“After you, motherfucker,” I growled, rolling over to my side, taking out his leg. I threw him off balance and he fell sideways. I grabbed the gun I kept hidden behind my belt buckle, and before he could lift his gun again, I’d already aimed and fired, sending him to the place in hell reserved for pieces of shit like him.
And me.
I ran over to where Bear was pinned beneath the rubble. Shots rang out, the table exploded, shards of the glass top rose off the table like someone had just canon-balled into a pool of water, then crashed back down, sending bits and pieces of shrapnel soaring through the air, stabbing into the skin on my neck and chest like a million tiny knives, not much bigger than a grain of sand.
A bullet whizzed by my head and lodged into the wall behind me, narrowly missing my forehead by less than an inch.
I stood straight and aimed my gun toward the snarling man who wore a look of disappointment on his face, pissed that he’d missed his intended target.
Me.
I took more time to aim than was safe, standing out in the open with no cover, but my little back up gun only had one bullet left and I needed to make it count. I squeezed the trigger and the man’s eyes went wide as the bullet pierced his throat. He choked and gurgled on his own blood as he crumpled to the floor.
I tossed the gun and started clearing off the rubble off of the couch. After what seemed like forever, but was probably only a few second, I cleared a block that revealed Bear’s face and neck. I leaned down and put my ear to his chest.
Still breathing.
I had to move quickly. Eli was standing just outside and God only knew what that crazy motherfucker might be armed with.
I reached behind Bear and tried to wrestle a gun from one of his holsters under his cut. I had no doubt it was fully loaded. Bear was always prepared. I hadn’t successfully freed the gun when seven more men came bursting through the hole in the wall. All armed. All guns aimed at me.
I froze.
The front door opened and another four men came barging through, followed by Eli. “I know I made my own entrance, but I had to use the front door, you see. It’s more civilized that way.” Eli said, pushing his dark sunglasses back up the bridge of his nose. He looked around the room and turned up his nose. “And Lord knows someone has to remain civilized in this godforsaken shit town.”
I wouldn’t blame any man for giving up if they were in the same situation I was in. Unarmed, facing a firing squad.
I wasn’t just any man.
I had things to live for. People to live for.
My girls. Bear. Grace.
My family.
“King of the Causeway,” Eli sang, reading it off of a street sign on the wall Preppy had made for me when we’d first moved in. “They worship you here.” It was a statement, not a question. He blew out a long sigh. “It’s too bad you know. We could have done some business together, you and I.”
He sounded just like Isaac before the shit when down with Preppy. But now? Now that you killed Isaac without so much as a thought of the repercussions…well, I don’t do business with stupid men, King.” He stressed my name as if it were a ridiculous thing to say.
I cracked my knuckles and hissed through my teeth. “You best be careful about who you call stupid, motherfucker,” I spat. “Isaac came at me and my people after I’d already offered to cut him in on our business. If you want to call someone stupid, it should be him,” I chuckled. “Oh wait, you can’t…’cause I made the fucker’s head explode.” Maybe I was the stupid one after all, because I knew that taunting Eli wasn’t the brightest thing to do, but I needed to let that motherfucker know that he wasn’t dealing with someone who was just going to roll over and die.
That wasn’t a fucking option. So while Eli spoke I formed a plan.
“That wasn’t your fucking call to make!” Eli said, his pale face turning red. He took off his dark sunglasses. His right eye was missing, nothing but a gaping hole in its place. “I decide who lives and dies in this state. Not you! Not anyone! Me! That is my call!”
I spotted my other gun, the one I had threatened Bear with earlier on the ground only a few feet away. “Isaac made it my call when he aimed his fucking guns at me and my boys and raped…” I was about to say my woman, but quickly corrected, “some biker bitch who didn’t like what he was offering.”
“I don’t care if he raped your fucking cunt mother!” Eli seethed. “And what you did was stupid, because it’s going to cost you…your life.” He nodded to his boys who began to descend upon me. Leaning back against the wall I found what I was looking for and clicked the switch with my shoulder.
