Bad Boy Criminal: The Novel (22 page)

W
hen our bikes
all arrived at the street address, we drifted to the side of the road and hid our vehicles behind dumpsters and overflowing bags of trash. I would’ve preferred if we were able to use brush to hide the motorcycles, and could’ve climbed out from behind foliage instead, but that wasn’t really an option in Juarez. Instead, I straddled a fat plastic bag of trash and swung my leg over it, grimacing. What a dump this place was.

“I’m sorry,
mi amor,
” Juan whispered to his bike, kissing his fingers and pressing them to the bike before abandoning her amid the trash.

Surrounding us were rundown houses and a smattering of apartment complexes, where it appeared that no one actually lived. The streets were empty, and many of the windows on these buildings were broken. Far in the distance, the sound of a siren echoed out into the sky, huddled low with a smog the color of peach, even though we were nowhere near sunset.

“House is coming up on the left,” Juan instructed us. “Now…we need to stay out of sight of any of those windows, guys. They won’t be expecting us. Drake, you and me—Nacho, Woody, you come with us—should go around the front. We’re Hell's Ransom members. Senior Hell's Ransom members. He needs to show us some goddamn respect, so let’s go be direct with the son of a bitch. But Ash…he can’t see you. He’d panic, get defensive, and might do something crazy with Jade. So you slip around the back. We’ll be distracting Mickey plenty up front, I gather. And Izz? You still want in on this?”

“More every second,” she answered shortly.

“You can watch his back with your little lady, Beyonce.”

“Sounds like a dream come true.”

Ash surprised me by snatching up my hand and giving it a quick squeeze.

“All right, there’s the place,” Juan said, gesturing toward a two-story building with grim, cement walls. It looked like the kind of place where a kidnapping and some drug-running would generally take place. “Let’s head over. Everybody ready?”

The four Hell's Ransom brothers trooped toward the house over the sidewalk, as if house calls were quite common in the motorcycle club—even house calls which crossed the border—but Ash hung back and turned to me.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” he whispered.

“For the rest of my life,” I whispered back.

He kissed me once more, briefly but completely, and then departed toward the back of the house, slipping through the overgrown grass of the median between this busted-up street and the next one. I crept after him, cursing Adriana Rey for not owning a more sensible pair of shoes.

As we approached the patio, from which we remained separated by a chain-link fence, a sliding glass door in the basement rolled open, and none other than Alex fucking Cantrell sauntered out, carrying himself as comfortably as any old roommate would…or as comfortably as a brother. My blood began to boil at the insult that this was to the Hell's Ransom name—and if I was mad, I imagined that Ash was fucking enraged. He was probably coming outside because Mickey had gone to answer the door and seen that they were his “brothers” knocking.

Ash vaulted up over the chain-link fence and approached Alex with all the haughty confidence I really wished he didn’t have just now. I hunkered down in the tall grass and extracted Beyonce from where I had holstered her to my side, beneath the silk blouse of Adriana Rey. I took aim and kept her focused on Alex. I took deep breaths, in and out, in and out. Focus. I knew I couldn’t just shoot him for talking to Ash. I would have to keep a cool head. That was the difference between a self-defense verdict and a verdict of manslaughter, or even murder. I would have to keep a cool head…but—

“Hey, fucker,” Alex called to Ash, his already beady eyes narrowing. “I figured I’d have the severe displeasure of seeing your ass again. Where’s Bonnie?” he asked, meaning me, I assume.
Right behind you, fucker,
I retorted acidly in my head.

“You know how it is with road warriors and women,” Ash replied smoothly. “She was good to me for a while, but…started being more trouble than she was worth. I think you might know what I mean when I say that, right?”

Ash passed in front of my line of fire and I pulled the gun up; I couldn’t get a clear shot anymore.

“I think I do,” Alex sneered. “You’d think, without that little bitch stuck between us, our business would be over, though, right? Yet here you are.”

“Here I am,” Ash agreed. He was trying to get a better look inside the house. “And here you are. What are you doing at Mickey’s place, huh?”

“Oh, Mickey and I go way back,” Alex assured him, hooking an arm around the back of his neck and dragging him forward, through the open sliding glass door and into the darkened basement. “Why don’t you come on in and say hi. We’ll all catch up.”

