Page 25 of Lockout (The Vikings MC: Tucson Chapter #11)

Lockout

I sat up in bed later that morning when I heard my front door open. Glancing over at Keely, I grabbed my Glock from the nightstand drawer and got out of bed.

Keely was asleep on her stomach, her cheek pressed against the pillow. She didn’t even twitch as I tugged on a pair of sweats and left the room.

I kept my gun pointed at the floor, because the odds of someone making it past the guards and everyone else was slim to none. Sure enough, Rip was standing next to my door.

“Sorry, Lock,” he said in a low voice.

He knew Keely was still here. Hell, they all probably knew it. Otherwise he wouldn’t be keeping it down.

“No problem,” I told him. “What’s up?”

“You’re going to want to see this.”

“What’s wrong?”

I glanced over my shoulder and saw Keely standing there, in nothing but my t-shirt, her arms crossed over her chest. There she was, barefoot, hair a mess, and looking incredibly vulnerable.

It just brought out the beast in me. I wanted to take her back into my bedroom and keep her there while I took care of every possible threat to her.

“Nothing,” I told her, even though I didn’t actually know what was wrong.

“Just something I need to take care of.”

She gave a hesitant nod, then smiled over at Riptide. “Would you like some coffee, Rip?” she asked as she stepped into my kitchen.

I left them to talk and went back into my bedroom to get dressed.

I was finishing lacing up my boots when I smelled the coffee in the air.

It made me wonder how many of my guys were going to be functional this morning.

Rip didn’t look too bad, but I knew most of the men had fully let loose last night.

Keely looked up from the steaming cup of coffee in front of her on the table when I came out of the bedroom.

“I don’t know when I’ll be back,” I told her, shrugging on my cut. “You should go back to bed.” The clock on the stove read nine a.m., but we’d woken up much earlier than that.

I bit back the satisfied grin as I remembered exactly what we’d been doing around five this morning. Then we’d fallen back asleep wrapped up in each other. I wasn’t sure I’d ever been more relaxed than I was right now.

“Okay,” she said.

Rip was watching us with a calculating look. I just scowled at him. “We going, or what?”

He was fighting back a grin, but he nodded toward Keely and left my apartment.

Right. It shouldn’t take my brother subtly pointing out how to take care of my woman for me to realize what I needed to do. It’d been too damn long since I’d been in a relationship. I wasn’t used to this shit anymore.

I crossed the room and used my finger and thumb to tilt Keely’s chin higher so I could lay a kiss on her lips. When we broke apart, I studied her tired eyes. “Go back to sleep. Feel free to dig around in here for breakfast when you wake back up, even if I’m not here.”

She nodded, then her eyes strayed toward the door. “What’s going on?”

Of course she would want to know. She had a keen and inquisitive mind. I liked that about her. “I don’t know. Rip didn’t say.” Running my hand over her hair, I tugged on the end of a strand, pulling her focus back to me. “I’ll tell you later.”

“Be safe,” she said. There was worry building in her expression.

“We don’t even know it’s anything bad,” I reminded her.

“Riptide woke you up early after a night of partying,” she pointed out. “It’s bad. Otherwise he wouldn’t have brought it to you until much later.” She paused then grinned. “The guys are going to be hurting.”

I chuckled. “Yeah, they are.” Leaning forward, I kissed her again, then turned and walked out the door. It would be too damn easy to scoop her up and take her back to bed. To spend the whole day there. That’d been my plan for once we woke up until Rip had showed.

Keely was right. The only reason he’d be waking me up after a night like last night was for something bad. He didn’t say anything as we walked down the hallway and down the stairs. He didn’t stop until we were in the meeting room where I always held church.

Sitting down in my chair, I watched as he turned on the TV and tapped on his laptop. My eyes narrowed on the TV as a photo came up. “Goddamn it, is that Keely’s house?”

“Yeah,” Rip said, anger and guilt in his voice. “Code and Bolo headed over there this morning after I checked the cameras.”

“Shit,” I muttered, staring as he flicked through more photos.

We’d spent time guarding her house at first, but when nothing happened, we’d left that up to the cameras.

