Chief Jim Novak sat at the bar in the Bulls’ party room and stared dully at the concrete floor. Simon watched him, wondering if he would act as the Bulls’ friend or as Tulsa’s Chief of Police. He’d been a club friend from the beginning, because he’d grown up with Dane. But now Dane was dead.
Mo had redone the party room a few years back. For a while afterward, it had looked like a franchise of some chain ‘neighborhood’ restaurant, but the Bulls’ wear and tear on the place, and the light damage from the tornado a couple years ago, had taken a toll, and it looked more lived in and comfortable now.
One of her big projects, the only one she’d hired out rather than handed off to the Bulls to do, was a fancy floor. She’d had the old linoleum ripped up and had done some kind of stain on the concrete. She called it ‘patina.’ Simon liked it. Delaney had groused, often and loudly, that it had cost a whole lot of money to make the floor look old and beat up, when they could have done it for free just by using it.
They’d paid a high price for the fresh stains on the floor now. Novak stared at bloodstains, soaked into that arty finish. A lot of blood. Three bodies. Two Bulls. One woman. And Rad, in surgery at Tulsa County Hospital.
They had the women and children upstairs in the crash rooms. The old ladies had surrounded Joanna, Dane’s wife, and Mo had given her some kind of pills and had her wash them down with whiskey, so she was out, taking a respite from the reality of her new widowhood. Maddie had taken a sedative as well. She’d lost her livelihood, not her old man, but she’d clawed her way to that business and had taken the loss as hard as one might expect.
Signet Models, in the middle of downtown Tulsa, was badly damaged but not destroyed. Fire crews had arrived on scene there quickly. Thankfully, the building had been empty. What jobs the girls had been doing for the past week or so had been out of house; Maddie had managed them from the clubhouse. It would be months, at least, before she could run her business right again.
The Wesson Farm was an apocalyptic ruin. Sam Wesson was dead. Deb and Leah were missing.
Deb and Leah were missing, and they hadn’t gone for them yet.
Simon’s nerves had frayed to floss; for hours, he’d paced the room, keeping to the edges, going quietly mad. Morning had come, a whole different day, and still they camped out at the clubhouse. He needed to move, to get going, to fucking do something. But they didn’t have a plan yet.
He barely cared about a goddamn plan. Just get to them. He could not get the vision of Patrice’s broken body out of his head. That was what those bastards did to women. And they had Deb. They’d barely gotten a good start between them, but she was wound up so tightly around his insides he felt torn apart at the prospect that she could be hurt, that she probably was hurt. Or worse.
For all Simon’s internal frenzy, Gunner was bizarrely calm. He sat at the bar and barely moved. Almost like there was a force field around him, everyone gave him room. No one had ever known Gunner to be like this. He was their loose cannon, the one who went off half-cocked, the one they had to hold back. But now, he was almost inert.
That force field pulsed and hummed. When he went off, it would be nuclear. He wasn’t calm. He was lying in wait.
Delaney, Alexei, Ox, and Apollo came out of the chapel. Delaney went straight for Chief Novak. Simon made himself stop pacing. He leaned against a support beam and tried to focus.
“Jim. Thanks for giving us that time.” Delaney set a friendly hand on Novak’s shoulder. “We got a lot of trouble in our house today.”
Novak nodded. “I told you, D, this war—I can’t have this war in my city. Now, Dane’s dead, and Griff, and shit, a woman, too? And another goddamn fire. You told me you wouldn’t let this beef tear everything down, but I got burned rubble all over Tulsa, and I’m standing here looking at the stain where my oldest friend bled out.”
“The war is over.” Alexei’s voice rolled out as if over ice cubes. “What this is, is last gasp of a dying enemy.”
Novak scoffed. “I don’t want to talk to this guy, D.”
Delaney shifted his gaze to Alexei, who cocked his head in agreement, but didn’t move away. Then Delaney stepped in toward Jim and turned, effecting the appearance of privacy. “I need to know your play, Jim. We got more trouble than what landed on your lawn. We got women missing, so I need to know if you can or will cover us here, or what we’re facing. Because we have got to move before there’s more blood.”
