Yazmin
I crouch low in the kitchen near the door, waiting for the Vipers to push through into the clubhouse. I have my gun trained on the door to the bar, knowing that soon some Scorpion might push through and attack me. Dad is passed out on the floor, his face covered in blood from where I hit him, his chest rising and falling just enough to tell me he’s not dead.
“The bastards keep coming,” one man says. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. Look at these dead, man. They’re too many dead. They’re too many goddamn dead.”
“We have to keep fighting.”
“I want to go home.”
“We all want to go home, but this is what we signed up for when we joined up with Snake. This is the game. So get your fuckin’ act together. You better get some steel in your—”
A bullet sounds. The man’s voice is cut off. I can only assume what’s happened to him.
When the back door swings open, I jump to my feet, leveling my gun at the man who barges in. It’s Justin, the mole, holding a rifle and aiming it right at me. I hold the gun at him longer than is necessary, far too long if I don’t want him to know that I know who he is. I ask myself what I would do if I didn’t know he was the mole. I have to be careful here. One misstep and maybe he’ll kill me so that nobody ever knows what he’s done.
I lower the gun. “Justin!” I cry, my voice full of hysteria I only have to fake a little bit. “Get me out of here, please!”
He squints at me for a moment, and then looks down at Dad. “He dead?” he asks.
I shake my head. “I don’t think so.”
I can tell he’s deciding whether or not to kill him, but he doesn’t know how this is going to play out yet. Maybe he’s thinking that if he kills him and the Scorpions win, he’ll have lost a source of income. He looks far colder and more calculating than I’ve ever seen him look. Normally he looks like a teenager with his ginger hair and freckles. Now he looks like a man coldly considering what to do.
“I need to get you to Spike,” he says. “That’s the only thing to do right now. Come here.”
“Oh, thank God!” I cry, skipping over to him. I have to keep up the act. If I let it slip for one second, there’s no telling what he might do.
He takes me by the wrist—being careful not to hold my hand because I’m Spike’s woman, maybe—and leads me out the back door, down a short hallway, and into the street. “Don’t shoot!” he shouts, holding his free hand up. “It’s me.”
I recognize the huge man called Knuckles kneeling in a flowerbed with a rifle butt jammed in his shoulder, his eye looking down the sight. He nods brusquely for us to get out of the way and then advances on the kitchens. I feel Justin tense up, his hand going tight around my wrist when he sees Knuckles moving toward the building. It’s like I can hear what he’s thinking. What if they kill Snake? What happens to me then? But there’s nothing he can do but walk away from the men. I’m guessing that Spike is on the other side of the building, near the road, but Justin just keeps walking in a straight line, heading for the woods on the other side.
“Where are we going?” I ask him, making sure to not let any suspicion enter my voice. He has to believe I’m just a naïve victim, otherwise he might do something stupid.
“Spike is back at the clubhouse,” he says. “I’m taking you there.” He tries to pull me up a small knoll which leads into the woods. I have no idea what his plan is. I don’t like the frantic look in his face, the way his eyes keep darting left and right. He looks like a man who’s trapped with nowhere to go. He looks like a man who might do something stupid at any moment. He looks like a man who is working himself up to hurt somebody he doesn’t want to hurt. Me, Spike, both?
“Isn’t the clubhouse the other way?” I mutter.
“Is it?” He turns on me, standing close to me, his face inches from mine. “Is it?” he repeats, voice sharp. “Is what there it is? You seem to know everything. Why don’t you tell me where Spike is, since you’ve been in there hiding and I’ve been out here? Hmm? You seem to know everything.”
“You’re scaring me,” I say, glad not to have to lie. “Justin, you’re really frightening me.”
“Justin!” Spike’s voice is like the swelling at the end of a classical piece of music, causing goose bumps to prick all over my skin. Invisible warm fingers stroke down my back, my spine. A smile which makes all the pain and the anxiety seem petty lifts my lips. Spike, my Spike . . . “What’s going on?”
Spike jogs to us, looking down at Justin’s hand gripping my wrist. Behind Spike, five men stand, all with weapons in their hands. Justin looks to Spike, then to the men, then down at his hand. After a moment he lets me go and takes a step back, laughing awkwardly. “I thought you were back at the clubhouse,” he says.
“The clubhouse is the other way,” the new officer retorts. I think his name is Kieran. He hefts a rifle.
“Spike.” I collapse into him, savoring the scent of his leathers, the feeling of his hand in my hair. “I’m so sorry for leaving. It was a mistake. It was a huge mistake.”
“Hush.” He kisses me on the forehead, gives me a squeeze, and then releases me, becoming the leader again. “We’ve got the last few pinned down in the dormitory. The raid is gonna be a success real soon. And you’re dragging my woman into the woods, away from the clubhouse? The fuck is this, Justin?”
“He’s a mole, Spike,” I say, watching the gun in Justin’s hand and wondering if he’ll do something stupid. But he sees the guns trained on him. Six of them, including Spike’s. He doesn’t stand a chance. I quickly tell Spike about what Dad revealed to me, how Justin warned them him about the first raid. “That was why I made that sign. Justin has been feeding them information for a long time. I’m not sure how long, exactly.”
“Is this true?” Spike steps close to Justin, wrenching the gun from his hand and tossing it to the ground. “Is this fuckin’ true?” His voice trembles. His fists tremble. I imagine his heart is trembling, too. “You’ve been betraying me every step of the way? Speak, Justin. Speak!”
He speaks for a long time, maybe five minutes, making excuses about his mother, telling Spike how he needed extra cash to pay for her treatments, telling Spike how he never meant to betray him. In the end it comes down to what it often comes down to: a man who needs more money than he has, doing things he’d never normally do to get it.
“You know I never meant to hurt you,” he says.
Spike sighs. I can tell he’s hurt just by looking at him. He’s not going to cry—he’s too keyed up and full of battle adrenalin for that—but his face is twisted. He grinds his teeth, staring into his VP’s eyes. Behind us, the gunfire has stopped. The Vipers are emerging from the clubhouse, Dad propped up between two men, his feet dragging along the floor. “You helped the Scorpions kill good men,” Spike says. “I ought to kill you. I ought to string you the fuck up.” He sighs again, heavier. Then he shoots Justin in the knee, a loud bang which makes me jump back. The bullet bites into his trousers, smoke and blood rising into the air. “Limp to your mother and take her somewhere far away. If you’re ever seen in Sunnyside again, you’re a dead man.”
Spike turns away as though that’s the end of matters. There are tears in Justin’s eyes as he turns and limps up the hill into the woods. It’s only when he’s deep in the woods that he lets himself roar. He roars like a man who hates himself, like a man who wishes he could go back and change each of the small decisions which led to the biggest moment of his life. He roars in a way that makes me sorry for him before I remember Danny and the other men, all their deaths assisted by his intel.
Soon all the Vipers are turning away from the woods, forming a circle around Snake. If there was pity in their eyes for Justin, it evaporates when they see Snake. There’s nothing there but hate.
Dad manages to lift his head as Spike approaches. “So,” he says. “This is it, is it?”