Rain Shadow(24)

My mind darted around to the different ways we had out of this, but there was nothing solid. Once we drove off, we could only hope that the guy hadn’t recognized Dex. My friend wasn’t always known for his intuition. He had always been an ‘act before you think’ type of person. I parked the truck and looked back in the mirror. Dex looked grim as he stiffly carried the cargo to the truck. He didn’t need intuition this time. This whole fucking thing had gone awry.

The one-eyed man acted as if everything was going as planned. The truck was filled. I climbed back into the driver’s seat. Dex climbed into the passenger seat, and the two Bent for Hell guys climbed in back with the cargo. The one-eyed man stayed behind. I watched him in the side mirror. He waited for us to get down to the end of the road and then went inside the old house.

Dex didn’t say a word. He kept his eyes straight ahead and so did I. The plan was to drive the drugs fifty miles to a warehouse where some of the Hell crew were waiting to unload. Once emptied, Dex and I were to drive off with the courier truck. And as the truck pulled through the gate, the other agents would storm the place in their armored SUVs.

Fifty miles seemed fucking long all of a sudden. We could hear the two men talking in the back but it seemed like a casual chat. After about ten minutes on the road, Dex relaxed some, and I released my white knuckled grip on the steering wheel.

Neither of us were in the mood for conversation, but I knew we were both thinking the same thing— let this be over soon. The two lane highway was nearly deserted, and I was just as glad not to have a lot of traffic to deal with. A cell phone rang in the back of the truck, but neither of us paid it much mind.

“How are you doing?” I asked quietly.

“I’ve been better.”

The sliding door to the back slid open. I glanced up in the rearview. It was the guy with the skeleton tattoo. He held the phone with his ghoulish hand. He was just finishing his conversation. He shot me a cold glare in the mirror. “You’ve got it, Boss,” he said and hung up.

“Change of plans,” he said sharply. Dex flinched and I had to work hard to keep my cool. “We’re not going to the warehouse after all.”

I looked up in the mirror at him and forced a casual tone. “Uh, our boss said we had to stick to the coordinates you gave him. Otherwise we’re not going to get paid, and I can’t afford—”

The cold barrel of a gun pressed against my temple. “You don’t have a boss anymore, Narc, but you might want to talk to the man upstairs cuz you’re going to be meeting him real soon.”

“Fuck.” Dex stared down at the tattoo on his arm. We’d all had a good laugh about it when he’d gotten it. He’d even scored a few dates because of that tattoo. That fucking zipper tattoo.





Chapter 8

Luke

Gunner managed to hit every pothole in the road, and my head smacked the metal wall of the truck each time. The lump on my head didn’t help. The ridge Dreygon had left on my flesh hurt plenty too. But none of it mattered. Angel had come out to see me this morning, and her plea to get her out of the compound played over and over in my head.

Strangely enough, every time I did something that I was sure would get me strung up in the dungeon or even killed, Dreygon shocked the hell out of me by showing appreciation for it. In his own creepy way, he seemed to like me. Gaining his trust was key. It was the easiest way out of the compound, other than dying. I’d gone through an escape scenario in my head a dozen times. It had all started with gaining enough of Dreygon’s confidence that he would allow Angel and me to drive out of the compound together on some brief excursion. From there I’d contact the agency tell them where we were and they could come pick us up. It would be messy from that point on but with my protection, I was sure I could keep Angel safe.

Keeping my true identity hidden hadn’t been a problem yet. Up until the night before, I’d been cautious and there’d been no real missteps. But rage had gotten the best of me. The asshole had been bleeding badly from his nose but his eyes had definitely rounded as I leaned down to threaten him. It was hard to know if it had been my warning or the face of a dead man that had stunned him. My only hope was that the two clubs had little or no communication. It was obvious from Dreygon’s reaction, to the two men invading what he’d obviously deemed his personal watering hole, that there was no love lost between the clubs.

The truck slowed and then turned sharply. The lack of windows suddenly made me sympathize with the lizards I used to carry around in shoeboxes. The motor turned off, and the driver and passenger doors opened and shut. For a second my heart beat faster thinking that Bent for Hell might already have alerted Dreygon. Maybe I was being taken to a far away location to be shot and dumped. The doors to the back swung open and Jericho motioned me out. There was nothing murderous in his expression. For now, it seemed, I was still part of the crew.