KING
In that first moment, I felt the entire building shake and heard the windows rattling. In the next, I heard the sound of the explosion as it rocked Abbie's apartment building.
“What the fuck was that?” Drew asked.
Without stopping to respond, I dashed out of the kitchen and got to the window in the living room just in time to see the fireball rising into the sky and the thick column of pitch-black smoke that followed it upward. “Son of a bitch,” I growled. “Our bikes.”
El, Duke, and Drew were out the front door before I'd even turned away from the window. When I did finally turn away, I found Abbie standing there, between me and the doorway. Her eyes were wide and it looked like she'd been crying. She was terrified. And rightly so. Somebody had just blown up our bikes in her goddamn parking lot.
“What in the hell is going on, King?” she asked, fear twisting her features.
“Stay here, Abbie,” I said. “Don't leave the apartment and don't let anybody in. Lock the door behind me. Got me?”
She looked at me a long moment, seeming like she had something to say. Whatever it was, though, she seemed to realize now was not the time and bit it back. Instead, she just looked at me. “Yeah, got it,” she said.
I nodded and turned away from her, bounding down the stairs. I heard her shut and lock the door behind me. I just hoped it was going to be enough. Instinctively, I knew this was the work of El Segador and the Incas. But I had no idea what game they were playing. I had no idea what they were doing. Why blow up our bikes? Unless it was to send a message.
“But what is the fuckin' message?” I grumbled under my breath.
Two bikes were burning bright and hot by the time I got to the parking lot. Drew, El, and Duke were standing around looking as confused as they did pissed off.
“Fuck!” I shouted as I realized that one of the bikes-turned-infernos was mine.
“What the hell is going on, man?” El asked.
I glared over at him and tried to dial back my rage. It wasn't El I was pissed at and I didn't want him thinking I was. Kicking a rock at my feet, I took a deep breath, and stared at the flaming wreckage of my bike – and Drew's bike, as well. He looked every bit as pissed as I did. And with good reason. Our bikes were our lives. They were our freedom. To see them in pieces, burning and smoking – it was like losing a limb for us. “It's El Segador and the Incas,” I said.
“They still pissed that we said no to running heroin for them?” Duke asked.
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“Son of a bitch,” Drew muttered.
I felt the sweat rolling down my back, making my shirt cling to my skin. I wiped away the sweat on my brow and looked up at the window to Abbie's apartment, but the glare from the sun reflecting off the glass made it so I couldn't see whether she was there or not.
“First Dawkins,” Drew growled, “and now this. These assholes have got to pay. We have to make them pay.”
“We can't let them get away with this, bro,” El said.
“We've got to do something about it,” Duke said. “They've got to pay in blood for the shit they're pulling here.”
I could feel the bloodlust in them rising as quickly as their anger. And I couldn't blame them. What the Incas were doing – what they had done – was unconscionable. It was monstrous. And as a club, we couldn't let that pass without answering – without making them answer for what they'd done.
And, as the leader of the club, it was my responsibility to see that the Incas paid. That El Segador paid. If I let them get away with this, if I let this simply pass by without a response, I wasn't doing my job. I'd be losing face and letting all of the guys in the club down.
At the same time, though, I couldn't let them go off all half-cocked. I couldn't let them rush into this fueled by their outrage and desire for vengeance – even though it was tempting to. The last thing I wanted was for any more of my guys to wind up with their throats cut. Or, maybe worse for them, rotting away in a prison cell for gutting those pieces of shit and getting caught.
“Look, we're not going to let them get away with this shit,” I said. “We're going to answer in kind.”
“Damn right,” Drew growled.
“But we need to be smart about this,” I said. “We can just go rushing in blindly.”
“My eyes are going to be wide open,” El said. “I want to see the look on their faces when I start beating their asses to death with my bat.”
“Fuck that,” Duke grumbled, “I'm just going to start shooting every Inca prick I see.”
I shook my head. “This is what I'm talking about,” I snapped. “We're not going in shooting and we're not going in swinging our fuckin' baseball bats around. We have to use our heads here.”
The three of them looked at me and I could feel the hostility, feel the outrage coming off them every bit as hot as the heat from the fire coming off the wreckage of our bikes. They wanted revenge and weren't happy being told that they were going to have to wait for it – or that maybe it wasn't going to be as bloody as they'd wanted it to be.
And I had to admit, there would be a lot of satisfaction in stomping those pieces of shit into the ground. It would feel really good to see their blood flowing, to hear their bones snapping, and to hear them screaming in pain. It would feel really, really good. But it would also be really, really dumb to pull something like that. The cops were already on high alert and if these pieces of shit turned up in one bloody pile of death, we were going to be the first – and probably only – ones looked at for it.
I personally wanted to tear El Segador's throat out. I wanted to feel his blood all over my hands and look into his eyes as the life passed out of him. I wanted him to know that he was dying at my hands. And I wanted to do it for Dawkins. To dish out the justice he deserved.
But I had a bigger responsibility. I had to protect the club and all of my brothers in it.
“I get where you're coming from,” I said, “I really do. But it's my job to protect you guys and protect this club. If I sign off on a full-scale war with the Incas, we're all either going to end up dead or in prison. And I can't live with that. Not after Dawkins.”
“Nobody's blaming you for that, bro,” El said.
“I'm blaming myself for it,” I replied. “I let myself get distracted and didn't handle my shit. Well I'm on the ball now and we're going to get shit locked down good and tight. The Incas are going to get what's coming to them, but we're going to be smart about it.”
“What's your plan?” Duke asked.
“Don't know yet, man,” I said. “All I know is that the Incas are hoping we'll fuck up and come charging at them with guns blazing. They want to draw us into that kind of fight. So, if we go charging in there, we're fighting on their battlefield. And it's going to end badly for us. I can feel it. We're going to pick the battlefield and make them come to us.”
Sirens sounded in the distance. Somebody had obviously called the cops and probably the fire department – which was probably the normal response when something blows up in a parking lot. But that meant we didn't have a lot of time.
There was something bothering me, though. It was like a splinter in the back of my mind and I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was. Why blow up our bikes? Was I overthinking it all? Had they simply been trying to goad us into a confrontation? Or was there something else, something more sinister going on here? Abbie. I left Abbie unguarded and completely unprotected.
“Son of a bitch,” I said.
“What?” Drew asked.
“This was a fucking distraction,” I yelled as I started to run back toward the apartment.
I sprinted across the parking lot, El, Duke, and Drew close on my heels. I bounded up the steps and slammed into Abbie's locked door.
“Shit!” Taking a step back, I raised my foot and kicked the door as hard as I could. Wood splintered and the door flew inward, slamming into the wall behind it. The four of us crowded through the doorway and into Abbie's apartment.
“Abbie!” I called out.
Nothing. There was no response. We spread out through the place, looking for her in closets, under the bed, wherever we thought she could have been hiding. I ran into her bedroom and found the window open.
“The fire escape,” I almost shouted. “Son of a bitch!” I rushed to the window just in time to see her car squealing out of the driveway. I pounded my fist against the windowsill as my guys filed into the room behind me. I turned around, my head pounding, and my face red with heat. “They have her,” I snarled. “They fucking have her.”