Reprisal (Tidals & Anchors MC Book 2) (3 page)

I half expected my dreams to be restless. What, with having put down one of my own girls and having to stitch up an angry giant, but I actually was relieved that I hadn’t dreamt anything at all. Chances where I would’ve had some crazy visions of being chased by white masks or something.

“Alaska!”

“What?!” I sat up and gasped, as the door to my office banged open and Tumbler yelled my name. I was so startled at first that the sudden movement almost caused me to fall out of my chair. “What time is it?”

“Jesus Christ,” Swing grumbled from him place on the couch.

“Alaska, they’re here,” she said urgently as she shut the door behind her.

“Who’s here?” I asked, wiping the small amount of drool off the side of my mouth. I was so groggy and so tired that I wanted to shove Swing off the couch and go back to sleep.

“
Pardon and Tidals & Anchors
,” she hissed, flipping open the blinds behind me.

Swing looked at her, then me, before he struggled to his feet and came over to look out of the blinds with us. When I got this place, I had a window set up in my office so that I would be able to see into the gentleman’s club whenever I needed to, but I primarily kept it closed because I wasn’t a fan of watching naked women writhing all over the place. I was a fan of the monetary intake.

“Motherfucker,” he said through grit teeth. “Give me a gun.”

“You can barely walk,” I reminded him rolling my eyes.

“I don’t need to be able to walk to put a bullet in his fucking head,” he replied angrily.

I got to my feet and smoothed my hair back, redoing my bedhead ponytail and sighed. Reaching down, I straightened my vest out and pulled up on my jeans.

“You’re staying in here,” I said, sticking a finger in his chest. “If he tries to leave this room, this is where I want you to shoot him,” I said to Tumbler, before I walked out and closed the door securely behind me.

I walked down the narrow hallway with my head held high. Nothing about Pardon really scared me and I wasn’t going to let him think he knew more than he actually did. Pardon had never come into my establishment before so it was no coincidence.

“Well, look at what the cat dragged in,” I remarked, walking toward the empty stage where they were waiting. Pardon had been sitting on the edge of the stage, but pushed himself to his feet when I approached him with my arms open.

“How’s it going, darling?” he asked, taking me into his arms and kissing my cheek.

“Good! So what brings you here?” I asked, with a bright smile.

“Looking for something that was taken from me,” he said, looking into my eyes. “I was just wondering if you might know where I could find it.”

“Depends on what it is,” I replied with a laugh.

“I think you know what I’m looking for Alaska,” he said with a tired sigh. “I’m really not in the mood for games. Just tell me where you put Leon’s boy and we’ll leave. No repercussions; scout’s honor.”

I crossed my arms over my chest.
Fuck. I knew he found out somehow.
I looked Pardon up and down for a moment before I went over and sat down next to him on the edge of the stage.

“What makes you think I would know anything about that?” I asked, glancing at him.

“Bring her in, Boots,” he nodded to one of his larger, scarier looking club members.

Bring who in?
I thought curiously as I looked toward the door. When the club member reappeared, he had a small, obviously frightened person by the arm. The closer they got the more I realized who it was and I felt myself become furious.

“Judas bitch! You can fucking shoot her for all I care,” I spat out angrily. “You and your sister deserve everything that happens to you, Saylor!  And in case you were wondering I already put your bitch sister down
myself
.”

Pardon glanced at me and gave me a grim smile. I didn’t understand at first. The look on his face was smug and dangerous at the same time.

“I knew you’d have him,” he said softly. “Warner got to you, didn’t he? Told you the Raders are good people? Did you know that he’s the one that set up Nero? He’s the reason he wound up in the warehouse getting cut up, but you just couldn’t leave well enough alone could you, Alaska? You just had to play the hero and go running in to save him. Warner hates Nero. He hates Leon. The only one he respects is Harold, but you’re too blinded by worshiping the legend of Leon that you pretty much made up for yourself, that you don’t see anything else. Your father would be so disappointed if he knew what his little girl was up too. Hiding the man that almost killed him because of her wanting to be so badly like his old man.”

“Leave Warner out of this,” I replied through grit teeth.

