“Sounds like fun,” the girl said into my comms. “Can I kill anyone who bothers me?”
“No,” I said. “Not until we locate and exfil the kidnapped victim.”
“Hell. She’s long gone and broken by now.”
“We’ll find her.” If I had to track her through johns and money, I’d do it. Sometime in the last couple of days, I had amended my long-term goals. Along with tracking and taking down the trafficking sex trade, I was destroying the dark ridersand whoever they were in bed with in the Law, the military, and the Gov.
Adult women wanted to make a living that way, fine. But no one was a slave. Not as long as I had Jolene and Gomez to ferret out locations, and a beating heart inside my body.
???
Anse’s second-in-command was sitting on a bar stool in the diner. I was in a booth with Amos by the door, both of us in heavy winter riding clothes, drinking coffee that that had to have been scorched from leftover grounds and molded chicory. It took bad coffee to a whole new level of disgusting.
Jagger was sitting against the wall watching everyone. His eyes grazed over me from time to time. We needed to talk about why he was still the OMW’s national enforcer and not living with me as he’d promised when he retired. It had to be something big.
“Five seconds,” Joleen said into comms. “Tap when you’re ready.”
I had synched my morphon to comms so I could toggle between channels easily at my wrist which was less obvious than at my jaw, and I hit a depression on it.
Jolene shut down the electronics. Two seconds later, Anse walked in, his entrance timed.
“Beckett,” Devil Anse said, taking a stool next to his number two. “I need you and a team of your most loyal men. Right now. In HQ. We’re going after Eloise.”
The moment Anse informed Beckett, three men and a woman surreptitiously tapped their morphons and tried to send messages. No electronics were working except ours. Not even the ancient microwave employed by the cook, who began cursing his kitchen appliances. A fifth man looked from Beckett andaround the room, noting me at the door, and Jagger at the back. The corners of his eyes tightened.
Jagger strode through the crowd of men. They gave way, without even being aware of why they were moving. It was the unstoppable force that was Asshole, and I appreciated it when it wasn’t directed toward me. He passed behind Beckett and, moving with the faster than human reflexes of one who was infected by my nanobots, jerked Beckett up by one arm and slammed his face against the bar so hard he stunned the man. Before anyone could react except for their mouths to drop open, he’d knocked out another man, swept the legs from under a third and kicked him in the gut, and had the woman’s arms up behind her shoulders.
While he did that, Amos and I stood, blocking the entrance.
Our fourth man raced toward the door and stopped dead when he saw Amos’ handgun pointed at his belly. One hand reached for his own weapon.
“Ahn, anh, anh,” I said. “Don’t be stupid, man. On your knees, your weapons over by me, sliding them nice and slow.”
I hadn’t taken my eyes from the last man, sitting against the wall.
The guy standing against Amos had eyes that shifted left and right, fear so strong on him it almost had a smell. Amos reached out and plucked the handgun out of the man’s unsecured holster and handed it to me. I removed the magazine and ejected the round, still holding the last man’s eyes.
“Amos, sit on him, please.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Amos took me literally and shoved the man down into the booth seat and sat on his legs. The man squawked in pain.
I walked through the room, aware of all the men and women staring—watching and worried and confused. I walked within two meters of the man. “Name.”
He didn’t reply, his expression still unchanged, though the skin at the edges of his eyes quivered slightly.
“Anse. Who is this man?”
“That’s the town mayor, Richard McCoy.”
I laughed. Of course it was. We were in Hatfield and McCoy territory. “Your mayor is taking orders from the riders. Jagger. Start with him.”
Faster than even I could react, the mayor pulled a weapon. Fired. Point blank. At me.
???
It hurt. It felt like I’d been . . . shot. Yeah. That. But none of my people reacted. I’d informed them all what I’d hoped to do, and how I’d hoped the local leader would react.
One hand over my bruised but well armored belly, I crawled to my feet as Asshole tossed the mayor into the dirt outside. Amos slammed Beckett into a booth seat and took out his teeth. Both men looked to be having fun. The rest of the place was pure mayhem.
