She rode with a stress-reducing purpose, letting the bike drift a little in the lane and not rushing to get home. The sky was clear and deep blue. Spring was everywhere, and life, or rather, being alive, was a good thing.

 

She pulled into her drive and parked her Lowrider by the porch. She gave a glance toward Leo’s place across the road, but she decided to get a shower, possibly something to eat, and then call Leo. He had said he had a busy day today, anyway. Perhaps it would be best to give him until seven at least.

 

Tomorrow, though, he was back into it, whatever it was.

 

From what she had gathered so far, it had something to do with the Vasquez cartel, and maybe even Nomar himself. She figured that Danny was the one pulling the strings and Leo was working as perhaps a freelancer, rather than a patch holder of the Sinners. Secrecy, even from the Sinners, was paramount.

 

Something had to give with this secrecy stuff soon, though, because the rumors out there were festering until everyone was convinced they were facts. Nearly everyone who came by to give condolences to Yvette were already convinced that Leo had been the trigger man. When Bev told these men that he was with her, she got the sideways glance that said, “Sure dear, sure. Bet you would say anything as long as he kept dickin’ ya.”

 

“I swear to Christ, the next motherfucker that gives me that look.… No! I’m not going to wait that long,” she decided as she toweled off.

 

She put on blue jeans that weren’t as tight as normal and a thermal shirt under a black Harley shirt. Then boots. Not girly boots, but stomp-a-mud-hole-in-him boots. She pulled her hair back into a severe ponytail, and then she put on her knife. Anyone who knew her would say she was looking for a fight, and she was.

 

Grabbing her jacket and keys, she headed for the door, eyes filled with visions of how she was going to do this, when the door burst in just as she was going to reach for it. Three men came in at her hard and fast.

 

Reflexively, she palm-heeled the first man in the nose, smashing it so it sprayed blood, and used his momentum to throw him back behind her. He landed on the coffee table, smashing it to the floor. The second man grabbed her shoulder, and she grabbed his finger in return, yanking it back hard until she heard the crack of joints coming undone.

 

A hard fist hit her in the jaw and sent her reeling backward. Then the third man shoulder tackled her into the couch. She tried going for her knife, but it was too late. His weight and momentum jammed her into the corner of the couch, squishing her shoulders together and limiting her movements. He came down on her thighs with most of his lower body, pinning them to the seat bench of the couch.

 

The flash of a steel blade caught her attention. Unable to do anything, she watched it slash toward her throat. She felt it cut, but not deep.

 

The man looked at her. He was Mexican, thick and very powerful. His eyes were a dead, dull black. They were the eyes of a killer, someone who killed as easily as they put on socks in the morning, and some weeks, just as often.

 

“Now puta, you and me are going to talk,” he told her, his voice calm and heavily accented. “After that, I am going to kill you.”

 

Her eyes went wide with horror.

 

“Yes, puta, you die tonight,” he told her with exaggerated nods of assurance. “But there are many ways to die. Such as a bullet in the back of the head. Not so bad. You probably don’t even feel it, really. You’re just dead. No pain. Just dead.”

 

He let that sink in for a moment.

 

“Of course, there is also death by rape, and torture, where you beg me to kill you instead of going through it again, but I say no, I shake my head sadly, and then I do it all over to you again, and again, and again, until you die.

 

“See, this here,” he sighed while tapping her left tit, “is just another body to me. It has no meaning to me. I don’t care about how much pain it is in, or how horror stricken it becomes. For me, it is nothing.”

 

He let that sink in as well.

 

Beverly was growling in her mind, and she searched through everything she knew, every move her dad had taught her since she was fucking twelve, to keep this man from killing her. If he released her, for just a moment, she would choose option number three: die fighting.

 

She just needed a distraction, anything to get him to let her up enough to get her knife in her hand. Then … then motherfuckers were going to die.

 

Please God, please. Just one chance. Even if I fail and die, that’s alright. Just one chance. Please.

 

“Now, we talk,” he told her. “Now you tell me everything you know about Leo Hampton.”

 

“You mean like how he’s standing right behind you?” she asked sweetly.

 

He bought it, hook, line, and sinker. He drew back from her like a cobra and twisted around, dropping his knife with such grace while going for his gun that she marveled at the man’s skill.

 

Bev wasted no moment or movement. With over a decade of daily training and many years keeping that training honed, she went for her knife.

 

The man was pulling out his pistol as she slashed out with her knife, cutting deep into his exposed side with the same movement. His reaction was unbelievably fast — inhuman. All of his momentum, all of his energy snapped back on her, bringing the gun to aim at her head. Bev met him speed for speed, and as he forearm was lining up for the shot, her blade cut deeply through the extensor carpi radialis longus muscle. This muscle runs along the top of the forearm. It moves the wrist, helps to close the hand, and has control over the trigger finger. Ernesto could suddenly no longer fire the gun in his hand, and it fell out of his grip.

 

She didn’t wait to see if that strike was enough, though, as she continued her attack. She swung the blade as hard as she could, using all of her upper body strength to drive her blade through the bottom of his jaw and up into his brain.

 

Her eyes were flaming with pure wrath.

 

But another hand caught her wrist, and the new man’s free hand backhanded her across the face.

 

She barely noticed the blow, already twisting her arm against the new man’s thumb to release her wrist and clawing with her left hand for his balls.

 

The report of a handgun filed the room, and the man that she was going to castrate by hand flew away. He was just gone, like a magic trick. Then the man on top of her, who was howling in pain and rage, was pulled back by his neck and thrown off of her. He landed on the man who had wrecked the coffee table, who still hadn’t moved since she had put him there.

 

“You fucking bitch, you fucking puta!” the man was screaming, and long curses streamed from his tongue in his own language.

 

She looked up to see Leo standing there with a gun in his hand.

 

“Please shoot him,” she asked.

 

Leo shot him. He shot him in the ass. The Mexican looked wildly around, seemingly unable to believe that he had just been shot in the ass.

 

“You didn’t kill him,” she snarled at Leo.

 

“No, but I will. I need him alive for just about an hour longer. Can I please have that hour?”

 

She looked at the Mexican, who looked at her with disbelieving eyes.

 

“Just a body to me,” she told Leo with a shrug.

 

Leo nodded, seeming to understand her completely, which scared her more than anything else that had just happened to her.

 

Leo loaded the two dead men into the back of the their own truck.

 

“Who is that?” she asked.

 

“Ernesto Morales. Enforcer for the Vasquez cartel and probably one of the most dangerous men in that organization.”

 

“And why exactly are you waiting to kill him?”

 

“To impress the most dangerous man in that organization, Nomar Vasquez. I want to impress upon him that this shit is never, ever, to happen again.”

 

She processed that for a few moments, and then asked, “And then you kill him?”

 

“Yes, and then I kill him.”

 

“No deals or wimping out?”

 

He raised an eyebrow at that.

 

“Well,” she defended, “it’s kind of like murder, right?”

 

“No, it’s kind of like war,” the told her. “The man is already a corpse. I’m just choosing where he will stop breathing.”

 

“I suppose no cops,” she assessed.

 

He kissed her lips. “I’ll be back within three hours.”

 

“You go have your fun. I’m in the perfect mood now to go have mine.”

 

“Yours?”

 

“Secret squirrel stuff baby, secret squirrel.”