Page 141 of Caution to the Wind
Now, I sighed heavily and scrubbed a hand over my face before turning to face Wrath fully. “My wife kept secrets, and she was murdered for them. My daughter…” I paused to swallow the angst that rose in my throat like bile. “Kept secrets and was very nearly murdered. You think I got it in me to love another woman who’s as reckless as they come, who’d martyr herself in a fuckin’secondif it meant savin’ someone she loved, someone she just thought deserved to live more than she did, and she’s got a fuckin’lowopinion of herself, you’re wrong. Maybe it makes me a coward, or maybe it makes me smart. Either way, I don’t got it in me to take that risk. Life’s taught me not to.”
Wrath made a noise in the back of his throat before he nodded slowly and clamped a hand on my shoulder. “Yeah, man, okay. My bad. I was wrong. Thought I recognized that look on your face.”
“From what?”
“From the one I saw in the mirror every time I was around Kylie,” he admitted. “I thought for a second Mei was the love’a your life, but if you don’t feel the full-body fuckin’ compulsion to be with her no matter the madness, then I was wrong.”
I blinked at him as he slid off the stool and holstered his weapons. His gaze was pinned over my shoulder where I knew Mei was geared up and chattin’ with Boner and Curtains still. I could hear her laughin’.
“For her sake, then, you should put a stop to the games you’re playin’,” Wrath murmured. “’Cause I might’a been wrong ’bout the look on your face, but anyone with eyes can see she lives for you, and she’d die for you in a second.”
He turned and stomped away to where Zeus and Bat were porin’ over a map of the highway, leavin’ me shell-shocked and irritated.
“Fuckin’ bikers,” I muttered.
I wasin the convoy that tailed White Snake all the way from Vancouver, keepin’ far enough back he couldn’t see us, and the only reason we could track him was ’cause Curtains had hacked into his car system while we waited parked down the street from his company’s skyscraper on Burrard.
“ETA ten minutes,” Curtains relayed into my earpiece as I drove beside Dane and Bat along the curvin’ Sea to Sky corridor into the mountains. “Zeus and the guys will take out the front car. Axe-Man, Bat, and Dane, you got the last car. I’ll stop White Snake’s.”
I checked over my shoulder to make sure Mei was still with us, sandwiched between us at the front and Curtain driven in an unmarked SUV by Boner at her back. She looked sweet on the back of the Kawasaki decked out in a leather bodysuit and it’d taken everythin’ in me not to kiss the fuck outta her when I’d seen her come outta the clubhouse bathroom ready to roll out with us. ’Cause even though a part of me didn’t want her in danger, another part was turned on by her competency, and the fact she could ride with us, fight with us, and hold her own.
Bat revvin’ his engine beside me alerted me to the fact we were catchin’ up to the convoy, the last black SUV visible just disappearin’ around the bend a few dozen yards ahead of us.
Adrenaline surged through my blood, carbonated and heady. This was what I loved about the life, ridin’ on a bike, doin’ shit in our own way on our own terms after a lifetime of military directives and medical rules.
Ride free or die hard, The Fallen MC motto.
I gunned my Harley-Davidson Softail and sped forward, Bat and Dane flankin’ me as we raced through the dark night toward danger, reckless and wild.
We timed it just right, comin’ up on the SUV right after a curve in the road so they didn’t see us comin’ and have time to escape. Bat took one side and Dane the other, shootin’ out the tires while I stayed on their tail.
Up ahead, there was a screech of tires on asphalt and then a metallic crash as Zeus flashed his head beams from the side of the road, startling the driver to swerve into the waitin’ row of spikes we’d placed across the asphalt. A plume of smoke unfurled into the air from the crash site at the side of the mountain road.
The car in front of us lost control as it tried to race ahead on the rims of their shot-out wheels. It was drizzlin’, the rain makin’ the roads slick beneath our bikes but also the SUV. The crash obstructed the road and the two cars were forced to slow down as they strategized what to do about their predicament. Finally, Curtains worked his magic and the front SUV rolled to a stop, lights off, engine dead.
That was the problem with new cars. They were fuckin’ easy to hack.
I slowed down with the car, gettin’ ready to surround the last car with my brothers. Only, the sound of a revvin’ engine behind me alerted me to the fact Mei fuckin’ Zhen had a different plan.
I started to turn just as she gunned past me on her sleek crotch rocket, a blur of black swervin’ around the SUV in front of us, Bat at its side, and up to the car housin’ White Snake. My heart leapt into my fuckin’ throat as she gained speed inside of slowin’ down on approach. I opened my mouth to fuckin’ yell at her when she steadied her feet on the bike seat and carefully got into a crouch. A moment before impact, she lurched into the air, flyin’ at the SUV just as her bike slammed into its rear.
She landed with a hardsmackon the top roof, scramblin’ to get purchase so she wouldn’t fall right off the front. I watched in horror as she held up her hand, a signal to Curtains, and the sunroof slowly opened.
Shots fired so fuckin’ quickly, I couldn’t see what the fuck was happenin’. It prompted the Red Dragons in the last car to try their luck while we were caught out. They opened their windows and started firin’ at Bat and Dane.
Fear for Mei burned through me, leavin’ scorched earth in its wake. My imagination, forever fixated on the worst outcome after what’d happened to Cleo, envisioned Mei with a bullet between the eyes, elegant body slumped over the roof, cloaked in her own blood. Bile rose into my mouth, and my heart clenched so hard, I wondered if it’d ever beat again. Only the thought of gettin’ to her, savin’ her no matter what I had to do, prompted me forward.
I crouched, runnin’ around the side of the car beneath the triad shooter’s eyeline and firin’ off a shot into the window while Bat hit the fuckin’ deck to get outta Dodge. There was a curse inside the car as the shooter recoiled. I jumped up and slammed my body to the side of the vehicle beside the window, aimin’ my gun inside to fire off four more rounds.
Silence.
“You good, Demon?” Bat called out Dane’s club name.
“Just a graze,” he shouted back.
I risked a peek into the back seat, found the two men there dead and the driver twisted to face me, gun raised. He got a shot off, but the angle was bad and the bullet hit me in the vest over my upper chest. I took a step back from the impact, cursin’ but already squeezin’ off another shot. It didn’t hit him.
“On me,” I grunted to Bat before crouchin’ and makin’ my way to the front door. I unclipped my axe and swung it into the door handle, usin’ the wooden grip to open the broken door wide.