It was a risk that they might go there, but I figured they wouldn’t bother since she wasn’t there.

They had to know she wasn’t living there.

They weren’t fucking stupid. Which meant Hangman had his guys do this just to fuck with her.

He was probably trying to draw her out. I wasn’t about to let that happen.

“It happened around two a.m.,” Rip said. “Cameras caught the action, so now I’ll be able to identify some of the LoS’s crew and look into their backgrounds.”

Rip had wired up the whole block with cameras and sensors the day after I’d found out Keely was back in town. “Could you make anyone out?” That was a mistake on their part. Dumbasses.

“Yeah.” He clicked the laptop and the photo was black and white but clear enough to see. It was two men coming through the back door. They had ball caps and heavy jackets on to try to hide themselves, but there was no hiding from Riptide.

“Come on,” I said, pushing out of my chair.

Thirty minutes later, I was inside Keely’s house, scowling at the walls. The fuckers had written shit all over them. Some were pretty uninspired, like bitch and cunt. But the one on the living room wall read, ‘we’ll find you’. “Is that blood?” I asked, my lip curling at the copper scent in the air.

“Yeah,” Priest said, rubbing a hand back and forth over the top of his head. “Fuck, I’m sorry, Lock.”

“There was a chance this could happen,” I said with a shrug.

I’d spoken to Keely about it before I’d stopped posting guards here.

She knew the risks as well. Clapping a hand on his shoulder, I shook my head.

“Don’t worry about it. We’ll get it cleaned up.

I really didn’t think they were going to hit her place since they hadn’t done anything up until now. ”

“They obviously picked up on the fact that she hasn’t been staying here. So for them to come here is just…fucking petty,” Rip said, motioning toward the message.

“Yeah, well, Hangman is a pro at getting inside people’s heads,” I said with a shrug.

“They want her to come out of hiding,” Code said, his arms crossed over his chest. He hadn’t said much before now, but we all nodded at him. “Fuck that,” he said in response to our agreement. “She’s not going anywhere.”

I grinned at Code and gave him a slap on the back.

The fact that fuckers like the LoS threatening women brought out that protective side in him, was the exact reason we were working with the Saint’s Outlaws.

They had damn good men. Code was young, around twenty-five, but he was proving why the Phoenix crew had patched him in.

A low whistle split the air and I turned my head and watched as Warrant walked through the front door. “Well fuck me,” he said, staring at the mess they’d made of the place. “They tossed this place like feds trying to find a joint.”

We all chuckled at that. The FBI was notorious about executing a search warrant and leaving the place a wreck afterward.

This was obviously worse than the feds, but the joke was needed.

Especially when I thought about having to tell Keely what these fuckers had done to her place.

It didn’t matter that she knew it was a possibility.

The reality was going to be difficult for her.

They’d sliced and diced her couch. The recliner cushion was spilling its contents out onto the floor. Her mattress was soaked in gasoline. And they dumped buckets of blood randomly on the wooden floors. There was more, but I was too fucking pissed to catalogue it all.

The only thing they hadn’t done was break the dishes, because that would have made too much noise. They didn’t want any of Keely’s neighbors to be alerted that they’d been here.

Rip shook his head and looked around. “Keely’s going to be upset.”

“Yeah,” I muttered. “But she was the one who made the decision. She didn’t want me to keep posting guys here and take the chance that we were short-handed at the clubhouse. She’ll understand.”

“Wish I’d been watching the cameras like I normally do,” he said with a sheepish grin.

“We all deserved to take last night,” I replied. “None of us knew this was going to happen.”

“Looks like Hangman has gotten whatever he needed to squared away,” Priest said, “and now he and his crew are coming after her.”

Gritting my teeth, I thought about what might have happened if Keely had still been here when they made their move. I clenched my fists, trying to keep hold of my temper.

“Don’t worry, Lock,” Warrant said. “They come after her and all they’ll find is us.”

“Thanks, Warrant,” I told him. “Get with Ruck and make a schedule for the apartments and school and the clubhouse. Make sure Ruck’s guys are on a rotation.”

“What about the ranch?” Priest asked.

“My guys have got the ranch,” Warrant said. “At least until you need us to go beat some ass. Want us to watch over the house, too?”

