Page 56

Hands snake down my arms again, this time daring to trail across my chest.
“Stop,” I mutter, pulling away, stepping closer to the bar, but I trip over my own feet and I’m so tired.
Why am I so tired?
“Aww come on, I thought we were having fun baby,” a voice whispers low in my ear.
I slap his hands away again and this time I feel an arm around my waist.
“S-stop,” I groan, but my knees feel really weak and I’m leaning against him for support at this point because I can’t stand on my own two feet. There are people all around me but nobody stops, everyone just keeps dancing like I’m not being accosted right beside them.
“Stop,” I groan and my whole body falls slack.
A loud voice cuts through the music, but I don’t recognize it.
Suddenly the support is pulled out from under me and I drop to my knees, scraping them on the rough floor of the club. The voices are muffled, but from my peripheral, I see a body drop beside me. The flashing lights make me nauseous, and I feel like I’m going to throw up.
With all the chaos, people still dance around us like nothing is happening.
What is happening?
Is this all in my head?
I’m so goddamn sleepy. I could just lay down right here. But the floor is sticky and hard, so I begin to crawl my way to the bar. It feels like I’m using all my strength to drag myself out of the mess of feet and legs that surround me.
Just as I pull myself up against a barstool, threading my arm around the legs of the stool, I feel a set of large hands wrap around me.
No. No. No.
Put me down, put me down please.
I’m being lifted now, and suddenly everything is… upside down?
We’re moving to god knows where, and I have no ability to fight. Instead I just watch the room spin until it all goes dark.
Chapter eighteen
Travis
Pulling my bike up to the docks, I cut off the engine just as Zeke pulls up beside me in his pickup truck. Sliding my helmet off, I climb off my bike, set the helmet on the handlebars, and walk around the front of Zeke’s truck just as he’s exiting the driver’s side door.
Our drugs come in through the docks, because the port authority is in the Brotherhood’s pocket. Ryker had dirt on them all, and if I were a better man, I’d tear up the blackmail. But I’m not. I may not be a psychotic piece of shit, but I have an empire to run and people in this cesspool of a city that rely on Brotherhood paychecks to keep their families fed and a roof over their heads.
So I feed the fucking machine. Keep it running.
“Okay, so what are we doing here?” Zeke asks, “What are the areas of concern. I know you mentioned security but…”
“When Riot and I were clearing up the organization, some shipments went missing here at the docks. I’m pretty positive we killed everyone involved, but pretty positive isn’t fucking enough. I need eyes everywhere Zeke. Tell me you can do that.”
Crossing his arms over his chest, he looks around the docks. Shifting his weight, he moves to run his thumb across his chin.
“Well?”
“I mean, there’s not a lot of places, not a lot of power sources, but I could tap into some of those lines over there,” he points to the poles just before the dock.
“Honestly, there is not much I can do about the docks themselves other than making sure we have some serious high-end cameras so we can capture a quality picture. But that’s gonna be pricey, I -”
“Money isn’t an object,” I interrupt, shoving my hands into the pockets of my jeans.