Love's Hope (The Unknowns Motorcycle Club Book 2) (6 page)

“Okay,” she said.

He stood at the door for a moment, looking in at her. He had to tear himself away, pulled by the reality of what was waiting for him on the other side of town. His heart thumped with dread as he finally turned away and headed for the front of the house.

When he stepped out into the night, the silence of the city seemed foreboding. Even when he cranked his bike to life and started down the street, everything seemed too quiet for his liking.

It felt like even the city was waiting for this to unfold, its silence an indicator that it knew trouble was on the way.

CHAPTER TEN

Jameson flicked his used up cigarette to the pavement and watched the orange embers die out. He sat astride his bike, looking out across the empty restaurant parking lot and tried his best to figure out how he was going to handle this situation. He thought the world of Alex, but he also felt that he needed to make an example of him.
No one
abandoned the Unknowns without his say so. It was more than just a stupid, stubborn pride thing. It was the fact that Alex knew lots of information about the club and, beyond that, was on the fast track to taking up an important position within the club.

If anything, Jameson felt betrayed. His feelings weren’t hurt, and, truth be told, he wasn’t even that pissed off anymore. The anger he had felt — the same anger that had been behind his attack on Slim — had waned on his drive out here. Hell, he didn’t blame Alex. He was a young guy that had a whole future ahead of him. If he wanted something other than the lawlessness and constant movement that the Unknowns required, there was no fault in that.

They’d just have to have a talk to sort things out. And if Alex really did want out of the club…w ell, maybe they could come to some sort of an arrangement. He hated to see the kid go, but he wasn’t a monster that was going to
make
people stay in the club. He’d allowed people an easy out before, and there was no reason this situation with Alex couldn’t turn out nice and clean like those instances.

Then why in the hell am I so furious? Is it just because he failed to finish the job on Marco?

He wasn’t sure. Maybe it was just the stress of moving the club. There were a lot of working cogs, and it was next to impossible for him and Karla to keep up with them all.

The darkness of the early morning hours sat heavy on the parking lot as he sat there and waited. He knew that he had put a lot of anger into the phone call he’d had with Alex, but it had been necessary. While he didn’t fault Alex for his decisions (well, maybe a little bit), he still thought it might do the kid some good to squirm. He glanced at his watch and saw that Alex had seven minutes before the deadline Jameson had given him.

Just as he looked up from his watch, he saw headlights approaching from the street adjacent to him. It was a small car that blended in well with the night. It came across the intersection, its lights pointed directly for the parking lot.
Has the kid even given up his bike?
Jameson wondered.

Something in his guts started to churn. Something was going on here… something unexpected and likely not good. He’d been in enough of these situations to know when his ass was on the line. It was almost like a sixth sense.

And right now, as the little car pulled into the parking lot and came towards him, that sixth sense was telling him to get his Glock out of the small pack on the back of his bike. Slowly, he started reaching for it. He unlatched the pack and slipped his hand inside, searching for the smooth surface of the gun.

The people in the car apparently saw this because it was then that the car put on speed and barreled directly towards him. There was a moment when Jameson was convinced that the car was simply going to plow into his bike. But at the last moment, the car took a hard right turn, slicing into a U-turn.

As it did, Jameson got a good look at the driver’s side window. It was rolled down, revealing a face that had clearly seen a beating recently. It was a familiar face, and when Jameson saw it, his hand finally found the gun in his pack.

Marco,
he thought.
How the hell did he know I was here?

Jameson gripped his gun and pulled it out, but Marco’s gun was already up. Three shots were fired, filling the parking lot like lighting blasts. The shots came in rapid succession, the first taking Jameson in the arm, the second taking him in the shoulder. The shoulder-shot spun him like a top from his bike and likely saved his life. The third bullet whizzed by the area where his head had been less than a second ago. He heard it blaze by as he fell from his bike, a split second before his freshly wounded arm slammed into the pavement.

He screamed out in pain as he rolled over with his gun in hand. The car had already made its turn, and all Jameson could see was the back of the car. He fired two shots anyway, out of anger more than anything, aiming for the tires. He had no idea if he hit one, though. There was too much pain in his arm, and his shoulder felt like it had been torn from his body.