“That depends on you Alaska. You gonna give me what I want or am I gonna send Saylor to kill your old man?” he asked.

I looked down at my shoes and took a deep breath. Glancing at the blinds I could see that they were being held open by two sets of curious hands.

What would Leon do?

With a slight shake of my head, I looked at Pardon and smiled, “I don’t have him.”

“Kill them both and burn this fucking place to the ground,” he said to Boots, who shoved Saylor onto the stage. Pardon signaled for the rest of his club to follow him as he walked out of
Femme Fatale.

Dallas

T
he outside condition of Swing’s workshop made my heart drop into my ass when I arrived. The door had been left cracked open, something he never allowed, and as we backed our bikes into our usual spaces, I was honestly terrified to see what the inside looked like.

“It’s not that bad once you get over what the outside looks like,” Red assured me, as I walked toward him.

No sooner had he said that, did Honest walk out of the workshop looking extremely pale. “There’s so much blood,” he mumbled in a shaky voice.

“You’re not helping right now,” Red snapped at him.

“I’m sorry, Dallas,” Honest said looking at me with tears in his eye. He blinked a few times to keep them from falling and shook his head as he walked past me and went to sit on his bike.

“What’s he apologizing for?” I asked Red, a sick feeling suddenly forming in the pit of my stomach.

“He’s overreacting. I’m telling you that it is not that bad Dallas. Swing wasn’t the only person in there, remember? That mask with the bullet hole is still in there; whoever was wearing it was bleeding out too. It’s not all his. Come on,” he said, leading the way in.

“I don’t know if I want to see this,” I replied, not moving.

“Dallas. I know how tight you and Nero are; I wouldn’t let you walk into some shit show if I didn’t think you couldn’t handle it. You know if he was here right now, he’d call you a pussy and shove you inside,” Red remarked with a chuckle.

If he were here right now, I wouldn’t have to worry about this shit,
I thought grimly. With a nod, I relented and followed Red into the workshop.

Once we were inside, I realized that Red was right. There were bloody drag marks and the white mask with the bullet hole in the middle of where the forehead would be. But the splatters of blood, the bullet hole mask, and the bloody marks on the ground weren’t what had my attention.

“So
that’s
where it went,” I said under my breath.

“What?” Red asked curiously.

“That’s the President’s chair, man. Didn’t you fucking notice?” I asked him incredulously.

Red put his hands in his pockets and walked slowly around it. I watched as he shook his head before stopping in front of it. “It’s too cut up for me to have noticed. That means Pardon was here.”

Obviously,
I thought grimly. There weren’t many things I was sure of anymore; who to trust, if I could trust myself, if Swing was still alive, but this... I knew for sure that Pardon was behind this.

“When did everything go so wrong?” I asked myself quietly.

Red cleared his throat but didn’t say anything. I heard another set of footsteps as Honest entered the warehouse. With a heavy sigh, I crouched down in front of the chair and took in the nicks in the wood, the dried blood;
shit
, there were even small pieces of Swing’s clothes stuck in the wood.

“How deep did they cut him, you think?” Honest asked quietly.

“Deep enough. We gotta find him. He’s obviously in Bend, but where the fuck is he?” I asked in frustration, getting to my feet.

At that moment, my phone rang startling all of us. I looked down at the caller ID and sighed. It was Pardon and I wasn’t sure if I should answer the phone or not. I decided to let it go to voicemail but he only wound up calling again.

“Hey,” I said, answering the second time.

“Where the hell are you?” he asked.

“The warehouse. Just checking on some shit, making sure that Nero stayed good on his word about Warner,” I replied looking at Red and Honest.
Pardon,
I mouthed. They both understood and left the warehouse, closing the door behind them. I held my hand over the speaker of the cell phone hoping that the closed door and my hand would be enough to muffle the sounds of their engines roaring to life and leaving.

“Did you find anything?” he asked curiously.

“Not a thing,” I replied, moving my hand away from the speaker.

“Alright, well come to the clubhouse. We’re about to take a vote and I need you here, son,” he said in a tired voice.

“What are we voting on?” I asked as I made my way out of the warehouse toward me bike.

