I try the handle. It's unlocked. I yank the door open, throwing myself back against the shed wall, shielding my body with it just as the flash grenade starts its noisy dance, my fingers plugging my ears.
If I'd stayed in the doorway, the wanker would‘ve fired a shot off trying to take me down before I even stepped foot in the shed.
FUUUCK!
My body arches forward as though struck by lightning. I’ve been hit twice in the back clean through the shed wall. Motherfucker is fighting for his life and playing to win. He worked out where I was standing. A pain-filled groan seeps out of me as I try to stay on my feet.
Not today motherfucker, I breathe through the pain.
I figure there's only one attacker or he would have shot up the shed by now. The wanker knows he hit me, and the others he thinks he's got disorientated with the flash grenade.
Ignoring the pain, I swing my hand around the door and hope to fuck he's got a set of balls on him, and he's heading for his escape. I pull the trigger on the taser gun.
I know I've hit my target from the loud noises he's involuntarily releasing because he's lost control over his body. Those volts I just incapacitated him with just saved us from further attack.
Jesus those two bullets hurt.
There’s a blur of movement past me as somebody beats me inside the shed. Joel? He would’ve pulled back behind the side of the shed, fingers in ears, saving him from the full effects of the grenade going off. It still messes with you, but we’ve trained with flash grenades before, and we know what to expect. Edge and Mathias won't be so lucky. They would've caught the full brunt of it, disorientating them and sending them off balance.
“Need the fucker… alive… to interrogate,” I wheeze out loud enough for Joel.
“Boxer… you hit?” he shouts over the noises the arsehole is still making.
“Yeah… this pain never gets old,” I joke.
“I got the sonofabitch covered, sit the hell down,” Joel tells me in a calm voice. He’s got the situation under control.
“I got eyes boy,” I tell him, wincing from the pain as I stumble closer to him. I’m grumpy because bullets hurt. I look around, making sure there isn’t another motherfucker in here with this one.
“Two security men dead in here,” Joel adds. Fuck! “We can get him to talk when he stops twitching.” I nod my head, still trying to catch my breath.
“Yup… can see that, too.” Christ! They were just doing their job and on Christmas Day.
“Boxer, sit down before I shove you down!” Joel raises his voice. “I’m just gonna text Linc to let him know we got this under control in here.”
I nod.
Christ, I hurt.
Good thing I got all the men suited up with a Kevlar vest underneath our clothes before we left Ghost’s home or this could have been the end of me. I wasn’t taking any chances after Adam’s head was handed to us.
I lean up against the shed wall, dropping my head, deciding if I will adhere to Joel’s request. It’s probably easier to keep standing.
“Boxer…Buddy, you still with me?” I raise my head and stick a thumb up in acknowledgment. I was gonna have some colorful bruises underneath this vest—better than dead.
I'm watching Joel duct tape the wanker’s wrists with the tape he's found near the security men's bodies. He yanks the guys clothes up and takes a look at his back. “Nope, no dragon tattoo on his back, all clean white skin. He rolls him back over. He starts tugging on the guys face, pulling his cheeks about and yanking on his hair.
“What… the…furrck?” wanker says in a slurred, southern voice. He’s still mostly out of it.
"Nope, this isn't an elaborate mask. I was just double checking. He's not a British black man. He's white all the way." Joel comes to this final conclusion after holding the guy's head up roughly by his black hair and then tugging hard on it before releasing it to smack back down on the ground. Wanker looks in his late fifties. Age hasn't been too kind to him. His black hair is salt and peppering. More salt than pepper.
“We got ourselves an accomplice,” he says sitting back on his haunches, annoyed we don’t have Filip.
“That would be too easy to have caught Filip. Man’s smarter than that,” I grumble.
Joel's undoing his coat, checking him for: weapons, identification, a phone, any paperwork. He's all decked out underneath the coat like he's living some cowboy fantasy: jeans, boots, embroidered black and copper shirt and a leather fringe jacket with a black bandana tied around his neck. All wanker needed was the horse. He may still have one outside somewhere.
I watch Joel produce a knife, but no phone. Wanker's gotta have one on him.
I survey the inside of the tidy shed. It's pretty clean apart from two dead bodies and some haphazardly stacked different supply boxes. We need to check all this shit for any stuff this cowboy may have ditched from his person—like his phone.
I estimate how long it’s gonna take for Evelyn to come flying through the door because she sure as hell would’ve been watching what went down outside this shed through those binoculars she’d been playing about with on the plane.
Good thing, too.
I can hear the female I love, making a commotion outside the shed.
Three.
Two.
One.
“Boxer! You better not be dead,” she calls out in a frightened high-pitched voice.
Yup, that’s my Ev, I smile to myself.
She rushes inside skidding to a halt beside me, immediately starting to check me over as she mutters to herself grumpily about me getting shot. I let her fuss. It will be easier in the long run. She needs to see for herself there's no blood.
I try not to hiss as she pokes around my back and mutters some more grumpy words about my profession. I swear she's deliberately rough.
The woman is adorable.
She unzips my jacket, then tugs on my clothing until she can lift the layers up. Her sigh of relief loud when she can confirm I’m wearing the Kevlar vest. She notes where the bullets would have hit, one below my left shoulder, close to my heart and the other hit my lower back.
I turn around and seize her busy hands. “Ev, I only got hit twice.”
“Only?!” she whisper-shrieks in my face, which in hindsight wasn’t the best use of my vocabulary.
