Shelter From The Storm (The Bare Bones MC Book 6) (13 page)

“No. Don’t, not yet. Let me and Tobias figure out who sent this guy, where he is.”

I went up to Fox, put my arms around him, and laid my cheek against his chest. I squeezed him, but not too tight. Didn’t want to put the fear of God into him. I had the feeling that I was way more into him than he was into me. It was
more
than just sex for me, but I knew that was all it could ever be for him.

“I know you can be cruel,” I whispered, my breath fluttering across his pectoral. “But I trust you to protect me, too.”

Mechanically he brought his hands up to my shoulders, where they fluttered ineffectually like pieces of Kleenex. Was he actually afraid of
me
? “I will,” he said, not too convincingly. “I will.”

Good gracious, Ignatius. I’d gone from a heartless Lieutenant Commander who didn’t love me to a redheaded hitman who didn’t love me. I was a woman who loved too much.

FOX

“L
et me hold the rocket launcher.”

“No.”

“At least let me pull the trigger.”

“No.”

“Oh, come
on!
” cried Wolf Glaser. “Why do you get to do all the fun stuff?”

Because Ruben Ochoa’s bulletproof SUV had not come down his access road yet, I fell for it, and engaged with the former Prospect. Sometimes I can be so stupid, or maybe just bored. “I get to do ‘all the fun stuff’ because it’s
my
mission. I’m the trained operative. I need to hit the passenger door while they may be going seventy miles an hour. You’re just the guy who works in the Bare Bones parts shed.”

Wolf had executed his role. He’d waited patiently by Ruben Ochoa’s fortress-like abode for the garage door to open. As expected, Ruben had walked directly from his home into the armored SUV. He was already in the back seat by the time the SUV moved out onto the driveway and a couple goons looked out the windows suspiciously. Wolf radioed me to get ready, got on his scoot, and went off-road behind a few hills to reach my position a half a mile down the road. Now he lay on his stomach next to me. I’d dug a slot in the dirt in which to rest the tube of my grenade launcher. I had the iconic, Russian-built RPG-7 and it fit comfortably on my shoulder. It could take out a tank, so I imagined it would probably incinerate the SUV. No one else took this access road to Ochoa’s mansion, so I just listened for the approaching vehicle.

“They gave me that job because I used to work at Home Depot. Made sense, don’t you think? It’s an important position, knowing which part to hand out for an operator of a Cat 374D excavator. What’s taking these losers so long? They barbecuing in their garage?”

I had to chuckle at that. Beaners sure did like to barbecue in their garages, or their front yards for that matter. “Listen. You sure you don’t want to take off? I don’t really need you here.”

“What, and miss the extremely awesomesauce sight of what is essentially a
tank
blowing to smithereens before our very eyes?” Wolf lost his grin. He had his brain bucket on in case of falling debris. So did I. It felt like I was in the Army again. “It will, won’t it? Blow to smithereens?”

“That’s what I’m banking on,” I muttered, attentive to the sound of an engine coming closer. “We’re only sixty yards away.”

The Ochoas were threatening to destroy our union—either that of The Bare Bones MC or my increasingly tenuous one with the Jones cartel. Taking out their kingpin sent a message that we’d take it to the mats with them if they so desired. I’d just been reading Abe Lincoln’s Cooper Union speech in which he’d solidified his presence as a man to be reckoned with. Ochoas sending spies into the Bare Bones backyard was a blow to their union, a suspicious threat akin to armed robbery, like the South demanding to secede from the North.

“Oo, they’re coming,” trilled Wolf. I had to hold him down by the shoulder to prevent him from popping his stupid head over the ridgeline. Being spotted wouldn’t be fatal, but it wouldn’t help.

“Stay put,” I growled. I followed the approach of the vehicle by tracking it with the tube. I estimated the SUV was moving at a steady fifty miles per hour. I tracked, tracked, tracked and squeezed the trigger.

I felt as well as heard the impact. The ground shook as though we were jumping a moving train. The entire vista on the other side of my little hill was lit up with a few flashes so bright they temporarily blinded me. I couldn’t resist man’s natural urge to witness what destruction he’d wrought, and I shot to my feet.

All that remained on the road was a mangled chassis. Whoever had been in the vehicle was liquid bone now. The shaped charge had penetrated the side of the SUV and exploded on impact. Twisted pieces of metal and flaming engine parts were dropping with thuds all around us. I got conked in the head with part of a fuel hose, so it was time to make tracks away from the impact site.

“How fucking awesome is—” Wolf was brained with part of a seat followed by a hunk of bloody flesh slapping upside his lid, so he followed me to our bikes too.

“That was awesome, Fox.”

“I’m going to report to Ford at his house. You can do what you like.” I thought, then said, “Thanks for your help.” I wasn’t used to thanking anyone. I always worked alone. But Lytton had stuck me with this guy, so I may as well make the most of him.

“No problem. I love witnessing explosive carnage like that. See you at Ford’s.”

We thrashed it off-road for awhile until we could hook up with Obed Road. A bridge there would take us to Joseph City where we could hit Route 40 west again. We’d ride separately on the off-chance someone had already heard and investigated the explosion and had called other operatives along Route 40. But honestly, who would jump to the immediate conclusion the hit was affiliated with The Bare Bones? Wolf wore his cut, but Jones might
want
to take credit for the hit. Well, Ford and Ortelio Jones could fight it out for the honor. I was pulling double duty today.

