Luck was with me; a taxi was meandering down the road and swerved over to the curb as soon as I raised my arm to flag it down. Pulling the phone away from my ear to check the tracker’s progress, I had about five more seconds for it to latch onto his location. “Come on, Jerel, she’s my mate. Let me talk to Lore.”
The outburst didn’t come from Jerel, as I anticipated. Taylor’s voice roared from the background with a litany of curses in what I assumed was Irish. It certainly wasn’t English. “What the actual fuck, Lore? You’remated? And you didn’t even tell me?” Jerel hadn’t needed to put me on speaker to hear the fallout of the bomb I’d dropped. If I hadn’t just seen Lore hobble out of the alley and feared for her life, I would have laughed at the theatrical reaction from her little brother. My phone chirped, notifying me of the completed tracking that popped up on the screen. For a moment, I ignored the absolute chaos ensuing on Jerel’s end as the app triangulated his call. It looked like he was heading to a part of the industrial district about twenty minutes west of the club. I was confident that even if Jerel turned off his phone, I’d be able to track Lore by scent if I were in the general area.
Throughout the last minute or so–what felt like an eternity–the cabbie waited patiently for directions. Muting the phone, I showed him the screen, and he nodded. “Rough neighborhood,” he muttered behind a bushy brown mustache. “You sure you’ll be okay over there? It’s all warehouses and shut-down mechanic shops, mostly.”
“I’m sure. Can we get there as fast as possible?”
Jerel’s voice rumbled down the line just as I pressed the phone back to my ear. “I know you probably tracked the call already,but I’m warning you now to stay out of Riot business. We don’t have the manpower to sic someone on you right now. So if you want to be helpful, stay the fuck away.”
The call ended on Jerel’s not-so-subtle threat. Honestly, I couldn’t care less if he wanted me to butt out. My primal rode me hard ever since Lore left, gnawing at its cage to take over and track down our mate. Even with half a bond, the instinct overrode rational thought. Seeing her slumped between two men I didn’t know, hobbling across the camera’s view, had me almost feral with potent rage mixed with the bitter tang of helplessness.
This was a classic case of ‘the worst possible idea I could go through with right now,’ but at this point, I’d rather Lore shoot me in the head herself than wait around.
As it turned out, finding the Red Riot’s warehouse was ridiculously easy. Streams of red bikes roared in from all directions toward a particular block a couple of roads to the right from where the cab driver dropped me off. I figured a taxi rolling up right in front of their meeting place wouldn’t go well for either of us. At least twelve bikes had flown by in the short time since my taxi had pulled to the side of the road.
“Thank you,” I paid the driver, who looked rightfully nervous, and slammed the back passenger door shut. He sped off almost as soon as the door met the frame. A ball of dread weighed heavily in my stomach, jostling with every hesitant step down the weather-worn sidewalk.
Man up, Grant. You’re already here.Admittedly, my internal pep talk didn’t do much for the creeping anxiety. The skin around most of my nails has already been picked raw, but that didn't stop my nervous tick from scratching at them even more.This had to be the bravest and dumbest thing I’d ever done, coming onto a mob’s meeting site uninvited and unannounced. I half expected to catch some bullets before I even hit the corner of the block. A scout must have spotted me long before I made it there, because the lumbering form of a familiar body came around the corner of the building with a scowl.
“I thought I told you to keep your fucking nose out of our business,” Jerel’s voice was deep with admonishment. I tried not to bow under the pressure of his dark stare. We may be equals in designation as betas, but he carried much more authority in his broad shoulders and muscles, barely contained by the simple black cotton shirt he wore. No less than three pistols were strapped to either of his thighs over black cargo pants and hanging off a shoulder holster. If he knew I was here…
“Lore had a tracker on me too, didn’t she?” A bitter laugh burst from my tight lips. “Should have fucking known.” She could have planted it anywhere–in my pockets, under the inner sole of my shoes, sewn into a jacket collar–and I hadn’t reached the level of paranoia necessary to check every nook and cranny of my belongings. Whether out of an abundance of caution or to keep a leash on her ‘puppy’ I couldn’t say for sure.
Jerel shrugged, obviously not ratting out his boss. “Regardless, she sent me to escort you–” He stilled abruptly, his eyes taking on a thousand-yard stare. One hand lifted to his ear as if pressing an earpiece. Then he cursed low. “I don’t have time for your bullshit,” Jerel jabbed a thick finger at me with his deepening scowl. “If you’re gonna come, pull your gun and keep your head on a swivel. Nick found someone in the warehouse.”
And then he was gone. Leaving me to recover from the whiplash of this wild situation I had willingly thrown myself into. But once my brain turned over and restarted, I yanked the pistol from my hip and followed Jerel around the corner with an abundance of caution. He had already sprinted down thesidewalk and crossed the intersection with a sad, broken traffic light dangling from its wires. Just walking past the run-down buildings riddled with broken windows and abandoned displays gave me chills. Leave it to Lore to have her mob’s headquarters in the most uninviting, nightmarish part of Vegas possible.
