Damon:A Bad Boy MC Romance Novel(28)

She thought about how gently Damon touched her sometimes, and how hard  he pushed her other times. She chewed at the end of a strand of hair, an  old habit revived from its grave. She rolled the window up and thought  about a movie she'd seen once, about a party trapped on an island by a  storm. Then she thought about how nice everything felt after a storm had  passed.



Kennick watched the storm from the driver's seat, where he kept a steady  pace towards Miami. They broke through Pompano Beach and into Fort  Lauderdale. If they were lucky, they'd be there in less than an hour.  But the storm looked like it would make them unlucky.



In the back, Kim and Ricky stared out opposite windows, and Mina sat  with her knees nearly touching the divider between the driver and  passenger seats. She had a hand on each knee, her green eyes dead set  ahead. Cristov ground his teeth in the passenger seat. He'd told Ricky  not to come. Just like Kennick had told Kim not to come. But they'd  known from the start it was a losing battle. They should never have told  the girls at all.         

     



 



No one talked about how ugly the storm looked. What would be the use of  talking about it? It was coming, whether they wanted it to or not.



Jenner didn't know about the storm. He was locked up tight in the back  of an unmarked van, and had been for days  –  at least, it seemed like  days. He knew that the few times he'd seen daylight, the sky had looked  like morning and then afternoon and then morning again. They'd chosen to  bring him along, after all, instead of trusting him with the few young  recruits left behind at the clubhouse.



He was as much a prisoner as he'd ever been, but he was closer to  freedom than he'd ever get. The variables, though  –  they were a  nuisance. What if's spiraled through his mind in a dizzying array. He  had all the time in the world to consider each and every one of them,  too.



The men driving the van stayed a safe distance behind the bikes up  front. They wouldn't crowd their brothers in the Miami traffic. They  knew where they were going. They worried about the storm, though. Riding  in the rain was a bad time. Their numbers were small enough without  adding this kind of risk to it all.



Roper rode forward, towards the clouds, towards the storm, not caring  about what conditions he'd have to ride through. He was going to get  revenge for Rig. He was going to show that gypsy fuck and his inbred  family what happened when you fucked with the Steel Dragons.



Curly Gottlieb glanced out the window. He saw the storm, grunted at it.  Another day, another fucking thunderstorm. He hated Florida. But it was  cheap, and there were enough scumbags that he didn't feel like he stood  out, walking down the street. He fingered the switchblade sewn into the  waistband of his shorts; the threads would give easily when pulled. At  the right moment. Always at the right moment. Curly needed to trust  himself to find the right moment. He needed the money. That was all he  cared about.



Slowly, all the parties began to converge. The location of the fight was  not the center of the storm, as poetry would want it to be. It was  actually quite a ways south of the center of the storm. But life and  poetry rarely converge. And when they do, that's when things are at  their most dangerous.





31





Tricia watched the door to the gym until she saw Damon emerge, then  started the engine. She kept her distance as she followed him through  the strange streets; he kept checking his phone, presumably for  directions, which meant he didn't notice the car moving just a bit too  slowly a block or so behind. She hoped that he wouldn't make any sudden  turns, and to her relief, he didn't. She followed him until he turned  down an alleyway beside a boarded-up building with no signage on it.

The other side of the building had a pull-through for cars. She turned  down it, saw a parking lot stretching out behind the building. There  were plenty of cars there, so Tricia felt confident speeding up and  pulling into a space, hoping that Damon wouldn't pay it any mind. He  glanced in her direction as she parked, but nothing registered. He was  focused on the fight.

Tricia, for that matter, was too focused on watching Damon enter through  the back door to see the car pulling up beside hers. She was still  looking in the opposite direction when she opened the door and began to  slide out; one foot had just hit pavement when she finally noticed the  five sets of eyes staring at her.

"What the … " she said.

"Where is he?" Cristov asked through the rolled-down passenger side window. "Where's that dumb meathead fuck?"

