After internally arguing with myself for twenty minutes, I decide to risk my neck and see if he needs help. Quietly rapping on the door, I listen for his reply. No answer is returned. Softly turning the knob, I quietly open the door enough to see into the mirror on the wall. Hero is fully clothed in the shower. He sits on the floor with his knees pulled up to his chest and the hot water spraying down on him. His face is buried in his knees and his chest heaves with sobs. Hero is falling apart in the shower. Something happened to break this man so quickly. I want to go to him, but even I know that it wouldn’t be wise on my part. Quietly closing the door behind me, I return to the couch and wait for him to come out on his own. As much as I want to rush to him and comfort him, I know better than to intrude on a private moment with him.
What the hell happened out there to cause this man to shatter like a China doll? I just hope I’m not the next piece that shatters in the fallout.
I woke up in the middle of the night with her arm over my chest and one of her legs intertwined with mine. Holy hell, seeing her draped over my body was a sexy as fuck sight to behold. I’m not sure whether she was using me for the warmth or that her body naturally gravitated to me once her mind just shut down for the night, but whatever the reason was, I liked it. The feel of her body against mine soothed me as I gently stroked her back as she peacefully slept beside me with her hair fanned around her head like a dark crown. Tonight was the first night in weeks that I didn’t relive my brothers in arms being blown to fucking bits. The barrage of death and darkness hit every single night without being prompted so I can only assume she is the reason for their MIA status. It’s a welcome relief. Her body formed a barrier from the darkness that haunts me and blocked my ghosts from emerging. The rhythm of her heart beat pressed against me regulates mine.
To call this woman beautiful is the understatement of the year. She’s every man’s dream girl, and here she is in bed with a man like me. The higher powers in the universe must be getting a good laugh at my expense on this one. I know I’m not the right kind of man for her. She deserves the American dream kind of life with a rich husband, kids, a Labrador, and a house with a white picket fence and a front porch swing. Not some fucked up and rough around the edges biker. She’s not meant to live the life of a biker’s lover, but I’ll keep her for as long as the universe lets me. I lay there holding her until a soft knock raps on my door. It’s time to take care of business.
I carefully lift her limbs from mine and slide away from her body. Why does it feel like I’m leaving part of me lying in that bed with her? I shouldn’t feel this way about her in the least. She could still be a fucking spy, and here I am skirting around the rules trying to get to know her. I’m not made for loving a woman like her, and I need to make myself believe that even if she does move into the lover category in my life, she’ll never be more than that. I watch her chest rise and fall with each breath for a few minutes, savoring the moment. The vision that lies before me will forever be present in my mind.
As much as I want to spend the day in bed with her, I need to get my head on straight and in the game for our mission today. Shoving my chick emotions to the side, I stalk to the dresser and remove a black t-shirt and dark-washed jeans. Getting dressed quickly, I retrieve a black leather pouch of knives along with two loaded handguns that lie hidden in a false shelf in the dresser. I pull each shining blade from their sheath to check their sharpness. If I was to be disarmed, these knives may determine whether I live or die in the field of battle today. Grabbing my cut from the back of the couch, I gather my weapons and head toward the door. Stopping for just a moment, I stare one last time at Dani’s sleeping form. God, I hope we can clear her name today. I want the chance to see her underneath me just once before she runs for the hills.
Sliding from my room, I meet Voodoo and Tyson in the hallway. We walk downstairs in a tension-filled silence. The things our club is going to do today are not going to be easy to deal with. Anyone with a soul will be stained for life after executing our attack. Good thing for me, my soul shattered in Iraq.
Making our way outside to the line of bikes in the back drive, I walk to my Harley and pull my bullet proof vest from my saddlebags after setting my knife pack down on the seat. The sun has to yet to rise and probably won’t begin to shine until after we make it back home. Well, if we make it back to the clubhouse. Shrugging off my cut, I wrap the heavy vest around me and Velcro it tightly in place. As I pull my cut back over my shoulders, Raze walks past me and begins the suiting up process. Next, I strap my knife holsters around my thighs and fill each slot with a razor sharp blade. As a precautionary measure, two of the blades I shove into my riding boots.
Straddling my bike, I wait for Raze to signal for us to leave. The ride to their hidden clubhouse will only take about fifteen to twenty minutes, but we want to sneak in as quietly as we can so we’re going to kill the engines on the bikes and hide them in a wooded section about a quarter of a mile away. We will use the woods as our cover for the longer range weaponry. Our amigo assured us that they would all be asleep until well after sunrise, so we want to use the darkness of night to hide us as much as possible. If they can’t see us, they can’t target us once the melee begins. We need to have as much in our favor as we can to achieve our goals.
Raze waves his hand in the air and we fire our bikes. He leads the pack as we cruise away side by side to the south. I let the chilled desert night breeze wrap around my body as we ride into the night. Our amigo’s intel proves truthful so far as the wooded area comes into view on the left side of the road fifteen minutes into our ride. Cutting the lights on our bikes, we ease into the woods and kill the engines. Sliding off my bike, I listen for any noise in the woods surrounding us, but all I hear are desert insects chirping in the night. Raze stands at the edge of the woods watching the darkened clubhouse up the road. Had our amigo not given us the address, we’d have never known it was an active residence. One of Trax’s men took one of our club’s cages and drove by yesterday morning to do recon for us. He reported back that the bikes were well-hidden, and that very few people were visible on the grounds. They’d gone to lockdown after they massacred our friends knowing we would come after them. The element of surprise wasn’t with us, but the numbers were. Our club outnumbers them five to one. Their former VP squealed the location after Ratchet pried off his fingernails one by one with a pair of needle nose pliers. We had the men, and we had the locations. The fight was in our favor for once.
I move to stand next to Raze and survey the area around us. There’s not a single building for miles around their compound, which is good news for us. We won’t have to deal with noisy neighbors calling the local police department over a noise complaint. Raze quietly instructs the men to fan out. Leaving the cover of the woods, we form a line and quietly walk toward the building. Ratchet and a few of the other guys stay behind in the woods with sniper rifles. They can pick off the men from a distance if necessary. We get to within one hundred feet of the house when Raze raises his hand to halt us.
“This is it. I need four guys to get close enough to the house to break the windows and throw in tear gas. They should start to run outside and we’ll pick them off as they exit. Leave the women and children alone. They could have some of Ace’s women in that building and I don’t want them harmed. If you find Enrico or any of the officers, I want them brought to me alive,” Raze orders. Pulling my guns from my holsters, I click off the safeties as the four men stealthily walk toward the building. The sound of shattering glass echoes off the surrounding mountains just before the tear gas begins to pour out of the buildings. The gas falls like a fog around the building as bangs and screams spill from the inside.