I allowed my mind to wander as we zoomed away from the carnage. I didn’t know if the
sicario
with the rotten jaw, Phil Din, had been sent to get me or Pippa—or both. Slayer said he was keeping his ear to the ground for chatter, but I didn’t have much faith in that, unless Din was about to Snapchat his favorite gangster hand signals.

Either way, ol’ Phil had obviously been sent by Jones to check up on me and perhaps make my hit for me if I was falling down on the job. All the giant goon had to do was to see me with Pippa, and he’d instantly know I’d lied to Jones about not having been able to find her. More than likely, though I’d never met the guy before, he’d put two and two together after seeing us at archery together. Yeah, and humping behind the UXO shed.

I was living on borrowed time. I could bury Pippa, and feel like a shitsack for the rest of my life. But I’d known my time in the business was short. The career span of a
sicario
was something like two, maybe three years. I’d been doing it for Jones for almost two. I was thirty-fucking five years old. I’d worked for the Taos DA’s office before the fateful misunderstanding that altered the course of my life forever. I could never go back to New Mexico, but how would I elude Ortelio Jones?

Lincoln wrote “neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations,” which in my case were probably true accusations, “nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.”

My duty was to Pippa Lofting. I’d passed the bar with flying colors but was now prevented from practicing law. The smartest thing I could’ve done was to return to Jones and tell him I could find no tux rental girl.

But I couldn’t leave Pippa to the wolves. And I couldn’t go to her with my hat in my hand, offering nothing. And I certainly couldn’t go as a
sicario
who decapitated guys and hung them from bridges.

I was rude, screwed, and tattooed.

PIPPA

E
very one of their rides was an adventure.

That was the claim of the Run-a-mucca organizers. By the time we hit Vegas, pipes rumbling, leather streaked with dust, stomachs growling, I believed their advertisement.

It was the most exciting, invigorating thing I’d ever done. We started out from the Bare Bones’ Citadel hangar in a small group. Ford Illuminati, Prez of the club, rode front door with his wife Maddie. Lytton and June, Tuzigoot and Brunhilda, and Faux Pas and Sapphire were the middle of the pack. Fox and I were the tail gunners.

I’d never ridden two up with anyone before, and it was a high. My boots on the pegs, the incessant vibrations between my thighs, and most importantly, my arms wrapped tightly around Fox’s torso. I knew it was way too much exposure for me. As a WITSEC witness, I wasn’t allowed to be outside of contact with Randy Blankenship for more than three days. But I shut off my cell so I was off the grid of GPS tracking, an even bolder thing to do. Randy didn’t know I was a biker’s old lady—or was I? What was I to Fox other than a handy snatch, a Bone Licker?—but he knew I worked for them. I was taking a risk he’d call me, like for an update on my new weed venture which I think actually amused him. He might put two and two together if he heard about the famous annual Winnemucca run.

I knew I was living dangerously. But it felt good again, like the old days with Russ Heston at the Coast Guard. I knew Russ was playing a risky game with some cartel, and he referred to it often, like a spy. Vague news had just come into Pure and Easy that Fox had completed some kind of mission for Ford. Maddie made references to it—as instructed, I was staying at her house. I knew it had something to do with the Ochoas, our rival out at Show Low. I was learning not to ask questions, but it gave me a dangerous thrill to have my arms around a man who had been up to some badass business. Maybe it wasn’t in my nature to fly under the radar in WITSEC, knitting and renting tuxedos.

I could feel every sinew in Fox’s torso, and I even dared to brush my fingers against his nipples under the thin cotton of his tank top. We rode through giant swelling waves of almost blistering hot air, although some slopes were still carpeted with electric blue desertbells and richly purple fivespot wildflowers after a good decent rainy season.

When we stopped in Vegas, I was alive with craving for the buff, ginger hitman. I was shocked when he paid for a separate room for me at the Venetian. We spent all night partying as a group, but he didn’t necessarily sit next to me or seek me out. I was floored. It even seemed that Maddie was looking at me quizzically. I went to my room much earlier than everyone else out of sheer confusion, clutching a bottle of Blue Nun. I almost turned on my phone to text someone, anyone. Then I remembered. The only people I was allowed to talk to were in the same hotel.

The next morning, though, Fox sat next to me at the buffet breakfast and looked at me, it seemed, with glowing eyes. Maybe he was just as hungover as I was. That Blue Nun was garbage.

“We’ll be in Winnemucca in eight hours,” he said with a smile. “Then I’ll take you to dinner. Enough of this crowd bullshit.”

I was more confused than ever. But Duji was standing now, making a speech about giving Gollywow something called a Fast Riding Award. I guessed that Gollywow had gotten to Vegas before everyone else because there were lots of congratulations and jokes.

In the parking garage, our group had swelled to about fifteen scoots. There were a couple of guys wearing cuts that marked them as members of The Friends of Distinction MC out of Las Vegas. Fox told me they were like a brother club to us. But for some reason they looked meaner than us, maybe because they wore chains and ball peen hammers around their waists. They didn’t even make the slightest effort to hide their large caliber pistols stuck down the back of their pants.

Wolf was there, apparently having ridden two up with Tracy. I wondered how he’d stolen her away from Tobias. There were also a couple of guys from a club named The Bent Zealots. They seemed well-mannered, and Fox said they were actually a gay club. That intrigued me.