Grenade. Fucking grenade? Are you kidding me?
“Garrett!” I heard a distant voice call, but my hearing still hadn’t returned.
I nevertheless looked to my left to see Brock motioning that he was going to toss me his rifle. I caught it, turned around, and fired at the Bandits through the opening.
It seemed like they had not expected us to retaliate, for the second I opened fire, they all sped off. I inflicted no casualties, but for the moment, just escaping the Bandits apparently having military-grade weapons was victory enough.
Only when they left had my hearing returned enough to make sense of everything, and that was merely replaced by the horrible smell of smoke and charred materials. I sat up, looked around the corner to make sure there were no ambushes, and confirmed all clear to Brock. I knocked the side of my head a couple of times to try and get everything back to normal, but it seemed like that would take some time.
“Everyone all good?” Brock said.
“All good,” Steele said.
“Yep,” the prospect said.
I gave a thumbs up.
Brock went over to the garage door and tried to lift it. It would still raise up, but the hole wasn’t some insignificant chunk that only a rat could fit through. A human could have easily crouched down and shimmied their way through it; had the grenade landed closer than it had, there was a decent chance a much bigger chunk would be missing right now.
“Motherfuckers,” Brock muttered under his breath. “I expected things to escalate, but I did not think they’d have fucking grenades. This has always been about establishing dominance in the town, not turning it into a fucking war zone.”
He reached into his pocket and made a call. I already knew whom he was calling even before he spoke.
“Cole,” he said. “Clubhouse just got attacked. No casualties, but we have a problem. They used grenades. Which means they probably got other shit they can use.”
I slumped against the Jeep, exhausted, as I waited for Cole to continue talking.
“Well, remember how Mason and Garrett said something about one of the guys claiming to be bankrolled by someone? I wonder if this is that. They’ve never had grenades before this.”
God, how I could have used some shots right at that point. How I could have used…yeah, fuck, how I could have used Hannah’s company.
Too bad she was with the one guy that would make sure that never happened again.
“OK, understood.”
Brock hung up and looked at the three of us on our asses, trying to catch our breath.
“Someone call back Mason,” he said. “We need our sergeant-at-arms back. We need to kick some ass.”
Unfortunately, as lovely as that sounded, I had a pretty good feeling that calling back Mason would start another massive fight.
Hannah
The instant I heard the knock, I knew things were going to go very badly.
At best, the lying would continue. It would continue up until the moment I gave birth, or maybe a little longer. But at some point, Mason would put two and two together and figure out why the baby looked like one of his club mates. And that wasat best.
At worst, I was going to tell him the truth, and I’d never see Garrett again.
I steeled myself for a hard confrontation and promised myself I would do whatever it took to get Mason to stop promising to kick people’s ass, but just as I could be stubborn and hard-headed, Mason could be the same way. We hadn’t gotten this far without our parents for nothing.
I had barely gotten the door all the way open when Mason just walked right in like he owned the damn place.
“Care to tell me why the fuck you’re defending a goddamn fucking Bandit?” Mason said, treating the word “Bandit” like a slur he felt disgusted to say.
I drew a deep breath. For as long as I could, I had to maintain the illusion that that was the truth.Are you really sure about that, though?
“Mason, sit down,” I said. “And then I’ll talk.”
