“He didn’t know. Just said to check near the back.”
Whatever the fuck that meant. Did that mean the back of the property? Or the side which was the furthest from the front office? Cokehead navigation was not a class I ever took. Guess we’d find out what he meant soon enough. Hooking my thumbs in my belt to keep my hands near my waistband, and weapon, without having them stuck in my pockets I walked with my brothers around the place.
We had no idea if Dolan—or his crew—knew what we looked like, or if they were even here right now.
“Two o’clock,” Warrant muttered.
Without making it obvious we looked over and I narrowed my eyes. There were two men standing outside a unit. The door was shut and one was leaning against the wall, smoking a cigarette while talking to his buddy.
Brown eyes met mine and widened in recognition. “Shit.”
“What?” Jury asked, then swore as one of the guys pointed a handgun at us.
The one smoking put a hand on the man’s wrist, forcing him to lower the gun. They didn’t want to burn their spot. There was no doubt they were either making or storing their Ecstasy in that storage unit. He straightened up off the unit and called out something.
There was also no doubt they knew who the fuck we were. I turned to face them, my brothers on either side of me, waiting to see what their next move would be. They advanced forward a few paces.
“Fucking idiots,” Jury scoffed. “We outnumber them.”
The doors rolled open for the entire row of units. I did a quick count. Eight units. Thirteen men.
Fuck. Me.
We all stared over at Jury and he made a face that clearly said, ‘well shit, my bad.’
“We really need to have a talk about keeping your mouth shut and not jinxing shit,” Warrant muttered.
“Bunch of superstitious bullshit,” I replied in a low tone as the men began to cluster together. With three to one odds they weren’t going to need to use their damn guns. And we were far enough back in the lot that it wasn’t likely whoever the attendant was up front was going to hear us. The kid had been watching TV in the office when we strolled past. Not that we wanted his help. What would he be able to do other than call the cops, which would make things worse in the long run.
“Sure, like you don’t have your own superstitions,” Warrant shot back.
He had me there. I had an entire routine down that I did before every big patch job. Especially if it was in the field. If I didn’t do it, people died. It was kind of like fuckers not washing their socks until the end of a football season for good luck, but less nasty. Well, less nasty to me. There were plenty who would consider my ‘rituals’—if you wanted to call them that—worse than some socks that smelled like Fritos and funk.
Pulling out our knives, we watched as these bastards grabbed bats, crow bars, and two by fours out of the units. I sighed. We weren’t going to let them win, and if that meant shooting every one of them, we would, but that was a last resort. We didn’t want Owen or his deputies crawling all over this place any more than the Iron Circle did. It would fuck with our plans for them.
Getting tired of waiting, I muttered, “Let’s get this over with.”
“Do me a favor,” Warrant said, glancing over at me.
“What?”
“Pretend one of them hit Rae,” he said.
I turned my head and stared at him in anger and disbelief. “Why the fuck would you say something like that?”
“He wants you seeing red and ready to murder,” Rotor replied.
“I don’t need the extra motivation,” I told them.
“You and Jury take the seven on the left and we’ll take the six on the right,” Warrant ordered.
“Why do we get the extra?” Jury looked over at me. “It’s like the additional Chinese fortune cookie no one wants.”
“Because I just pissed Pyre off enough that he’s going to cut through the first couple like they’re butter,” Warrant told him. “It’s only fucking fair that you take the leftovers. Besides, it’s your fault that there’s so many of them.”
“Fine,” Jury muttered. He smacked me in the back. “He’s right. Picture death girl somewhere in one of those containers.”
“I’m going to beat your ass later,” I growled at him, but I moved forward like a man possessed. It didn’t matter that I knew Rae wasn’t here. They had it in my head now that these fuckers were a threat to her.
