I wasn’t giving a cop any excuse to shoot me.
If I couldn’t talk my way out of this, they would haul me in and book me for breaking and entering. It was a petty charge. Even if it stuck, I wasn’t going to do any time since nothing was damaged and they wouldn’t find an unregistered weapon on me.
But when I was cuffed and brought out to the cruiser to be set in the backseat with the window halfway open, and then the damn cop walked his ass back into the warehouse, well, I figured I didn’t have to get booked after all.
Not everyone could shimmy their handcuffed ass out of a police cruiser window.
But I wasn’t everyone.
CHAPTER TWO
Caymen
“My friends!”
Zayn leaned against the hood of a black sports car with a strip of burnt orange that moved around the side and wrapped the door.
It was a sleek car.
Then again, so were all of Zayn’s cars. And boats, yachts, private jets.
“Holy shit, man,” Eddie said at my side, his voice whisper-excited like a kid on Christmas morning. “That’s a Bugatti Chiron.” Then, sensing that didn’t mean as much to me as it did to him, a car guy, he added, “That’s a four-million-dollar car.”
Of course it was.
When it came to extravagant wealth, this club was attached to a lot of it.
There was Teddy’s old-money, understated, but undeniable affluence.
Then there was Zayn’s new-money—flashy, in-your-face, and over-the-top.
There was a crunch to my side, making my brother jerk as Zayn’s bodyguard, Daniyal, moved out from the side of the clubhouse.
“Jesus. Put a bell on him or something. Man moves like a ninja,” Dixon said, shaking his head.
“What were you creeping around for?” Huck asked, moving from the other side of the clubhouse, likely coming from his house when he saw Daniyal in the yard at that hour.
“Well, see, my good friend,” Zayn said, pushing off his hood.
I got the feeling that everyone was Zayn’s ‘good friend.’ Until they weren’t. Until he had a reason to turn on you. Then I suspected that a man who was outwardly that friendly in such a cutthroat business was damn near demonic with his own form of justice. “I have reason to believe that the deal we are waiting on is about to go sideways.”
That got Huck’s attention.
He took a step closer.
Then another.
“Why? Wasn’t this your broker we brought in for this?”
I’d been there for the original meeting. Huck hadn’t been keen on the idea of using a middle man for such a big drop of weapons. But the guys who’d managed to get them into the country—amateurs, it sounded like—had been adamant that they didn’t want to have direct contact with us or Zayn.
So Zayn had offered to bring in a ‘broker’—whatever the hell that was—to be the go-between.
“It’s not the broker. I got word through my networks that the guys are going to renege.”
“The fuck? Why? Got a better offer?”
“I have no idea. And I haven’t been able to get in touch with my broker.”