Ricky, in the backseat, leaned forward and gently smacked the back of Cristov's head.

"What are you doing here?" Tricia asked, one hand still on the door of her car. "How did you … "

"It took a lot of calls, and a lot of money, for us to find you guys,"  Cristov said, opening his door and getting out of the car. "Where's  Damon?"

Tricia rose to meet him, watching as Kennick, Kim, Mina, and Ricky all  piled out of the car, vaguely reminiscent of clowns  –  minus any  semblance of jolliness. She didn't get a chance to answer Cristov's  question before Ricky lunged at her, wrapping her in a skinny-armed hug.

"We were so worried," Ricky said. "You can't just go gallivanting off into … "

"Ricky," Tricia said, returning the hug. "I'm sorry you were worried."

She pulled away, though, and looked her friend dead in the eye.

"But I can just go gallivanting off," she said. "I'm an adult, not a pound puppy."

Kim joined the two girls in their embrace, pulling Tricia away from Ricky to hug her.

"You have to tell us where next time," Kim said. "That's what Ricky means."         

     



 

"Alright, alright," Cristov said, growing more agitated by the moment.  "She's safe, she's fine, great. Damon's not, though. Where is he?"

"What do you mean Damon's not?" Tricia said, her tone sharpening, looking at Cristov with her arms still around Kim.

"This is a set up," Kennick said, stepping in front of Cristov. "Whoever  Damon's here to fight is on the Steel Dragons' payroll, and he's going  to fight dirty. Damon doesn't know, right?"

Tricia's eyes widened, her jaw falling slack. She shook her head; she  couldn't imagine that Damon did know. Steel Dragons. Those men. Those  men who'd …

She swallowed her fear. She wasn't the one in danger this time. Damon was.

"So where is he? We need to get to him before he goes out there and gets himself killed," Cristov said.

Tricia's stomach felt like a cold, icy pit. She'd had a bad feeling about this fight, but for far different reasons.

"He went in the back," she said, pointing to the metal door that Damon had knocked on and then disappeared into.

"Let's go," Cristov said, pushing past the small crowd and stalking  across the parking lot, Kennick quick on his heels. Tricia made to  follow them, but felt Kim's hand on her arm, pulling her back. Mina was  following Kennick, but looking back over her shoulder at the three  women.

"We should let them deal with it," Kim said softly. "They know how to deal with him best … "

Tricia shook herself free, smiled softly at Kim.

"I don't know about that, Kim," she said. "I don't know if that's true anymore."

She trotted off behind Mina, leaving Kim and Ricky to look at each other in surprise.

"Fucking gypsy magic," Ricky said, shaking her head slowly. "How do they do it?"

"If you figure it out, let me know," Kim said, leaning back against the  hot metal of the car. "We can bottle it, make a fortune off love  potions."

Cristov banged on the metal door, relentlessly. Kennick watched Tricia  approach, wondering what had happened between her and his brother on  their long trip down the coast. If you gave him three guesses, he'd be  right on the first try. Good, he thought, if we can't get through to  him, maybe she can …

"I'm going around the front," Mina said, backing away from the door. "If we can't get in through the back … "

"Be careful," Kennick warned, not entirely comfortable with the idea of  his little sister walking, solo, into an underground fighting crowd. But  she was already around the corner and gone. There was still no response  from the other side of the metal door, despite Cristov's unrelenting  pounding. He shouted Damon's name to punctuate each bang, his fist  reddening at the same rate as his face. The storm was almost on top of  them, a strong wind now blowing stray papers across the parking lot.

"Did he tell you what this was all about?" Kennick asked, turning to  Tricia. She opened her mouth, feeling compelled to tell the truth.  Kennick had that way about him that inspired honesty. But she knew the  story wasn't hers to tell. She shook her head.

"I was just along for the ride," she said, looking away quickly. Kennick  narrowed his eyes, sensing her dishonesty, but just at that moment, the  door opened. Cristov nearly fell forward into the dank, sweat-scented  room on the other side.