CHAPTER 25
MAYA
Eve immediately walks toward the room the guys ran out of and took every other person with a penis—besides Drake—with them. They’re acting irrationally, running out half-cocked, and I’m too curious to find out why.
I’ve learned this is their routine—strike back immediately. No forethought. No planning.
Someone could easily be using it against them.
Eve doesn’t bat an eye when I join her, and I hear Drake trying to calm the girls down as Colleen jogs into the room. “I’ll handle all the girls if you’ll tell me what the hell is going on,” Colleen tells Eve.
Eve is typing a password onto the laptop, waiting for it to start. I move in behind her, and Colleen does as well. The second the image pops up on screen, Colleen gags, the scream from a woman sending her to her knees.
Eve cuts her gaze away, choking back a gag of her own. But I’ve seen worse. I’ve seen a lot worse.
“Who is that?” I ask them flatly, wondering why this woman’s eyes are glued to the screen and who she is to them.
“That’s Liza,” Eve says through strain, still averting her eyes.
A man comes into view, making threats. Apparently that’s the notorious Herrin.
“How could they do that to her?” Colleen asks, but I’m more focused on the woman I’ve heard about a few times.
“Liza is Sledge’s girlfriend who runs the bar, right?” I ask.
Eve shuts the laptop, standing up and breathing in and out harshly as Colleen wipes her mouth and eyes.
“Yes,” Eve says quietly.
“Somewhere they launder the money,” I say to myself.
Outside of the box, I’m not attached to this woman the way they are. I’m also really paranoid, so I could be wrong about my suspicions, and know how bad this could turn out if I’m wrong.
“What are you doing?” Eve asks as I pull out my phone.
Axle’s phone goes to voicemail, so I start typing a text, hoping he reads it.
“Liza’s been with the club a long time, hasn’t she?” I ask Eve.
She wipes her eyes and clears her throat. “Over twenty-five years.”
Twenty-five years of loyalty.
Blowing out a heavy breath, I send Axle that text.
ME: I think you’re driving into a trap!
This could go really, really badly. I call Axle again, hearing it go to voicemail. “Call me. I think you’re riding into a trap!”
“What?!” Eve demands as her head lifts from where she’s telling Drake what’s going on. I didn’t even know he was in here yet.
There’s no telling what Sledge has told Liza. I know she’s unaware of my origins, but hell, she may know a lot of other things.
That thought alone has my stomach plummeting.
“Would Liza know about the cars for today?” I ask Eve quietly, crowding her space.
She gets a quizzical look on her face. “Yeah. We’re having a party because of the big order, because the guys always do that for a big order, and it’s a show to the rest that the club is still in business.”
I turn and walk out, texting Axle again. Herrin never gave any indication verbally as to where they were, and there was nothing too obvious in the image as a landmark. Something got them running out of here with a direction in mind.
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.