“I do. But that’s not why. My dad always smoked. Cigarette after cigarette after cigarette. Stress of the job, I guess. I just never wanted to be like him.”
Ciara nodded like she understood. “Fair enough. I’d fucking quit. Until they came after Demon. Can see why your dad felt he needed these just to cope.”
We stood together in silence, and somewhere beyond the waves was the rumble of a motorbike. I was tuned into it now. Every tiny rumble in the distance and my ears pricked up like a dog waiting for its owner to return.
“Tori?” I prompted Ciara.
“Aye. Well, the old president, Ste. Indie’s dad. That was Grace’s husband once.”
“And Tori was also his ol’ lady?”
Ciara nodded. “Yeah. Up until he died. Think Grace is coping fucking remarkably letting her stay here with us all. Don’t think I’d have been able to do that.”
A rumble again. Closer now. Ciara glanced at me, her cigarette poised in front of her lips.
“You hear a bike?” I asked.
“I hear multiple bikes,” Ciara answered, pushing off the wall and straightening up.
The sound surrounded us now, and the ground vibrated underneath us. They came from both sides. Two of them rode the wrong way up the street, and then from behind Grace’s gable-end cottage another two. Big black bikes snarling and chrome shining. They weren’t our men. The colours on their cuts blood red and white.
“Fuck,” Ciara cursed, the cigarette dropping from her hand, falling to the little pavement still lit.
They rolled into the tiny street one after another, headlights flooding over the cottages before cutting dead in front of Grace’s cottage and us.
Ciara went rigid beside me.
“Fuck,” a whisper this time.
Men climbed slowly off the bikes. Leather cuts. Hard faces. One stepped forward from the middle, broad shouldered and heavily tattooed, his gaze locking onto us instantly.
“You two,” he instructed. “Back inside. Quietly.”
Ciara lifted her chin, a hardness setting over her face. “Who the fuck do you think you are?”
The man smirked and pulled his cut aside just enough for the handgun tucked into his waistband to catch the light.
“Someone suggesting you do exactly what I just said.”
My stomach dropped. Behind him, he jerked his head towards the others. “You two stay out here. Watch the bikes. No one comes out.”
“Aye, Thrash.”
Ciara’s fingers locked suddenly around my wrist. Tight.
“Inside,” she muttered under her breath. “Now.”
Chapter Thirty Seven
They arrived growling just as Jazz and Chase sped off, so close that I wasn’t sure whether they had eye-balled each other as they crossed. I counted twenty of them, just like Chase had described, pouring into the car park and breaking off into two flanks.
We were surrounded. Outnumbered and outgunned. We’d moved over a third of our weapons to the Church last night. And now we had nowhere near enough weapons or ammo to hold them off.
“Fuck,” Beanz jabbered. “What do we do? What do we do?”
“Not fucking panic ya big bald pussy,” Demon growled.
“You’ve seen them all? There’s no way we’re getting out of this alive.”
