Gunner

 

When I pulled up to the garage on my bike, I was greeted by a crowd of our men parked in front. Despite what I had told him, Duncan had obviously put the call out after we talked on the phone. And, true to form, our men were answering that call quickly.

 

One of the things I liked about riding was that through the MC we had been able to bring together men from a cross-section of our city. While the five of us had devoted our lives to making the MC successful, we had men who still worked their day jobs to maintain connections in the business world and on the street. We made sure they were compensated accordingly for their efforts. I didn’t want anyone depending on their day jobs for sustenance.

 

“We found her,” Venom said, approaching me as I cut off the bike.

 

“Sierra?” I asked, giving away the real reason I wanted to pursue Coyote. Getting the diamond back was secondary.

 

“Maybe. We found Coyote’s hideout,” he explained. “That wasn’t an easy task either. Whoever she is, this Coyote doesn’t actually exist. I’m convinced it’s an alias, but with some help on the street, I was able to tie together several properties owned by a nameless shell corporation. Nothing is in anyone’s name, but we were able to locate a mansion on the north side of town that belongs to the same corporation as several offices and vacant warehouses known to be used by Coyote and her people.”

 

“Can be we certain that this really is her?” I asked. “I don’t want this many guys riding out in the middle of the night on a hunch, Venom. We’re professionals,” I reminded him.

 

“Oh, we can be sure. We got one of her men,” he said. They had been busy since I talked to Duncan on the phone, unless they’d been working on getting to her people the whole time. If that were the case, it was pretty good timing.

 

“Where is he? I want to talk to him.” I started walking past our men to get to the building.

 

“He’s no longer available,” Venom informed me.

 

“Oh, for real?” I raised my eyebrows and laughed.

 

“Yeah, we had to let him go. He was dispatched,” Venom told me slowly, placing emphasis on the last word.

 

I shook my head. The only lead we had, and they took his ass out.

 

“Oh well.” I sighed. I had to trust them on this one, which wouldn’t have been a problem if I wasn’t hell bent on bringing Sierra back with us.

 

Inside, I found Duncan, Luther, and Bryce waiting at the table for us.

 

“I said I didn’t want a whole bunch of guys riding out there, Duncan. We can handle it ourselves,” I said as I walked into the room.

 

“And I went ahead and called them in anyway,” he retorted. “I think you underestimate Coyote and her people, Gunner.”

 

“I don’t. That’s the thing. I don’t want to put people’s lives in danger here.”

 

“Well, that’s fine. If you want to send them home, feel free to step outside and tell them you’re chicken shit and you’re scared that they’ll get hurt,” he fumed.

 

“Okay, you’re right. I’m not thinking clearly on this one. We’re a motorcycle club, for crying out loud. Getting hurt is part of the fun, right?” I laughed nervously. I was really only thinking about getting Sierra back. I didn’t want to make a big show out of what we were doing because I didn’t want everyone to see that the diamond wasn’t the real reason I was going after Coyote. But Duncan was right. If we were going to go after her, we needed to take as many rough, mean men as we could get.

 

“I’ll text you the location of the house,” Venom said, pulling his phone out and tapping on the screen a couple of times.

 

A moment later, I received Coyote’s coordinates. I pulled up the map to see where she was. Sure enough, she had a mansion on the north side of town, several miles out. It didn’t look like there was much around her except a few other mansions on large plots of land.

 

“Got it,” I said, looking at the route from where we were to the mansion. It was simple enough to get there, and something told me we would know once we reached her house, especially if we were keeping an eye out for it.

 

“So, are we ready to go?” Duncan asked.

 

I slid my phone back in my pocket and let a smile slowly spread across my face. I started nodding slowly, and everyone else joined in.

 

“How long has it been since we had to all ride out like this to put down some competition?” I asked the other four men around me.

 

“Too long,” said Luther, and I could hear the excitement in The Boulder’s voice. I could see in his eyes that he was looking forward to hurting someone.

 

“Then let’s do it,” I said.

 

A kind of perverse excitement grew in me as I thought about showing Coyote why we called ourselves The Immortal Devils. Sure, we had a reputation for being twisted and depraved, but I wondered if some of the other local bosses forgot that we had earned it. It seemed to me that they believed we had hung up our depravity when we rose above the ranks of typical street gangs and basically became the white-collared version of organized crime.

 

It wasn’t even crime anymore. The word itself was too petty to describe what we did. The best way to describe our recent ventures was to call them illegal business. It wasn’t just crime anymore. Crime didn’t pay the way we did.

 

We walked out of the garage calmly, greeting the men waiting for us to give them some indication as to what the hell we were all doing out there in the middle of the night.

 

“Alright, guys. I’m sure Duncan has told you at least a little bit about what we’re doing here. We’re going after a big-time jewelry thief based just outside of town.” I raised my voice enough for everyone to hear me. I wasn’t worried about being overheard by neighboring businesses since it was late enough for everyone except us to be gone home.

 

“She goes by the name Coyote,” I continued, watching a few heads nod as they recognized her name. “She runs an international operation, and she’s stayed off of our radar for years because she has stayed out of our way. But she recently stole something that belonged to us, and we’re riding out to take it back.”

 

As I looked back and forth across the rows of faces gathered in front of me, I realized that I had not seen this many of our men standing together at one time since the early days. It was encouraging to see that we still had it. Sometimes life got so comfortable at the top that I needed a reminder of who and what we really were.