“Ev—”
“Rei—”
I smother her mouth with my hand. Don't need her using my full name in front of this wanker. She blinks, understanding immediately why I silenced her words. Don't know how much the wanker can track after being tasered.
I wrap my hand around the back of her neck and tug her forcefully toward me until I can smash my lips against hers. She fights me because she’s in angry-love. I wait for her to simmer down, applying pressure to keep us connected and she allows her fears for my life to catch up to the conclusion no bullets have pierced my flesh.
Her tense body starts to unwind, and her kisses become less frenzied.
She rests her forehead on mine, taking control of her breathing.
“Ev, how are Edge and Mathias?” I have to know they’re okay.
"Lincoln's taking care of them, they'll be fine, and Miss Catherine and Lily are still on the plane," she whispers. Her sweet breath invades my senses. "Rei—you are going to give me a heart attack one of these days.” She catches herself again on using my name.
She lays her forehead on my chest. It's sunk home; I'm fine. "Thank god you wore the Kevlar vest," she whispers and then punches my arm. "What if he aimed higher?" She touches the back of my head, her fingers sliding under my beanie.
“Ev…he didn’t.”
“But what if—?”
I silence her with another kiss. She tastes so good, even when angry.
“Ev, I’m okay. Although I’m enjoying this closeness, I’ve gotta get out of this vest,” I groan at the discomfort of moving. I’m going to be black and blue.
"Shoot…sorry," she apologizes moving quickly. I don't give a shit it is freezing temperatures, I need to get this vest off and reclothed. "Here, let me help," Evelyn says quietly, back in control being the professional doctor. I let my hands drop to my sides and allow her to take care of me because I know how I'd feel if she got shot twice and the Kevlar vest wouldn't discourage my anxiety for the woman I love.
She removes my jacket, undoes the buttons on my knitted sweater, finds the vest over my thermals and helps me to get out of it and then she’s getting me back into my warm clothes before I get hyperthermia.
“I’ll have something for those bruises you’ll be sporting once we’re back on the plane,” she says quietly, aware Joel can hear.
“Won’t be going anywhere for a while, got to sort this wanker out and I don’t want you or any of the other women in here. Please go wait for me on the plane and go help Edge and Mathias if they need it.” Last thing I need is her seeing us interrogate this mofo.
“Edge is quite okay to do some interrogating himself,” he says entering the shed, a little off balance like he’s got vertigo, Mathias close on his heels wobbling a little.
I groan and roll my eyes. I need the guy alive.
Joel gets up ready to have my back if things get out of hand. Edge does things his way, and I do them mine. Today they are gonna be my way.
Edge assesses me as he stumbles past, looking like a flash grenade has fucked with him, and he is none too happy, but his face lights up with a deadly sneer when he sees our attacker trying to squirm on the floor like a drunk snake. Edge cracks his knuckles in anticipation. He's holding a little black bag, and I can only imagine what he's got inside.
He kicks our attacker in the arse hard with his good foot, right up his hole, causing the wanker to groan and curse, curling in on himself.
“I gather this isn’t Filip?” Edge looks at Joel for confirmation.
“Nope… got us an accomplice.” Joel lets the ‘p’ pop and crosses his arms and stands back.
Jesus! Shit is gonna go south if I don’t take charge.
“Ev, you need to leave now and tell Jerry where we are when he arrives,” I tell her firmly. She nods, under no illusions, this is probably gonna go bad quickly and leaves.
"I want some time with this dickwad because Mathias and I have our names on a retribution list and we ain't liking that too much. Need me some answers, and I'll be wanting them now." Edge's gray eyes expect to see no resistance from me.
“Nope, can’t let you do that,” I reply, moving next to him and giving him an I’m-in-charge stare.
"Don't care your current thoughts on the matter. Go stand outside if you don't want to be a part of this, but I'm getting my answers—I always do." Edge is confident I'll step down and allow him to torture the man to get his answers. It is after all his job in the Soulless Bastards MC. He thinks nothing of reverting to the enforcer. It's who he is.
“Let me do it my way.” I hold my palm up flat to his chest.
"Fuck…take a look at these," Joel interrupts us. He's holding up a camera and a cell phone. "Dickhead here"—he nudges our prisoner with his foot—"has been documenting us folks with some happy snaps, including the tail numbers of the planes. I doubt he's had a chance to do anything with them. Got some nice shots too," he says sarcastically.
Edge sidesteps me and snatches the camera from Joel. I stand slightly behind Edge and look over his shoulder as he flips through the images on the screen.
“Fuck!” we both growl.
“Time to have a chat with dickwad.” Edge shoves the camera at me and places his black bag down on the floor.
Oh, fuck! It's not how I want to deal with wanker.
This person he becomes is not who I want Whisper to be sharing kids with. I want her to meet somebody who doesn't go about gutting people to get answers.
He yanks our prisoner up into a seated position, grips the guy's face roughly and looks into his eyes. "Are you ready to tell the truth or squeal like a pig?" A switch gets flipped, and Edge becomes an intense killer. Someone a father hope’s his daughter will marry… not! Edge continues, "My only rule: I only ask once. You make me repeat myself, I will take action, and it will hurt like a motherfucking bitch. You lie, I will know. Nod your head if you understand."
He nods.
“What’s your name?”
“They call me, The Cowboy,” he replies, his words still slurring. Edge accepts his response.
“So motherfucker, did you slice my good friend’s head off?”
Oh, shit…here we go.