The Nightlife San Antonio: (Urban Fantasy Romance) (The Nightlife Series) (19 page)

“Please tell me you explained this to her.” Crenshaw rolled his eyes. “You didn’t?”

Adrian opened the passenger door and let it swing wide. “This is the best thing. You have to understand that it wouldn’t have worked out any other way. Crenshaw’s getting me an attorney. I’m going to make sure this mess is all cleared up. Then, maybe I can go see you, wherever, in the Caribbean or something.”

She shook her head, a terrible pain in her chest and a sickness that went all the way to her bones. Her throat constricted up tight, she could hardly breathe or speak.
Dios mio, he didn’t understand, not at all
. She took his hand desperately and choked on her words. “Adrian, we can never be separated. You don’t know the nature of our connection. You could die!”

She saw the alarm in his face as her words struck him like a slap to the face.

Crenshaw pulled on her right arm, trying to urge her out of the truck. “Come on, girl, we gotta get moving.”

She reacted with a backhand slap hard e
nough to knock him back two steps. “Don’t touch me!” She growled, feral, claws out and teeth down. “I’m not going anywhere without Adrian!”

Crenshaw wiped the blood from his nose. “Oh hell no!” He
pulled a pistol from inside his jacket and pointed it at her. “Don’t fucking move, or I’ll do you right here. I can deliver you dead or alive, and I really don’t give a shit which way it goes.”

Adrian had his pistol over her shoulder, pointed straight at Crenshaw. “Y
ou piece of shit. I trusted you! Is this your idea of helping me?”

“Sorry, dude
, she’s got a half million dollar price on her head.”

“Guess the who
le racial hatred thing doesn’t make a damn bit of difference when it comes to doing business.”

“Got that right. Don’t have to like ‘em to take their money.
Some big-shot from south of the border is paying a pretty penny for this little wetback, and you’re money ahead to just let her go, Adrian. I’ll throw ya a bone, man. I’ll give you twenty grand to pay for your attorney. How’s that for a deal?”

She itched to gut this fool who thought he could take her alive. He obviously wasn’t aware of the full extent of La Reina’s reputation. It was well known
in the Mexican cartels that La Reina killed anyone who challenged her,
with her bare hands
.

From the driver’s side of the truck came a knock on the window. “Put it down, now.”

A big white guy with a baseball cap and a goatee had a large revolver pointed against the window, right at Adrian’s head.
Oh, Adrian, what did you do?

In the world of cartel and mafia
, no one is ever what they seem. Loyalties change with a stack of hundreds, and no one deals with people outside of la raza,
the race
. The cartels of Mexico were constantly at war with each other, and the Colombian cartelitos were the same, but none of them trusted anyone who wasn’t from their own country. The gringos were never to be trusted. Never.

Adrian had no idea he was stepping into the middle of a battlefield, a turf war just as bloody as anything
the Middle East had ever seen. She’d survived this war by being a ruthless, cunning, Ice Queen, her master’s cutthroat voice in her ear, telling her who to kill, when to kill them, who to manipulate, and when necessary, who to torture for information.

The asshole threatening her bloodslave tapped on the glass once more when Adrian didn’t budge. “Put
the gun down, or I put you down. Right now, dude.”

Crenshaw grinned at her, the smile of a predator
right before he eats his meal. “Adrian, I didn’t plan to hurt you, bro. We’re gonna take this problem off your hands and solve it once and for all. That woman controls distribution from Colombia to Chihuahua, and straight across the border. You don’t have a clue who she is or what’s she’s done in her life. You know what it takes to be on top in the Mexican Mafia? Death, torture, mutilation. These people will boil a man alive. No shit. They’re murderers and terrorists, every one of ‘em. You can look it up in the Homeland security website, I ain’t lying.”

“Well
, since you put it that way, murdering, drug-pushing, white-trash, racist bikers sound so much better than drug cartels. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

She felt his tension, his unwillingness to let her go under these circumstances. The fool would rather die than see his mistake bring her down. “Adrian, I’ll go with them. Please, put the gun down.”

She slid off the seat to stand before Crenshaw, blocking Adrian’s shot.

“God
dammit!” He dropped the pistol, a look of pure fury on his face. She’d never seen him so angry.

“Smart move
, girl. Ain’t no reason to get him killed.” Crenshaw held the gun steady on her as two more men joined him, pistols pointed at her.

Crenshaw signaled his friend with his gun sti
ll aimed at Adrian. “Let’s do this, boys.” He eyed her with a wink. “Start walking, slow and easy, no sudden moves.”

The guy behind Adrian walked around the truck and shot out his front passe
nger side tire. “Stay here, boy. Don’t get no stupid ideas about following us.”

Adrian cursed quietly.

The man joined her and the gang as they all circled her, guns unwavering. She walked at the pace they set, casually, towards a black van that was hiding in the shadows across the street. With four men holding guns on her, she began to wonder if maybe they did know her reputation. One glance over her shoulder told her that Adrian was a powder keg. If these men did something to her in front of him, he’d surely explode, and probably get himself killed in the process.

Oh, Adrian, why didn’t you listen to me
?

* * * *

Adrian
held up his scope to watch them load her into a black full-size van as he counted down the seconds until he could do something, anything. “God, I’m such an idiot!”

As soon as they drove off, he
spun down the spare tire from under the back of his truck and rolled it over to the front passenger side. Three minutes later, sweating furiously from the Nascar tire-change routine, Adrian leaped into the cab of his truck to dig through his backpack and take inventory. Three full clips for the Berretta, one full clip for the Glock, one army issue knife, his bullet-proof vest, and only one box of spare 9mm rounds.

