Mason

 

We could see our targets now. We spotted them by the muzzle flare as they shot back at us. From what I could tell, there were two of them—Skull and one of his goons. They’d ducked behind the car, using it as cover while they shot at us at intervals.

 

“All right, guys,” I shouted at my men over the gunfire, “surround the car. We’ve got to take them down. Leave Skull for me if you can. Someone find Clara. She may still be in the car.”

 

I didn’t check to see if anyone nodded, flipped me off, or otherwise acknowledged what I was saying to them. I started walking to the car with my gun in front of me. I saw Skull duck around the front of it, and I didn’t care what else happened, I was going to shoot his ass. Before everything was said and done, I was going to eliminate him. The other guys were more than able to handle the other shooter and get Clara to safety.

 

We’d started shooting again when we saw a phone screen light up. The night had been silent and almost pitch black for some time after Skull’s car had come to rest on the side of the highway, but we heard voices from inside the car.

 

Then, there had been a light from within the car, as one of them had probably turned on a flashlight or a light app on their phones. We stood back even then and waited. We wanted to see how many people, if any, came out of the car.

 

Only two emerged, which meant we’d definitely taken out the other goon. It also meant Clara was likely still inside the car. I’d still told the guys to hold their fire and stand down while we watched what the two men were up to.

 

One of them tapped his phone screen, and I could see Skull’s face illuminated perfectly from underneath. I could see his dark eyes staring down the phone, and I watched his mouth move as he was saying something to the man standing next to him.

 

I cocked my gun and waited. I couldn’t tell what they were doing. It looked like Skull was about to call for backup or for someone to come pick him up, but I wasn’t about to allow that. I took a shot, but he quickly moved out of the way.

 

The man had quick reflexes. Watching him in action made it easy to see why so many people on the street compared him to a snake. The way he moved seemed almost unnatural, as did his dark eyes. They were quite possibly contacts, but I didn’t know anyone who’d spent enough time around him to know. I certainly wasn’t going to ask Clara about it.

 

That was when everyone else began unloading on the two men. They fired a few rounds back at us, but for the most part we had them cornered behind the car. We advanced on the car. The gunfire calmed as Skull and his goon seemed to be regrouping and my guys were circling the car. They were so cornered and so screwed. I was surprised they hadn’t given up yet. It occurred to me that they could have just texted someone to come for backup, and that would have been a good reason for them to hold out as long as they could.

 

That wasn’t going to fly with me. We were going to end this now.

“Skull,” I called out. “I know it was you behind the thefts, man. Your girl told me everything.”
I stood with my back to the underside of the front end of the car. I could still feel the heat from the engine. It hadn’t cooled off completely yet, reminding me of how quickly everything was happening even though time felt like it was almost standing still for us. The night certainly felt still enough. The gunshots cracked through the darkness, echoing in the woods along the side of the road.

 

The interstate was dead, adding to the timeless feeling of the scene in front of us. The moon didn’t even seem to be moving in the sky above. Everything was still. Even we became still as we stood and waited for someone to make the first move.

 

I had seen Skull duck around the front of the car, so I crept slowly around, expecting to find him, but he wasn’t there.

 

I heard him shouting at the other gunman, and I stood back to watch what they were doing. I heard a gunshot from inside the car, alerting us to Clara’s presence. Then, I saw the other gunman scrambling atop the car before rolling off.

 

“Skull!” My voice rang out in the night like a gunshot.

 

In the near perfect darkness, I saw his face snap in my direction. I saw those dark eyes focus on me. He raised his gun, but he didn’t shoot. Instead, he ducked around behind the car, leaving his man on the ground holding his arm. I couldn’t tell if he’d been shot or if something else had happened to him.

 

“Dammit,” I cursed under my breath. “Where the hell is everybody?”

 

It suddenly felt like the world had come down to just myself and Skull. Everyone else, everything else, had faded into the darkness of the night surrounding us.

 

“Come on, Skull, stop trying to delay the inevitable, man,” I called out into the darkness.

 

I pressed myself against the hood of the car and started to creep slowly back around.

 

“Guys,” I called out to my men, “I think Clara’s still in the car. Someone get her out, but be careful. I think she’s armed.”

 

“On it, boss,” someone called out behind me. I could hear footsteps on the car as someone climbed up to get her.

 

I crept around the front end of the car until I stood on the interstate side of the wreck again.

 

“I’m not delaying anything,” Skull said as I came around the car. We stood face to face for the first time since our little feud began.