 

I walked through the crowd as Duncan stepped up behind me to address everyone.

 

“We’re riding out behind Gunner,” he started. “He knows how to get to Coyote’s compound. Stay together, stay tight. Watch us in the front for any signals. And remember, Coyote is ruthless, and her people are as ruthless as she is.”

 

I hopped on my bike and fired her up. The roar of the engine was greeted with enthusiastic yells and cheers from the twenty or thirty men crowding the parking lot in front of our garage. Their bikes followed suit, and before I knew it, we were all riding in formation down the highway. I rode in front with the other four founders, and the rest of the MC rode behind us, filling our lane.

 

I didn’t know how late it was, but the road was mostly abandoned as we rode towards Coyote’s location. We passed a few cars here or there, but nothing of any particular interest until we were closing in on the mansion.

 

We came around a corner, and a car that was flying up to us on the opposite side of the road started flashing their lights and turned on their hazards. As we drove past, I couldn’t shake the feeling that they were trying to get our attention somehow. I signaled to the other guys to turn around and run back to check on the car.

 

It was difficult to manage that many riders at one time, so only Duncan and I left the line, leaving everyone else driving towards the mansion. As we approached the car, I noticed it didn’t have plates, and the windows were completely blacked out, leaving it impossible to see who was inside.

 

The door opened as we slowed to a crawl and walked our bikes the rest of the way up to the car. I pulled my helmet off as Sierra’s beautiful red hair peeked out of the driver side. She sort of slumped against the doorframe.

 

I parked my bike and left it running as I ran over to her. I had to throw my arms out to catch her because she was falling out of the car.

 

“Hey, hey, whoa. Sierra?” I sat her back in the driver seat.

 

“Gunner, thank God you’re here,” she said, out of breath.

 

“There’s blood on your face, Sierra. Are you okay?” I pushed her hair back to see where she’d been struck in the head by something.

 

“That bitch hit me with the fucking diamond,” she hissed.

 

I wanted to laugh at the venom in her voice, but I also wanted throttle her for stealing from me. I also wanted to take her in my arms and tell her everything was going to be okay. I didn’t know which to do, so I stuck to business.

 

“So Coyote has the diamond at her hideout?” I thought it was pretty obvious that Sierra was coming back from Coyote’s location, so there was my confirmation that we were, in fact, driving in the right direction.

 

“She does.” Sierra nodded. “But I think she might be on her way to stop me from getting away,” she said.

 

I looked up at that time to see headlights coming our way and spreading out across the road.

 

“That’s obviously them,” I told her. “Get back in the car and stay put,” I said absently as I watched my men spread out in front of the oncoming traffic to block it.

 

I glanced over at Duncan, who nodded and roared off on his bike to join the rest of the MC.

 

I leaned in the door and kissed Sierra’s tender lips. She kissed me eagerly, filling me with something I didn’t have words for at the time. It was like relief, but it was deeper. It made me want to put her on the bike and order my men to stand down, to let Coyote keep the damn Sun Stone.

 

I knew I couldn’t do that. Instead, I cupped the back of her head and held her mouth to mine as long as I could.

 

Gunshots ripped through the night from one of the cars blocking the road in front of my men. I jerked my head out and looked up to where my men were facing off with Coyote’s people. I could see the four men pulled up in front on their rides, but there were also several people standing in front of them in between the cars lined across the highway. That must have been Coyote and her closest advisors.

 

Sierra lay her head back in the seat and cut off the car.

 

I hoped my men had brought their weapons. Any time we all rode out like this, I required everyone to carry a piece. Most of our weapons were unregistered street pieces that couldn’t be traced back to anyone except by fingerprints, but gloves did a pretty good job of preventing that. I did require them to have permits, though. It wouldn’t hurt, and with the legal muscle we had, we had used carry permits to get our men out of some tight spots before. It paid, and quite well, to almost be legit.

 

Something told me that Coyote had brought a fair bit of fire power with her. She had no idea what she was up against, but if the person standing in the front had fired off an automatic weapon, it was almost guaranteed that the people behind her had more.

 

“That’s them,” Sierra said, almost as an afterthought. “She probably doesn’t have the diamond with her.”

 

“What kind of firepower do they have?” It wouldn’t hurt to ask someone who probably knew.

 

“I don’t know.” She turned her face towards me, and I could see in her tired green eyes that she really didn’t have any idea what to expect from Coyote.

 

“You work for her. You have to know what she’s got for protection,” I insisted.

 

“Not a clue.” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “I wasn’t involved in all of that. I just stole for her.”

 

“Damn.” I looked back up, and she grabbed my arm with one of her frail hands. I looked back down at her in the car.

 

“I’m really sorry, Gunner,” she said.

 

“It’s okay, Sierra.” And it was okay. It shouldn’t have been. I should have been mad, but I couldn’t be. I couldn’t even force the anger up.

 

My phone buzzed while I was standing there.

 

She looked at me as I pulled it out of my pocket, her eyes wide with terror.

 

It was Duncan, and he was talking as soon as I answered.

 

“Where are you?” he asked in a panicked voice.

 

“Right here with Sierra, why?”

 

“You need to come up here. Now,” he said. I looked up and saw him standing next to his bike in front of Coyote and the other members of her organization standing in front of the cars. It was time.