“Christ, D. Never been like this before. I don’t even know how to cover all this up.”
“You’re the Chief. The story you tell will be official. And we will help all we can. You tell us you’re with us, you give us cover, and we’ll keep this off your shoulders.”
Novak nodded, his shoulders sagging. “I got your back. You take care of the bastard who got Dane killed. I know it was Griff, but I’m saying you get the guys who brought this shit on him.”
“It’s got to be Griff,” Gunner said, in a voice sharp as a blade. He stared dead at Simon. “All this shit here, we land it on Griff. He killed Dane. He shot Rad. Simon’s shot was self-defense. All that’s true. We put Patrice on him, too. That’s why it was in our house, and it takes the Hounds out of it. The war doesn’t make the news.”
“Jesus,” Becker muttered. “That’s fucking harsh. He loved her.”
Gunner turned on him, still in perfect control. “He killed Dane. He shot Rad. He meant to shoot D. I don’t give a rat’s fuck about that weak suck traitor. He already told us he beat her once, enough she wouldn’t keep his flame. Jealous, was why. So he did this to her, too. Let his corpse clean up the mess he made.” Gunner made a strange noise, and Simon studied him more closely. Fuck, that boy was close to critical. Inside that uncannily calm head were two eyes just about bouncing with rage. “We all gotta clean up our own fucking messes,” he snarled as a coda to his rant.
Novak breathed out a whole year’s worth of sighs at once. “Fuck. Yeah, it works. Still got the fire. Firefighters on scene knew it was arson. Whole fucking place reeked of gasoline. No way to avoid an investigation, but I can cut it short if I can give them a story that fits.”
Fucking amateurs, dumping gasoline to make a fire, Simon thought—then thought again. “Say Griff did the fire, too.”
He needed time to sort out his feelings about killing Griffin, and the whole mess that had brought them to that point, but he agreed, at least, with Gunner: Griffin had killed Dane, shot Rad, threatened Delaney. He could carry the weight of cleaning up the mess.
Delaney, Novak, Alexei, Ox, Gunner—just about everybody swung his direction. “What? How’s that?” Novak asked.
But Simon didn’t know that answer.
“Maybe she wanted to work with Mads,” Ox offered. “She’s been looking for a job that pays, right? Maybe she wanted to work at Signet, and that set Griff off. He hated her at the Rose, with guys ogling her. The story’d make sense if was truth, so it makes sense now.”
“Griff’s got family. So’s Patrice.” Becker said, but his protest was offered without much heat. “We’re saying he went psycho and she wanted to be a whore. That’s what we want to lay on their kin?”
“He did go psycho,” Ox countered. “And there’s no shame in what Maddie’s girls do.”
“I can make something of this,” Novak said, after a moment’s consideration. “I can make it work. But whatever you do now, you take it out of Tulsa.”
“Already is,” Apollo answered, closing his laptop computer. “I’m pretty sure I know where they are, and it’s out of town. But we got to get our shit together and move.”
“Boys,” Mo’s voice rose up from near the stairs. God, she looked old and tired. Simon thought of her as timeless, even ageless, but right now, she looked like an old woman. “I’m sorry to intrude, but we have another thing to deal with.” She walked to Maverick and took his hand. “Jenny’s in labor, love. Her water broke.”
The blood rushed from Maverick’s face so quickly, Simon was surprised he stayed on his feet. “What? She’s only thirty-five weeks!”
“Your son doesn’t understand about calendars, Mav.” She pulled on his hand, and Maverick broke his stunned freeze and leapt toward the stairs, dragging Mo along.
“Not alone,” Delaney barked. “Nobody alone until this shit is over. Gun…” He stopped, and Simon knew why. They were down too many men. Two dead. Rad in the hospital, Gargoyle on guard with him. They needed everybody for this do-or-die mission, and now they’d lose Maverick and one other, plus guards on the women and children at the clubhouse.
