Extreme Curves (Dangerous Curves Book 7) (14 page)

“So… what did you say, Tex?”

“Nice recovery,” the voice in her ear hissed. “A bit too close, but I won’t take it out on Kevin.
This
time.”

“Oh.” Tex was cheerful and enthusiastic, and Lilly fought hard to look interested. “Well, Lilly… seems you got your wish.”

“Yes?” she said, clueless. “About…”

“About Ace and Spider!” Honey said. “They’re together!”

“Oh,” Lilly said, knowing that she needed to summon
some
energy here, even if it was all faked. “That’s – that’s great! I mean…
really
great!”

“Yeah, it’s actually kinda cute,” Tex said. “We’ve learned to listen from below before heading upstairs to check things, though, I can promise you. They’re going at it like
rabbits
, I kid you not.”

“Well, they
do
have seven years to make up for,” Knox said. “Do they ever come out of the bedroom?”

“Oh, sure,” Tex said. “Their big thing now is to go for little walks outside in the snow together, I suppose to get some real privacy away from us. One of us stays on the front porch, another stays in the house, and the last of us follows ‘em around the open field at a discreet distance. We don’t want to hear what they’re saying, of course, but we
do
need to keep on eye on them out there. I mean, we can spot anything coming from the road for miles around, but still… we
do
have that patch of trees a mile out.”

At the words ‘front porch’, Lilly’s focus had snapped back into place, and fast. Only three of the safe houses had a porch, and when Tex talked about the open field, the road, the isolation, and the patch of trees, suddenly she knew – she just
knew
– where they were.

Where Ace Cuddy was.

Her conscience reared its head now, and she fought it down. If she told the man in her ear what she knew, then she was effectively sending Ace to his death, that was for sure. Maybe the boyfriend too; maybe even some of her fellow Men.

Was Kevin worth that much blood on her hands?

Was he worth
any
blood on her hands?

She’d just finished asking herself those questions, and then she knew: yes. Yes, he was. Kevin was innocent, completely and totally. Ace wasn’t
anything like
innocent, and her colleagues knew how to defend themselves. They had also accepted the risks when they had started working for King – and a big one was being attacked, hurt, maybe killed, in the line of duty.

Spider was possibly going to be collateral damage, and she struggled with herself briefly over that. Like Kevin, he was an innocent… but then again, by choosing to get involved with a one-percenter MC member all those years ago, Spider had
also
accepted certain risks, hadn’t he? Maybe he wasn’t
totally
innocent, after all? That thought bubbled up in her brain, and she clung to it, like a life raft, or a talisman, or a pardon.

Like forgiveness.

She knew that she was telling herself all of this so she could do what she was about to do. If she
truly
believed that Kevin was the biggest innocent here, then she could reconcile her betrayal and her stupidity and her failure.

Lilly
needed
to believe it. So she did.

“I’m sorry,” Lilly said, getting to her feet. “I just – I need a minute. Is that OK, King?”

“Yeah, of course.” He looked concerned. “You alright, hon?”

“Yes… I just…” She swallowed. “I promised my Dad that I’d call him at eight this morning to get an update. I’ll just do that and be right back.”

“OK.”

She strode out of the room, her head held high.
No way
she was doing this while feeling weak or beaten or defeated. If she was going to turn her back on her colleagues, walk away from every belief she held dear, betray her principles, and send her soul straight to hell, she’d damn well stand by it all.

No snivelling. No excuses. No pretending that she was doing wasn’t fucking heinous.

If Lilly was going to do this, she was going to do it with her eyes wide open.

She marched back to the bathroom, saw that it was still empty. She stood for a few seconds in front of the mirror, meeting her own bright blue gaze.

“What are you doing, cunt?” the voice in her ear demanded. “You slitting your wrists?”

“Fuck you,” she gritted out. “You’ll get what you want. Give me thirty seconds.”

“Ooooh, mouthy,” the man teased. “I’ve seen you, bitch, and I think that your mouth has better purposes. Like being wrapped around my cock.”

“I’d sooner blow a leper,” she snarled. “Now shut up so I can focus.”

He chuckled, but stayed quiet. She closed her eyes, retrieving the information that she needed from the thousands of phone numbers, names, addresses, dates, e-mail accounts, and faces that she’d filed away. Safe house addresses were committed to memory, of course, never
ever
written down or shared by any kind of written message. Lilly sending this text was a first in many ways.

She took the burner cell out of her blazer pocket, tapped out the address to the only saved number in the phone book, pushed ‘send’. In her ear, she heard a beep and knew that he’d gotten her text.