“Dammit,” I hissed under my breath. Now I couldn’t see anything. Even their shadows had disappeared—I didn’t even think they were in the basement anymore… I holstered Beyonce and came to a low stand, swinging my legs over the chain-link fence and darting across the desolate yard of dry, brown grass. I ran to the sliding glass door and peered inside: nobody. Sliding the door just an inch open, I pressed my ear to the open air: nothing.

Sliding the door open further still, I removed my high heels and slipped inside.

“
H
ey
, Mickey!” Alex called, dragging me up the steps from the basement to the ground floor. Still, I wasn’t particularly nervous, because I knew that the other Hell's Ransom members were here—and would Mickey really do something so drastic as hurt one of us, unprovoked, at the behest of a Valiant? That kind of short-sighted idiocy would get a brother killed. “Look what I found outside!”

We came around a twist in the wooden staircase and were deposited onto grimy, yellowed linoleum in a kitchen which had the chemical odor of cooking hard drugs. Fantastic. One could only guess.

Mickey, a skinny and proud piece of trash with missing fingers and missing teeth, was sitting in the next room—the living room, which was openly connected to the same kitchen where the basement emptied out—except he wasn’t sitting. Only Hell's Ransom brothers were sitting. Mickey remained standing, which seemed odd. He towered over them with a kind of dominance, and Juan’s eyes flashed to me thoughtfully. He’d wanted to try to talk to Mickey peacefully about this, I could tell—and he had faith in the hierarchy of the brotherhood. He’d expected that Mickey would explain and apologize and no one would get hurt unless they absolutely had to…

But he hadn’t anticipated that a member of the Valiant would be here. That was worrisome. I wasn’t sure if I should pull my gun yet, or wait.

“What’s that fucker doin’ here?” Drake demanded. Drake was a big guy, even bigger than Juan; I could see how he was used to talking that way to people, especially wrinkly twigs like Mickey, even in their own homes.

But Mickey was an idiot. Everyone forgot that part when they talked to him. It was the first thing I’d realized when we’d met, and it was the first word I’d choose to describe him still.

“That’s the same fucker who—”

Alex was quick to draw weapons—one from within his shirt, and the other tucked into the back of his jeans—and train one on Drake, and one on me. Juan started to get up, but Mickey’s piece flashed out at him and held him—as well as the dumbfounded prospects—still.

“What the hell are you doing, Mickey?” Drake demanded, eyes wide with shock. “You’re supposed to be one of us!”

“Yeah, well,” Mickey sneered, “that’s always been true, ain’t it? I was always supposed to be one of you…but I never have been. Even after initiating, it didn’t mean shit. Still had fuckers being sent after me, fucking with me… Nobody cared. None of y’all did anything! If you did do anything, it was blame me—make it worse—hell, Dom’s little brother got sent to mangle me after I was part of a bad deal in Albuquerque! I can’t help if the guy got suspicious when the bags were light!”

I cleared my throat. “The bags were light because you skimmed from them,” I reminded him gently. “That almost got two other Hell's Ransom brothers killed, and they can’t do business in New Mexico anymore, period.”

“Sounds like it’s not my problem,” Mickey said, shoving the barrel of his gun in my direction next. Juan’s eyes ticked between us.

“That’s exactly why I was sent for your fingers, Mick,” I said. “Dom wanted to make it your problem, so you’d think about it next time.”

“Yeah, well, I made it his problem, then, didn’t I?” Mickey retorted nonsensically.

“Um. What?” I had to ask.

“I made it his problem by making a problem for his little brother.” Mickey glowered at me. “It was the closest I could get to that son of a bitch.”

“Shut up, Dannell,” Alex whispered hoarsely. “You talk too much.”

“I got shit to be proud of!” Mickey boasted. “Think about it, man. You got The Valiant up your ass now that Jared Wayne’s out of the way.”

My eyebrows dropped into a deep scowl.

“And I got revenge for how many fucking years I wasted, thinking the Hell's Ransoms were my brothers,” Mickey went on.

“The Hell's Ransoms were your brothers,” Juan insisted angrily.

“You got Jared Wayne?” Drake wondered incredulously.

“You set me the fuck up?” I shrilled.

“Technically,” Alex intervened, forgetting his command that Mickey shut up, “I’m the one who got Jared Wayne.”

“You’re a fucking whore,” I told Mickey emphatically. “And I really mean that, dude, from the bottom of my heart.”

