Torched: Afterburn (Iron Serpents Motorcycle Club Book 2) (24 page)

Cora smiled and popped the trunk, revealing a bloody, bound, and gagged Mena lying on a plastic tarp. “I thought I owed it to you to be transparent and let you talk to him yourself. Think of it as goodwill.”

Well, he’d be damned, this was the criminal equivalent of a bouquet of fucking flowers.

Cora pulled the gag out of Mena’s mouth. “Tell Torch and his men what you told me about Scully,” he ordered.

Mena started coughing, so one of his former coworkers brought out a bottle of water from inside the car and tipped it in his mouth. Hopefully he enjoyed the nice gesture, Torch didn’t think the day would end well for him regardless of what he said.

Mena looked up at him. “Scully took my cousin in and wanted payment. I heard Buddha and Rob talking about the loan for those coins, so I told Scully about it thinking he could use it to his advantage. He’s the one who set up the robbery, but I didn’t know about the hit-and-run until you showed up at the strip club. I never would’ve done any of it if I’d known he’d set up my boss.”

And there it was… Liv’s theory had been spot-on.

“But you didn’t mind setting
us
up, huh?” Torch asked. “Why does Scully need guns? What did he get your cousin wrapped up in?”

“He got in with the Patriot Defense Militia, they have a compound about twenty miles from here. Scully’s got another couple years on his probation, so he’s gotta stay in the state, but his old crew greenlit him. It’s his safest option. He’s got money, they’ve got a fence and need guns. The guys he used to ambush you were militia. As far as I know, they’re still stashing the coins somewhere on their property.”

“Did you tell Scully we paid off our debt?”

Mena nodded. “Yeah, last night. He knows he lost his leverage.”

Shit.
He could hear his guys murmuring to each other behind him.

Cora pulled Mena’s gag back up, tightened it, and turned back to him. “There you have it.”

Hearing Liv’s pipes as she rode into the parking lot, Torch looked out through the open garage door. She was the only one who had a Night Rod, he could always hear her coming.

Cora followed his line of sight. “Is that your old lady?”

“Yeah. What are you gonna do with Mena?” He kept his eyes on Liv, watching as she took off her helmet and dismounted.

“Bella!” Cora yelled out, catching her attention and Torch’s ire. “Come in here!”

“What are you doing, man?”

“Relax, I’m just saying ‘hi’.”

Liv sauntered over to the door, but stopped and waited for him to nod his approval. Fuck it, he did.

“Close the door behind you,” Cora instructed.

Torch gave her another nod, they were all armed and outnumbered Cora anyway.

She pressed the button and walked inside. “Rob, we meet again.” Reaching the trunk and seeing Mena inside, she took a step back and glanced up at Cora. “Wow, you brought us a present. How touching.”

Cora chuckled. “I didn’t want you shooting my balls off.”

“Wise decision. Did your guy admit to selling us out to Scully?”

“He did.”

“And that his cousin ran us down? He’s the reason my friend lost her baby?”

“That too.”

She angrily narrowed her eyes at Mena. “Good. I guess I’ll be on my way.”

Cora held up his hand. “Not so fast. I think you have some big words to back up.”

Torch stood back, trying to figure out what the fuck kind of game Cora was playing.

She sighed and rolled her eyes. “Yeah? What words would those be?”

“You said I haven’t seen shit,” he reminded her. “Prove it. You wouldn’t want to tarnish your man’s honor by not following through, would you?” He pulled out a gun, twirled it in his hand, and held it out with the grip facing her.

Not seeing the entertainment value, Torch took a step toward Cora and stared him down. “Put it away. What the hell are you doing?”

“Gino, show him,” Cora called out.

Gino ducked into the car, pulled out a briefcase, and opened it for them all to see.

“A hundred grand,” Cora explained. “I feel like the right thing to do is to return the profit cut and interest since it was one of my men who screwed everything up for you.”

