Chapter Nineteen

 

 

 

 

Buck didn’t like the way this run was going. It had been a shit storm from the beginning when his bike started acting up. He’d had to ride over to the clubhouse to get his other bike out of the museum—that’s what they called the place they kept their bikes they rarely rode—and take his Harley over to Mitch’s shop.

It didn’t help that Dice had been an asshole because he was tripping over some girl who hadn’t played for over three weeks after they’d fought over some bullshit or another. Dice was always bitchy when she wasn’t playing. It had happened four times over the past three years. She’d disappear and change her gamer tag as well as the information on the account according to Dice and he’d freak until she sent him the new information.

Dice was getting way too attached to this woman who refused to even meet him in person or tell him her real name. Dice wasn’t one to get attached to people. Hell, they were lucky he tolerated them because the man was beyond introverted most of the time. He didn’t do close well. With Dice being so damned bitchy Buck was sure that if he didn’t know they needed the payoff this job would get them he’d say fuck it and head back to his old lady.

Fuck, it was good to know he finally had a right to call Tessa his. She’d already been his but now nobody was going to say she wasn’t and they’d keep their fucking hands to themselves when he wasn’t around to smack their heads together because if they didn’t, his brothers would fuck their shit up for him. He liked knowing he didn’t have to worry about her while he was out on the road handling shit for the club.

Two weeks ago, he’d given her his patch and gotten the orders for this run. They were headed to a computer site where they were going to download some information they could sell for close to a million in cold hard cash. It meant his share was about fifty thousand and he wanted that payload. It would let him finish outfitting the house. Two of the three bathrooms needed work and they needed more furniture to make it feel like a real home. This job would let him take care of everything and be able to store some for when they started having kids. That was a trippy thought. If anyone had told him a year ago that he’d be thinking of kids, he would have laughed his ass off before he walked away but here he was.

He followed Dice off the road onto the dirt path that would lead them to the area they were going to so they could interface with the computer via a satellite connection. Why they needed to do this out here in the middle of the desert a day-long drive away was beyond him but he knew Dice knew what he was doing, even if he was hating it because it meant he wasn’t with Tessa.

He pulled up to the little shack Dice had set up for this task of stealing the files for the program they’d been paid to get after winning the bidding war with the Tricky Dicks to get the contract from the client. They’d taken a half million dollar pay cut to do it but it was worth it. They’d cut the Dicks out and that’s what mattered. The payoff was still going to be nice and leave the club pretty set for six months or so. Not that they’d be avoiding jobs, they could just be selective and slow down for a while.

Climbing off his bike, he grabbed his sawed off and the AK-47 off the back of his bike, grateful they’d avoided main roads and cops because explaining his current arsenal would have been difficult had they been stopped—not to mention the illegal nature of his weapons. After he set up the security and made sure no one was able to get inside the place, Dice got to work. Eight hours and three close calls later, they were packing it in and he was heading home to his old lady.

He didn’t take the drive to the clubhouse even though he was tasked with protecting the drive till they handed it off to the client in a week when things had cooled down from their cyber-attack. Instead he headed home to his woman, needing to feel her in his arms. He’d been up for almost three days by the time he pulled into the drive but he knew he’d never sleep till he made love to her. Entering the house, he dropped his bag near the door and grabbed Tessa as she came into the living room.

“Buck, I thought you weren’t supposed to be home till tomorrow?” Tessa asked, dallying way too long for his tired needy brain. Tossing her over his shoulder and grinning stupidly, he headed to the bedroom with her shrieking and smacking his ass in protest.

“Time for bed, woman!” he grunted and tossed her down on the bed before following her down.

 

Tessa woke listening hard, unsure why she felt like something was off. Sitting up, she looked over at Buck who’d been out for a little over three hours according to the little clock beside the bed. Tessa had gotten up earlier to lock up and turn off all the lights Buck had left on when he’d dragged her to the bedroom. He’d likely intended to get up and do it himself after he’d rocked her world but right after he’d come he’d fallen to the bed and was asleep in seconds. Buck was usually good about making sure she was safe before he went to bed.

She couldn’t help the little grin that touched her lips when she realized he was as ridiculous in his overprotective behavior as the men in her family were. Of course, Buck had never seen her in action like her family had so she’d give him a little leeway. Not that she’d had much call to use the skills she’d learned when she was barely past puberty. They’d run drills once a week simulating a real breech with paint guns and it had always pissed her uncles off when she was better than their kids because she wasn’t just muscle, she was also a thinker. Thinkers were much more dangerous, her father had always explained, laughing when she was the only one besides Hannah who didn’t have at least one ‘wound’ when they lined up after the drills.