Just then, headlights swept through the living room window, followed by the sound of an engine cutting and the slamming of doors. Somehow, with no logic whatsoever to my thoughts, I assumed that the police had arrived to liberate us from this situation. But when have the police ever shown up at the right damn time?

A thunderous knock came at the door, and Mickey yelled, “Come on in, brothers!”

The door burst open and in sauntered three strangers—but I knew them anyway. I knew them by the faded angel wing patches on their jackets and vests.

“You’re a fucking whore, dude,” I reiterated, my voice roiling with loathing for Mickey Dannell. At least Alex was a piece of shit from birth onward, but Mickey had actually fooled Dom into thinking he was a good-hearted, harmless idiot. He wasn’t. He had just enough charm to get by, and underneath that thin layer of grease was nothing but avarice and laziness. “You’re a whore for The Valiant, and you’re a whore for anyone else who’ll take you.”

I punctuated my decree with a spit to the ground, then looked back up and grimaced. I should’ve known there’d be three more fucking guns in my face.

I
followed
Alex and Ash through the basement, but had to stop after they ascended the stairwell and left me behind to eavesdrop. Breathless, I pressed myself to the wall and held Beyonce at the ready. Up above me, I could hear their muffled voices rise and fall. Alex trying to quiet Mickey—Mickey raging about his mistreatment in Hell's Ransom…and bragging about the murder of Jared Wayne.

Off to my right, I heard the sound of a soft clatter, like a box falling off a shelf, and it drew my eyes away from the wedge of stairwell on which they had been trained.

There was a narrow plywood door, closed tight, on my right. It looked like little more than a closet…but it sounded as if a fairly large animal, like a dog, was tied up inside.

A dog…or a woman?

Scooting silently over to the right, I tried the knob and found it resistant. Locked.

Interesting.

Unlatching the handle, I allowed the door to fall open just an inch, and found myself peering into a dark storage space—with a petite, copper-skinned, lavender-and-teal-haired twenty-something stashed in the shadows. Her eyes, sooty with tear-smeared mascara, flew open wide at the sight of me, and she began to call out around the gag in her mouth.

“Mmm!” she exclaimed. There was duct tape sealing the gag into place—and duct tape wrapped around her wrists, as well. I grimaced. It looked like Alex Cantrell took the old saying, “Duct tape fixes everything,” just a little too literally. His captive had been sawing intently at the metallic frame of a shelf, fraying her bonds slowly but surely. Familiar.

“Hey,” I whispered, sliding into the closet and letting the door hang open so the light from the basement would filter in. “You must be Jade.”

The girl nodded emphatically.

“Mm-hmm!” she agreed, bouncing away from the metal shelf. I looked down to see that her ankles had been taped together, too. “Mmn mm mm mm mmou?”

“Shh,” I hissed. “Just relax for a minute.”

Hunting in the dark closet, I found a pair of rusted shears at the top of the shelving and collected them. I went first to Jade’s hands, and then to her feet. While I cut the tape at her ankles, her hands flew to her mouth and undid the tape and gag there.

“Oh, thank Christ,” she sighed. Her voice was high-pitched and mousy, but instantly likable. “I have to say, girl,” she whispered, “I’ve never been happier to meet one of my friends’ girlfriends.” I rose my finger to my lips, signaling quiet, and Jade’s eyes immediately flicked up to the ceiling. “What’s going on?” she wondered. Apparently Jade had a pretty serious problem with keeping her mouth shut, and I rolled my eyes.

“Hell's Ransom brothers are here,” I whispered back. “They’re talking upstairs with Mickey and Alex.”

“That prick,” Jade muttered. “Mickey is the lowest scum to ever sully a motorcycle badge. Worse than Alex, even. Did you know that he was the one? That he was the one who shot Wayne? And he set Ash up with the gun on some half-cocked notion of revenge on
Dom?
”

“I heard a little bit of it,” I affirmed. I really didn’t feel comfortable whispering in the closet like this—and I wanted to get out of here. Closer to the action. Closer to Ash. “He was bragging upstairs.”

Jade grimaced. “Yeah,” she said, “homeboy can’t keep his damn mouth shut about it, can he?”

After Jade had finished quietly—quietly—pulling the duct tape from off her skinny jeans, I pushed the closet door open again and let us slide out into the basement together. But I didn’t give back my rusted shears. I had a strange feeling I might need them again.