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I chuckle. That Ghost. Erik Marquez wasn’t about to break. He was already broken. My buddy just saved him for me so I could have a little fun. I smile, and not wanting to turn down Ghost’s good deed, I ram the wrench into Erik’s midsection, feel the satisfying crunch of ribs. He howls, wrenches against his bonds and ejects a stream of bloody vomit onto the floor.
“You’d better talk, then,” I say.
“I was hired to be at the meeting. To watch it from a distance. I have sniper experience, and Rafael and Lucas both didn’t fully trust the Road Kings not to try something. So I was going to be there as insurance. Oversight. At least, that’s what they told me when Lucas was around,” he says. Then he laughs.
“What’s so fucking funny?”
“When Lucas wasn’t around, Rafael gave me the actual job. He’s one cold motherfucker. Oh, let me tell you…”
Something in the man’s voice makes me bring the wrench down hard on his leg, silencing his words with a brutal scream. He’s broken, he’s talking — I know I should get Alexandra so she can hear the truth about her father straight from the horse’s mouth, but something in the way he says it makes me want to brutalize him. Punish him. Because I have to make sure he’s telling the truth before I bring Alexandra in here. I can’t let Erik Marquez’s fucking mind games hurt the woman I love.
“I swear to fucking god, if you are lying, I will keep you alive for days while Ghost and I fucking disassemble you like a fucking LEGO set. Every piece of you, bit by bit, until you’re nothing but a bloody mess of parts.”
“It’s true. Fuck!”
He screams as I hit him again. Thank fuck, this room is soundproofed.
“Convince me,” I say, then I hit him again.
He babbles as blood leaks from his broken mouth. “Rafael hired me to kill his son. Lucas found out that he was the one behind all the drugs. Rafael had some side deal with a group of dealers and a cartel connection for a sizable piece of their action. It was outside the MC, and Rafael and his guys were fucking good at diversion, at making the Road Kings think it was the Crimson Fury, and making the Crimson Fury think it was the Road Kings. But Lucas found out the truth. He’d had suspicions, and he tailed his dad, saw him meet with some dealers. Made his dad promise to stop. Once Lucas arranged for peace with the Road Kings, he was going to force his dad to unwind the drug business or else he was going to remove him from the MC. But Rafael has other plans.”
“His own son? He murdered his own fucking son?”
“He liked the money. And there was a lot. When the meeting between your clubs went down, I was watching. Waiting. My job was to time it right, and then fire the opening shot. Then one of Rafael’s other guys — some fucker whose name I can’t recall; it started with an ‘M’ I think, like Matt or Mark, whatever — would start shooting, too, and say you all provoked it. Man, that sure was some wonderful chaos, wasn’t it?”
My eyes shut, my ears thunder with the memories that play out behind my eyelids; the torrent of blood and bullets that ripped my life to pieces and threw Alexandra into brokenhearted despair. With Erik Marquez’s words ringing in my ears, I stay deep in that memory, seeing things clearer than I did even in the moment; I hear the voices screaming in surprise and pain; I feel the heft of my gun in my hands; I see the look of surprise on Lucas’s face as I raise my weapon to return fire at what I thought was their betrayal; I hear, I see, I feel the concussive force of my gun firing and witness the puff of smoke that preludes the explosion of Lucas’s head.
Then I see something new.
Something I didn’t see before in the haze of bloody combat.
A wide shot.
My wide shot.
I missed.
My eyes open.
To see Erik Marquez standing, blood dripping, eyes wild, a feral grin splitting the bloody mess of his face. His look and his words hold me entranced for a moment.
“Now you remember. I was proud of that shot. Timed it well. Almost synced it up perfectly with yours. My orders were to make sure Lucas died, and I never leave anything to chance, so when I saw you reach for your gun, oh fuck, I was in the zone. Popped one in just the right spot in his skull so it cracked open like a fucking ripe watermelon.”
Then his cuffs clatter to the floor and Erik Marquez launches himself at me with murder in his eyes.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Alexandra
I wait for as long as I can.
Which is not as long as if I were standing outside Reid’s Repairs by myself, or, honestly, with anyone else other than Ghost. But that man, with his blood-covered everything and his icy-friendly demeanor, gives me the creeps. He sips his beer and leans against the wall of the mechanic’s shop like he isn’t covered in another man’s blood and the first thing he says to me as soon as we’re alone is, “Hey, so things seem to be going pretty well between you and Smokey. I hear you moved in with him?”
He says it as if he isn’t an exact replica of Arnold in Predator, except instead of being covered in mud, it’s blood.
I look at him blankly for what might be a minute.
“Excuse me?”