In any other case, Gunner would be the obvious choice. He and Maverick were close as blood. But they were going out to save Gunner’s sister and old lady, so he wouldn’t be buddying with Maverick now. “Caleb—you’re with Mav. Everybody else, let’s suit up and lock and load.”
~oOo~
Until the last quarter of the twentieth century, Oklahoma had been oil rich. Tulsa had been ‘The Oil Capital of the World.’ Then, in the Seventies, oil had gone bust and taken the state’s economy with it.
There were still some oil refineries around, but a lot had gone belly-up, and abandoned rigs and refineries dotted the landscape. As soon as Apollo had said he’d noticed crude oil on Patrice, Simon had understood that she’d been kept in one of those derelict places. But which one? Where?
Apollo thought he knew. So the Bulls who could rode south from Tulsa, deep into what had once been booming oil land. Delaney. Apollo. Gunner. Simon. Ox. Becker. Eight Ball. They’d left Slick and Wally back at the clubhouse. Fitz, the third prospect, drove behind them in the club van.
Eight men. To fight the next, probably the last, battle in this war.
About thirty miles south of Tulsa, surrounded by farmland, Delaney and Apollo turned onto an overgrown lane, and the others followed. Simon noticed a low, long steel sign, faded and pitted past legibility. But he knew, because Apollo had discovered it and briefed them, impressing even Alexei, that this had been Roberts Oil Co., a property recently purchased by a business concern from Chicago, the same concern that Alexei Volkov had traced Italian money to. Abbatontuono money. All the dots connected.
This was one of the facilities where the Hounds packaged their Colombian product for distribution.
Except, just now, they didn’t have any product to package. The Bulls had blown it up. They banked on the place being mainly empty, free of innocents and less tightly guarded.
They were banking on a lot. There was too much they didn’t know, too much they risked. Coming up on this place at high noon, like a bunch of fucking John Waynes. With only eight of them, and no sense of how many foes they’d face—seventeen men wore Hounds colors, but, unlike the Bulls, they hired extensively beyond their own circle—it was absolutely nuts to attack in broad daylight.
But they couldn’t wait. Deb and Leah had been missing for about eighteen hours. Every second they waited was one more second that Booker Howard could do to them what he’d done to Patrice.
All their hope was pinned on the Russians, at their flank. Three men, and one big gun. And Delaney on his Nokia, saying when.
They pulled their bikes up and parked them in high brush, far enough back on the lane that they couldn’t even see the refinery yet. Fitz pulled up behind them, driving slowly deeper in, until the van was obscured from the lane by wild bushes.
The rest of the trip, they’d make on foot. They went to the back of the van and loaded up, all the weapons they could carry.
Gunner made sure everyone was equipped and arranged for maximum efficiency. He carried on, silent and rigid as death. Simon had figured it out—this must have been what he’d been like in the Gulf War. Pure focus, all business, that wild need for chaos channeled forward, at the fight.
Normally, Simon was the level head, the one who took in the scene. But he could barely catch a thought in the cyclone of his mind. So much chaos, so much death, so much terror. His brain couldn’t hold it all, so it had just tossed it up and let it fly.
All he could do was follow his brothers, latch onto their purpose, and aim for Deb. Pulled by some inner force beyond his understanding, Simon reached out and laid his hand on Gunner’s forearm—like he might pull some of his brother’s focus into himself and settle a head that was all white noise and desperation.
Gunner paused. He looked down at Simon’s hand on his arm, then up and met his eyes. They held like that for just a single beat, but Simon saw the cyclone in Gunner’s head, too.
~oOo~
When they crested the rise and saw the rotting facility, it looked entirely abandoned, but Apollo waved them around to the east, and Simon saw that tracks worn into the hardened, dusty earth were newer here than elsewhere. Moving slowly but steadily, they made their way through the facility, stopping at cover before every blind turn and passage. They saw no one, heard nothing but a moderate wind rolling through decaying buildings.