Coming up on the Riot’s warehouse, it was easy to see the high security that made it stand apart from the other decrepit buildings surrounding it. Towering fences surrounded the property, lined on the top with razor wire—for anyone who managed to make it up that high—only broken by a sturdy gate locked shut with an electronic system. I barely managed to catch up to Jerel before the gate closed behind him, throwing my own glare at his hulking back as I followed him to the parking lot full of red speed bikes and riders with Red Riot patches sewn on both arms of their black jackets. Everyone I could see had some kind of gun drawn and pointed at the overhead doors, which were still shut. Whatever spooked Jerel hadn’t trickled down to the other members yet, but they were obviously staking out the building for whatever was inside. Only a couple of SUVs were parked among the loitering crowd, one of which had all the doors flung open and Taylor sitting in the front passenger seat with one leg hanging out.
And right in the middle row, checking rounds in multiple handguns with single-minded focus, was my mate and current source of anxiety. I knew she knew I was there when her shoulders stiffened, and she stilled for a moment before scoffing and carrying on. Apparently, I wasn’t worth her attention at the moment. That had my primal roiling and growling in my chest, just barely contained as I held myself back from rushing at her.
Taylor sighed heavily, pulling the phone from his ear only to have it fall into the seat beside his leg. He didn’t even disconnect the call. “Nick is on the roof with the scope. He said it looks likea woman strapped to a chair along with about fifteen men,” his voice faltered. “She’s dead.”
I was expecting Lore to be raging, throwing profanities, and fuming at the news. From my short time with her, I knew Lore couldn't stand to see a woman be brutalized in any fashion. Kent, who seemed to have taken Taylor’s place in the driver’s seat, curled his hands around the wheel until the knuckles turned white. He looked a little worse for wear, the knuckles on both hands leaking red through their tight bandages, and the start of a black eye blooming over a deep gash on his right cheek.
“What does she look like?”
Lore’s voice was even, still as the frozen surface of a lake. But the currents beneath that surface were brutal and unforgiving, and I honestly feared for the lives of everyone in the vicinity, along with my own. Lore was categorically insane. Doubly so for anyone she felt responsible for protecting.
“Lore,” Taylor twisted around, concern darkening his green eyes that matched hers. “You need to stay cool. We can’t have you going off and—”
She leaped from the seat and blew past me before he even finished his warning. Luckily, someone had the forethought to put a Kevlar vest on her before we got to the car, but it gaped open at the front as she stormed straight for the closest overhead door to the warehouse. Some of the members closest to us immediately fell into step to follow her, guns drawn and pointed in front of and behind their impromptu formation.
“Shit!” Taylor spat, shutting his own door and pushing hers closed as loudly as he dared. “It’s going to be a damn bloodbath in there.”
Kent was busy talking on his phone in a rush, likely directing the rest of the Red Riot on where to enter and what to expect. Nick had relayed whatever information he could see from his vantage point to Kent before we arrived. He gestured hurriedlyto Taylor and me to go after Lore before she did something stupid. She was at least sensible enough to pull the velcro straps on the Kevlar vest and secure them by the time she reached the door, even if it was with jerking, angry movements. One of her hands reached to rip her mask from where it was clipped onto her tactical belt and slipped in over her head. The audacity of her to just walk up to the warehouse with no self-preservation made my blood pressure shoot through the roof.
“You don’t fucking say,” I muttered back. “Do we know if they have explosives in there?”
He scoffed, breaking into a jog to try to catch up to Lore. I followed quickly after. “Trust me, she’s not going to care if we all get blown to hell.”
Right on cue, I watched her yank something else from her belt. Her head jerked to the overhead door as if gesturing for one of the Riot to open it, and a couple of men holstered their guns and bent down to crack it just a little. Then she pulled the pin on what looked like a grenade and haphazardly tossed it under the door. The other hand reached for the gun strapped to her left thigh. She pulled and cocked it in a blur of movement.
“Fuck!” Taylor’s expletives were cut short as he sprinted ahead, trying to catch Lore before she did something even more reckless… Like burst into a building filled with enemies by herself.
Smoke began to leak from the broken windows near the roof’s overhang. It was a smoke bomb she’d tossed inside. Yells of confusion and barked commands ensued, and the scuffing sounds of footsteps pounding on the concrete heading toward the roll-up door indicated that there were enough men in there to be a problem. Lore pressed her back against the wall right beside the opening, gun gripped in both hands, waiting for people to come running out like wasps from a nest shedisturbed. She didn’t seem at all worried about the noise she was making.
Two hands gripped the door from the inside and began to pull the door all the way open.
