Dax took the exit toward Dorchester, but once they were off the highway and on a busy city street, he made a right-hand turn into a neighborhood that Hunter knew well. It was still the Southside, but it was the part that Dax and the Skulls had never been able to control…the only part. This neighborhood was the kind that most people, including Hunter until he saw it with his own two eyes, believed only existed on a Hollywood set somewhere. It was now where Hunter found fifty percent of the runners he was chasing. He usually found them hiding in a house with their girlfriend, mother, or wife and those women usually turned out to be just as dangerous, if not more so, than their men. The bail-jumpers or the people he had to talk to during the course of looking for them usually had three or four babies in the house, or middle-schoolers or teen-agers. The kids weren’t asked to leave the room when the guns came out either; these were kids that were just as dangerous as Mom and Dad. They had been taught how to handle a gun as soon as their hands were strong enough to hold one. They knew who should be in their hood and who shouldn’t be. They hated cops or they were terrified of them, or both. They usually lived in a place that most people would consider uninhabitable, crawling with roaches and empty takeout food containers that should have been tossed out weeks ago. Drug paraphernalia could be found on the coffee tables, dining room tables, and kitchen counters, and illegal guns could be found everywhere. Most of the people who lived here, over the age of fourteen, were on some kind of probation or parole. The officers showed up before the sun went down and in full body armor in most cases. Dogs roamed freely in the streets and some of the houses housed more cats than people. It was a place that Hunter would be happy to never see again, but unfortunately, the type of work he did bound him to this place on a regular basis, like it or not.

The street they were on was mostly vacant, not one of the worst ones. Dax pulled over to the side of the road and Hunter followed him. They both killed their engines and Dax said, “Trayvon doesn’t know we’re coming.”

Hunter bit the inside of his lip to keep from smiling. He wasn’t surprised. He doubted the other man would extend an invitation to his territory to the likes of Dax Marshall. Dax was the man who had kept Trayvon and his minions confined to this small, roach-infested space for a lot of years now and Hunter doubted that there was anyone Trayvon despised more. “Okay,” was all he said.

“They have a meeting house, an old crack house that’s not operational any longer. It’s two blocks over. We obviously can’t drive up in the driveway. I’m going to walk over…”

“We.”

“No. It’s too dangerous. I don’t believe they’ll have the balls to shoot me. They’re smart enough to know what kind of hell the rest of the club would rain down on them…at least, Trayvon is. I’m not sure they wouldn’t hesitate to shoot you on sight, though.”

“This isn’t my first rodeo, Dax. I’m not hiding in the shadows while you go in alone like a fucking rhinestone cowboy. I’m going with you.”

Dax sighed. “I didn’t expect you to hide out in the shadows. I’m going in first and you can cover me. That’s all I’m asking.”

Hunter didn’t like the idea of Dax going in alone, but he knew Dax was right. Shooting him would be akin to killing Queen Elizabeth and not expecting to unleash the worst that the UK could bring down on you. “Okay,” Hunter said, reluctantly. “What’s the plan?”

“There’s an abandoned garage at the end of the street. We’ve used it before to park the bikes and sneak in on them.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“Yeah, well…so far we’ve only snuck around here to gain intel and cut them off at the pass when they try to infringe on our territory. I’ve never walked right in before.”

Hunter shrugged. “I’ve kicked down a few doors in this neighborhood. So far I still have my head and my balls.”

Dax laughed. “That’s promising. Okay, follow me up to the garage and we’ll go from there.”

Ten minutes later, the two men were on foot. When they got near the front of the old crack house, Dax used hand signals to direct Hunter where to go, and wait. Hunter did as he was told, for the time being. But if he heard anything that suggested Dax was in trouble, he was going in. Once Hunter was in place with the automatic rifle Dax had given him, Dax walked up to the house, up onto the porch, and knocked on the door. Hunter watched as the door was pulled open. Dax put his hands up in the air and the guy in the doorway, heavily armed and dressed in the crimson colors of Street Chaos, pushed him into the wall of the house and searched him. Dax was unarmed, and once the kid determined that, the president of the most powerful MC in the state was pushed roughly through the door and it was slammed shut behind them. Hunter was just wondering how he would ever be able to stay put and wait, when he heard the scream. At first, he wasn’t sure where it was coming from, and then he heard it again.

