Axle's Brand (Death Chasers MC 3)

ME: They’re setting a trap for you and coming here!

ME: Please hear this message dinging. Please!

“Why are you asking about Liza knowing about the cars?” she asks quietly.

I didn’t realize they celebrated business or I would have known the person who cleans the money wouldn’t need to ask where it was. They’d just need to know when the merchandise was ready—in order to stop the money from ever coming in, unaware of my arrangement with the club.

“Maya, please, answer me,” she says, following behind me as I send another desperate text to Axle.

“Axle said all the women get escorts to and from their businesses,” I say without looking at her. “Who were Liza’s?”

“It varies. Liza just picks a couple of guys out at the club to escort her home, since there’s always a group of them there. She closes most nights. Why do you keep asking questions about her?”

Telling her would be stupid. Because she’d tell Drex. And he’s going to want to kill me for issuing that level of disrespect toward someone of Liza’s stature within the club.

If we live to tell anything, that is.

“Of course she does,” I mutter to myself as I jog upstairs to Axle’s room.

The door is locked, and I silently curse as I jog back down.

“Do you have any weapons at all?” I ask Eve.

She blinks at me, and Drake snorts a little as he uses his crutches to carry him across the floor. The strippers—hate to refer to them as merely that—are in the seating area, watching us with guarded expressions, trying to stay calm.

Drake lifts a false panel, and the wall becomes a hollowed out shelving unit that is loaded with every type of gun I could ask for. Only problem is, I’ve never actually had to shoot at someone. I hope the target practice I’ve had has actually prepared me for real life.

I’d love to see AJ right about now—not Sarah. Because in my head, she’s two different entities, and I need the badass killer version.

“Why?” Drake asks me as I pick a gun and make sure it’s loaded.

“Axle and the guys are driving into a possible trap. And we’re likely to get hit. Please keep trying to call him,” I state calmly.

“Colleen, get the girls underground. We’ll come too,” Eve tells her.

Colleen curses at the same time Drake does, but they both launch into action.

“This is why I simply tattoo people,” Drake says on a grumbled breath. “So that I don’t get shot at. So why the hell am I so close to flying bullets all the damn time?”

He glares at his phone next.

“Answer your phone. I’m a man on crutches and bullets are coming, damn it!”

The brace is still necessary, since he’s struggling to learn to walk on it again. Apparently the injury was really nasty.

Colleen is ushering people into the back passage, through a secure door that Eve gives her the combination to. The girls follow her without asking questions.

Just as Drake starts barking at Axle’s voicemail again, I hear the first shot burst through the glass, followed by what seems like a thousand other bullets. Drake dives on Eve, tackling her to the ground and covering her body with his near the door.

I drop, landing on my stomach, trying to crawl toward the doorway as glass bursts way overhead, near the top of the warehouse, and rains down on us. Ignoring the multiple stings, I continue to crawl over the broken glass, keeping my body low to the ground.

Eve and Drake manage to make it, but before I can get there, a loud, rumbling explosion bursts open the hangar door to the warehouse, and I scream, curling into a ball as the pulse wafts over me.

My ears rattle as smoke billows in, and I hear a ringing as gunfire continues to rage on. My eyes open, but I don’t see what’s going on around me.

All I can see is that building exploding back in New York. I can hear myself screaming for my parents, helplessly watching.

My breaths hit my ears, and I’m vaguely aware of two hands dragging me back until I’m shoved against a sealed door. Colleen is banging on the door, and I can hear Eve screaming at her through the other side, telling her the code, panicking when it doesn’t open.

And slowly, I come back to the warehouse we’re in, seeing the smoke. Seeing the scorch marks. Seeing the small flames that the overhead sprinklers try to snuff out.

But I can’t move.

Frozen, I listen to the world around me, staring unblinking, as my throat tries to close up. Until I’m suddenly scrambling away from Colleen, curling up in a corner that makes me feel safer.

CHAPTER 26

AXLE

We stop at the end of the block, and I dig into my pocket to grab my phone that’s been vibrating against my thigh since we left. We’re only ten minutes out, which is pissing me off.