Exiled (Anathema Book 2) (19 page)

He
feared his dominance. I no longer trusted my submission.

I
didn’t mean to part my lips. He groaned as his lips met mine.

The
soft kiss ended as soon as it began. The elevator dinged and opened. I pulled
away first, sucking in a useless breath.

“This
is my stop,” I whispered. “I better go. The biker I’m with expected me hours
ago.”

Brew
didn’t answer. He pushed himself from the wall and strode into the hall. I ignored
the quiver in my belly and followed.

I
didn’t make it past the emergency stairs.

An
arm wrapped over my belly, another over my mouth. He kicked the door back, but
my muffled cry for Brew rang through the hall.

My
scream reignited the rage suffocating him under months of torment.

Brew’s
roar echoed with the crashed of the metal door against the stairwell. The hands
grabbing me tightened as he approached, but my captor didn’t make a run for the
stairs. He also didn’t bear a weapon. And his voice sharpened over my name as I
kicked him in the knee.

“Jesus,
Martini! It’s
me
!”

Red
spun me to the ground, ducking as Brew’s fist swung over his head. He rolled
from a second strike and held his arms out.

“Brew!
Stop!” I shouted.

The
gun already pulled from the hostler. Brew thrust it into Red’s face. My cousin
swore, cracking his hand over Brew’s wrist and wrestling the gun free. Brew reached
behind his back to pull a second weapon. Red released a knife from his sleeve
and aimed it for Brew’s throat.

“
No
!”
I rushed between the two. Brew swore, shoving me toward the door.

A
split second of agony ripped through me, and I feared I had been caught between
bullet and blade. Brew poised to kill Red, and I had no idea how my jagoff
cousin planned to retaliate. It would be just like Red to try to protect me. He
aimed the knife for Brew.

He’d
kill him so I wouldn’t have to.

My
stomach turned. I couldn’t save them both.

“Stop!”
I forced myself between them. “Brew, that’s Red! You remember him. My cousin!”

Red
offered him a cheesy grin that did nothing to lower the blade. The gun wasn’t a
great reflection of Brew either.

“Does
your cousin normally try to kidnap you?” Brew readied for blood. “How did you
find us?”

Red’s
laugh wasn’t the best response, not when Brew had fifty pounds of muscle and a
full clip on him. But Red never needed brute strength—he was quicker than most
people reacted.

“I
know how to crack Martini.” Red twisted the knife before slipping it into his
sleeve. I flipped him off. “Looks like I got here just in time.”

“Red,
what are you doing here?” I spoke before Brew got too close. My cousin hovered too
near the stairs, within range for a fatal fall. “Are you okay? Did something
happen?”

He
swiped the edges of his blonde hair from his face and offered me the book bag
over his shoulders.

“We
don’t have a lot of time. Tell Noir to calm down before he gets my foot up his
ass.”

Brew’s
voice lowered. “I’d love to see you try, kid.”

“Careful,
old man. Don’t slip and break a hip.”

“Christ.”
I took the bag from Red and the men followed me, but I wouldn’t need the
keycard to get into the room if they punched each other through the wall.

Brew
chained the door, and Red headed for the bottle of vodka on the table. I pulled
the laptop from the bag.

“That’s
the laptop Kingdom gave Noir to trade,” Red said. “I grabbed it.”

“Oh,
God! You’re the best!”

Brew
frowned. “Why the hell would you bring that here?”

“I
had an opportunity. I took it.” He unfolded a post-it from his pocket. “Sam
keeps his guns in a cabinet with two locks, but he tapes his passwords next to
the computer.”

“Does
he even know how to use it?” I asked.

“Hell
no.”

The
laptop was old, but functional. I pressed the power button, and Red tossed me a
USB flash drive.

“Get
everything off it you can,” he said. “I’ve gotta get it back in an hour.”

“Stealing
from your own MC?” Brew’s words were cold. “You’re on your way, kid.”

Red
stared him down. “And how many of your tattoos have you blacked out?”

“Stop
it.” I typed in the password. “How is it at home?”

“Forget
about Sacrilege.” Red’s gaze focused only on the bruise blossoming over my
cheek. “What the hell happened to your face?”

“I’m
fine.”

He
didn’t buy it. He sneered at Brew. “You do this to her?”

“You
think you could stop me if I did?”

“You
think I wouldn’t slit your throat for touching her?”

Brew
loomed over him. “I don’t see Goliath bleeding out anywhere.”

“Fuck
you—”

I
waved a hand. “Enough.”

The
laptop booted slow as hell, but I peeked around the desktop. The normal icons
offered me nothing—recycling bin, a printer driver, the browser. But a .txt
file pushed into the corner. I opened the document and stared at a dozen series
of numbers, dates, times, and locations.

“What
is this?” I jammed the flash drive into the laptop. “It’s like...a schedule.”

Red
stopped measuring his dick with Brew and moved behind me. “Something like
that.”

“Are
these serial numbers?”

Red
squinted. “VIN numbers. Like, for vehicles.”

“Trucks?”
I scrolled through the file. The data was hastily pasted from a spreadsheet,
but most of the columns and rows still lined up. “It spans multiple days.
What’s it for?”

“Hell
if I know.”

“Is
Sacrilege knocking over trucks?”

“I
doubt it. The club is getting old. That shit is too risky for Sam and his
generation. They’d need me and the prospects to do the heavy lifting.”

“And
you’d do it?” I arched an eyebrow.

Red
shrugged. “Med school was expensive, Tini.”

“Brew,
any ideas?” I asked the questions dozens of times and got nothing out of him,
but I had to try again. “Anything at all? Why is this information so valuable?”