A pause, then she heard him talking to someone else. More voices, movement, maybe chairs scraping on a floor.

“Where’s Kevin?” Lilly demanded. “
Tell
me.”

“Ooooh,” the man said and his voice dripped with malice and venom. “You want your one-handed, one-footed man, do you?”

“
Fuck
you,” she repeated between gritted teeth. “Tell me, or I tell King what’s going on and I call the safe house and warn them. You don’t tell me where Kevin is, and that means he’s dead anyway – and then I have exactly fucking
nothing
to lose, prick.”

“Fair point,” he said, almost amiably. “I’ll text you the address in ten minutes.”

“But –”

“Get in your car and start driving north. You’ll get more specific info while you’re on the road.”

Without a word, Lilly flung herself out of the bathroom, down the hall, out the door. She ran to her car, and almost ripped the door off its damn hinges. And when she peeled out of the garage parking lot, she didn’t so much as look back, even though she was pretty damn sure that she’d never be back to the garage.

What she thought was true, of course… but what Lilly didn’t know was the
real
reason that she’d never see King or any of the others again.

Chapter Twelve

Lilly pulled up to the abandoned warehouse with the massive ‘17’ painted on it in faded white paint, and peered around. It was one of many warehouses scattered about a closed old factory, and the grounds were sprawling and overgrown. She opened her car door, listened hard.

Nothing.

She looked down at the ground as she walked to the open warehouse door, gun drawn. Plenty of footprints in the snow; plenty of tire tracks. She counted at least eight sets of prints, four different tire treads, some motorcycles, some larger and heavier vehicles, maybe trucks. She looked around one last time, then plunged through the door into darkness.

What she saw stopped her breathing.

Kevin was lying on the floor in a pool of blood. Pale, unmoving, silent, his face covered in dried blood from the bullet hole in the middle of his forehead.

And she knew.

“No,” Lilly said numbly. “Please. No, no, no…”

Her feet carried her over to the body on the floor that she knew wasn’t her Kevin anymore; her hands reached to feel what she knew wasn’t going to be a strong, steady heartbeat under her fingertips; her eyes searched the face that she loved, knowing that those amazing green eyes were never going to open again.

She’d lost him. And by losing him, Lilly had pretty much lost everything.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered to him, stroking his cold, gray lips. “I’m so, so sorry. I love you.”

Lilly felt the bullet enter her back and tear through her lungs before she even heard the shot behind her. She was thrown forward and she slumped over Kevin’s body unable to move, surprised at the lack of pain after that initial blinding, ripping, white-hot agony.

Dimly, she heard footsteps behind her, and she looked up at Nails Paxton.

“Hey, bitch,” he said in a conversational tone that she knew all-too-well. “Change of plans.”

She forced herself to glare at him, and he chuckled.

“Gonna go down swinging, huh?” he said. “I admire that, even though in your case, it’s pretty fucking pointless.”

Lilly kicked her foot out, made contact with the toe of Nails’ boot. Astonished, he looked down, then burst into laughter.

“Bitch,” he said, sounding almost affectionate this time. “I like you. That’s why I decided to let you die with Loverboy here. I don’t do that for just
anyone
, you know.”

It was getting harder to breathe now, and Lilly shut her eyes, trying to keep her lungs inflated. For what, she didn’t know… but she knew it was for something.

Then it came to her, what she was holding on for.

Play dead.

Right.

Now.

She held her breath in her burning lungs, held herself still. Above her, she felt Nails go still and watchful, felt those cold blue eyes on her. Then he half-sighed, and turned away.

“Bye, bitch,” he said. “See you in hell.”

She stayed where she was until she heard him go out the other door, until she heard the motorcycle engine start to die away in the distance. Then slowly, painfully, she pulled the burner cell from her coat pocket, forced herself to focus.

The phone number that she knew as well as her own swam upwards in her consciousness, faded away, surged up again, and she grasped it, tight, forcing herself to retain those digits.

One chance is all you’ve got. Don’t you fuck this up
.

Gripping the phone, she used her thumb to dial the number. She held the phone in both hands, and almost burst into tears when she heard King’s growl in her ear:

“Yeah?”

“K – k –” Her throat was closing. “”
King
.”

“Who’s that?”

“Li – lil –”

“
Lilly
?”

“Mmmm.”

“Where are you? Hon, where are you? Whose phone is this?” He shouted for Knox to check the GPS tracker on Lilly’s car, then turned back to the phone. “Are you hurt? Lilly?”