He rolled over onto his back, trying to summon the energy to get to his feet. He sat up, and the pain made him sick to the stomach. He thought he had been hit in the left shoulder, but it was more like the upper chest. Every breath he took was agonizing.

As he tried to get to his feet, he heard the sound of an approaching engine. Right away, he knew it for what it was: a motorcycle engine.

He managed to get to his knees, but that was it. He rested against his bike, feeling its reassuring weight beside him. The motorcycle engine drew closer and within seconds, its headlight illuminated the area in front of Jameson’s bike. It quickly drew up by Jameson’s bike and within seconds, Alex was there, kneeling beside him. To Jameson, it all happened in weird jerking movements. He realized then that his shirt was soaked with blood, the shot in his chest perhaps more damaging than he had originally assumed. He saw Alex’s face, but it was blurry and nearly translucent, as if he were seeing a ghost.

“What the hell happened?” Alex asked.

“Marco,” Jameson said. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he tasted blood in the back of his mouth.

“Here?”

“Yeah.”

“We need to call a doctor,” Alex said. “There’s blood everywhere.”

“No. Go after him. He can’t be but thirty seconds ahead of you. He took a left out of the lot. Black car.” Each word was like hot iron in his shoulder. The pain wound through him and seemed to plummet through every inch of his body.

“Jameson, I—”

“Now!”
And with that, he was sure there was blood in his throat. He felt it thick and gummy on his tongue now.

Jameson watched something happen in Alex’s eyes then, some deep thinking that made him look like a truly haunted individual.

“Okay,” he said. He then pulled out his cellphone, and Jameson watched as he pushed in 9-1-1. “Get to a hospital before you bleed to death. I’ll get Marco. And after that… well, after that, I need to have you gone.”

Jameson chuckled, and it sent a flare of pain through his body. “We’ll see,” he said as he put the phone to his ear.

Alex waited until someone on the other end picked up before turning his back on Jameson. As he mounted his bike, he heard a sharp whistling noise. He turned and saw Jameson with a gun. He lobbed it at Alex and he caught it deftly.

Listening to Jameson tell the dispatcher where he was and what had happened, Alex kicked his bike to life and headed left to deal Marco O’Brien a beating for the second time in less than a week.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

It had been about eight months since Alex had given chase to anyone on his bike with the intentions of hurting them. Every time he had done it during his time with the Unknowns, it had been on those vast and seemingly endless roads out in the Nevada desert. But now, in the darkness of a city that he was unfamiliar with, it was a completely different scenario.

He picked up the headlights of the black car easily enough, coming up on them in less than a minute. He sped up, running a red light in the process, grateful that the streets were empty. Jameson’s Glock was tucked away in the interior pocket of his jacket, and as he neared the car, Alex fought the urge to pull it out. The last thing he wanted was to fire several shorts that would do no good. There was no sense in giving people reasons to call the cops. Adding the police to this situation would only makes things so much worse.

Not wanting Marco — or Marco and his companions (that was another thing; Alex had no idea how many people were in the car) — to discover that he was tailing them, Alex slowed his speed a bit, hanging back, and waiting for an opportune time.

The car seemed to be in no real hurry to get anywhere. It broke the speed limit by only a slightest amount and stopped at the appropriate lights. By the time Alex had managed to get to within two hundred feet of them, he was able to faintly see the interior of the car with the aide of the dim streetlights. There were two people inside…one at the wheel and the other in the passenger seat.

Only two of them,
Alex said.
I can handle that.
The gun in his jacket seemed to bulge at this thought, agreeing.

Alex followed the car for ten minutes, only passing two other cars during that time. They were heading to the industrial side of town, where there were factories, warehouses, and rundown apartment complexes. As he realized this, Alex wondered if this wasn’t deliberate. He knew that there was an exit to the interstate further down this way, but if the men in the car were looking for a quick escape from the crime they had committed, this was not the way to go.

As the twelfth minute of the eventless chase passed, Alex saw his window of opportunity. He was still two hundred yards behind the car and they had now started to catch the same sequence in the traffic lights: when Marco caught a green, so did Alex. They had caught three in a row, but now a red one shone bright in the dark like an evil dragon’s eye.