Buck would likely flip his lid when he saw she’d also moved his bag from near the doorway to hide it behind the chair he’d bought her a few weeks ago.  She was sure whatever he’d been up too with that AK-47 and that drive wasn’t strictly legal—which meant moving that bag so it wasn’t immediately visible if the police showed up at the door. She would have stowed it with her weapons if she hadn’t thought he’d have a hissy fit over it.

She heard a hissing sound from the living room and frowned, her spidey sense tingling something awful, and she knew it wasn’t a drill. Quietly she crawled from the bed, her eyes moving to where Buck was sleeping, wondering what he had on that drive he’d brought home and what type of men she’d be dealing with if this was about that. She went to the dresser to grab her knife, feeling her insides clench at the thought of using it on someone. She’d do it and then deal with the fallout just like her dad had taught her.

She slipped down the hall on silent feet, her legs bare because she’d only slipped on her panties and Buck’s shirt that hung to just below her ass. Buck would be mad that she hadn’t woken him but as tired as he was he’d likely make a mistake trying to handle whoever was in their house and she didn’t want things to get messy. As she neared the living room she could hear the two men talking.

“Where the fuck is the damned bag. I know he brought it here because he didn’t go anywhere once he showed up here and I saw him bring it inside. What the fuck?” a tall thin almost gangly man wearing a dusty leather cut and what looked in the dim light like dirty jeans demanded.

“How am I supposed to fucking know? I checked the kitchen. Did you check the other rooms? Maybe he has it in his room with the bitch. We’re going to have to look in there,” the chunky man with a grisly beard muttered, sounding a little put out that the bag might be in their room. Tessa felt a little relieved that they hadn’t looked behind her chair—although that told her she was dealing with two idiots, which made her happy. It meant they’d discount her as a threat. A dark grin split her face; that would work for her.

“You go in there. I don’t want to get a gun in my face. He’ll kill us if we go in there,” the skinny one muttered.

“Jesus, grow a pair. Fucker’s sleeping, he can’t shoot us when he’s sleeping,” the other one grunted. Tessa knew they were worried about Buck when they should be worried about the bitch who was sneaking up on them with a butcher knife.

“Shut the fuck up. Asshole’s taken out like twenty of our club just this year and you damned well know it,” Skinny whined. Damn, Buck had been a busy boy. Well she’d known he wasn’t a girl scout but fuck, twenty? How had he not been arrested with that many people dying?

“Yeah, those illegals were never great and they were just prospects,” Bushy growled, shaking his head. That explained why no one had come to their door then. Illegals weren’t big on contacting the police over their dead family any more than the clubs would be. Tessa needed to get to it but before she could do anything she heard a sound in the hallway and turned to see Buck flipping on the light.

Fuck, she hid the knife under the couch and stood up quickly trying to move back from where she was standing right beside Skinny but she didn’t make it. He reached out, grabbing her arm and jerking her to him with a gun pressed against her side.

“Duchess, where did you g—fuck,” Buck said entering the living room, his hand rubbing the back of his neck, looking confused as he paused taking in the room. Damn, why did he have to wake up before she’d killed these two bastards. Bushy was close to the hallway and he trained his gun on Buck.

“Well isn’t this fortunate, Curly? We were just about to come into your room and you both come out to say hi to us instead,” Bushy muttered and Tessa almost couldn’t contain the laugh that bubbled up in her chest at the realization the skinny man was named after one of the biggest TV idiots out there. That thought died when Bushy shoved Buck, making him stumble to his knees.

“It’s good they came out here. Now they can tell us were that bag is,” Curly muttered, his gun pushing harder into her side. If only he’d move it just for a second, she’d be able to get away and shove that gun up his skinny ass.

“Take her in the kitchen and tie her to the chair in there. We’ll torture her till he tells us where the bag is,” Bushy ordered, and skinny or Curly pushed her towards the kitchen using his gun to prompt her to move.

Maybe if they separated she’d get a chance while he was tying her up. She just hoped Buck didn’t do anything stupid. As she entered the kitchen with Curly pushing her forwards with his gun, he shoved her into the counter making her breath escape her in a rush.

When she caught her breath, she glanced over her shoulder. She realized this was her chance; he was holding the gun on her but she could disarm him if she moved quickly. He wouldn’t expect her to try and disarm him and that would work in her favor. She waited until he was distracted and the gun lowered just a little. Tessa moved, twisting around, but before she could disarm him Buck burst through the door to the kitchen with his gun raised, shooting towards Skinny but missing him.

Tessa moved, trying to get to Curly before he could shoot at Buck. She would have been able to kick the gun out of his hand if Curly wasn’t so afraid of Buck that he jerked back away from him. Curly crashed into her body as she kicked out. Her foot hit his elbow instead of his wrist and his submachine gun went off spraying the room with bullets, hitting the wall, the window and Buck.