“They’ve already seen that she’s not here,” Rip pointed out.

“Yeah, but if they can’t find her they might come back,” I told him. “Yeah, set up some of your guys here, too,” I said, answering Warrant’s question. I met Priest and Rip’s gazes. “Leave Code here with Warrant, you two meet me back at the clubhouse.”

“Church?” Rip asked.

“Church,” I said in confirmation.

By the time I got back to the clubhouse they’d woken up the others.

I’d taken a longer way home because I needed a few minutes to cool off.

The fact that these fuckers had gone into my woman’s home last night and trashed it made me want to kill someone.

They obviously knew I no longer had guards out front, so there was no doubt in my mind they knew we were involved in this.

“Time to stop fucking around,” I said, as I walked into church. Everyone looked like hell. Except Rip and Priest. Hellfire barely had his eyes open and Ricochet winced as I spoke. Smokehouse was pillowing his head in his arms on the table.

Toxic and Butcher didn’t look quite as bad, but that was just because they were used to downing large quantities of alcohol and still functioning afterward.

“Toxic,” I said. “Is Billie’s grandfather moved in?”

“Yeah, as of last night. He wasn’t thrilled about it, but Pops took him under his wing and they spent the whole night drinking and bitching about me. Pretty sure Billie joined them for most of the time,” he said with a grin. “She and Robert aren’t thrilled I made them come here.”

“They’d rather stay at the ranch and risk the LoS coming after them there?” Idaho asked, speaking a lot quieter than normal.

“Happened before,” Static slurred. His left eye closed in a blink a split second before his right.

I held back a laugh. These fuckers had gone hard last night and now they were paying for it. “Everyone stays here,” I ordered. “Hush, get the word out to the girls’ families to be on the lookout. These fuckers won’t likely go for them at first but when we make this difficult for them, they might.”

Hush nodded and rubbed a hand over his face. “Will do, Prez.”

I chuckled and looked around the room. “We’ll meet later tonight to come up with a plan.”

“We can do it now,” Toxic offered, Butcher nodding along with him.

“Yeah, can do it now,” Smoke echoed, sounding like a bullfrog was lodged in his throat.

“No. Later is fine. You guys go back to sleep.” My eyes met Idaho’s. “Can you hang back?”

“Sure.”

Everyone else got up and trudged out of the meeting room, leaving me and my twin alone.

“Can you get one of those construction crews over to Keely’s house? I’ll pay for the work.”

His brows shot up. “Yeah, no problem. What happened to her house?” he asked.

I hadn’t told any of them about what had happened yet, though they knew something must have to have me dragging them into church after a night of partying. It was why they were offering to stay awake and work hung over.

“Those fuckers did a number on it,” I told him. “I’d rather have the majority of it cleaned up before she sees it.”

“Understandable.”

“You happen to have the number of a hazmat cleanup crew?”

His brows shot up again. “It’s that fucking bad?”

“Bastards dumped blood everywhere. And soaked her furniture with gasoline.”

“Shit. Yeah, I’ll get Andrew on finding someone. He’s got contacts for everything. I’ll even get an interior decorator in there.”

Andrew was his assistant. The one he was paying mass amounts of money to basically run shit while Idaho was here with us. “He going to say anything to anyone about why we need a hazmat team?”

Idaho snorted. “Fuck no. Andrew knows how to keep his mouth shut.”

“Good. Let me know who to pay. See if you can get a rush put on it.”

“Yeah, no problem.”

“Thanks, Idaho,” I said as he started to stand.

He froze for a brief moment before finishing the movement and nodding. “No problem. I’ll get it taken care of before I pass back out.” He gave me a devious grin. “Shouldn’t you be getting back to bed, too? Chicks get pissed when you leave them alone for too long.”

I laughed and shook my head. Everyone was too hung over to give me shit about Keely, but once they were feeling better I’d be getting more of the teasing. “Fuck off.”

Idaho left me alone to go back to brooding. I was pissed that the LoS had escalated before I had the chance. It was my damn fault that Keely’s house looked like it did, and that we were now playing catch up. I’d fix both problems real soon.