Tempered Steel (Steel Riders MC Book 2) (5 page)

CHAPTER FIVE

It was late in the afternoon, just getting dark, on Wednesday when Cynthia left Daphne in the mothering care of Sally — the Sally who was married to sexy James the Dark — and headed for home.

She rode with a stress-reducing purpose, letting the bike drift a little in the lane and not rushing to get home. The sky was clear and deep blue. Spring was everywhere, and life, or rather, being alive, was a good thing.

She pulled into her drive and parked her Lowrider by the porch. She gave a glance toward Hank’s place across the road, but she decided to get a shower, possibly something to eat, and then call Hank. He had said he had a busy day today, anyway. Perhaps it would be best to give him until seven at least.

Tomorrow, though, he was back into
it
, whatever
it
was.

From what she had gathered so far, it had something to do with the Ruiz cartel, and maybe even Orlin himself. She figured that Knight was the one pulling the strings and Hank was working as perhaps a freelancer, rather than a patch holder of the Riders. Secrecy, even from the Riders, was paramount.

Something had to give with this secrecy stuff soon, though, because the rumors out there were festering until everyone was convinced they were facts. Nearly everyone who came by to give condolences to Daphne were already convinced that Hank had been the trigger man. When Cyn told these men that he was with her, she got the sideways glance that said, “
Sure dear, sure. Bet you would say anything as long as he kept dickin’ ya
.”

“I swear to Christ, the next motherfucker that gives me that look.… No! I’m not going to wait that long,” she decided as she toweled off.

She put on blue jeans that weren’t as tight as normal and a thermal shirt under a black Harley shirt. Then boots. Not girly boots, but stomp-a-mud-hole-in-him boots. She pulled her hair back into a severe ponytail, and then she put on her knife. Anyone who knew her would say she was looking for a fight, and she was.

Grabbing her jacket and keys, she headed for the door, eyes filled with visions of how she was going to do this, when the door burst in just as she was going to reach for it. Three men came in at her hard and fast.

Reflexively, she palm-heeled the first man in the nose, smashing it so it sprayed blood, and used his momentum to throw him back behind her. He landed on the coffee table, smashing it to the floor. The second man grabbed her shoulder, and she grabbed his finger in return, yanking it back hard until she heard the crack of joints coming undone.

A hard fist hit her in the jaw and sent her reeling backward. Then the third man shoulder tackled her into the couch. She tried going for her knife, but it was too late. His weight and momentum jammed her into the corner of the couch, squishing her shoulders together and limiting her movements. He came down on her thighs with most of his lower body, pinning them to the seat bench of the couch.

The flash of a steel blade caught her attention. Unable to do anything, she watched it slash toward her throat. She felt it cut, but not deep.

The man looked at her. He was Mexican, thick and very powerful. His eyes were a dead, dull black. They were the eyes of a killer, someone who killed as easily as they put on socks in the morning, and some weeks, just as often.

“Now
puta
, you and me are going to talk,” he told her, his voice calm and heavily accented. “After that, I am going to kill you.”

Her eyes went wide with horror.

“Yes,
puta
, you die tonight,” he told her with exaggerated nods of assurance. “But there are many ways to die. Such as a bullet in the back of the head. Not so bad. You probably don’t even feel it, really. You’re just dead. No pain. Just dead.”

He let that sink in for a moment.

“Of course, there is also death by rape, and torture, where you beg me to kill you instead of going through it again, but I say no, I shake my head sadly, and then I do it all over to you again, and again, and again, until you die.

“See, this here,” he sighed while tapping her left tit, “is just another body to me. It has no meaning to me. I don’t care about how much pain it is in, or how horror stricken it becomes. For me, it is nothing.”

He let that sink in as well.

Cynthia was growling in her mind, and she searched through everything she knew, every move her dad had taught her since she was fucking twelve, to keep this man from killing her. If he released her, for just a moment, she would choose option number three: die fighting.

She just needed a distraction, anything to get him to let her up enough to get her knife in her hand. Then … then motherfuckers were going to die.

Please God, please. Just one chance. Even if I fail and die, that’s alright. Just one chance. Please.

“Now, we talk,” he told her. “Now you tell me everything you know about Hank Park.”

“You mean like how he’s standing right behind you?” she asked sweetly.

He bought it, hook, line, and sinker. He drew back from her like a cobra and twisted around, dropping his knife with such grace while going for his gun that she marveled at the man’s skill.

Cyn wasted no moment or movement. With over a decade of daily training and many years keeping that training honed, she went for her knife.

The man was pulling out his pistol as she slashed out with her knife, cutting deep into his exposed side with the same movement. His reaction was unbelievably fast — inhuman. All of his momentum, all of his energy snapped back on her, bringing the gun to aim at her head. Cyn met him speed for speed, and as he forearm was lining up for the shot, her blade cut deeply through the
extensor carpi radialis longus
muscle. This muscle runs along the top of the forearm. It moves the wrist, helps to close the hand, and has control over the trigger finger. Ernando could suddenly no longer fire the gun in his hand, and it fell out of his grip.

