Mason

 

I reached for my door without pulling out my keys first, and I wasn’t surprised to find it was already unlocked, even though I had locked it behind myself when I left. I pushed the door open and drew my gun.

 

“Clara,” I called into the empty apartment.

 

Everything was just as I’d left it that morning, but it still felt empty without her there. I carefully walked through the living room to the kitchen. I peered into the bedroom. I checked behind the door and opened my closet. With the barrel of my gun, I pushed aside the clothes hanging there. No one was waiting for me. I checked behind the curtains in my bedroom windows. I walked into the bathroom, checked the linen closet, and checked the tub even though my shower door was mostly clear.

 

“Clara,” I called again, just in case she’d found a hiding place I hadn’t thought about.

 

I walked back into the kitchen, heading for the balcony, and noticed that one of the drawers was still open. The gun that I usually kept in it was gone.

 

“Son of a bitch,” I cursed.

 

I looked at the counter. There was a glass sitting with a couple of melting ice cubes in it. A bottle of whiskey sat beside it. I considered pouring some for myself and using the same glass, so it would be like kissing her as I placed my lips where hers had been. I needed to keep my wits about me, though. There would be time for drinking once everything had been handled.

 

I was starting to get the picture of what had happened after I left. She’d obviously called Skull to let him know we were on our way to his hideout, giving him the opportunity to wipe the place clean. There was no way the office we’d gone to would have been that clean if it hadn’t just been cleaned out in preparation for our arrival.

 

He’d offered to come pick her up. Or had she requested it? Either way, on her way out the door, she stopped and grabbed a gun for protection. Then, to gather up her nerve, she grabbed a drink. It hadn’t been that long ago. The ice was still in the glass.

 

She had obviously begun to suspect the same thing I did about Skull and his goons. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have grabbed a gun. She wouldn’t have needed a drink to convince herself to go through with it all.

 

Clara was in trouble.

 

I slid my gun back under my belt and grabbed my phone. I called Mick at HQ.

 

“Shoot,” he answered on the first ring.

 

“Have you guys heard anything out of Clara? Has she been by?” I asked, sounding a little more panicked than I would have liked to.

 

“No, we haven’t heard anything out of her.” He paused. “We haven’t seen her either,” he said. “Is everything all right?”

 

“Well, she’s not at the apartment,” I told him.

 

“I’m telling you, brother, after she gave Skull the heads up, she went back to him. We should have seen it coming,” he said.

 

“Yeah, but I’m pretty sure Skull was behind the attack at the park, which means if he came to get her, she’s in danger right now,” I told him.

 

I closed and locked my door. I didn’t need my home spread out and open for anyone who wanted to go in and look around. I knew how lucky I was that no one had already gone through my place.

 

“Look, stay by the phone, but make sure you and a couple of other guys are ready to ride if we need to,” I told him.

 

“You’re still going to protect her, even after everything she’s done?” Mick asked.

 

“Even after everything she’s done,” I answered. I couldn’t explain it, but she was in trouble, and despite all the trouble she’d caused, I’d promised to take care of her and to protect her. Plus, there was the possibility that she’d stolen something important from me when she left the apartment, whether I wanted to admit it or not.

 

It definitely would have been the first time a woman held my heart in her hands, but I wasn’t about to let anyone know that.

 

“You’re the boss,” Mick said. “Let us know what the plan is. We’ll be ready.”

 

“Thanks, Mick,” I told him.

 

“No problem.”

 

We hung up, and I was on my way down in the elevator. At the ground floor I looked around, wondering which way I would have gone if I had someone like Skull coming to pick me up. I would have gone out the back and met them in the alley between the building and the parking deck for the next apartment complex over.

 

I ran through the doorway into the alleyway, and I suddenly felt like I was standing on any of the streets in the industrial side of town. Everything back here was gray and dingy. The road was covered in a layer of filth that just seemed to settle every time it rained or with every passing car or truck. Everything was concrete. Sunlight didn’t quite make it all the way down between the buildings here.

 

I looked around to see if I could catch a glimpse of anything, but there was no sign of anyone behind the building. If she’d met Skull back here, they were long gone by the time I had even arrived at the apartment building.

 

“Hey, brother,” an old, scratchy voice called.

 

I looked around but didn’t see anyone.

 

“Hey, man,” he said again, and a tall, lanky homeless man stepped out of the shadows. “She said you might come looking for her,” he told me as he approached.

 

“Who did?” I asked.

 

“That fine little blonde,” he answered. “She told me to let you know what happened when you showed up,” he said.

 

“All right, then, what happened?” I asked, a little irritated that he hadn’t just come out and said it yet.

 

“She got in the car with three other guys. There was a fourth, but he got shot. They stuffed him in the trunk and hauled ass out of here,” he told me.

 

“Do you know where they went?”

 

“I didn’t get a good look at which way they went from here, but they turned north up at the next street.” He nodded at where the alley opened up to the road about a block away.

 

“How long has it been since they left?”

 

“I don’t know. I’m not too good with time out here, but it couldn’t have been more than maybe ten or fifteen minutes, man. They just left.” He scratched his filthy, matted hair.

 

“Thanks for the info, man.” I fished out a twenty and handed it to him.

 

“No. Thank you, man,” he said, smiling and laughing at the money I’d handed him. He was probably going to go get something to take the edge off the heat of the day, maybe take away the ache in his bones from being on the concrete all day.

 

I hurried to the parking garage and called Mick back.

 

“That was fast,” he said when he answered.

 

“Yeah, a guy living by the dumpster out back saw the whole thing. Apparently she was jumped again,” I told him.

 

“Did he say if she was okay?”

 

“He made it sound like she was. She took one of my guns and apparently shot one of the guys trying to abduct her. They had to put him in the trunk according to my friend here.” I laughed.

