Che (Golden Glades Henchmen MC 2)

"Who would you piss off enough to have taken a shot at you?" he asked. "What have you gotten into?"

"After a couple years, the racing thing got old. Cops are cracking down hard across the country. But especially in the bigger cities. And that's where the money is," I told him, grabbing a couple napkins just to keep myself busy, not wanting to watch him stare at me while I told him the story.

"So, what did you do?"

"I decided to put my skills to another use," I told him, looking over to watch as realization crossed those dark eyes of his.

"You became a wheelman."

It wasn't a question, but I answered anyway. "Yes."

"Why?"

"What else was I going to do?" I asked. "I'd spent my late teens and most of my twenties doing illegal street racing as a sort of profession. You don't go from that to answering phones at a dental office."

"You could."

"I couldn't," I said, shaking my head. "Any more than you could go from racing to anything other than chopping cars and running guns. We thrive too much on the chaos. Junkies through and through, that's what we are," I said, pausing when the server came over with a pizza on a metal stand, putting it between us, dropping some plates, and moving off.

"How long?"

"About four years. But it's not exactly steady work. But I've had some big payouts. Worth the risk kinds of payouts," I added. The cash was all sitting pretty in several safety deposit boxes up and down the eastern seaboard.

I kept expenses low, what with living on the road and all. There was no reason to keep an apartment somewhere that would be empty most of the time. So I just did short-term rentals wherever I was looking for work or helping plan a job. Food and cheap motel rooms, that was all my life had been for the past several years. It sounded sad when you thought of it that way, but I had enjoyed every minute of it.

"I'd finally started making a name for myself. Which led to bigger and bigger clients. Which was what brought me back down to Miami a few weeks back," I told him, watching as he pulled a slice of pizza off the tray, the cheese holding onto the pie for dear life before finally giving up the fight. Once he dropped it on a plate, he passed it to me.

"The deal was to eat and talk at the same time," he reminded me.

And, really, I didn't need any more prompting than that.

I didn't come up for air again until the first piece was nothing but a crust. Which Che pulled off of my plate and onto his own in an old, familiar way, before he passed me another slice.

"Who did you get involved with?" he asked, raising a brow when my gaze darted away, uncomfortable. "Hey, if you want my help, I need to know what I am getting into here, Sass."

"It was for the Triad," I told him, wincing a little.

"As in the Chinese mafia Triad?" he clarified.

"The one and the same," I agreed.

"So they are after you."

"Not exactly. I don't know who is after me, actually."

"Okay, explain it to me from the beginning," he demanded.

"Well, someone came up to me when I was at a gas station. Gave me a password I gave to clients so they could share it, and I would know people were approaching me for jobs. He gave me a time and place."

"You just walk into meetings with strange criminals, and no backup," he cut in, sounding frustrated.

"I've never had anyone," I reminded him, the words stinging more than they should have after living that way for so long. "Anyway. It was a good meeting. They laid out my part of the job. They asked if I was interested. When I agreed, they gave me half of the money upfront. And, ah, it was a lot of money," I told him. It was nestled in a safety deposit bank in Miami still, out of reach since it was too risky to be seen anywhere right then.

"Did you do the job?"

A bitter little laugh escaped me right then.

I'd played that night over and over in my head, trying to see where it could have gone wrong, if something might not have matched up to the plan exactly.

I couldn't find a single flaw. Nothing I had done was wrong.

Yet here I was, missing a little chunk of ass. And scared for my life. Begging for help from a man I hadn't seen in nearly a decade.

"Yeah."

"And?"

"And I don't know. I got the package. I was on my way to the drop. And then I was driven off the road."

The terror in those seconds where the car was spinning was something I couldn't even describe properly. I was sure I was going to slam into a tree and it was all going to be over.