About halfway in, they came upon a covered parking strip, corrugated steel over a simple wood frame, and there, two high-end SUVs and an old GMC van were parked. But no sign of their passengers.
Dead ahead was a crude oil tank. Apollo had made a good case, on the evidence of that oil on Patrice’s body, that they’d find Deb and Leah in there. The tank without its interior reservoir would be just a concrete silo. A perfect prison.
No one around yet. Could it be this simple? Or had they gotten it completely wrong?
As planned, they broke into two groups—Delaney, Eight Ball, Simon, and Fitz in one direction around that tank, and Apollo, Gunner, Ox, and Becker in the other. Apollo wasn’t sure where the service door was, and there was no good cover at a round building, so they meant to double their coverage.
About thirty seconds after they split up, the air filled with shouting and gunfire. Simon and the rest of his team tore hell forward, around the tank. They came up behind the rest of the Bulls. Two Hounds lay dead in the dirt. Apollo’s AK hung useless from his hand; his other hand grasped his bicep as blood oozed between his fingers.
A rusty metal door broke the curving continuity of the tank wall. If there’d ever been a lock, it was gone. Despite the commotion, it hadn’t opened.
Gunner slung his AK back and stepped up to the door. Everybody else set their stance and aimed, out of range of the doorway, ready for someone to charge through. Swinging his head back and forth, taking in all his brothers, he held up a hand and counted down 3…2…1…and yanked on the door.
It gave at once, screaming on corroded hinges. Becker ducked his head around the edge of the doorway. “Fuck! They’re here!” He ran in, swinging around a hundred-eighty degrees. “Clear!” He finished his circle and charged forward.
Gunner and Simon pushed in next.
The tank was dark, but for the light through the doorway, and empty, but for the bodies on the floor. Deb and Leah. They were bound together, wrists and ankles, back to back, their arms stretched over their heads. They were naked, their bodies bruised and blood-smeared. Bandanas had been shoved into their mouths.
Deb faced the door. She was awake, her eyes wide and uncomprehending.
They were alone. No guard but the two dead Hounds outside.
Simon took all that in in a flash. So did Gunner, and he went critical. His scream ricocheted off the curved concrete walls as he dived for the women. His blade in his hand, he went for their bonds right away.
As Simon dropped to his knees and pulled Deb’s gag from her mouth. Delaney yelled, “It’s a trap! Get the fuck out!”
Simon didn’t think. He scooped Deb up and turned—and saw a flashing green light over the tank door. Connected to a large brick of C4. They must have tripped the timer when they’d opened the door.
“FUCK!” Gunner shouted and sprinted to the door with Leah over his shoulder. Simon ran after him, cradling Deb.
“THIS WAY!” Delaney shouted, drawing them toward the edge of the facility, to the woods. “RUN!”
Simon ran faster than he ever had. He was ten feet from the tree line when the tank exploded. The concussive force caught him like a sweeping hand and heaved him off the ground. He kept hold of Deb, clutching her desperately, and landed hard on her.
He moved off of her as quickly as he could and shed his kutte, laying it over her naked, battered body. “I got you, hon. You’re okay. Tell me you’re okay.”
She didn’t speak. Those wide, terrified, confused eyes stared up at him, and she didn’t speak. She wasn’t okay.
“Alexei,” Delaney said, and Simon glanced up. The president was on his phone. “Yeah, a trap. But we’re whole, and we got the girls. Those Hound bastards are still here. … Thank you, my friend. Thank you.” He ended the call. “Fitz, Beck, go get the van. Bring it close as you can. Let’s get the women help.”
“Hospital,” Gunner growled, holding a sobbing Leah to his chest. “Do not fuck with me on that.”
“Hospital,” Delaney agreed. “No question. But let’s make it Willa’s. We might need her help.”
It was the right call, and with Willa there, it wouldn’t take longer to be seen, even if the drive was longer. But Simon watched Gunner and waited to see if he’d understand.
