Page 33 of The Biker’s Second Chance (Chrome Creed MC #2)

DOCK OF WOMEN

SPIKE

S hit happens fast when there's a plan to follow. I have to be careful. If I I play this wrong it could all go bad. The last thing I want to do is lose another brother. The sting of losing Zero is still too fresh.

Right now, everyone is still focused on what we are going to do about Xavier, I don't think anyone has really let it sink in that Zero is gone.

I know if someone else goes down, the despair could literally breaks us.

I am halfway to the door when she steps in front of me.

Jayne plants herself in the hallway, hair mussed from sleep, my shirt hanging off one shoulder.

Her eyes are swollen as if she were just crying, but there is steel under the softness.

The clubhouse is a low hum behind us. Boots thudding.

Metal clacking. Guns being checked. It smells like oil, coffee, and nerves.

“Move, Jayne.” My voice comes out rougher than I intend.

“Make me,” she says, chin up. “You are not leaving me behind.”

I drag a hand through my hair. I want to argue. I want to put her back in my bed and barricade the door. But my brothers are already loading up, and Leo is looking at me like time is gasoline and I am holding a match.

“ Do you have any idea what we’re walking into,” I squint my eyes at her. I don't know how much she knows.

“Yes. And I know what we are walking out with.” She reaches for my kutte, fist hooked in the leather like she dares me to shake her off. “Those women will not trust a swarm of armed men in leather and guns. They will trust me. You need me.”

She is right and I know it.

I move closer, lower my voice. I need her to understand how serious this is.

If I'm worried about her I'm not going to be able to do what I need to do.

“You ride in the trucks. Rumble in the first, Tella in the second. You do not get out until I say. If bullets start flying, you drop to the floorboard and keep your head down. I swear to God, Jaynie, if you do not follow my lead tonight I will handcuff you to my bed and throw away the key.”

Her mouth twitches. “Promises, promises.”

“Not a promise. A warning.”

Her palm presses flat to my chest. My heart kicks under her hand like a beast trying to get out. She always brings out the deepest parts of me. Sometimes good, sometimes bad.

“Then give me one promise. You do not die on me.”

I take her wrist and squeeze. “I do not plan on it.”

She nods once. “Then let’s go save some girls.”

Out in the lot, engines crack to life. The night air is cold enough to bite. Leo eases up to my shoulder as we mount. “You sure about this, brother?”

“No. But waiting is killing us faster.”

He studies me for one beat, then grunts. “Then we ride.”

We roll out in a staggered column. Bikes up front.

Two box trucks behind with the back doors pulled down, Rumble driving the first, Tella the second, Jayne riding shotgun with Rumble.

I catch a glimpse of her in the side mirror, hands white-knuckled on the dash, lips moving like she is praying or cussing or both.

***

The road thins into the port district. Cranes loom like iron skeletons against a dark-blue sky. The shipyard is a maze of corrugated warehouses and stacked containers stenciled with numbers and rust. It smells like salt, diesel, and rotten fish.

I lift a hand. The column fans out and idles in the shadows.

“Last chance to rethink this,” Leo voice cracks through my in helmet headset.

“We are done reacting,” I answer. “We hit hard. We hit fast. Then we get the hell out with whoever is breathing.”

Silence. Then the clicks of mics opening one by one. Lash. Creek. Torch. Virus. Rumble. Tella.

Ready.

“Move.”

We breach as one. Two bikes tear the chain-link and drag it wide.

The trucks nose through. We kill lights and coast into the belly of the yard.

Dogs bark somewhere to our left. There is a guard shack ahead with a yellow bulb buzzing over the door.

The place is so much bigger than I thought it was.

Creek did a drive by earlier just to get a lay of the land but I never anticipated that it would be this much space.

Fortunately, it looks as if most of the space isn't in use.

That's good for us. Less of a chance for someone to sneak away.

Lash shoots first. The glass shatters and blows out. One guard drops with a thud. The other bolts for the radio and gets folded in half by a round that nearly takes his spine out of his back. He drops face-first, twitching in a lake of his own blood.

Alarms bark deeper in the yard. Too late.

We sprint.

Suddenly, the rolling door squeals half open. Light spilling out in ugly stripes. Voices inside. Men roaring and running in our direction like they are auditioning for the next big war movie.

We rush the gap.

The first Burning Soul I meet is a thick-necked bastard with a tire iron and a swastika tucked behind his ear.