Alex swerved over into the second lane, making as if he were going to take a right turn rather than drive straight ahead. He pulled slowly to a stop, sidling up beside the small black car. Before he came side to side with it, he reached into his jacket and removed the Glock.

He pulled to a complete stop, his wheel coming to rest perfectly aligned with the front of the black car. Right away, he looked to his left and saw the man that was sitting in the passenger seat. It was indeed Marco O’Brien. Marco was looking directly at him, perhaps a bit alarmed at the sound of a motorcycle’s engine so soon after having shot the leader of a feared motorcycle club.

Marco’s eyes grew wide and he fumbled with something in his lap—his gun, Alex assumed. Alex didn’t give him the chance. He pulled off two shots, causing the passenger window to explode. He could hear Marco screaming inside, yelling at the driver.

“Go!”

The driver obeyed, the tires on the black car squealing a bit as he rocketed through the red light and to the open road beyond. Alex placed the Glock under his left leg, trapping it between his leg and the seat. It was warm from where it had just spent two rounds.

Alex kicked the bike into gear, giving chase. He kept his head down as low as possible, certain that Marco would start popping off shots as soon as they established a good lead. Sure enough, the first shot came within ten seconds, the bullet missing wide right and pinging off of the road.

Alex brought the Glock up and fired back. He heard the metallic sound of his round tearing into the back of the car. He fired one more time, bringing the aim up a bit, and fired at the back glass. It splintered, but did not break.

He took careful aim once more—hard as hell to do while driving his bike at sixty miles per hour—but never got the chance to take the shot. Unexpectedly, the car took a harsh right turn. It struck and jumped a small concrete divider that separated a warehouse parking lot from the street. Alex knew that hitting the divider with his bike would be disastrous, so he had nothing to do other than speed ahead, looking for the entrance to the lot.

It came into view ten seconds later. Alex turned a hard right into the lot and sped in the direction he had seen the black car go. There were a few cars in the lot, but none with the passenger window blown out. The warehouse loomed ahead, offering a churning sound of machinery to the night. A few sparse overhead lamps shone down, but the light they cast was weak.

Alex made his way quickly to the edge of the lot where a small loading road wound around to the back of the building. It was the only place the car could have gone. He slowed his speed and crept down the road, finding that it emptied out behind the building where several loading trucks and empty pallets lay scattered along the side of the building.

Had it not been for the puttering of his bike’s engine, he would have heard the car revving up behind much sooner.

As it was, he heard it about three seconds too late. When he heard the sound of the car’s engine behind him, he wheeled around, bringing the Glock up and nearly spilling the bike.

Again, he didn’t have time to shoot. The car was coming straight for his bike and it wasn’t stopping. The headlights were on, glaring directly into his face and momentarily disorienting him. Alex was able to bail at the last minute, leaping from his bike awkwardly. His foot hung up on the seat as the car plowed into the bike, and he went spinning in an almost comical fashion to the pavement.

He sat up at once, bringing the Glock up with him, gasping for breath because the wind had been knocked out of him. The car was backing away from the bike, its front end dented and giving off a mist of steam from under the hood. Alex saw right away that the back of the bike was wrenched and almost obliterated completely. His heart sagged a bit at this, as he’d had that bike for almost five years and loved it more than he had loved some people in his life.

“Stop!” Alex screamed, the sights of the gun now aimed squarely at the passenger window. Rage boiled within him, begging to be let loose.

That’s when he saw that there was only one person behind the wheel. But he knew there had been two people in the car when it had come into the lot. So where in the hell was the other person and—?

Something dry exploded at the back his head. Following the pain that enveloped his head, he smelled wood and dust.
One of those damned pallets,
he thought, the idea spinning through and out of his head like a dust devil.

When he hit the ground, he saw fragments of one of the pallets all around him. The world went black and red for a moment as fireworks of pain flared in his head.

As he tried to collect his thoughts and senses, he felt a heavy foot come down hard on his back. He was planted firmly to the ground, his chin grinding against the pavement beneath him.

But the weight behind the foot was weak and with a single ferocious wrenching of his body, he was able to move. He shoved the foot away and rolled over just in time to catch a kick to the stomach. Above him, he saw a man that he had never seen before grinning down at him. “Marco figured it would be fun to not kill you outright,” this man said. “It’s time for payback first.”

