“Well, as you may have heard recently, Phoenix has been rocked by a bit of gang violence.”
I’d heard. I knew Asher had probably found himself in the middle of it. And I knew I could pull him out—or at least drag him out as much as I could—if I just saw him again.
“Uh-huh.”
“And the company in question actually had a shooting in its lobby fairly recently. There were no injuries, and all shooters were arrested, but the incident has scarred the psyche of quite a few people there. They’ve lost about ten percent of their workforce and they’re expecting to lose more in the coming weeks. So on the one hand, they are desperate for people, and you could probably even negotiate a few extra thousand dollars on your salary. But it is a city growing in crime, and there’s no reason to believe any spaces like that are exempt.”
But it would put me in Phoenix.
And while I wasn’t oblivious to the dangers of crime, I also wasn’t cowered by it. It wasn’t like Asher had ever avoided the rough life before he left me. Perhaps I was the dumb blond going for the rough and dangerous guy, but it was what it was.
“That’s fine; I’ll be cautious.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes, Xavier. I’m aware of what’s going on in Phoenix. Vegas isn’t exactly a known safe place, either.”
I could hear Xavier trying to stifle a sigh. Was this city hit harder than I thought?
Only one way to find out.
“I’ll send them your contact info and put you both in touch,” he said. “Expect to hear back by the end of the week.”
I hung up shortly thereafter. Even if this company never reached out to me, I was going to Phoenix. I was going to find Asher.
And job or no job, crime or no crime, safety or danger, I was determined to make this work as I knew it could.
Asher
For some fucking weird reason, showing up when I was asked to felt a hell of a lot more unsettling than when I’d shown up unannounced.
Perhaps it was the fuckload of bikes parked outside of Satan’s house. This was not his son and SAA coming to his garage. This looked like a whole club’s worth of bikes, even if that was perhaps slight hyperbole.
Perhaps it was the knowledge that if the Devil’s Patriots—or Black Reapers, or whatever club they were associating with these days—wanted to jump me and torture me, they had all fucking day to do so. It could get ugly really fucking fast if they wanted to. The element of surprise yesterday could have scared them into shooting me, but at least it would have been a quick death.
Or perhaps it was because there was the distinct possibility, fair or not, that the King’s Men had figured out what had happened, gone in and killed everyone, and now had their eyes on destroying me.
And let’s just say that if there was one fact I’d picked up in the last year or so, it was that one could never be too fucking paranoid on the streets. When your life literally depended upon not being recognized by two distinct groups, both of whom had large presences in the city, you got real good at getting suspicious at some hot girl smiling at you at a coffee shop. You could not overdo it.
I didn’t have any weaponry on me; I knew better than to bring a gun to a meeting in which at least three other people but now easily eight or ten would have guns. This shit wasn’t Hollywood. I had my wits and my knuckles, and it was obvious which one would save my ass more.
I knocked on the front door. Immediately, I heard feet moving quickly, along with the kind of rustling that suggested guns being shifted into position. Spawn answered the front door, and I could easily sense the presence of someone just around the corner of the room.
“Huh, you’re on time,” Spawn said, even though he didn’t have a watch on him.
I didn’t say a word. I was here to save my ass, not backtalk.
“Come on,” he said.
I took one step in before he held a gun to my head.
“We’re making sure you’re unarmed,” he said as someone did a rather rough pat down on me. “You’ll forgive us if, after having our clubhouse blown up, we’re a little bit fucking paranoid about losing an actual house.”
“I get it,” I said quietly.
When the pat down finished, Spawn put the gun between my shoulder blades and pushed me forward. I walked into a nicer kitchen than I ever expected a biker to own—then again, Satan already lived in a house that was far nicer than I ever expected a biker to own—and came to a table with about a half-dozen men.
A few of them, I recognized. Spawn and Sonny, for one. Even if you didn’t see the patches on their chests—which, for whatever fucking reason, still said “Devil’s Patriots” on them—you could see the family resemblance. I recognized one club member who stood behind them, a rifle across his body, prepared to fire at any second.
