Walking around downtown Blackwoods with a shit-ton of coke wasn’t something of which Nash made a habit. It was too early in the morning for him to get mugged, but the drugged-out homeless were still around, as were early-morning stock and delivery workers. Anybody could make a mint off the load Nash was carrying, and he did his best to keep a low profile.
Well, as much as a guy like Nash could keep a low profile. Given his size, his bike, and his leather jacket, most people had a tendency to remember him. But when he walked anywhere with Eliza, he blended—because everyone was looking at her, and rightfully so. Every time he thought of her in Phillip’s clutches, he came closer and closer to spiraling into a murderous rage. Luckily, Eliza gave him focus. Never in his life would he ever consider robbing the Phoenixes, no matter how much any one of them pissed him off, but that morning it was all he could think about. Get the coke. Go to the address. See Eliza. Kill Phillip. Save Eliza. He had a plan and a gun strung to his hip.
Nash was out for blood.
Plus, if all went according to plan, he’d have the stolen coke back at Phoenix headquarters in an hour or so and nobody would notice it was missing. As he’d suspected, there were club members at the bar still when he arrived, but they were all heavy-eyed and quiet, closing down the bar for the day now that all the patrons had been booted out. No one asked why he was going down to the vaults. Even if he’d lost some credibility lately, most of the guys still trusted him to move about freely around the prized possessions under Phoenix Rises.
Maybe that would be their undoing. Didn’t they know someone was hunting Phoenixes? If anything, they ought to trust no one, especially with their biggest moneymaking drugs.
But here he was. Long gone with a hefty stash of cocaine on his person, headed to the address Phillip had carefully mapped out for him almost an hour ago on the phone. His time was limited, Phillip had said, because Eliza’s time was limited. He had no idea what that psychopath meant by it, but Nash hauled ass, worried that Phillip had Eliza locked in some steadily filling water tank or buried in some coffin underground with her oxygen rapidly depleting.
They were twisted thoughts, yeah, but with all that Nash now knew about him, Phillip seemed like a twisted kind of guy.
The rain had tapered off by the time he arrived at the specified location: a grungy rundown apartment in the east end. There was a guy sleeping on the front step, huddled under the awning, who didn’t rouse to the sound of Nash’s heavy footfalls as he approached. None of the windows hinted at any sign of life inside, no lights or flutter of curtains to be seen, and Nash wondered if the place was on the verge of being abandoned. The east side of Blackwoods was always a little sketchier than the rest, even sketchier than the south end where the bulk of the drug deals went down.
While he would have preferred to take his bike, the roar of his fine-tuned engine wasn’t exactly inconspicuous, and he wanted to hide the drugs from the elements for as long as possible. So Nash drove his car down, the GPS guiding him. Phillip had given the door code over the phone, too, and after hesitating, Nash punched it in at the front door keypad. Seconds later the whole door seemed to vibrate, and then he was in and out of the cold in a dark hallway that faintly stunk of mildew.
Eliza didn’t belong in a place like this. Blackwoods as a town wasn’t good enough for someone like her. Nash wasn’t good enough for her either, but he was damn sure he’d save her life if it came down to it—or maybe even give his life for hers.
Silence settled over him as soon as the door behind him swung shut. Usually the hallway of an apartment building was where one could hear the lives of the tenants inside. Even if the walls were thick, the doors leeched sound like nobody’s business. But in that moment, the place felt more abandoned than ever, and Nash couldn’t help but wonder if he’d been set up in one way or another. Phillip wanted the coke bad enough, so the guy was bound to be here, but this couldn’t be his base of operations. It couldn’t.
Straightening up, Nash readjusted the bag carrying the drugs over his shoulder, then proceeded down the hall with a hand on the weapon on his hip. Handgun. Legally purchased. Rarely used, if he could help it. Tonight he planned to use it as often as necessary.
Above the hallway lights flickered, the soft yellow glow of dying bulbs guiding him to the elevators—which were of course out of order. Teeth gritted, Nash moved to the stairwell, which was even less lit than the hall, and started upward. Slowly. Cautiously. The address was for a room on the fifth floor, and he planned to get there right on time—not a second before.
Unfortunately, his timing wasn’t exactly going to go according to plan. Just as Nash rounded the corner on the landing to get to the next flight of stairs, something heavy and hard and thick swung out of shadowy nowhere and clocked him right in the face. The last thing he remembered before real darkness took him was a flash of Eliza’s golden waves wrapped around his hand—and then nothing.