She didn’t wait to see if that strike was enough, though, as she continued her attack. She swung the blade as hard as she could, using all of her upper body strength to drive her blade through the bottom of his jaw and up into his brain.

Her eyes were flaming with pure wrath.

But another hand caught her wrist, and the new man’s free hand backhanded her across the face.

She barely noticed the blow, already twisting her arm against the new man’s thumb to release her wrist and clawing with her left hand for his balls.

The report of a handgun filed the room, and the man that she was going to castrate by hand flew away. He was just gone, like a magic trick. Then the man on top of her, who was howling in pain and rage, was pulled back by his neck and thrown off of her. He landed on the man who had wrecked the coffee table, who still hadn’t moved since she had put him there.

“You fucking bitch, you fucking
puta
!” the man was screaming, and long curses streamed from his tongue in his own language.

She looked up to see Hank standing there with a gun in his hand.

“Please shoot him,” she asked.

Hank shot him. He shot him in the ass. The Mexican looked wildly around, seemingly unable to believe that he had just been shot in the ass.

“You didn’t kill him,” she snarled at Hank.

“No, but I will. I need him alive for just about an hour longer. Can I please have that hour?”

She looked at the Mexican, who looked at her with disbelieving eyes.

“Just a body to me,” she told Hank with a shrug.

Hank nodded, seeming to understand her completely, which scared her more than anything else that had just happened to her.

Hank loaded the two dead men into the back of the their own truck.

“Who is that?” she asked.

“Ernando Delvalle. Enforcer for the Ruiz cartel and probably one of the most dangerous men in that organization.”

“And why exactly are you waiting to kill him?”

“To impress
the mos
t dangerous man in that organization, Orlin Ruiz. I want to impress upon him that this shit is never, ever, to happen again.”

She processed that for a few moments, and then asked, “And then you kill him?”

“Yes, and then I kill him.”

“No deals or wimping out?”

He raised an eyebrow at that.

“Well,” she defended, “it’s kind of like murder, right?”

“No, it’s kind of like war,” the told her. “The man is already a corpse. I’m just choosing where he will stop breathing.”

“I suppose no cops,” she assessed.

He kissed her lips. “I’ll be back within three hours.”

“You go have your fun. I’m in the perfect mood now to go have mine.”

“Yours?”

“Secret squirrel stuff baby, secret squirrel.”

CHAPTER SIX

Long before Hank would reach the Ruiz cartel with his truck full of bodies, Cynthia pulled boldly up to the club and parked near the door. She still wore the same outfit which was splattered by other men’s blood. She had killed a man tonight: the first one in the door, the one she had palm-heeled in the nose. His nose had broken and the force of her blow had sent the bone spearing into his brain. He was dead before the coffee table smashed.

She thought she should feel bad about taking a man’s life, but she didn’t. When Hank told her he was dead, the only thing she could think was, “Why didn’t I do that to the other two?”

Tonight, though, something else had to take a beating, and she was in the perfect mood to start a fight.

When she walked through the doors, she scanned the long wide room. As luck would have it, five of the men who had come over to Daphne’s house and told her things like, “
Just say the word
,” and, “
We know who it is, we got your back
,” and similar things, giving Cyn the
whore eye
when she told them Hank was with her that night, were nicely gathered together.

“Sorry boys, it just ain’t your day,” she growled as she walked up to the largest of them and sized him up. “Hey, you say I’m lying about Hank being with me on Monday?”

The big man looked at her. “I’m saying you’re a cheap fucking whor—”

Cyn hit him. She didn’t hit him like a girl. She hit him like the daughter of a Recon master sergeant.

The blow surprised him more than hurt him, as she knew it would — she was going for speed, not power. When the big man’s head snapped back from her punch to his jaw, she balled up her left fist, extending her thumb just a little so her fist looked like a rock with a nail sticking out, and she drove that nail right into the man’s Adam’s apple.

Reflexively, he dropped his beer bottle and clutched his throat, displaying universal sign language for ‘
I can’t fucking breathe, someone help!
’ But she wasn’t done with him yet. Her knee came up as her hands grabbed the man’s shoulders, and she pulled and kneed him as hard as she could in the balls.

Again, the man’s body responded with reflex and doubled over, but instead of backing up, she went into his gut shoulder first, knees bent. As his weight curled around his gut, she took him up with her arms, rolling him across her back and shoulders, and then shot up as hard as she could with her thighs.

It looked like she threw him onto that table. It really did. Actually, she had just let his own weight roll across her shoulders — a major difference in the amount of strength required — but it looked impressive as hell.

The man hit the table with his back and lay sprawled across it as she walked up to him. “Whore, huh? Well, you’ve just been fucked, so I’ll take my fucking money, dickweed!”

She turned with challenge in her eyes. “Now,” she shouted to a near-silent audience, “who the fuck is next?”

There was quiet and shock, and then a voice behind her said, “Yes, please. Step up and call Cyn a liar to her face. I haven’t had a good fight in, tsk, tsk, years, really.”

She turned and there was James the Dark, major heartthrob, and the sergeant at arms for the Riders.

She remembered he was married and turned her attention back to the group she had first approached.