He did. With a terse nod, he stood. When the move jostled Leah, she moaned. “I got you, baby,” Gunner murmured against her ear. “I’m here.”
Simon picked Deb back up. She didn’t fight him, didn’t complain, didn’t move on her own. If her eyes hadn’t been open and blinking, he wouldn’t have known she was awake.
God, what had they done?
Griffin had been right: the Bulls had done all of this. All these women, hurt because of the Bulls in their lives.
Simon had stayed alone all these years because he hadn’t wanted to subject a woman to the life of a Bull. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right.
He held Deb close and followed after Gunner, letting Delaney and the others keep watch as they moved through the woods.
“I’m so sorry, hon,” he whispered against her bloody temple. “God, I’m sorry.”
She said nothing.
~oOo~
Simon stood against the wall, just outside Deb’s little room in the ER. He couldn’t make himself go in there. Guilt that had started to churn in his gut weeks ago, when he’d burned the Northside school and killed Patrice’s uncle, had become a roiling vortex while he’d sat in the ER waiting room and waited to know if Deb would be okay.
Gunner had stayed with Leah the whole time. She wouldn’t let go of him, so they’d let him stay while they’d examined her. But Deb had simply sagged onto the gurney and closed her eyes, so they’d rolled her away from him.
“Hey, Simon, it’s okay.” At Willa’s soft voice and soft touch, her hand over his forearm, he opened his eyes. She gave him a gentle smile. “It’s okay. She’s going to be okay.”
He shook his head.
Before she’d led him back here, Willa had given him details. He knew that Deb hadn’t been raped—that had surprised him; seeing her naked and bound, bruised and bloody, he’d immediately assumed she had been. Why they’d stripped them naked, he now couldn’t fathom.
She had a concussion, and the blow to her head had left a gash that required stitches. A few minor lacerations. Deep bruises and rope burns around her wrists and ankles. Bruised ribs—probably from him, falling on her. Everything else was bruising and tissue damage. A lot of it, but everything would heal, and nothing would scar, except perhaps the back of her head.
And the inside of her head.
“Simon,” Willa tried again. “I don’t know much about you and Deb. I’ve never seen you together before today. But I do know trauma, and I do know love. Let me give you some advice: If you back away now, you’ll undo everything you’ve made together, and probably end any chance of more. She’s the one hurting. If you feel guilt, feel it, but don’t you decide what she deserves, or what she can handle, or anything else that’s her call. If she needs distance, let her back away. Don’t you do it.” She patted his arm. “If you love her, go in there and be what she needs.”
She walked away and left him alone outside the exam room door.
He’d just gotten schooled by a little blonde—one who had a full plate of patients all over this hospital, including her old man, recovering from abdominal surgery, and still had made time to lay down a lesson on his sorry ass. So Simon put a lid on his guilt and turned and opened Deb’s door.
She lay on the narrow gurney, her head propped up halfway and both bedrails up. A clear bag hanging from an IV stand fed fluids into her arm. Her hair was lank and matted, filthy from her ordeal. But her body was cleaner; they must have washed her as they’d tended her wounds. Her cuts and bruises, the abuse she’d been subjected to, looked even worse without the camouflage of filth.
Her eyes were closed; Willa had told him that she’d been mildly sedated, and he wondered now if she slept. Not wanting to disturb rest she needed, he stood at the door, only a wall separating him from where he’d been standing before, and found himself stymied.
Then her eyes fluttered open, and she saw him. This time, she saw him—there was life and focus in those hazel eyes that hadn’t been there at the refinery.
“Hey, hon.” The words You okay? were on his tongue, but he caught them before he uttered such idiocy. Instead, he went to the side of the gurney and wrapped his hand around hers. The right words came to him as soon as he touched her. “I love you.”
She took in a slow breath. “They killed my dad,” she whispered. “They shot him. I don’t know why.” Her eyes lifted to his and pinned him. “I don’t know why.”