Using the light on his phone, he looked in the direction that the sound was coming from. The light landed on a narrow window, just above the ground on the house behind him. It was a basement window, and there was a crack in it. The sound of the woman in distress was coming from there. “Shit,” Hunter muttered under his breath. He looked back up toward the house. “Fuck,” he said, as the sound of the woman crying reached his ears once more. He rarely wished that his mother had raised him to disrespect women, but this was one of those times. The sounds were faint, but they were steady and the woman was in obvious agony. “Fuck!” he said, once more, before making his way over to the broken window. Before he got there, he extinguished the light on his phone and lay down full length. With the gun out in front of him, he slithered the rest of the way on his belly. Once he was close enough, he tried to see through the window. It was filthy and spotted with mud, but he could make out at least two shadows. He lay quietly, controlling his breathing, and listened.

“You think you’re special?” a man’s voice said.

“No, Wallace, I don’t…” The woman hadn’t finished her reply when there was a loud whack and another sound like that of a pitifully wounded animal. The sound was unmistakably the contact of something against flesh. A sympathetic pain shot through Hunter’s body as he listened.

“Shut the fuck up. We all know you think you’re better than us. You always have. You thought you’d come downtown and play with the ghetto boy and walk away when you were done. You went crawling back to Daddy and two days later you let people see you driving a new car and dressing in fancy-ass designer clothes. You look like an expensive whore, which is fitting, since that’s what you are. I’ll bet you even suck your daddy’s dick for all that money he gives you, don’t you?” The woman was crying softly and suddenly there was another whack, and her cries turned into another howl of pain. “Don’t you?”

“No. He’s my father, he…”

“He fucks that nasty pussy, doesn’t he?”

“No!” Whack!

“Liar. Whore. You cut your wrist and let your blood mingle with mine. You remember that, Charlotte?”

“Yes,” she whispered. It almost sounded like she was about to lose consciousness. Hunter knew he had to do something soon or this maniac was going to kill her.

“What? I can’t fucking hear you.”

“Yes!”

“Blood in, blood out. You heard that before you cut your wrist, didn’t you? You heard Trayvon say that, when he let you become a part of us, a part of me. You know how bad I looked when you just up and walked away? I was gonna just drive by your house and shoot the place up…kill you all, even that sniveling little brat of a sister of yours.” The woman whimpered. “Oh, you don’t like that idea, huh? I tell you what, after I kill you, I’ll go get that little bitch and make a real woman out of her. I’ll bet she’ll be a good little whore, just like you were.”

“Wallace, please,” she whispered. “Please just kill me and leave them alone. Patty is only seventeen…” Whack! A scream that time, in a raspy voice that was getting weaker. In any other neighborhood, her cries would have netted a dozen calls to 911, but not in this one. Hunter knew it was up to him. He had to do something…now. He got up on his feet and pressed his back into the wall. With thoughts of Dax in the back of his mind and what this might do to whatever “negotiations” he was in the middle of, he moved around to the side of the house. He could see the entrance to the basement; it was a hatch and it was closed…but it didn’t look like it was locked, from where he was standing. He knew that pulling it open would almost certainly draw fire. He wasn’t sure if this piece of shit was down there alone with the woman, but he hadn’t seen anyone else through the little window. He got closer and nudged the hatch-like door with his boot. It raised up about an inch while he tried to decide what to do. Another harsh sound of the whip and a piercing scream made his decision for him. With a deep breath and a little prayer, he used the toe of his boot to push the hatch up even further. He could make out two forms. One was a big man, heavily muscled and equally as heavily tattooed. He had a whip in one hand and a gun in the other. He wasn’t looking at Hunter. He was looking at the woman tied over the chair in front of him.

Hunter couldn’t see her face. From where he stood in the dark, she looked nude. Her head hung down and her black hair, heavily matted with blood, covered her face. Blood pooled on the floor underneath her as well. The man said something else and once again raised the whip. That was when he lifted his head and saw Hunter. Hunter acted quickly, holding the gun in one hand and using the other to push open the hatch. The gunfight lasted about three seconds and when Hunter hit the ground, all he knew was that a chunk of his shoulder was missing and the sounds of gunfire had finally drawn attention from the house next door. He looked around at all the men with guns surrounding him before he passed out and two things crossed his mind. First, his mother was going to be completely broken, losing another son. And second, it was just his luck that he had to die so soon after he’d finally met the woman of his dreams.