“Havoc vote.”

“Another one? On who?” I inquired curiously.

“You’ll find out when you get here,” he said, before disconnecting the line.

I had a really bad feeling in the pit of my stomach about this vote. I didn’t know who the hell else Pardon wanted dead, but I knew that finding out was going to be easier than getting the deed done.

Alaska

I
wasn't exactly sure who had done it until Swing and Tumbler had come out of my office. As soon as Pardon and his crew had walked out of the front doors, a gunshot rang out, and Boots dropped dead to the ground. They were both gripping guns tightly in their hands; Tumbler had her usual Ruger P89DC and Swing had my Smith and Wesson.

“The two of you look like Bonnie and Clyde,” I remarked dryly.

Tumbler laughed, but Swing didn’t. He had an arm wrapped around his torso, obviously still sore from the stitching I had done on him. Raising my gun he walked straight up to Saylor and put the barrel between her eyes.

“It’s your call,” he said, glancing at me briefly.

“I thought you had a ‘no women and no children’ policy,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. I leaned my head to the right and looked up at his face. He didn’t seem to be wavering on the idea of killing a woman right now. Even when he cocked the hammer back on the gun, with as much as I wanted him to kill her, I knew I couldn’t let him. That would only make this MC debacle and even bigger mess than it was.

“Give me the gun, Swing,” I said softly, holding out my hand. He clenched his jaw tightly and lowered the gun. With an angry grunt he handed it over and I exchanged a glance with Tumbler.

“You know, you sound just like a caveman every time you make that noise,” I remarked with a smile.

“If I was a caveman, I would’ve clubbed you all to death by now and gone after the ‘leader’ of my pack.”

Tumbler shook her head and I sighed. This wasn’t the Swing I had heard so much about; a friendly, dangerous ladies’ man; no, this one was an unfriendly and even more dangerous would be killer of anything in his path right now.

It was kind of sexy in a really deranged kind of way.

“Wait. You said that you killed her sister,” he said, glancing at me. “Was it the person wearing the mask?”

I nodded.

“Yeah. Fuck that,” he said, raising the gun again and pulling the trigger.

I let out an impulse scream and covered my ears. A .357 magnum was a loud ass gun and in an enclosed space like this, it was even louder. Saylor’s body dropped like a rock and Tumbler looked sick. Not only was this gun loud, it was extremely powerful and ripped half her face off.

The semi-silence that followed was almost unbearable. With the exception of the occasional retching sound coming from Tumbler, I felt like I had just stepped into a bad dream. How was I supposed to tell him that now he had a price on his head for killing one of our MC members? What’s more, would he even care?

“Here, you can have this back now,” he said, holding my gun out toward me.

I took it from his hand and he went over to the other side of the stage and set down, letting out a long sigh.

“Before you say anything, I know what this means. I know what my actions are leading up to, but all I ask is that you let me finish this before it has to be done,” he said quietly.

“Normally this is the kind of thing we vote on,” I said, walking over to him, “but I don’t think we need it. You’ll get the time to do what needs to be done and it’ll give
me
time to think about what to do with you.”

Swing chuckled, but nodded in agreement. “Guess I should say sorry about the mess.”

I shrugged and hopped up onto the space next to him. Crossing my legs together, I swung them back and forth gently, glancing over at Saylor’s body. I’d have to get her out of here and the place cleaned up before we opened in a couple hours, and Tumbler obviously wasn’t in any position to do it.

“Clean it up and we’re even. Doors open up soon which means the girls will be here any moment. If they see brains splattered all over the ground and what’s left of her face staring at them, I’ll lose all my dancers.”

He nodded at me and looked down for a moment, before pushing himself to his feet.

“Got a mop?” he asked, with a small grin.

I laughed and shook my head. “You know, you’re not really as scary as you like to pretend you are.”  Swing followed close behind me as I took him to the closet space a few doors before my office and shoved a mop and bucket toward him. “When you’re done with that, I’ll be in here. Can you send Tumbler back please? I’m afraid she’ll lose her shit once you start swishing brain matter all over the floor,” I said, rolling my eyes.