He was so relieved to hear her voice, even that rough, weak rasp, after her blank silence and goggle-eyed emptiness, that he let out a breath as if he’d been holding it and squeezed her hand.
The words burned to say them, but Simon knew he had to speak plain and true. Now more than ever, he couldn’t dodge his guilt. “The club, Deb. They went after people we love.”
If she was surprised, she had no energy to show it. “The farm was supposed to be safe.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” He picked up her hand and pressed his lips to her fingers, holding there as sorrow swelled in his chest and choked him. “I’m so sorry.”
“Leah—where…?”
“She’s here. She’s o—” Leah was no more okay than Deb. “She’s hurt no worse than you. Gunner’s with her.”
“Gunner?” Deb frowned, like she didn’t understand.
It pulled Simon up a little; she’d always known her brother’s road name. But he put it to the concussion and clarified for her. “Max. Max is with her.”
“Oh. Okay.” Her eyes lost focus. Just as Simon was about to say her name, try to call her back, she homed in on him again. “They killed my dad.”
Inside his chest, guilt chipped away at his heart, breaking pieces off. “I know, baby. I’m so sorry.”
“They burned everything up. Tilly’s chicks just hatched.”
He was worried. Her mind seemed…incomplete. Detached. He brushed his palm over her forehead, lightly, gently, careful not to cause her pain. “Rest, hon. I’ll be right here.”
She closed her eyes. Simon scanned the tiny room for something to sit on and found a cheap plastic chair behind the curtain. When he set her hand down to pull the chair closer, she jumped and clutched his fingers before he could pull away.
He closed her hand in both of his. “I’m here, Deb. I won’t leave you. I promise.”
A promise he meant to keep. There was nothing that would pull him away. When she closed her eyes again and relaxed, Simon stayed where he was. He didn’t need the chair.
~oOo~
The hospital admitted neither Deb nor Leah. After several hours of examination, testing, and care, and unavoidable but formulaic questioning by the Tulsa police, they were both released from the ER, with meds and instructions for care. Simon and Gunner took their quiet, jumpy, damaged women back to the clubhouse, where Mo had cleared out and cleaned up two rooms for them, side by side.
It was late evening when Deb was settled in bed upstairs. She only wanted to sleep, so Simon lay with her and watched her do it. Mo checked in a few times, making sure there was water to drink, and wanting to bring food up, but Deb only slept, curled on her side, tucked against his chest.
Willa had been right. Deb needed him close. She wanted nothing else from him but his proximity. They’d had precious little of that in their relationship so far. He’d give her all she needed.
~oOo~
Near midnight, as Simon drowsed in a shadowy skim of tense rest, a businesslike knock on the door pulled him fully awake. Deb slept on in her sedated stillness. He hoped this sleep gave her respite and helped her heal.
Mo’s knocks had been soft, respectful of the hurting woman lying at Simon’s side, so he knew it was someone else at the door. He eased himself off the barely-double bed and answered the door.
Delaney stood in the hallway. Only the cheap sconce lights were on, making patches of incandescent glow down the walls, but otherwise offering only enough light so that people could find their way. That dim illumination cast deep shadows over the president’s face. He looked a thousand years old, and like he hadn’t slept in all those years. Even his hair seemed to have lightened, as if it had finally lost its tenacious hold on its youthful dark color and begun to cede Delaney’s follicles to age.
“How’s she?” he asked. He’d been smoking again; those hardcore Camels always roughened his already rough voice when he lit up after a long break. Mo was going to kill him.
“Sleeping,” he answered. “That’s all she’s doing, so I don’t know more.”
“Sleep is good, love.” Mo said, stepping from behind her man. “Sleep will help her.”
Simon nodded. But if both Delaney and his wife were at the door at midnight, something was up. Jesus hell, if there was more trouble, he didn’t know how he’d handle it. So much had happened already just within the past thirty-six hours that he’d all but shut down. There were too many things to think, too many things to feel, too many things to do. He kept his focus on Deb, where things made sense. Love. Guilt. Protection. Support. The rest had become white noise.
