Chapter Thirty-Six

 

RYAN

 

I get off the phone with Davis—Jada, I add mentally—and lower the gun I have pointed at Scheck. As long as she doesn't move, I won't raise it again. She looks like she's not exactly having a good time.

I can't say I blame her. I mean, obviously someone's just broken into her house, and threatened her with a gun, and then they talked on the phone for five minutes about the guy that she apparently didn't kidnap.

My heart goes out to her, but I can't exactly let her go, either. I'm in too deep, at this point, to do anything other than just take her and get the hell out.

I take a deep breath. I can't afford to rush in on this, though, either. So I take a deep, deep breath and start thinking very hard about my next moves.

"Come on, Beauchamp—let me go." Her voice is a lot less confident than she wants it to be. I shoot her a smile.

"You're right. I should let you go. That way, you can get big boy—Rosen, was it? Shane?—and he can come and kick the shit out of me. That about right?"

The way she shuts up tells me that it was more right than she wants to admit. That's smart. I have a gun, after all, and she had better keep her mouth shut until she gets a better opportunity than to try to convince me to put it to my own head.

"Come on, I get it. You were worried about your brother. But—" Marissa daubs her perfect nose, where it slammed into my knee. It's not as perfect, any more.

The way she recoils away from her own hand, I have a strong suspicion it might be broken.

"I need a doctor, Beauchamp."

"It's just a nose, you'll be alright."

She looks up at me with doe-eyes that might be convincing to someone else. "Just don't hit me again, alright?"

"Then don't go for the gun," I growl. "We'll be perfect friends if you can manage that."

I raise mine again and try to think. I have to get my head straight if I can have any hope of getting the hell out of here. If she goes missing now… they think she's going home. I think.

So we'll have a very brief period where, if I'm lucky, nobody realizes she's been taken. That's if I'm lucky.

But that puts a real short time frame on finding the others. From what Davis said, there are three others. I could pick Rosen out of a crowd. Could've picked him out of a crowd before I spent a great deal of quality time with him.

Carabello, though? I wouldn't know him from Adam. Nor would I recognize Dupree if he asked me to bum a smoke. Which makes everything real hard.

Everything's moving too fast. If I could sit down with Logan, or with Davis, I could talk it out. But I can't get my thoughts to line up inside my head, and I can't exactly sit down with Scheck and talk out how I'm planning to destroy her gang.

I've always hated being alone, not having anyone else to work with. It's easier when I can talk things through. But that's not an option, not right now.

I was on my own like this in prison. It isn't a memory I want to go back to.

"You have to let me go, Beauchamp. You don't want what the Crazy Horses are going to bring down on you, if you hurt one hair on my—"

"Shut up," I tell her. She shuts up when the gun points at her, like a switch goes off in her mouth.

She looks like she wants to say something, but I don't turn the switch back on. The gun stays put. What she said was right. I don't want to bring that kind of heat down on my head.

But I'm already in it, now, and there's no way that I can get myself out of anything by just hoping and praying that she doesn't double-cross me. After all, I'd double cross the hell out of her, and look where that got us.

She looks unsteady, for a long time. She's trying to look at me, to give me the old batting-eyelashes routine, convince me that she's totally harmless. I don't buy it.

More than that, though, her eyes keep dropping to the gun. I can see the gears turning in her head, planning for what she's going to do when she gets the chance. When I let anything slip.

It turns out that she doesn't have to wait for my attention to slip. I'm adjusting my weight on the door when something hits it hard, sending it flying open.

The hard wood cracks on the back of my head and sends me sprawling forward. I take a bad tumble, but I have to give myself credit for keeping the gun in my hand. When I turn and find a big son of a bitch and a little dark-skinned guy next to him, it answers a few questions.

"Jesus, it took you long enough," I hear Scheck saying. The apologetic tone, the pleading—it's gone, now. Like it was never there in the first place. She's all business, now."

"You alright, Missie?"

She shrugs and looks down at me. "I'm fine now."

I still don't know where to find Carabello, which would be real useful information right now. But he can wait, because Dupree's got a gun and it's coming up into line to take a shot at me.

I scramble out of the line of the bullet just in time for the shot to go off. He's standing about ten feet away, but it's so damn loud that it feels like it might as well have been right by my ear.

The bullet splits a floor tile in half and pings off somewhere, where it embeds itself in the wall. Part of me can't help thinking that it's a wasted opportunity, trying to get the hell out of here now.

Another part of me wants to live, and that part is the one I listen to. The back door is a big sliding glass number. I fire off two shots that spiderweb the glass open and then send most of it falling to the ground.

My shoulder hits the rest, and I can feel the glass breaking on my skin, leaving long, raking cuts. It hurts like seven hells, but it hurts a lot less than getting shot to death.

The idiots left my bike standing, right where it was. I get on and turn the key. I don't know what kind of shit that a gang like this can get up to, but the idea that they might have some sort of tracking… thing, does occur to me.

It just doesn't matter enough to stop me from grabbing a life raft in a storm. I jam the gun into my pocket and speed off.

I have to get back in touch with Davis, and I have to do it soon. But right now, as Dupree hits the street, his gun still in hand, coming up to fire another desperate shot, isn't the time.

Instead, I make a mad dash for the highway. Once I'm out of town—then I can try to get ahold of Davis. Until then, I'm going to concentrate on driving and making sure that the wrong fuckin' people don't get ahold of me.