The old garage door on the side of the room, the one Bear had covered with a huge Beach Bastards flag screamed to life, shrieking and scraping, dragging metal against rusted metal as it struggled to open for the first time in years, sending the furniture and a glass cabinet, which had been leaning up against it, tumbling over. Glass crashed. Wood snapped.
It was just the distraction I needed.
Just enough time for me to grab the gun off the floor and dart toward Bear. I pulled and pulled but he was stuck under the concrete. A bullet grazed my shoulder, leaving a burnt trail of flesh across my skin. I dove through the hole in the wall, managing to get off a few shots of my own in the process. Sending at least two more of Eli’s men to hell in the process. Bullets chipped away at the concrete all around me. I slid down the side of the garage and made my way into the thick brush that lined the yard. I hid between a patch of cypress knee roots.
“Find him or you all die!” Eli screamed, still inside the garage, his hands on the wall over the hole. Heavy footsteps jogged passed me in both directions. Some going the way of the road, others the way of the path.
I wasn’t going either of those ways. As soon as the foot steps passed, I ran through the brush, expertly avoiding collision as I expertly navigated the woods I’d been familiar with most of my life. Even when Preppy and I hadn’t lived in the stilt home, we’d camped in the woods surrounding it.
I ducked under the mangroves and eased my way into the water. I held my breath, sinking down as deep as I could before pushing off the bank and swimming across the small lake to the other side. I emerged, only up to my nose, before lifting myself onto the shore.
I looked across the lake, watching the men run back and forth to Eli. Most likely delivering the news that they couldn’t find me. He shook his fists in the air and let out a frustrated roar. Two of the men ran back into the garage and emerged a few minutes later. One was walking backward while the other was hobbling forward behind him. They were struggling to carry something as they made their way to the fire pit in the center of the yard.
Eli followed behind him, seeming calmer than just moments before. He pulled out a cigar and lit it with match. The smoke shrouded his face in white. He tossed the match into the fire pit and after stoking the embers with a long stick, it came roaring to life and I was able to see what they’d been carrying.
Bear.
He was laid out on the ledge of the brick pit, his one hand dangling just above the red embers.
Eli looked out across the lake, and even though I knew he couldn’t see me, he somehow knew I was watching him because he tipped his hat and smiled.
It was a challenge.
I was the rabbit he wanted to scare out of the hole.
Bear was the smoke bomb he was going to use to do it.
His plan just might just work too, because their was no fucking way I wasn’t going to go back to save Bear.
At the very least, I was going to die trying.
Chapter Ten
Doe
I felt like I was walking around wearing Kevlar to protect myself from the parents who genuinely didn’t give a shit about me, and from the questions that sat on my brain unanswered like a fucking aneurism about to burst, and from Tanner. Who, when looking back, I felt shitty about how we left things. I truly felt like he could be a good friend. But instead of being sympathetic to what he was feeling, I threw it in his face and yelled at him.
I was alone.
Utterly fucking alone and for some reason that made me spitting fucking mad. I was either a raging bitch or so numb to everything I was practically a mute.
And I’d pushed Tanner away.
Which in turn meant I’d pushed Sammy away.
And that was the opposite of what I wanted.
I’d been just about to go see Tanner, but going to him and forcing him to talk to me before he was ready might be like kicking him while he’s down. So I decided to wait for him to come talk to me when he was ready.
If he was ever ready.
At least with the arrival of the specialist I had a temporary distraction to occupy some of my time.
The specialist had showed up and grilled me for an hour. Dr. Royster, a man old enough to be my grandfather’s grandfather, didn’t ask me anything about how I was feeling. He’d cut right to the chase and asked me what I remembered. I told him about Nikki. “No two brain injuries are alike.” Dr. Royster had said. “Especially those that affect memory.” In the end, he told me that I should seek help from someone who knew me. Someone I’d spent the most time with who could walk me through my life and hopefully evoke some sort of mental exorcism.
After the specialist left I found Nadine in the kitchen. “How did it go?” she asked, spraying cleaner onto the countertops and wiping it off with a rag.