 

“Right on. Did he happen to see where they went?”

 

“Yeah, he said he thought they turned north on the next street,” I told him. “Mean anything to you?”

 

“Yeah. You’re right there by the interstate, right?” Mick asked.

 

“Yeah.” If they’d gone onto the interstate, I knew there was still a chance of catching up with them. It was a fairly straight highway, and chances were, they weren’t jumping off immediately. It was better than trying to figure out where they were going within the city.

 

“All right. Rumor has it Skull has a hideout upstate. He’s probably taking her there. He knows we’re on to him. If that’s where he’s going, and he doesn’t have a huge head start, we can still catch up with him,” Mick explained.

 

“That’s the best news I’ve heard all day,” I told him.

 

“Good. Now get back here so we can get everyone together. I’ll grab a few guys and meet you outside when you get here. We’ll ride out together and try to catch up with them. Don’t worry. If she’s all right now, she’ll be all right when we get there. Then, you can do whatever the hell you want,” he said with a laugh.

 

“Yeah, but I think karma may be handling all of that for me right now,” I told him.

 

“Good.” He killed the call.

 

I stuffed my phone back in my pocket and hopped on the Roadster. It was time to head back to HQ to get the guys together. We had to hurry. Skull already had at least a fifteen-minute head start, and that gap was widening every minute we weren’t on the road behind him. If we could catch up to him, I knew it would get ugly, but at least we would get Clara back.

 

I would get Clara back.

 

I gunned the engine and pulled out of the parking deck. I didn’t know what I intended to do to her once I got her away from Skull. All I could think of clearly was what I was going to do to Skull once we caught up to him. He’d earned every bit of our scorn over the past couple of years, and he was about to face the full wrath of Storm’s Angels, especially after taking so many guys from us.

 

I wondered what Clara was thinking that very moment. I wondered if it had occurred to her yet how badly she’d screwed up by trying to play both sides of the field on this one. She’d tried to be a double agent, and it didn’t seem to be working out for her.

 

Now, in an attempt to go back to her old boss, she’d been kidnapped by him, and we were about to be on our way to rescue her. The irony was ridiculous.

 

The good news was that with her in Skull’s custody, it was less likely anyone would be contacting him to let him know what our next move was. The bad news, of course, was that he probably already knew his boys hadn’t taken out everybody, which meant someone was going to be riding up on his ass at any minute.

 

Hopefully, we could get to him before word did, and we’d still have some element of surprise. Plus, being one guy down on his ride, we had an advantage over his fire power, or so I was telling myself. I needed all the morale I could get.

 

We were about to go toe to toe with our biggest rival and the man competing for our reputation of being the toughest, meanest organization on the street. He may have had better weapons, but, like I always said, he didn’t have the balls it took to do what was really needed when the shit hit the fan.

 

And the shit was about to hit his fan in a big way. He’d taken business from me. He’d taken men from me. He’d even gone so far as to take my old lady from me. I wasn’t having it. I wasn’t going to put up with his shit anymore.

 

The orders were going to be to shoot to kill. We were going to take out Skull and whoever else was in that car besides Clara. She was going to be the only survivor. If anyone else showed up, we were going to take them down, too.

 

This was war, and we weren’t about to back down.

 

The engine roared as I sped away from the apartment building back towards HQ.

 

“Hey, man, we’ll get her back safe and sound.” Mick offered his encouraging words with a hand on my shoulder once I arrived. He could see how troubled my eyes were when I pulled up. He stood outside with four other members armed and ready on their motorcycles.

 

Afternoon had begun to turn to night, hurting our chances of catching up to Skull and his men. I looked at my guys, who were waiting to hear some encouraging words from their president, especially after having lost so many men earlier in the day, but I didn’t have anything left in me. This whole mess was really starting to take its toll. Part of me wanted to just throw my hands up and walk away, but I knew I couldn’t do that. I owed it to Clara to go after her.

 

I couldn’t explain why I owed it to her after everything she’d done, all the trouble she caused, but I felt it deep inside. I owed her another chance. Trust was hard to come by in our line of work, and she’d worked pretty hard to earn mine, despite turning around and stabbing me in the back with it. But I would have done the same for any of my guys. I understood the relationship she had with Skull.

 

I walked up to the closed bay door and turned to face the members who were prepared to ride with us in pursuit of Skull and his goons. They had guns strapped to their backs, and they were just waiting on the signal to go. I wanted to make sure we were all on the same page and not just running wild out there on the highway. We needed to handle the situation, get Clara, and come back with minimal deaths. We’d lost quite a few men already.

 

“All right,” I told the guys, “if we’re going to go, we’ve got to leave now. Skull has Clara. He picked her up at my apartment earlier this afternoon. He’s heading north on the interstate, we believe. He’s got a hideout upstate, and we think that’s where he’s going. Now, look, it’s a couple of hours away, and they’ve probably a good thirty-minute head start or better by now. We’re going to be chasing them down in the dark, but we can do it.”

 

I looked at their faces, and they still looked lost. I felt like I should have been able to give them some sort of pep talk, but I just didn’t have it in me. I felt just as tired and defeated as they looked. I glanced over at Mick.

 

“It’s all you,” I told him, patting him on the back as I stepped aside.

 

“All right, it’s go time. They’ve got a pretty good head start, and it’s getting dark. You know how this works. We’ll ride together. Stick close to each other but keep your distance from them until it’s time to take them down. And remember who we are,” he said. “We’re Storm’s Angels, and we’re going to ride out with Hell on our backs.”

 

Mick sounded like he was ready to kick some ass, and that seemed to get everyone else in the mood, too. I was just ready to get it over with. I wasn’t going to be happy until I saw Skull dead and Clara back in my arms.