“I –”

She knew it was no good… her voice wasn’t working, her mind was going blank, the darkness was closing in. As much as she feared to go into that cold, clammy after-world alone, and as tempting as it was to end her time on earth with a warm, caring voice in her ear, Lilly knew that she couldn’t do that.

Not if she was going to make any of this right.

It took everything that she had to disconnect the call, but she did; then it took everything that she had to press the ‘text’ option next to the last number dialed.

Gripping the phone, using her thumb again, she typed:

THEYR COMING SAFE HOUS

Her grip weakened, faltered, failed. The cell clattered to the floor, and when it started to ring with a call from King, Lilly didn’t have the strength to even reach for it, let alone pick it up.

The last thing that Lilly Forrester heard before she died was the ringing of a cell phone.

And the last thing that she felt was the cold hand of the man that she loved, clutched tight between both of hers.

**

Joker looked down at the cloned cell phone in his hand, and grinned at Lilly’s last message. He glanced up at the sign on the side of the highway, indicating that the small farming town they were aiming for was less than ten miles away.

“No, bitch,” he said aloud to the text message. “We’re already here.”

Chapter Thirteen

Sarah, Mirrie, Naomi, Gabi, and Maria were well aware that King’s Men, Dallas Foreman’s people, and the bouncers at Curves were ex-military types, though – admittedly – they had very little idea what that actually
meant
, in practical terms. Even Maria, who had seen her boyfriend Dillon in action at Open Skies Ranch, shooting down bad guys in cold blood, was pretty hazy about what
exactly
these people were capable of.

They got a crash-course, though, when King’s call came through.

Within seconds of getting off the call, Val, Tank, Dallas, and Curtis had their guns out, had the women strapped into kevlar, had them gathered in a group by the front door, had eyes on the yard outside.

“Go,” Val said to Curtis and Dallas, and they nodded, stepped out, went to get the SUV’s. Val turned to the women, who were only just beginning to feel petrified, because it had all happened far too quickly for them to feel anything much at all. “Gabi, Naomi, Sarah, you’re with me and Curtis. Mirrie and Maria, you’re with Dallas and Tank. Yes?”

They all nodded.

“What’s going on?” Sarah said in a tiny voice. “Why are we in such a rush?”

“We need to move you,” Val replied, merely stating the obvious without actually providing any information. “Now.”

“Are they coming?” Mirrie asked. “My brother and the MC? Have they found us?”

“All you need to know right now is that we’re moving you to a secondary location,” Val said crisply. “We’ll explain when we get there.”

“But –” Mirrie protested. “I just –”

“
No
,” Val snapped, watching as Dallas and Curtis pulled up. “No more talking. We need you to shut up and be compliant, and you need to do
exactly
what we tell you, without giving us a hard time or questioning us. You distract us when you do that, and if we’re distracted, you’re at risk. We
all
are. Now, Mirrie and Maria, you go with Tank to the SUV. Stay behind him, stay quiet, and stay down when you get into the back seat. You hear me?”

The women nodded, and Tank hustled Mirrie and Maria out double-time. Once he was in the front passenger seat, Dallas hit the gas and tore out. Val looked at the last three women.

“Ready?”

They nodded; Gabi gave a small sob. Sarah hugged her with one arm, and Naomi squeezed her hand.

“It’s OK, Gabi,” Naomi said. “No way Curtis or Val will let them anywhere near us. All we have to do is get to the SUV. That’s it… just one foot in front of the other. Alright?”

Gabi sighed shakily, but managed a tiny smile. “Yes. I – I can do that.”

“Good,” Val said, tightening her ponytail to keep the hair out of her eyes. “We’re going now, ladies, so move your asses. Go.
Now
.”

As one, Sarah, Gabi, and Naomi ran across the yard to the open door of the SUV. They dove in, scalps prickling and chests heaving, Sarah and Gabi sliding over quickly to make room for Naomi, who slammed the door behind her. Valentine jumped into the front seat, her gun still out.

“Go,” she ordered Curtis, who didn’t say a word as he peeled out. She spun in her seat and nailed the women with a steely violet stare. “Stay down. Don’t move until I tell you.”

They nodded yet again, their hands clutched tight and together. They held their breaths for almost twenty minutes, and when Curtis finally stopped the SUV, they were almost dizzy from tension and fear and lack of air. And when the back doors flew open suddenly, they all jumped and cried out.

“Ladies,” Dallas said, extending his hand. “You’re safe. C’mon now.”

