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Tex takes the moment to give Victor's finger one last disapproving look before tossing it on the floor and kicking it under a cabinet. "Hopefully it’ll take them a while to figure out where the smell’s coming from.”
"Let's get outta here. Skyhigh and his boys are meeting us up front. There'll be time for reunions and catching up later. We gotta stop this motherfucker."
Mom's face takes on an expression of grim determination and she clutches the remote tightly. "Right."
Two minutes later, we're racing to the harbor, me clutching Ghost tightly, Mom riding behind Riot, and Cooper seated behind Tex. Mom looks comfortable enough back there that I wonder if she hasn't ridden on the back of a motorcycle before. God, there's so much that I don't know about her and never have had the opportunity to ask. But now I'm finally going to get the chance. It's a dream come true, at least if we manage to stop Victor's missile.
We rumble onto the dock to find Hellfire and the rest of the club waiting for us.
39
GHOST
"I called backto have the crew clear out of the clubhouse and start doing what they can to evacuate the neighbors," Savage reports to Hellfire as we approach.
Behind him, floating well out of shooting range is Kane's luxury yacht. It's sleek, gray, and gotta be over a hundred feet long, easy. The kinda boat that you don't just take the family out on the weekend in without a full crew. There's a helipad near the back with a familiar chopper on it, the same one that Kane took off with when this whole shitshow started. Unfortunately, we can't ride our fucking bikes out there and show him what's up, so now it just sits there, taunting us, so damn close but still way the fuck out of our reach.
"Good." Hellfire turns to me. "You got something that'll get us outta this mess?"
I nod. "Thanks to Jessica and her mom. Shit show as usual, but we got it."
"I need to get closer." Rebecca jogs our way, trailed by Jessica.
When they get close, I pull Jessica against me, needing to feel that she's fucking okay. I'm not gonna pretend it's any kinda redemption for anything I've ever done, but I've never been so goddamn worried about anyone in my whole life.
"You're hurt," she says quietly, running a finger gently over my skin where my jacket ripped, next to the grazing wound left by one of the guards' bullets.
"It looks worse than it is. Just bloody." Honestly, it hurts like a sonofabitch, but it’s not going to kill me so we’ve got more important shit to worry about. If she wants to play nurse later, I'll be happy to let her. "I'm fine."
"Rebecca, you can't do that!" Cooper exclaims heatedly, and I realize I just missed something important. "Out of the question! I didn’t go through all of this just to have you sacrifice yourself."
"What's going on? What’s he talking about?"
Rebecca's face is grim, but she's not backing down on whatever it is. "The range of the remote is only about thirty feet. The launcher is near the back of the yacht. Do any of your boys know how to hotwire one of the little boats here? I'm good at code, but not so great at grand theft naval. I suspect you might be more experienced here than I am."
"What she’s not telling you is that she intends on getting there and doing it herself even if there’s no guarantee that she’ll make it away in time,” Cooper snaps. “Don't you fucking dare!"
"Don't you swear at me, Terrence."
If I ever had any doubts about where Jessica got her backbone from, that voice kills them dead. I'd laugh if this wasn't fucking serious shit. "What the fuck are you talking about?"
Cooper looks as angry as I've ever seen him, even more than when he was heading in to make an ass of himself with Kane at the beach estate. "The range of that damn remote is shorter than the blast radius of that missile. If she takes a boat up there to blow up the missile, she's not coming back, and I'm not allowing her to do it."
Jessica stiffens in my arm, and I squeeze her closer, part to comfort her and part to keep her from doing something stupid like charging out there and stealing one of the boats on her own. "Mom?" she asks, her disbelief thick in that single word. Fuck, losing her mom this soon after finding her would fucking kill her.
"It's the only way," Rebecca says, clutching the remote. "And it's not a guarantee. Someone has to do it, and I’m the obvious choice. I'm the one who designed and programmed the launcher system on that missile, along with a lot of other horrible tools that I don't even want to think about. If anything goes wrong, I’m the one with the best chance of fixing it."
"That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard," snaps Cooper. "It’s got one button. Are you really going to do this to your daughter?"
Rebecca hesitates. “I… I feel so useless. I wasn’t expecting to make it out and now I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
Shit, I know that feeling. “What do you mean?”
She looks down at her nails, fidgeting. “I’ve spent ten years being very careful. Taking tiny, microscopic risks because I wanted to be able to help one day if Jessica had a chance at getting free. When this started, I was terrified because she was out of Victor’s hands, but someone else’s prisoner. Still, I thought that if I could keep her away from Victor for good, it was worth getting caught.I knew the first time I sent a message that they would track me down eventually. I covered my tracks well, but my resources were limited. We don't know how long we have." She points at the helicopter on the yacht's helipad. "He could be pushing the button to launch right now."
As if on cue, one of the motorboats tied up to the dock rumbles to life. "Got it," Poe yells.
“I’ll do it," I say and hold my hand out. "It's our club that's under threat. Show me how to use the remote."