“What’s going on?”
“Need you and Gun downstairs.”
Simon shook his head. “I don’t want her to wake up alone. I told her I wouldn’t leave her.”
“We got Howard and Ammons in the basement, Si. Figure you want in on that.”
As far as he knew, the Bulls had pulled in to lick their wounds. No one had chased after Howard at the refinery; all their efforts had been on getting Deb and Leah clear and helped. “How?”
“The Russians. Alexei ran ‘em down. This is it, Simon. It ends tonight. We won. Now we take our pound.”
So much shit had gone down in this fucking war. He’d killed Patrice’s uncle. The Hounds had hurt Maddie and her girls. And Patrice. For that, Dane was dead, and Rad was in the hospital. For that, Simon had killed Griffin. Booker Howard had killed Sam and taken Deb and Leah. Beaten them. Terrorized them. Used them as bait. Nearly blown them all up.
Simon wanted Booker Howard dead.
He looked over his shoulder at the quiet form on the bed. “I can’t. I told her I wouldn’t leave her.”
Mo gave his arm a soft, maternal rub. “I’ll stay with her, love. If she wakes, she won’t be alone, and I’ll tell her you’re not far. Go do this. It’ll help.”
He tossed a quick glance to the closed door just down the hall. “What about Gun?”
“Ox and Maddie are in there, doing the same thing we’re doing. We all need to keep sharp with Gun tonight, but he needs this, too.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
~oOo~
With four of their number dead, wounded, or out of commission, and the rest of them stunned, sad, and weary, the group that met in the basement seemed somehow outnumbered, alone in their own house.
Not alone. In the room they kept for wetwork, two men were bound, awaiting the end of their lives. The painful, bloody end.
The club didn’t normally do this kind of work in their house. The location in the city increased the risk on heavy-duty disposal jobs, and Dane and Joanna lived on a sizeable parcel of wooded land beyond the civilized boundary of the Tulsa Metropolitan Area. When they had wetwork, it was safer to take it to Dane’s. But Dane was dead, and they had people to protect in the clubhouse.
They didn’t have this kind of work often—or, at least, they hadn’t. That had changed over the past year or so. Last year, they’d killed three hapless young men from the Dyson crew here in their basement.
And now they’d kill two older, savvier men from the Hounds.
The Bulls stood in the main area of the basement, incidentally arrayed in a warped semi-circle, all facing the open door to the wetwork room.
Booker Howard and Derrick Ammons lay on the floor of that room, stripped naked and bound together, wrist and ankles, back to back. As they’d left Deb and Leah bound, in a derelict oil tank wired with C4.
They’d both already been badly beaten, first by the Russians, and then, Simon guessed, the other Bulls had already gotten in some licks. They lay bruised and bloody. As Deb and Leah had lain.
Simon studied Gunner’s profile. He’d never seen his brother like this—as rigid as icy steel. Had he heard him speak since they’d saved their women? He didn’t think so. Their fireball Bull had frozen solid.
Except for his eyes and hands. Rage leapt from Gunner’s eyes like the licking flames of an inferno, and his fists were clenched to icy whiteness. All the emotion that was too much for Simon to manage, Gunner held it all, ready to use it as a weapon.
“How d’you want this?” Delaney asked, his eyes lighting on Simon and Gunner, each in turn?”
“Where’s the shooter that hit Patrice?” Gunner spoke with low menace. Hearing that voice without seeing his eyes, one might think he was truly calm.
“Dead. Russians put him down in the scuffle. Five other Hounds dead. That’s the head of the snake right there. Saved for you.”
Gunner turned to Simon. “Booker is mine. Bastard hurt my old lady. Hurt my sister. Killed my dad. Burnt my home. I mean to take my time and claim all that hurt back.”