Tank was on the other side of the vehicle, also offering a helping hand. The women climbed out, knees shaking from shock, barely noticing the falling-down building that they were being ushered into. Dallas slammed the sliding steel door, then stood right in front of it, peering through a small window to one side. He looked at Tank, gave him a thumbs-up.

“OK,” Val said once they were inside, gesturing at the circle of chairs. “Everyone sit. Take a few deep breaths.”

Sarah, Naomi and Gabi joined Mirrie and Maria, who were both holding what looked like untouched cups of coffee. They all looked at each other now, saw the same look of numb terror and stupid incomprehension that they were sure they were wearing.

“So.” Val sighed. “King told us to move you.”

“They found us?” Mirrie repeated her question from almost thirty minutes earlier. “The Fallen Angels?”

Just then, Tank’s phone rang. He answered, and everyone watched as his face turned gray with anger. He turned his broad back on the group, walked away, kept his voice low, then disconnected. When he turned back again and looked at the other bodyguards, they just
knew
.

“Aw, shit,” Curtis muttered. “Fuck those assholes.”

“What?” Sarah said, noticing that Val, Curtis, and Dallas all looked weary and resigned. “What’s happened?”

“It was the other one?” Dallas said quietly, but the women knew that it wasn’t a question. That Dallas was already light-years ahead of them, and that he knew what had gone done. “How bad is it?”

“
Oui
,” Tank replied. “It was the other safe house, not us. And it’s pretty fucking bad.”

**

Spider lay sprawled out on the hard, freezing-cold ground, his face in the snow, dimly listening to Jack’s cell phone insistently ringing. He had his hands over his ears, his eyes shut tight. It was hard to breathe, partly because he’d just seen Honey, Jack, and Tex shot right in front of him; partly because Ace was covering him with his own body. A huge, strong hand pulled his own hand off one ear, and he shuddered as the ringing finally stopped.

“You OK?” Ace whispered harshly, his breath hot on Spider’s cold cheek. “Talk to me, sweetheart.”

“I’m…” Spider turned his head slightly to look into those dark eyes. “I’m OK. You? Are you hit?”

“No.”

“But the others…
Tex
…”

“I know.” Ace was grim but calm. Shoot-outs were nothing new for him, after all, and he was already plotting, planning, weighing the odds. “It looks bad.”

“Can we help them?”

“We need to get out of here,” Ace said, thinking about the fact that the gunshots had come from the direction of the woods, wondering if they had any choice
but
to cross that open field to the road. Surely King and his people would be coming from that direction. “We need to try, at least.”

Spider turned his head the other way now, to look at Honey and Jack and Tex. They were all unconscious – at least Spider
hoped
they were – but Tex was by far the worst off. He’d been shot in the face, and even though he was still breathing, he clearly needed help, and damn fast. Jack was also bleeding heavily, and if Honey was, Spider couldn’t see it. But she’d been hit, that much was for sure. She’d been hit first, actually, just as she’d reached the driver’s side of the SUV, and Spider had watched from less than five feet away as she’d gone down.

Jack and Tex had been shot seconds later and almost simultaneously, just as they’d been sprinting towards Spider and Ace, shouting at them to return to the safety of the farmhouse. Spider knew that for the rest of his life, he’d remember Tex’s gorgeous face disappearing in an explosion of red, Jack’s large body falling to the icy ground as if every bone had just been sucked out of it.

“Liam?” Ace was pushing himself up and off him now, and as always when he did that, Spider’s body missed his hot, hard weight. “You ready to run, baby?”

“I guess.” Spider sat up, amazed that he wasn’t even slightly injured from Ace’s wild, almost violent tackle to the unyielding, unforgiving ground. “But which way?”

“Yeah, Cuddy… which way?”

The voice came from their left, hidden behind the high roof of the SUV, and both men spun on their knees to face its owner. Ace’s heart stopped dead in his chest when the group of five men came around both sides of the vehicle, surrounding them, holding guns – and it started up triple-time when he saw who was standing at the front of the group of three men on the left, as the leader.

Oh, shit, oh, no. Not Joker Fucking Kane.
Anyone
but him, please God. Even Nails is a better choice.

“So,” Joker hissed. “Which way, you cocksucker?”

“Joker.” Ace forced himself to his feet, forced a note of calm into his voice. “Please, man… just me, OK?”

“Just you what?”

“Take just me.” Ace held up his hands in a gesture of submission and compliance, and stepped between Liam and Joker. “Take me, do whatever the hell you want to me. Do your worst, and do it until you feel like you’ve got whatever you need from me, and it’s all out of your systems. But leave Liam alone. Let him go.”

“You really think we’ll do that?”