“I
wasn’t paid to ask questions,” Brew said. “The drop was time sensitive, that’s
all they told me. I didn’t care about anything else.”

I
scrolled through the numbers again. “These dates are for next week. Look. The seventeenth
and eighteenth. These trucks haven’t gone out yet. And most of them are going
to California.”

Brew
hesitated. I didn’t like his frown. “California?”

“Yeah.
Three of them are heading to...Dantry.”

Brew
grabbed the computer from me, accidentally minimizing the file. He swore,
clicking around the desktop.

“Taskbar,
Grandpa,” Red said. “They didn’t teach your generation how to work a computer?”

“No,
I was out getting laid.” Brew scrolled through the list. “This ain’t good.”

“What?”
I whispered.

“California’s
not Kingdom’s territory,” he said.

“No
shit.” Red tried to take the computer. I smacked him away. “Whose is it?”

“Temple
MC.”

My
chair flipped as I stood. “Are you serious?”

“That’s
my backyard. Dantry, Cherrywood Valley, Roth. Those trucks are heading to our
territory. They’re Temple’s trucks.”

“You
know them?” Red asked.

“Yeah.
I’m real familiar with them.”

“Then
what the fuck are they doing here?”

“Take
a guess,” Brew said. “The lake? The pissant MCs out here are guarding one of
the easiest border crossings. Temple controls the trade in the southwest. They
want a slice of the northeast.”

I
tabbed through a few other files. Most of the computer was clean, designed
specifically to house only the schedules. The laptop didn’t even have a wireless
card to access the internet.

“So,
Kingdom gives Sacrilege Temple’s trucking schedules.” Red paced the room,
heading to the vodka. Brew passed a tumbler as Red took another swig from the
bottle. “The trucks are probably carrying some sort of freight to look
authentic, a way to hide the drugs.”

Brew
nodded. “Usually.”

Red
exhaled, thinking out loud. “So…Kingdom hires Sacrilege to rob the trucks, get
the drugs, and take a cut of the profit. It looks like a small club getting in
trouble. It keeps Kingdom off the radar while it fucks over their rival.”

I
opened the laptop’s email program. For a computer without internet access,
someone had written a lot of emails. Ten drafts waited in a separate folder—an
easy way for people to pass messages without copies generating on a server.

The
first email coiled my stomach.

The
next broke me into a sweat.

“It’s
not the drugs,” I whispered. “Why would Kingdom give sacrilege intel on
Temple’s officers?”

Red
narrowed his eyes. “What kind of intel?”

“Pictures.
Addresses. Occupations and family and last known aliases and likely places
where they can easily be found.” I swallowed. It didn’t help. I stared at one
of the photos. They labeled the file as Ramirez—Sergeant-At-Arms. “This is the
man from the diner, Brew.”

Brew
didn’t have to look. Red dove for the computer.

“Christ.
This is their entire operation. It’s like a damn FBI registry!”

“It’s
all Kingdom’s intelligence.” Brew didn’t thumb through the emails. He exhaled.
“Everything they have on their new rival, Temple MC.”

“Why
the fuck are they giving it to
Sacrilege
?” Red asked.

I
knew the answer.

I
didn’t want the answer, but it was the only reason five headless bodies stashed
in a cottage only hours after we were chased by three members of a west coast
MC.

It
was the reason why Kingdom was so desperate to find us.

We
were witnesses to a conspiracy far bigger than Sacrilege.

I
backed away from the table. I wished the mystery remained a secret. Whatever
game Red and I played, whatever burning curiosity we had about the new money in
the club or the hushed secrets passing around the officers, it got too
dangerous and too real too quick.

Brew
figured it out the instant he heard the location. He didn’t say it. His brow
furrowed, and his cellphone was already in his hand. Texting his brother.

Preparing
Anathema for war.

“Temple
MC killed the Kingdom members at the cottage,” I said.

“A
premature retaliation,” Brew said. “They were careful. Kingdom hired me to act
as an intermediary between them and Sacrilege, to try and keep the clubs
separate. But they were watched by Temple MC the whole fucking time.”

I
crossed my arms to hide my trembling hands. “And Temple recognized you.”

Red
interrupted us with a sharp profanity. “Forget that for a fucking minute. If
Temple killed these douchebags, then I’ll find Sam and he can tell Kingdom
where to point their guns. We’ll get the heat off Noir since he’s supposed to
be watching over you, making sure no asshole punches you in the face.”

Brew’s
words cut through Red like a knife to the throat. “You tell Sam, and we’re all
dead.”

“What?
Why
?”

“Because
that computer was given to Sacrilege for one reason.”

“What
reason?”

“It’s
a hit list.”

The
words curdled my stomach as the walls and floor began to tilt. I sucked in a
breath, pretending I was still on Brew’s bike, and the bumps in the road
weren’t bodies hitting the floor.

Brew’s
voice hardened. “Kingdom MC knew Temple was edging into their territory. So they
hired Sacrilege to murder Temple’s ranking officers, men who created one of the
most dangerous MCs in the fucking country.”

“Shit.”
Red leaned over the table.

“And
guess which member they left in the dark to clean up the scene and hide the
bodies without realizing what went down?”

Red’s
fists curled over the chair. I hoped it wouldn’t launch through the window.

Brew
nodded at me. “Darling, you were Sacrilege’s collateral, but they weren’t
waiting for money.”

The
thought chilled me. “Kingdom planned to keep me until Sacrilege assassinated
Temple’s men.”

The
sickness rose in my throat. I sweated, but my teeth chattered. I needed to sit
down. Brew set me on the bed before I fell on my ass.

“Sam
wouldn’t sign on for this,” Red swore.

“Goliath
would,” I said. “And he’d be the first in line to put a 2x4 through someone’s
skull.”