Risky and Wild(100)
She gets my message, but it's too late. The man behind the sofa takes a shot at her, hitting her in the right shoulder, sending her staggering back across the faded rug. Agent Garza isn't far behind, lifting his pistol and firing several shots. The moment the last one goes off, he slumps forward and rolls past Buzz Hair down the last two cement steps, his gun sliding across the pavement to lay next to me.
“Miss Rentz,” Heather says, blood dripping down the sleeve of her beige suit jacket. “Are you hurt?” She drags the gag from my mouth with a shaking left hand; she doesn't let go of the gun in her right, pausing to reload only after she's pulled a Swiss army knife off the keys in her pocket and cut my ropes.
Upstairs, the sound of boots moving across the floor sends chills down my spine. Without hesitation, I reach for Agent Garza's gun. It's a semi, a nice solid weight in my hand. I check the magazine and find six rounds left. José must be a careful shot.
“How many men are there?” Agent Shelley asks me as I stand up and try not to stagger; my feet are still numb and my head is pounding. Also, I'm pretty sure I'm deaf. Gunfire indoors is not a pleasant thing to experience.
“I have no idea. I only saw five, but …” I decide how much I want to add to this. My decision: all of it. “There were members of Mile Wide here, too. They left, but I don't know for how long.”
Without having to talk about it, Heather and I move over to José and kneel down next to him. His pulse is faint, and he's bleeding like crazy, but there's not a lot of time to deal with his injuries. Shouts in Spanish sound from upstairs and a few radios crackle down here, attached to the dead men's bodies.
“Help me move him,” Agent Shelley says with a grim expression on her face. Her lipstick though, it's still perfect. I nod, leaning down to help her move her partner's body. I don't really want to touch the guy, unsure of the damage we could be doing to him, but then again, his only other option is to lay in the center of the room and possibly get shot again.
We make it around the ratty sofa in time for the door to swing inward again. I hadn't noticed Heather had even closed it, but now I'm glad she had. It gives us that extra millisecond of advantage.
I kneel on the floor, lifting both arms up, the gun held steady in my hands, and think of Royal. I imagine the cool, calm calculation in his face when he aimed his gun through the broken window of the truck and took down several Mile Wide guys, each with a single shot.
Easy, slow, calm.
I have to swallow bile down when I realize that I'm going to have to kill people today. Like you already killed Mia. A weird biting pain nips at my conscious, but I slap it back. Lucky people get to be worried and depressed about their own morality; dead people don't have the luxury.
Shots spray the room from the top of the stairs, but the angle isn't right for us to be hit down here behind the sofa—although I'm absolutely positive that I'm now deaf. I don't look at Heather, don't take my eyes off the staircase.
Several men move down the steps in quick succession, guns out, radios buzzing. They don't stop to check on their fallen brothers, kicking Buzz Hair's corpse out of the way as I suck in a breath and ready myself to take the shot.
Choosing the man on the far right, I aim carefully, between his eyes; I don't close my own as I pull the trigger.
The slough of mud beneath my bike splatters against the trunk of a massive old-growth redwood, the circumference of its trunk about the same length as the front of that fucking house. Good thing my bloody brakes are in order because I almost splatter against the deceptively soft looking bark myself.
The lush quiet of the forest explodes into the staccato whimpers of gunfire as I turn sharp and let my bike go out from under me. It's a planned fall, one that sends all six hundred pounds of my 66 Bobber sliding through the mud like a chrome bowling ball.
The forward momentum, the slick wetness of the earth, it lends for a perfect storm. The Bobber crashes into the trucks that are parked across the driveway like roadblocks, offering a split second of distraction for me and my Wolves.
I roll through the mud as my own momentum drags me towards the waiting vehicles. I don't bother to get to my feet as the gunfire starts up again. Instead, I use my bobber as cover to get around the front of the black truck on the left. My Ruger GP100 slides into my hand like a lover as I aim around the front wheel and shoot one of the men in the side of his head.
A spatter of red and pink mists in the air, dampened by the droplets of rain that fall from the thick branches above, lit strangely by the truck's headlights. The guy that drops looks vaguely familiar to me. Must be one of the actual, unpaid members of Mile Wide. Well, before the cartel started padding their pockets. They're not even an MC to me anymore, just a gang of well paid thugs.