“Yeah.” Ace stepped a bit closer to Joker, covering Spider a bit more. “I really do.”

“Why do you think that, Cuddy?” Joker said, and he sounded genuinely interested in the answer. “Why do you think for one fucking
second
that we’d spare your little fag friend here?”

“Because you know that
nothing
would hurt me more than knowing that he’s out here, alone and scared and worrying for me. You
also
know that he’s not the point, and he never has been.” Ace cocked his dark head at his ex-brother. “Your beef is with
me
, and you got some bad shit planned for
me
, and I know that damn good and well. You
really
going to let yourselves be distracted from all the fun you got waiting for
me
by some random guy that you don’t know, and don’t give a damn about?”

“You’re not wrong.” Another voice came from behind him, and Ace spun the other way now, shoving Liam behind him again when he saw Nails. “It might have been fun to slap your bitch around a little bit, no doubt about
that
… but as you said, that’s a distraction and a delay to what we
really
want to do.”

“So let’s get on with it,” Ace growled. “I’m ready.”

“No,” Spider said now, his voice trembling. “No, Ace…”

“It’s OK, sweetheart,” Ace said gently, and every Fallen Angel winced in disgust at the endearment, not that he gave a flying fuck what these morons thought. This was going to be the last time that he spoke to Liam,
that
he knew as sure as he knew Liam’s breath in the dark, and he was going to say everything that had to be said, homophobic MC dickheads be damned. “I’ve
always
known that it was going to come to this, no matter how well I hid, or how many of King’s people were standing around me. This is my fate, Liam, you get me? It’s how it has to be, and even though I’ve fought damn hard to put it off this long, the clock has run out on me. It’s all been borrowed time, and now I’ve got to face the music for betraying the men that I considered my family.”

He gestured around them, remembering a time when the men now intent on killing him had killed
for
him.

“
These
men, Liam. They took me in when I was eighteen and broke and homeless and robbing corner stores for food money. They let me patch in, they gave me work, they had my back. After years and years of support and loyalty, they gave me authority and they trusted me to lead – and I fucked them over, over and over again. I made a mockery of almost twenty-five years of being a part of the Fallen Angels family, and the bill has come due on that. I’ve been waiting for this day for a long, long time, and I’m ready.”

“Oh, no, you’re not,” Nails said quietly. “No
way
you can be ready for what’s going to go down.”

“Oh, God.” Spider was shaking like a leaf, imagining Ace’s body broken into a hundred pieces. “Ace…”

“Nah, baby,” Ace said, and his smile was almost peaceful. “It’s OK.”

“How can you
say
that?” Spider’s voice rose. “
How
is it fucking ‘OK’?”

“Because of what I’ve done with the borrowed time that King gave me.” Ace reached for Spider’s hand. “I’ve used my extra time to get a second chance with you. To make it right with you. To apologize to you, and make you happy. You think I’m going to regret that, even for one second?”

“I –” Spider began, but Ace cut him off. He had one last thing to say before he was taken away forever.

“I love you,” Ace said, almost harshly. “I’ve
always
loved you… I loved you before I fucking
knew
you, sweetheart. Before I saw you in that bar drinking alone, before that night at the lake, before we watched all those sunsets and moonrises and shooting stars, all curled up in the same bed. You’re the best, most amazing thing that has ever happened to me, and promise me that you’ll never
ever
forget that. Thank you for giving me all that you did – you made me a better man, Liam.”

“I love you too,” Spider said, clutching Ace’s hand. “I –”

“Alright,
enough
,” Joker snarled, totally
done
here. “Jesus
fuck
, you
really
think we wanna listen to this shit? You’re fucking disgusting, both of you faggots.”

“Yeah, Joker’s right.” Nails lifted his chin, and the circle of men tightened. “I’ve been lenient because I have to admit, this had a certain entertainment value, but now I’m fucking grossed out. You going to come quietly, Cuddy, or do we have to drag you?”

“No.” Ace shook his head. “No trouble from me.”

He started to pull his hand away from Spider’s, but there was no earthly way that the other man was letting go. Panic made Spider’s grip painful, and Ace knew that they’d only be separated by force – and force was the
one
thing that he didn’t want to happen tonight. Not to the man that he loved.

“Please, baby,” he whispered. “Please let me go.”

“I can’t,” Spider said, his throat closing with grief and pain. “
I can’t
.”

“You have to,” Ace told him. “Don’t give them any reason to hurt you. Please. I can’t see that, Liam. I can take anything they do to me… but I can’t watch anything happen to you. Don’t ask me to.”