That would have to do.

He peeled out and hit the highway. He could hardly believe he’d been so stupid. The truth had been in front of him all along. Crenshaw had never quit the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas. Gang membership was for life. “I should have known! Fuck!”

He could already feel
need creeping back into his bones. The need for her. This must be what cigarette smokers feel, stuck on an airplane and unable to light up. Her words rang clear in his mind, replaying over and over,
“Adrian, we can never be separated. You don’t know the nature of our connection. You could die!”

Never. They could never be separated.

Adrian figured he had about an hour at most before they killed her or handed her off to someone else. He needed to get his ass in gear. Find her. His mind raced through all the possibilities until one idea gelled.

The Last Resort
.

There w
as a biker bar over on the east side where they might have taken her,
The Last Resort
. The place actually doubled as the local Aryan Brotherhood clubhouse. Crenshaw never mentioned it, but Adrian had picked up more than one ambulance call at that bar. One of the beer-bottle-over-the-head incidents had this guy talking up a storm about the AB, his Harley, and a string of government conspiracy theories, while Adrian cleaned him up.

If
they didn’t take Sam there, someone at the bar would know something. Somebody was gonna talk, one way or another. All Adrian’s old military habits returned … too easily. His heart pumped hard at the path that rolled out in front of him.

“I didn’t want to do this. God, if you’re there, if there is a god, you know I didn’t want this. I tried
, God, I really tried to be a better man.” He shook his head as he missed the exit and sped up to the next one so he could flip around and backtrack. “I guess it wasn’t meant to be. I’m never going to be the good guy. She told me to accept who I am, and she was right.”

Adri
an’s time in Iraq had made one thing crystal clear. Good guys don’t finish last, no, that was a fallacy. They never finish at all. The good guys went home in a body bag.

Time to accept
who he was, and be the man he was meant to be – a soldier, a killer, and if the shoe fits, a sociopath. The new rules of engagement?
Kill ‘em all
.

Alt
hough time seemed to stretch, slowing down to where each second took forever to pass, it was only a few minutes later when he pulled into the back alley behind The Last Resort. He wanted so badly to just go right through the front door, start taking motherfuckers down, left and right, until someone talked, but that wasn’t the way to handle this.

For the first time ever, he had an emotional investment, and it was driving him to the edge. He’d never cared this much about anyone or anything before
her
. Samantha had gotten inside his head, his soul, and his need for her was screwing with his ability to function with some detachment. He’d never felt so fucking attached in all his life.

Breathe in through the
nose, out the through the mouth. Clear the mind. Focus!

The manager. That’s who he needed,
someone in charge. He stripped off his dress shirt, strapped on his bulletproof vest, and slipped his leather jacket on over the top. He crammed a pistol in his right jacket pocket, and one behind his back. He paused in the open door to his truck, thinking of the things he would need to do. He tried not to think about how much he would enjoy it.

Fuck that. “This is gonna be fun, and I’m not holding back. Never again will I hold back.” She wanted him to be who he was, and that’s exactly what he planned to do.

He saw the L-shaped tire iron on the floor-board and a grin split his lips. When there’s no baton to be had, a tire iron is the next best thing. It’s actually better in some ways.

He stepped into the bar, tire-iron inside his jacket sleeve,
the curved end nestled in the palm of his hand. The place was dead, apart from a pair of losers playing pool and slurping on a shared pitcher of beer. He didn’t have time to handle this discreetly, but better there were only two, rather than a bar-f. Whatever they planned for Samantha, it was going down right now.

He went straight to the bart
ender. “Are you the manager?”

The guy grunted, and stroked his goatee. “For tonight.”
He squinted at Adrian. “What do you need?”

“
I got a few questions.”

The t
ire-iron slid out into his hand and swung around into a crushing blow to the side of the man’s head. He went down with another grunt. Up and over the counter, Adrian landed on the biker with both feet, one in his stomach, the other in his groin.

His squeal of pain indicated he’d probably be shitt
ing blood for a week, assuming he was smart enough to talk and survive the next few seconds. The man’s hands came up in defense, a poor defense against a tire iron. Adrian smashed right over the top of his arm, crushing through clavicle bone.

The clavicle doesn’t take much to break, but it sure hurts like a mot
herfucker. The guy was spitting as he howled in pain. Adrian let him catch his breath, as the two pukes on the other side of the room ran up to the bar. “Are you fucking crazy?”

The pistol in Adrian’s left hand stopped them from getting any closer. “Leave, now. Walk out that fucking door if you want to live.”

The first one held up his hands. “I’m gone.”

The second
one watched his friend bail then followed suit. “You got it man. Don’t shoot, we’re leaving.”

They headed straight out the door and didn’t look back.

Adrian’s pistol swung down to the man beneath him, pointed directly at his head. “You got ten seconds to tell me where she is.”

His face went through a few seconds of shock and finally settle
d on recognition. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Adrian’s pistol dropped to the biker’s
thigh and shot him. The man shuddered and screamed, trying to grab at Adrian’s legs, trying to reach for his own leg. A stream of obscenities flowed. Adrian gave him a few seconds to let it out.

“This is
the last time I’m going to ask. Where did they take La Reina? Speak now if you want to live.”

The biker
did not hesitate. “She’s at a warehouse on the east side!”

“Address.”