“Why the fuck should I trust you?”
“Because you and your fellow officers will prove useful to me when you have nothing left to fight for.”
I nearly pulled the fucking trigger anyway.
But in the briefest of flashes, just before I would have, Leigh popped to mind. The appearance of her face was enough to get me to save myself.Fight another day.
And then I heard it.
Sirens.
“That would be the Phoenix Fire Department going to put out the fire at your clubhouse,” he said. “If you hurry, you may have a chance to save some of your friends.”
“Fuck you!”
I holstered my gun and stormed out, failing to tune out King’s maniacal laughter and cackling as I stormed away. True to his word—whatever the fuck that was worth—no one shot at me. In fact, some of the Black Reapers nearby popped out of cover, looking at me in confusion.
I didn’t have fucking time. That was doubly true considering I could see the smoke rising in the distance, right where our clubhouse would be. I hurried to my bike, revved it to life, and gunned it full speed down the roads.
Once again, we’d gotten fucking played! How was this always fucking happening? How the fuck were we always one, no, five or more steps behind? We couldn’t fucking keep up…
I smelled the smoke before I saw the fire.
And when I saw the fire…
It was painful.
No, it almost broke me.
It wasn’t like a fire where flames were contained in a window and one room was closed off. It was the kind of fire that ran because the building had already collapsed and was just the last remnant. How the fuck…
How the fuck had King set this up?
“Sonny!”
I looked over. There was a club member there, Woody, who had been with us for about five years. Around him were about fifteen members in total. Some of them looked mildly wounded, three looked badly hurt, but everyone else looked fine.
“What the hell happened?”
“Blast just came out of nowhere behind the bar,” Woody said. “Killed two of us instantly. The rest of us got out with varying degrees of success.”
“Any idea how the fuck this happened? Right under our noses?”
Woody shook his head.
“We’ve been on high alert for months now. I have no fucking idea. Someone must have put something there a while ago or has really good sneaking skills.”
Fuck.
“What now, boss?”
I shook my head. Now? I wanted to scream, throw some things, curse until I ran out of curse words, and just vent my anger and frustrations as loudly as I could.
But when I looked up to utter my first swear, I noticed it wasn’t just Woody looking at me. It was everyone. And, by extension, all of the Devil’s Patriots who weren’t there were “looking at me,” because anyone not here would eventually know of what I said and did. And if I acted like a little bitch, well, they’d have reason to believe this shit was over.
And it wasnotfucking over.
“What now,” I said, “is that we are still here. We are still a functioning club. We lost our clubhouse. I’m not going to pretend that that’s anything other than unsettling and difficult. We’ve lost many men today and the past couple of days. Their loss will be mourned and their names shall be remembered. It has been a hard few days.
