the University of Portland,” Ramon rasped. “Didn’t have a choice.”
“You had a choice, motherfucker,” Slider growled back. “Casper, he get that text out?”
I grabbed the phone off the ground and scrolled through the still open screen to find that he’d only typed out a few words but hadn’t sent it yet. I looked through his history, shaking my head in defeat.
“He’s lucky Tommy didn’t find this shit,” I mumbled under my breath, then answered Slider. “Nah, nothing tonight. We’re good.”
“I’ll take care of your family,” Poet told Ramon quietly. “Though you sure as fuck don’t deserve it.”
Ramon gave a thankful nod, his entire body going slack in resignation. The lack of resistance or fight surprised the shit out of me. I doubted I’d be so fucking calm in his situation, but I also knew he must have balls of steel if he was willing to betray the club and then spend months acting as if he weren’t.
Slider pulled the knife out of his back with a hard jerk, and I felt the urge to vomit and had to look away as he used it to cut Ramon’s throat. His gaze never left Ramon’s and though his face was emotionless, the betrayal and remorse in Slider’s eyes was hard to miss. He didn’t want to do it. He had to.
We stripped Ramon of weapons and ID, and then carried his body through the hole I’d cut in the fence over a week before, leaving him just inside. We’d grab him on our way out and take him back to Eugene with us if we could, but I knew we couldn’t just leave him in the van for anyone to find. The entire situation had me in a cold sweat, and by the time we’d taken up position to take out the guards at the exits of the warehouses, I could feel it trickling down my back.
The first guards had to go down quietly so they wouldn’t sound an alarm, so Poet, Grease, Dragon, Samson, and Slider took care of those on their own. I was okay with a gun, but I was glad as fuck that I wasn’t expected to do those outside guards. Killing a man with a knife wasn’t something I looked forward to.
As our group moved through the warehouse with the living quarters, I was surprised at how quiet it was. There were rows and rows of pallets wrapped in plastic filling the area, but no more guards or workers in sight. It was fucking eerie.
There was a TV on upstairs, and we heard it as we hit the first landing, walking as quietly as we could across the metal walkway. I had the unwelcome thought that I really hoped it wasn’t one of those kid shows that Will watched. Fuck. There had been no indication whatsoever that the McCaffertys had kids. I didn’t know why it was messing with my head so bad.
After all the preparation, stepping into the brothers’ living room was pretty fucking anticlimactic. If the way they sat in their recliners in their underwear were any indication, we shouldn’t have worried that they knew we were coming. They didn’t even notice us at first, they were so fucking toasted from their own supply.
Slider and Dragon raised their guns and set them at the back of their necks at the same time.
“You don’t fuck with family,” Slider whispered, his voice making me shudder.
They startled and began to rise, but before they’d gotten more than an inch from their seats, the sounds of simultaneous gunshots had blasted through the room.
They hadn’t given the brothers any time to plead their case or reach for the pieces I could see tucked down near the arms of their chairs. It was finally over. Thank Christ.
The other men were standing near the door watching Dragon and Slider, looking relieved that we’d finished what we came for, and none of the dumb assholes were watching the back hallway.
I saw her standing there in the dark an instant before Slider did and moved to call out, but before I could, her gun was in the air and pointed toward us. The sound of gunshots filled the room again and I couldn’t even look at Slider as he was hit in the thigh and dropped beside me. My eyes were filled with the beautiful woman in front of me who’d dropped her gun and was using her hands to try to stem the blood running from the hole in her chest.