She watched in horror as his chest exploded with red and his shocked expression changed to a pained groan as he fell to his knees. Buck’s hand pushed against the wound in his upper chest as his body shuddered and his grimace of pain was like a knife to her heart. Curly landed on the floor and the gun skittered across the tile away from him. Tessa didn’t know how long she had to get this situation under control before Bushy entered the fray and Buck was no longer any help she realized as he fell forwards passing out.

Tessa had managed to stay upright and she moved to the machine gun, her focus on taking out Curly for shooting Buck. Lifting the gun, she didn’t hesitate; she’d been training for this all her life and even if she’d never thought to use it she’d fucking learned it and she was going to use that knowledge to take out these two bastards. She shot Curly in the head once from the other side of the room, making sure to spray around him even as she used the first bullet as the kill shot—knowing that forensics would prove that she hadn’t shot the man point blank, allowing her some leeway to call this self-defense. Her father and uncles had taught her about that too.

Moving into the other room, she found Bushy getting up off the floor and shot him in the shoulder, then the heart, being sure to duck as he tried to shoot her first. He missed because she had already moved before he even pulled the trigger on his semiautomatic. Bushy fell back dead, his eyes wide open and staring at the ceiling. Tessa didn’t waste any time dropping the gun to the floor before she rushed back to Buck, falling to her knees in the blood. 

Gently she rolled him over to his back, noticing the large bruise on his head and his bluish appearance. She felt fear grip her when she saw where the wound was located. Her panic was rattling around in her head like a wrecking ball slamming into any surface it found, smashing it all to bits. She almost didn’t know what to do as she looked down at the man she loved beyond anything in this world lying there with blue lips, barely breathing. She was sitting there without a clue as to what to do when her brain suddenly started working.

She pushed away from him, her mind already lining up the things she needed and what she had to do. She moved into the living room, unlocking the door before grabbing the bag from behind the chair, gathering her knife quickly from beneath the couch, and running into the bedroom with the heavy bag and knife. She entered the closet and quickly popped open the floor, stowing everything under it with her guns, grabbing a few other things from the bedroom and tossing them in too. She made sure to close it properly, tugging the boxes into place and exiting.

She ran back to the kitchen grabbing both their phones and used her phone to dial 911. She talked to the emergency operator as her hand moved over Buck, using the towels she’d grabbed from the drawer to pack the wound, her mind doing a check on his vitals even while she used his phone to text Dice. She told him they’d been attacked and she’d called the paramedics and the police were on their way. Dice texted back he’d be here in ten minutes. She talked to the woman on the phone, constantly updating her on Buck’s breathing and vitals.

She could hear the sirens in the distance when Buck took a shuddering breath in and stopped breathing. Her heart nearly stopping, she tossed the phone and began CPR. His body gushed blood from the packed wound and it bubbled from his mouth making her panic level rise but she continued the familiar motions until the paramedics were rushing inside to take over.

Dice walked in four minutes after they arrived and the two of them waited while they loaded Buck into the back of the ambulance to transport him. Two more men showed up and they handled the cops when they walked in. They wouldn’t let Tessa leave with Buck because they had questions for her. She sat in the windowed room for hours with Choke answering questions while her mind twisted around and around about what was happening with Buck.

“Okay, Miss Holden, let’s go over this again.” The fat hairy cop who seemed slower than a snail taking a nap had his little note pad now full of notes on her answers, which hadn’t changed since she’d answered them the first time.

“No, she’s already told you what happened four times,” Choke, one of the men who’d arrived after Dice, muttered. He’d already sent Dice to the hospital to see what was happening with Buck.

“This isn’t your concern. You’re interfering with an investigation,” the cop, who obviously didn’t like Choke or his MC, said. Tessa would bet good money he just wanted to piss Choke off with his repeated questions.

A cop opened the door, sticking his head inside. “Their lawyer’s here. Cooper said to get you. They’re being released.”

“Told you we’d be out within an hour. Run along and get your marching orders, Randal,” Choke muttered, his smile satisfied. When the man left the room, Choke looked at her, nodding with a little smile. “They’ve sprung us, doll. Won’t be long now and you can check on your old man.”

“Okay,” Tessa said, hoping it was quick because she needed to know if Buck was okay and the past hour of questioning had nearly made her insane. She wanted to know what was going on at the hospital.

“You did good tonight. Real good, doll. Don’t ever think differently.” Choke didn’t elaborate but having realized that neither the drive nor any of the illegal weapons had made it into the hands of the cops had endeared her to Choke.

Tessa nodded, her mind far away as they waited to be let go. It took another three hours before they were walking out of the police station and heading for the hospital. Only the messages from Dice to Choke had kept her sane while she waited. Buck was alive and that was all that mattered to her at the moment.