“You!” She pointed at one of the men at the bar. “Alright, mister,
just give the word
. That’s what you say to a grieving widow? That you’ll be happy to kill the wrong man for her? Step the fuck up!”

He stayed where he was, and even turned away.

“Then you! Mr.
We all know who did it
, come on.… I couldn’t do it in front of Daphne, but I can do it here. I can do it all fucking night! Step up and call me a liar!”

Again, this one turned away. She knew it was James behind her that was doing most of the scaring, but she had a strong suspicion that the blood stains across her body might have something to do with it, too.

“Alright, how about that group that wants to hang outside Hank’s house and jump him when he gets home? I should
let you
fucking try that. There you are. You five right there.” She pointed to them, walking straight at them.

One of them came at her. “You don’t want to bring that sh—”

She went into a blur of speed as she closed distance, skipping a step and spearing into his gut an organ-bursting side kick that lifted the man off the floor and sent him back a foot to land on his ass. Cyn never stopped moving, though, shifting her weight and pouncing, following him all the way down. Then, grabbing him by his scalp, she hammered her fist into his forehead with a furious scream. The man’s eyes rolled and she dropped his head, hearing it thunk on the floor.

Then James moved past her. “My turn. Very sweet, Cyn, but my turn.”

The remaining four ran.

Cyn watched them go, a snarl on her face. Then she turned to the club and said in a clear, calm voice, “I’ll be at Daphne’s house every day until she can bear to be alone again. I swear to you the club and to God above, I won’t wait for you to show up here. I’ll fucking break you off right in front of her.”

Then she turned, nodded to James, who gave her a salute, and strode for the doors of the club.

Then James’s voice rose up, cultured and thick with sappy sexiness. “Just one thing to add to Cyn’s challenge. If you touch her, you deal with me. I don’t care if it is a kick, a poke, or a dirty look. You will answer to me and the rough riders. I will not be understanding. I will not listen to your reasons. I will not care about your grief. She stood up for Daphne when none of you fuckers would. She was who Daphne called when she needed someone
she knew
would show up. She is the one who has been there for her every day. So, you worthless rumor-humping whores, I say, shut the fuck up.”

Cyn walked out into the night and got on her bike. She started the engine and slowly left the parking lot. She road home with a glide, and she soothed herself with the sway of the bike and the vibrations between her legs.

“All I need now is a hot bath,” she said to the night sky, and she gave the bike a little more gas as she thought of a very large tub that had recently acquired oils.

Her first thought as she slipped with a sigh into the hot bath was, “Who are the rough riders?”

Her next thought was to call Knight.

“Knight?”

“Cyn? What can I do for you?”

“Knight, tonight after I got home from Daphne’s, three men invaded my home with the intent to rape, torture, and then finally, when they were done laughing, to kill me.”

Knight was silent, she wasn’t even sure he was breathing.

“I learned through these men that they were Ruiz cartel men. I’ve had enough time to process and play connect the dots, and I can’t think of anyone, except for perhaps Hank — if one-fifth of what I think is true — who could possibly understand the risks the way I do. So, with that, I want in. I want to help Hank, you, and the rest of the club. I want to have a chance at finding the killer so Daphne can get some sleep.”

“And what do you want?” he asked.

“I … I just said what I wanted.”

“No, how much are you looking for in payment?”

“Payment? Knight, with all due respect, weren’t you listening? They came into
my home,
Knight. They came in there and told me that I was just a body to them. That I had no value. I don’t want payment, Knight, I want to sleep better.”

After nearly a minute, Knight said, “Alright, I’ll talk it over and we’ll see if there is a place we can use you. We’re actually near the end, see, and honestly, it’s all on Hank now. But I will talk and discuss. Can you tell me everything? For example, where are the bodies? Apparently you are quite capable with that knife of yours.”

She laughed. “Not that capable. The man that was on me, his skill, it was inhuman, Knight. I mean, people don’t move that way, but he did.”

“So you had help?”

“Yes. Hank recognized the truck the men were using, and he came in just in time. I was holding my own for a bit, but then this other guy comes out of nowhere and I’m a rag doll again. So, Hank shot one of them dead, I killed one as they were coming through the door, and we both mangled up this guy name Ernando pretty bad. But Hank said he needed him alive.”

“I never meant him to take it that far, no,” Knight whispered.

“Hank isn’t supposed to kill anyone in the inner circle, right?” she prodded.

“Well, that isn’t quite the directive, but close enough. But after this—“

“Don’t worry, he told me Ernando was only going to live for another hour. But his death needed to serve
our
purposes.”

“Hank’s diplomatic skills are quite impressive. So, if he has a purpose, it is likely going to work out for him. Did he tell you about his errands for me?”

“No, he hasn’t said anything, Knight! He’s completely secret squirrel.”

“Secret squirrel. Ha, I like that. Yes, well, I’ll talk to him. It may be good for him to have someone he can discuss things with. Pillow talk. That sort of thing. Yes, I’ll talk to him and see what he thinks.”

“That would be nice, Knight. Like you said, it is reaching the end, so I’m guessing that, like any countdown, there is an explosion at the end. I would like to know what Hank knows before that explosion comes.”