That’s mistake Number One, asshole,
Alex thought.

The thought was cut short by another boot to the gut. Behind him, he heard the car door of the car open and close. A set of feet came towards them, joining in on the beating. Alex looked around the vicinity for the Glock that he had dropped after being hit by the pallet, but couldn’t find it. He then looked up to the new attendant and saw that it was Marco.

“You broke my driving arm,” Marco said, indicating the cast on his right arm. “So I had to hire a driver.”

At the word
driver,
the other man delivered a hard kick into Alex’s back. It took the wind out of him, but he remained on the ground, trying to figure out his options. So far, the stooge hadn’t shown any real strength, although his attacks came pretty quickly. As for Marco, he moved with the speed of an injured turtle, so he wouldn’t be much of an issue.

“Alright, Larry,” Marco said to his partner in crime. “Stand him up.”

Idiots,
Alex thought, amazed at how careless they were being. He sometimes forgot that not everyone was as skilled at fighting as he was.
Yes. Please. Get me back on my feet, in an optimal fighting position.

He pretended that the two kicks and the attack with the pallet had hurt him more than they actually had (although, truth be told, his head was still aching and he felt blood trickling down around his ear). When he felt Larry’s hands fall roughly on his shoulders, Alex nonchalantly slid his hand over one of the fragments of the broken pallet that had rested near his head on the ground. He let Larry think that he was bringing him to his feet and then snapped fully alert and firing on all cylinders in a split second.

He tossed his head back hard, connecting squarely with Larry’s face. There was a
thud
as the back of Alex’s head collided with Larry’s forehead. Alex then lunged forward and brought the fragment of the pallet hard across Marco’s face. A sound like hamburger being dropped on the floor filled the back of the lot from the impact.

Marco screamed and tried raising the gun with his left hand but before he could get it up, Alex brought the fragment of board down on Marco’s casted right arm.

The wood exploded and Marco let out an explosive yell of pain. He then dropped the gun as he fell to his knees, still wailing in pain. Alex took advantage of this by slamming his knee into Marco’s face. With Marco on the ground, writhing in pain, Alex took the gun Marco had been using… a handgun that was almost identical to Jameson’s.

He then turned back to Larry who was just now coming to his senses. Larry was a brute of a man ,and since Alex didn’t see himself having time to have a respectable fight with the man, he did the only thing he knew to do. He ran up to him and delivered a devastatingly hard kick to Larry’s balls. Larry dropped to his knee,s and when he did, Alex delivered a hard right hand to his chin, knocking him out cold. Both attacks took less than two seconds.

Alex turned back around to Marco and leveled the gun at his head. It was all happening so fast, and he was reminded how good it felt to be in a fight. He had always been good in them, even from the playgrounds of his youth. He was always in control, always moving and thinking two or even three steps ahead. It was no different now as he approached Marco with the gun in his hand.

Earlier, as he had been haunted by thoughts of beating up Marco in Chicago, Alex had wondered if he would ever have the guts to kill the man if it came to that. Now, under the cover of night and with his bike having been badly damaged, he couldn’t
wait
to pull the trigger.

“How did you know we were here?” Alex asked.

“I’m not telling you shit,” Marco said.

Alex shrugged and brought a hard stomping motion down on Marco’s cast. Something cracked; whether it was the cast or Marco’s arm, Alex wasn’t sure. Nor did he care.

When Marco opened his mouth to scream out in pain, Alex placed the gun inside of it. Marco’s eyes went wide, and he started to tremble. Alex could hear the man’s teeth clattering against the barrel. A tear ran down his face, and Alex could tell by his expression that it embarrassed the hell out of Marco.

“How?”

“Found out from one of your boys,” Marco said, his tongue finding it hard to speak around the barrel of the gun. He sounded like a little kid that was trying to speak with a mouthful of food.

“Who?” Alex asked, pushing the barrel in even further.

That’s when a noise behind them sounded out—a hydraulic sound followed by a bang. Alex looked up and saw a man wearing a hard hat standing at the top of a set of steel stairs. Behind him, a door was opened revealing the murky light of the warehouse. The hum of machinery spilled out of it.