 

He had been able to elude me for years, and we were finally standing right next to each other. I almost wanted to put my gun away and shake his hand. Someone as successful as Skull—and successful in as many different areas as he was—almost demanded respect. And I would have been willing to admit he had earned it if he hadn’t been stealing business from us. But that was how competition worked. He stole some of our business, forcing us to do a better job in order to earn that business back or pick up new clients to replace the old ones.

 

At first, I wondered if Skull was even a real person or just the name of his gang. He had been that elusive. No one had seen him, even though everyone knew his name from his prostitutes and call girls. He was well known among the gambling rings, too, and a few of those guys had claimed to see him on a regular basis.

 

I wasn’t entirely sure how it happened, but it came to pass that a lot of his gambling associates had gone out of business over the years, robbing him of gambling business the way he had robbed us of weapons and security deals, but none of that could be traced back to us. A lot of those gambling rings were broken up by police. It seemed like anyone who admitted to knowing Skull had become a target.

 

As we turned up the heat on his clientele, he turned up the heat on us, stealing more of our business, and eventually resorting to stealing my product so he could cut into my drug money. I still wasn’t sure exactly how he expected to grow a sustainable drug business if all he was doing was stealing from me to sell what he’d stolen, unless he was working on getting to my supplier.

 

None of that would matter in a few moments. None of our history would matter any longer. None of the petty bullshit either of us had done to piss off the other would matter. This feud was about to be over, and once his body lay lifeless on the ground in front of me, I was going to send my guys out to infiltrate every aspect of Skull’s business.

 

We were going to take over everything Skull had put his hands in, from the gambling to the prostitution, and from the call girls to his weapons supplier. That was one thing I hadn’t mentioned to Clara yet. As far as she knew, I was just pissed about the drugs. No, I wanted to take his ass over. I wanted to put Storm’s Angels on top of every game in town.

 

Once we owned this city, I was going to leave Mick in charge while I went from chapter to chapter, helping them achieve the same status we had. By the end of it all, wherever we were, we were going to run it. And we were going to have people in place to shut down anyone who tried to move in on our business. We weren’t going to have any more Skulls operating as thorns in our side.

 

As I stared into his dark eyes surrounded by his dark features, I could see the future of Storm’s Angels. I could see that with one bullet to his head, I was going to set the fate of my MC into motion.

 

He narrowed his eyes, and I started to think that maybe he was reading my mind. Suddenly, it felt like he could see my thoughts.

 

“Are you going to do it?” he asked. He raised his empty hands. He’d put his gun away. “Go ahead,” he encouraged me. He pressed himself against my gun. “Pull the trigger, Mason,” he growled.

 

I couldn’t. The gun was in my hand. My finger was on the trigger. I was just paralyzed. It wasn’t fear that had me unable to make my move. It was the magnitude of the situation. It was knowing that in one split second, I could unceremoniously end this conflict.

 

“You can’t do it, can you?” he taunted me.

 

I just stared blankly at him. I really couldn’t. I tried to flex my finger, to squeeze the trigger, but nothing happened. He grabbed my hand and pressed my gun harder against himself. He smiled at me, his lips curling up in an unnatural grimace.

 

Then, it became about fear. Skull had obviously embraced his reputation for seeming very otherworldly to the people on the street. He had worked to make himself as creepy as possible so he lived up to people’s expectations.

 

There was nothing special about this guy outside of his ability to read people, but we all had to be able to do that to be successful in this business we were in. Still, staring into his eyes with that creepy, maniacal smile spreading across his face, I couldn’t stop the chills that spread through my veins.

 

I was in trouble here. I was in big trouble if I couldn’t pull the trigger on this creep and stop him. If I didn’t kill him, he was going to kill me. And if he killed me, I was afraid the MC would fall apart shortly thereafter.

 

I tried to pull the trigger again, but I couldn’t make my finger squeeze it. I began to wonder if he hadn’t cast some kind of spell on me. Did he actually have the powers that people on the street thought he had? There was no way. That shit wasn’t real. He was just really creepy.

 

“I’m waiting on you, Mason,” he said. “Everyone is. If you do this, Clara goes free, you get your drugs and weapons businesses back, and you can take over anything of mine that you want. I will no longer be in your way.”

 

He pulled the gun slowly out of my hand.

 

“Of course, if you can’t, then I will, and you won’t live long enough to see me dismantle your MC.” He held my gun up in my face to show me that he’d pulled it out of my hand without a fight.