He swings for my head. I duck, drive my blade into his thigh, and feel it kiss bone.

He screams. I yank the knife free and he sprays the floor with a fan of blood that looks almost black under the dim lights.

He slips in his own mess and goes down hard.

I finish it with a boot to the skull that breaks something important. His legs kick twice, then stop.

Gunfire tears the air. Muzzle flashes strobe the world white. Someone’s AK coughs ragged, then jams. There is shouting in Spanish, then in English, then in the kind of panic every language shares.

“Right flank,” Leo barks. “Move.”

We split. Creek and Torch peel left, popping controlled bursts that turn a steel drum.

The air around it rains with red blood and the man behind it slouches to the ground.

Virus shoulders a shotgun and fires. The blast tears a guard’s chest open from nipple to sternum.

Ribs shine slick through the gap like white marble.

He looks down at the hole like he can not quite believe it, then sits hard and does not move again.

Then all at once the rumbling thunder of gunfire is over. No one comes running out, there are no more battle cries. It's just done. Done for the Burning Souls but not for us.

I clear a row of crates and see them.

Cages.

Eight of them in a row, dog-kennel style, chain-link and padlocks.

Inside are women of every age and color, crammed together, knees to chests, eyes huge.

A teenage girl clutches a stuffed bear that is more patch than fabric.

A woman with a shaved head rocks and hums. One cage has a bucket for a toilet. The floor is slick with piss.

To the right, three mattresses sit on pallets. Two women are tied wrist and ankle, spread-eagle, duct tape over their mouths, mascara raked down their faces like claw marks. One mattress is empty except for a coil of rope and a belt.

There are others in the shadows. Curled in corners. Wrapped in blankets that smell like mildew. One is so small I think she is a child until she looks up and her eyes are older than mine.

The sound they make when they see us is animal. Whimpers. Hisses. One tries to bite me when I get close. I do not blame her.

“Lash, cutters,” I bark. He tosses me a bolt cutter and covers my back while I lean into the first lock. It snaps. I pull the door wide and step back with my hands up. “We are here to get you out. Do not run. Do not scream. Stay low. Follow the woman coming in behind us.”

“Woman?” Lash asks.

A horn blares twice at the warehouse door. The first truck. Rumble jumps out and yanks the back open. Jayne jumps down with a med kit, blankets, bottled water, and a stare that dares anyone to get in her way.

I do not have time to stop her. I do not try.

“Jayne. Cages,” I call.

“I see them.” She is already moving, voice soft and fierce, hands gentle on shaking shoulders. “Hey, it is okay. We are Chrome Creed. We are getting you out. Water first. Then blankets. Can you walk? Good girl. Stay with me.”

A man lunges from behind a column with a box cutter. I guess it wasn't over. There are still a few guards in here who didn't come running out. That's fine. More blood for us.

Rumble steps in and eats a punch to the mouth that cracks like a gunshot.

I heard the bone break. Blood jets from his nose in two bright ropes.

He smiles through it, which is insane, then headbutts the man so hard the guy’s forehead splits like a ripe peach.

He collapses clutching his face. Rumble spits a mouthful of blood and a tooth.

“I was thinking about getting a nose job anyway.”

“Pretty sure it is on sideways,” Tella shouts, blasting a guard off a catwalk. The body drops and hits a pallet with a sound like a sack of wet laundry. Limbs at wrong angles. Neck loose as a rope.

Out by the loading dock, Leo engages two at once.

He parries a pipe with his forearm, takes the hit, then slides inside and drives a knife under the ribs, up into the heart.

The man stiffens and vomits blood down Leo’s chest like a red waterfall.

Leo shoves the body into the second man and puts a round through his cheek.

Half his face disappears in a spray that paints the forklift behind him.

Creek gets tackled. They go down in a tangle. The Burning Soul on top jams a thumb toward Creek’s eye. Creek bites his ear off. Rips it free and spits it. The man screams and scrabbles away, hands clutching bloody cartilage. I watch as the man tries to get up but winds up crab crawling on his back.

I don't need to intervene, Torch ends it with a boot that caves his temple. The skull gives with a weird soft crack. The body twitches and then flops like a fish.

Someone shrieks behind me. One of the tied women is choking under the tape. I slash it off. Her mouth opens in a silent wail that breaks into sobs. “Please, please, please.”