Ironside handed his holdout Glock 43 through the driver’s window of the van. The Knights were preparing to make their move and were in a parking lot two blocks from the motel. “You know how to use this?”
Peyton took the weapon, looked at it a moment, then handed it back. “No. If I need that, we’re already fucked.”
He grinned and tucked the weapon back into his ankle holster. “We’ll call you as soon as we have the building locked down. Get your ass in there as fast as you can and get the side door open. We’re all leaving in the van, so pack the girls in tight to make room for us.”
Peyton nodded. She was driving the van; the Knights were going to haul out as many girls as they found, and she had been silently praying the entire drive that one of them would be Melissa. He reached through the window and gave her hand a squeeze. The mission had been thrown together at the last moment with the simple plan of going in fast and killing anyone who looked like a threat.
Ironside stepped back from the van and the eleven men sauntered down the street in three groups, their patches covered in black tape, as if they didn’t have a care in the world.
***
“What a shithole!” Dolch muttered as the men sauntered into the parking lot of the Arabian Motel.
“It’s not the Four Seasons, that’s for sure,” Ironside agreed.
The Arabian Motel was a seedy, two-story motel that appeared to have been built in the fifties, and not renovated or repaired since. The once bright red doors were faded, along with the rest of the rain-stained paint.
“You take two, I’ll do one,” Dolch said as the men broke into two teams, then divided again, starting at opposite ends of the motel and working toward the center so anyone running would have no place to go.
The Knights fanned out, five on each floor, with one moving to the manager’s office. Each man stopped at a door and waited. The moment he heard the first door being kicked in, Ironside drew back and kicked hard at the door. The old, tired wood gave way easily and he burst into an empty room.
He hurried past his men as they burst into rooms to the shouts of men and screams of women. He stopped at the next room in line and kicked in the door. Inside a man was on his back in the bed with a woman on his chest, his cock inside her pussy. Crouching behind her was another man, his cock in her ass, while a third man stood at the side of the bed, his cock in her mouth.
“Everyone out!” Ironside ordered, his gun leveled at the tangled bodies.
“Hey, man! We paid for two hours with this bitch!”
“Out!” Ironside snarled, drawing a bead on the head of the man that spoke. The men began to scramble. “Are you Melissa Booker?”
The woman, her eyes empty, shook her head. “If you want to get out of here, go to the courtyard and wait. Now!”
“Don’t shoot us, man!” of the men spoke. “We didn’t know she was your bitch!”
“Shut the fuck up and get out of here! You have ten seconds!”
The men bolted from the room, joining other men running naked down the steps and into the courtyard. There were already three women forming a cluster, another woman running to join them.
“Thank you,” the woman whispered as she squeezed past and hurried down the walk to join the other woman.
Ironside pulled his phone and punched dial. “Get here! Now!”
He moved down the line, a woman running out of a room and bouncing off him with a shriek of surprise then cowering. “Run! Hurry!” he said, giving her a shove to start her moving again. He stopped at the next unopened door, kicked it in, saw it was empty and moved to the next. He kicked it in.
“One more step and I’ll kill her!” the naked man snarled, his Sig Saur 9mm under the woman’s jaw.
Ironside quickly surveyed the room, noticing the Saracens’ colors draped over a chair. “Go ahead, she means nothing to me,” he growled, his weapon never wavering.
“I don’t know who you are, but you’ve made a big mistake coming in here. You’re going to let me walk out of here or she dies.”
“Whether she dies or not, you’re a dead man. You’re not leaving this room except in a bag.”
“Fuck you! Then I might as well kill her and take my chances!”
“Go ahead.”
The woman stared at him with wide eyes and he could read intent, but he didn’t know what she was going to do, until she twisted hard to the side. The man’s weapon roared, followed an instant later by the loud pop of Ironside’s suppressed Glock. The man and woman tumbled to the floor together.
“Fuck!” he snarled, grimacing at the woman’s ruined skull and sightless eyes. The man moved with a groan, and Ironside pumped two more shots into the man as Hammer skidded to a stop in the door.
“You okay?” Hammer asked, starting at the carnage.
“Yeah. He had a gun.”
“We’ve cleared the motel! We need to go. That gunshot is going to bring the cops!”
Ironside nodded and turned his back on the mess. “How many?”
“Don’t know. About twenty looks like. We’re whole. Skin killed one, so that’s at least two Saracens dead.”
The two men pounded down the steps as Peyton was shoving the last of the women in the van, the Knights piling in behind. It was going to be a tight squeeze in the van with thirty people packed in back there.
Jinx wedged himself in, the men and woman piled on top of each other as Ironside slid the door shut. By virtue of his size, and his rank, he got to ride up front with Peyton. Peyton threw herself behind the wheel and yanked the gear selector into drive and matted the throttle. The van roared, groaning under three times the weight it was designed to handle. Peyton bounded out of the parking lot, the van healing over as the suspension bottomed hard.
“Take it easy!” Ironside murmured, but Peyton didn’t lift, the van straining for speed.
She stood on the brakes when they reached the parking lot where their bikes were waiting, some of the women in the back crying out in pain or fear as the van ground to a stop. The moment the van stopped, Ironside jumped out and opened the sliding door. The Knights began to pile out like clowns out of a car, some of the woman moving to follow.
“Stay in the van! We’re taking you someplace safe!” he yelled, pushing women back in. Most complied, but one escaped his grasp and began running down the street. He watched a moment then decided she was on her own. He slammed the door shut and banged on the side of the van with his hand. “Go!”
He watched the van surge away a moment then turned and mounted up, thumbing his ride to life.
***
Peyton drove on the edge of control, running red lights and speeding past slower moving cars, until she crossed north of I-90. She wiped at her face, trying to clear her eyes as she gasped, struggling to hold it together. Melissa was the fourth woman she’d shoved into the van, but she wasn’t the Melissa she knew. The Melissa she knew was a gorgeous, vibrant, quick to laugh, fun-loving woman. This Melissa had lost weight and her beauty was gone. Worse than that, she was broken, her eyes empty, and as she shoved her into the van, the way she looked at her reminded her of pictures she’d seen of concentration camp survivors.
She blubbered once as the Kings rode up, flanking the van. They were safe now, but she couldn’t stop her tears. This was all her fault. She was the one who wanted to join the hard-drinking, hard-fucking, hard-partying lifestyle. She was the one who talked her friend into going to the party. She was the one who wanted to stay in the Saracens clubhouse after the men were done fucking them. When Andrew picked her out for special treatment, fucking her like she’d never been fucked before, she had ignored Melissa’s warnings, the pleas to leave while they still could.
Peyton wiped her eyes again. She had to be strong. She would take Melissa and they would get away from Cleveland and the Saracens. Ironside had promised to get them out of town, and she believed him. She didn’t know how, but she would do whatever it took to make this right, to repair the broken shell of her friend and return her to the fun, vivacious, woman she once was. And after that? After that, it would be her life’s ambition to find and kill that fucking Andrew Moore.
She turned into the Teutonic Knights’ compound, waiting while the gate rolled open, an anger and hate unlike she’d experienced before burning inside her. The Saracens would pay for what they’d done; she would see to that, or die trying.