Slowly, drawing their attention to every movement I made, I stood and walked to the huge window looking over the hills behind the armored house. “Nowthis.”
The men gathered in front of me, elbowing me to the side. Which was fine with me, because I got to watch their faces when Mateo drove the Simba down the hills and toward the back entrance, narrowly missing crushing Marconi’s bikes. With the camo feature turned off, it was like watching an entire city block crush across the landscape on tank tracks. Then it stopped. The Simba sat there, in all its mid-war glory, clearly not a piece of scrap, but a war machine with functional weapons.
Mateo didn’t have to get out, so the fact that the driver was a warbot was still a secret. A partial secret. Maybe.
In the poker room, no one moved until Bengal swiveled on his feet and demanded, “What the fuck else you got hid?”
“Not much as you hope. Maybe more than I’ve said.”
The Booze and the Sabbath glared at each other, looked back out the window, and both shrugged. “I’m in,” they both said.
The Simba’s chameleon skin wavered, and it disappeared, visible only by the movement of crushed trees as it crawled up the far hill on its massive tracks.
“And you want nothing out of this bunker except a prisoner, right?” McQuestion asked.
“Like I said. You let me rescue her as part of this Op, you help me kill Warhammer, and you can have all the goodies.”
All in all, the leaders reached a consensus much faster than I had expected. I had come prepared for us to stay overnight if necessary, but after seeing the Simba—and the execution of McQuestion’s wife—the club leaders were all in. Part of their easy acquiescence might have been the grief, poorly hidden in McQuestion’s eyes. Part of it was the rats. Part was seeing how many of their own people had been infected. And part was all the wartime weapons, armaments, supplies, and goodies in the bunker. But the biggest part was the men’s abilities to see a problem and decide when to be practical and pragmatic and work together for a common goal.
Plus, they knew they could kill each other afterward if needed.
* * *
It was dead-dark-thirty when the biker leaders finally hammered out the specifics of their agreement to work together, without honoring their individual supposedly-ultra-secret contracts with the military. The clubs’ parley ended with the agreement to keep their infected members in the prison—which Marconi informed us he had discovered in the basement of his fortress—until they could be transitioned back with my med-bay and my “medication protocol.” They still needed to choose a commander to run the attack—which I figured they’d fight over, then end up choosing Jagger. Sure enough, the conversation got heated, so I left them to check on the med-bay occupants, my cats, and the prisoners. While I was occupied, they also picked a time and a location to meet—about two klicks south of the bunker in a time schedule I could meet if I hustled. Maybe most important—in an action that showed solidarity with Roy Gamble, who had killed his own wife—they volunteered to shoot their own people at the slightest hint of betrayal.
When I got back, they were done, a bit more bloody and banged up than when I left, but all in agreement, which was way more than I expected. I followed them back downstairs where they each, individually, announced the plan of action to their members, the small groups that I had separated and merged into looser packs, back in place again as they talked with their club members. I had all I wanted and needed. A chance to rescue Evelyn and the promise to kill Warhammer. Nothing else mattered.
And then the leaders shook hands, bumped fists, and packed up. I managed to cover my shock when I was included in the fist bumping, gloves to gloves, but I managed not to make aneeepsound like a little girl when it happened.
The clubs dispersed, bikes roaring into the night, taking their part of the supplies and weapons I had offered. And the cats.
Spy and her clowder stayed with me, which was a relief. Spy was adventurous. She was a warrior cat. I had been afraid she might desert me.
Our crew, with Tuffs and Spy’s clowder, went back to the junkyard. I held Spy on my lap as Cupcake drove and hummed along with the radio, turned low. She was still off-key but it wasn’t as noticeable since she wasn’t competing with the radio volume. For most of the trip, my fingers massaged Spy. Then she scratched me. Blasted cat. I sucked my fingers. “You know perfectly well how to tell me to stop. Next time you scratch I’ll roll down the window and throw you into the bushes.”
She flicked her tail at me, unconcerned, and rolled over, exposing her belly for more scratches, which I ignored. I wasn’t risking my flesh again.
“Tuffs was an abandoned cat,” I said to Spy. “Maybe she got tossed out of a moving car. You should ask her how it felt.”
On the dash, Tuffs opened one eye, held my gaze for five agonizing seconds, and closed it.
I crossed my arms and tried to decide if I was pouting. I probably was, so I concentrated on the good things that had happened: I had intel taken from the traitors’ Morphons, an indication of how widespread Warhammer’s contagion was, along with names, ranks, addresses, and pics of dozens of her thralls. I had gotten away without touching anyone with my skin except Razor. Without expanding my nest. And without sticking my tongue down Jagger’s throat. I had spies in every leader’s family and the principal chapter house in every club. If the cats bothered to tell me what was going on, that was an ace up my sleeve. I decided I had come out ahead and fell asleep as the old truck rolled down the back roads, the Simba behind us in stealth mode.
I lurched awake when the truck bounced into the office’s driveway and up to the sealed gate, Cupcake working the gears, her voice silent.
Mateo, in the Simba, was in front of us, trundling back into hiding.
Jolene said, “Welcome back, y’all. It’s so good to see you all alive. And you brought company too. Now ain’t that sweet.”
I didn’t know that Jagger had followed us until his bike thrummed up the drive and circled around us. He’d been driving lights-off, night-camo mode. I hadn’t checked the sensors. Hadn’t sensed him. And no one had told me he was following, though they had to have known. All of them.
I swung down from the cab to the ground and met his eyes in the darkness. Heat branded its way through me, thrust into my muscles, seared along my nerves. I turned away for the office. He trailed me, his armored boots nearly silent on the dirt.
I was so tired that I didn’t speak when he followed me through the airlocks and secured the doors, locking the cats and my people out of the office. He held my eyes, not speaking, his heated and dark and promising everything. And nothing. I waited in silence as he stepped to the donning station and his armor was removed. He was naked when it fell away, and he stood there, letting me look my fill. Then he walked to me, took my hand, and led me to my bed.
He had promised me it would be, “Mind-blowing. Screaming. Hot. Sweaty. Sex.”
He was right.