Simon wanted Booker Howard dead, no question. But he had no lust for the kill. He wanted to get back to Deb, to hold her and comfort her and protect her. He wanted all this horror to end. He fucking wanted to be able to love his woman like a normal human being. They’d had no chance to build their relationship. Now she needed him, and he was standing in a basement preparing to soak his hands in more blood.
He just wanted to go back upstairs.
But he wanted these men dead, and he had no qualms about them going out slow, bloody, and screaming.
“I’ll follow your lead, Gun.”
~oOo~
It took an hour. They left him bound to Ammons, and Simon stood back and let Gunner work, offering an assist when he needed it.
Gunner worked silently, slowly, in complete control. He used his blade and simply cut pieces away, carving them out with precision but without any clear pattern to his moves, except—maybe, vaguely—in from the edges, toward Howard’s vital center.
Simon had never seen anything like it outside of a horror movie.
Gunner was silent, and Simon was as well, but Howard was not, nor was Ammons. Both men screamed; Ammons, unhurt but tied back-to-back to Howard and tortured by what he could hear but not see, served as a gruesome echo to his boss’s every scream and howl and shriek.
The last thing Gunner did was open Howard from throat to waist. By then, Howard had no tongue, and his screams had become bloody gargles. The gutting finally killed him, but not quickly. He moaned wetly for a full five minutes before it was over.
And still, Derrick Ammons was tied to him. He’d taken some small, incidental hurt toward the end, when Gunner’s cuts and slices had swiped between their bodies, but his torture had, so far, been purely psychological. He’d voided bladder and bowels, and between that, and Howard’s viscera, the room pulsed with an unholy reek.
Blood coated Gunner’s arms to his shoulders, streaked across his t-shirt, and smeared over his face, through his beard. Simon wore a heavy layer of Howard’s blood as well. He’d held the man steady for his brother to work.
When Howard breathed his last, Gunner finally stood. His knees, locked in a crouch for such a long stretch, both cracked loudly. Staring at the deconstructed body of the man who’d hurt everything he had, Gunner said, “Ammons is yours. I’m done. I need to get back to Leah.”
Simon understood. He wanted to wash the blood away, from his body if not from his psyche, and get back to Deb. He turned and considered Ammons, who lay quietly, whimpering without energy. He’d broken when Howard lost his tongue.
It had been Ammons who’d dragged Patrice from his SUV and pushed her toward the clubhouse. Another man had killed her, but Ammons was just as culpable. For what they’d done to Patrice, Dane and Griffin were dead and Rad hurt.
Simon had killed Griffin. He’d killed a brother. A friend. Someone he loved more than he loved his own blood family. He’d had to, Griffin had already killed Dane and shot Rad, and he’d been aimed at Delaney. No one in the clubhouse faulted him for taking that shot.
It didn’t matter; he’d killed his brother. Because Derrick Ammons had pulled up in front and pushed Patrice to her doom. Ammons was owed a hard death.
But Simon was so fucking tired.
“Si,” Delaney said, standing in the doorway. “Take your pound, but don’t kill him. Ammons dropped the trouble on our doorstep. We should all get a pound from him. So take your pound and get back to your lady, and we’ll finish him.”
Relief eased through his shoulders as he saw the end of this mess. Nodding, he walked out of the wetwork room, pushed between Becker and Apollo, and went to the tools organized at the far wall.
Selecting a sixteen-pound sledgehammer, he went back through his brothers, past his president, and stood before Ammons’ feet, bound to the lifeless ankles of Booker Howard.
He cocked the hammer like he meant to make a long putt, and he swung at Ammons’ heel. The impact shattered his foot—Simon felt the bones give like broken glass—and Ammons shrieked, hoarse and high-pitched. Simon set up and did it again, aiming for the same foot. It gave the second time as if it were made of rubber, pushing up into his bound ankle. Frayed bone broke through his skin and dripped blood.
With a short nod at Delaney, he turned and carried the hammer back to its place, then headed to the stairs. He was done. He was needed elsewhere. Somewhere he could do some good.
If Deb would let him.