Blood & Bones: Cage (Blood Fury MC 5)

Shade spoke more today than in all the time since he’d joined the MC. He didn’t speak fast, but carefully. Again, Cage wondered what that was about. He’d probably never know and was A-fucking-okay with it because Shade knew his shit.

How? Cage would probably never know that answer, either.

“Dodge,” Shade held out a rock to the bar manager, “break a window at that end of the house. Wait thirty seconds, break another one. Want their attention focused at that end. Women and kids will move away from the noise, men will move toward it. Keep your head down. They might just start blindly shootin’. If they do, that’ll cover the noise of the rest of us goin’ in. Oz and Rook, find and gather the women. Assumin’ all twenty-six are inside. Lock them up in a room. Don’t worry about the kids but watch any old enough to be a threat. Me and Cage are gonna take out the men.”

Shade and Cage made eye contact and he jerked up his chin in agreement with the plan. This had to work. His daughter’s life depended on it.

Dodge stayed low and moved around to the opposite side of the house.

The rest of them waited to hear the first window break.

Once they did, along with men’s voices yelling inside, they moved fast and low to the back of the house where they found a rear entrance. Ozzy pulled something out of his back pocket.

A lockpick.

Within seconds the door was unlocked and Shade slowly opened it before slipping inside. Another second later he opened it halfway, indicating they should enter.

They did.

More glass broke. More men yelled.

Twelve uncle-daddies could be in that house. They needed to move fast and efficiently.

The back door had taken them directly into a rustic kitchen where Shade grabbed a six-pack of Mountain Dew in plastic bottles off a long roughly-made table. He freed a bottle from the plastic rings and handed it to Cage.

“Silencer,” he mouthed.

Christ.

Cage nodded his understanding.

Shade pointed at Ozzy and Rook and signaled the order to go. The two disappeared up the back steps with the assumption the women and children were hiding on the second floor. Cage and Shade headed toward the sound of the men and a third window breaking.

Trying not to make too much noise, Cage twisted off the bottle’s cap and dumped the soda as they moved through the rooms, sticking close to the walls, doing their best to be invisible. Because once they were seen, they’d be in a fight for control, maybe even their lives. They needed to pick off as many clan members as possible before that happened.

Shade came to an abrupt stop at the end of the hall and the beginning of what might be the front room, where Dodge had just broken a fourth window. He peeked his head around the corner, then snapped it back and lifted up his hand with all five fingers in the air.

Cage read that hand signal as “five soon-to-be dead motherfuckers.” The palm holding his gun itched and his fingers flexed in anticipation.

Shade then counted down from three using those same fingers. Three. Two.

One.

Cage and Shade rushed forward. He lifted his gun, held the empty bottle over the muzzle and shot three right in a row, taking them down.

Pop. Pop. Pop.

They crumpled to the floor, their long guns spilling from their hands, but still within reach.

Shade grabbed a fourth Shirley at the same time Cage was shooting and sliced the man’s throat with crazy efficiency.

As the fifth guy was pulling the business end of his shotgun in from the broken window, Shade sank the large blade deep into the man’s back, where the man’s heart would be. The fucker remained on his feet and tried to turn. As he did, and as Shade jerked the knife back out, Dodge appeared in the window with his gun drawn and pointed at the clan member’s forehead.

“No!” Shade shouted.

The Shirley somehow still stood, but barely, as blood poured from the fatal stab wound. Shade used a handful of the man’s hair to yank his head down while kneeing him in the face at the same time. Once he collapsed all the way to the floor, Shade pressed a knee to the man’s chest and unceremoniously sliced his throat.

The man gurgled one last time and blood seeped from the newest wound.

“Was gonna take that fucker out,” Dodge complained, appearing disappointed he didn’t get to take out one of the goat fuckers.

But their mission wasn’t over yet.

“Don’t want the rest of them hearin’ shots if we can avoid it. Don’t wanna give them a head’s up to hurt Dyna before we got our bargainin’ chips.” Cage explained. “Get in here and let’s clear the rest of the house. And find Ozzy and Rook.”

Dodge disappeared from the window.

Shade and Cage moved toward the stairway to meet him at the rear of the house. Then the three moved up the steps, which creaked under them.