“And what does that have to do with my woman?” Torch fumed.

Cora curled his lip. “If she wants to go around acting tough, she needs to be willing to step up. If your old lady kills Mena, you get the money. But only if
she
does it. Let’s see what she’s got.”

Torch took another step forward, going nose-to-nose with him. “You’re not putting that shit on my wife, keep the fucking money.”

“Oh, come on,” Cora smirked.

Having reached full bullshit capacity, Torch grabbed the fucker by his designer shirt and shoved him backwards, immediately turning the situation tense as both his and Cora’s guys moved in to stop a fight before it started. “I told you
no
,” he hissed.

A shot rang out.

They all stopped and turned around to see Liv pointing her own gun at the trunk, the barrel still smoking. Toto ran inside with his weapon drawn, but nobody moved. They just stood there with their jaws hanging open, watching in stunned silence as she put her piece away and grabbed the briefcase full of cash Gino had set down on the roof of the car. She snapped it shut and walked over to them.

“I’ll be taking this,” she told Cora. “Don’t test me again.”

After giving a speechless Torch a kiss on the cheek, she sashayed her ass out the side door. They all rushed over to the trunk and saw that she’d put a bullet in Mena’s head. Right between the eyes.

“Fuck,” Cora murmured. “That bitch scares
me.
Good luck, man.”

: 20 :

| TORCH |

For the second time that day, Torch and the boys found themselves waiting for Liv to work her computer magic, this time on a mission to figure out what the fuck this militia group was all about. He’d never even heard of the Patriot Defense, but when did guys like that start taking on guys like them? From what little he knew of the type, they were mostly just men on the paranoid side, who liked to play with guns and thought they could go up against the American military if it came down to it.

He sat down next to Liv at the bar and slid her a beer, the rest of the guys who were at the clubhouse were just milling around now. With Mena confirming that Scully knew he’d lost his shot at getting them to play ball, the chances of him trying to pull off any other harebrained stunts were low and protection orders had been lifted. The club would get payback on the militia and take out Scully—maybe even find those damn coins—but it would be through a well-planned and premeditated move, not some half-assed, guns blazing type of shit.

“You wanna talk about what happened in the garage?” he asked.

She didn’t look away from her computer. “Like how I should probably get rid of the gun I used in case Mena’s body shows up floating in a river and they run ballistics?”

He reached across her lap and swiveled the stool around so she couldn’t avoid eye contact. “Sweetheart, you played the part to perfection, but I know you’re not a cold-blooded killer. The only other asshole you killed was a rapist and trafficker who tried to kill
you.
It’s gotta be eating you up just a little.”

She looked up at him and rubbed his leg. “Babe, he set you guys up to be ambushed and robbed. I don’t care if he didn’t have all the details, Mena got the ball rolling. He got in bed with a man who took out his second-in-command with no regard for code or honor, he knew exactly who he was dealing with and what Scully was capable of. In a way, that makes him just as culpable for the hit-and-run too. He was dead anyway, if I hadn’t done it, Cora would’ve. Now the club’s down one problem and up a hundred grand, I don’t see why it should eat me up.”

He couldn’t help but smile.
This woman
. Zed had been right about every last thing he’d said, Liv got the life like none of the others. And she was all his. What a beautiful fucking thing. “Alright, fair enough.”

Liv turned back to her laptop and twirled it around so he could see what she was up to. She pointed at two side by side satellite images on the screen. “Anyway, back to our militia neighbors… Look at this shit. These are pictures of their twenty acre compound in the middle of nowhere. The one on the left was taken a year ago, the one on the right is recent. The shooting range was already there, but these ten other buildings are new additions. And that’s just the stuff above ground, I bet they have bunkers too. It’s surrounded by two, eight-foot fences spaced six feet apart, but the gap is actually used as a dog run for Rottweilers. It’s kind of brilliant actually, much more effective than electricity or barbed wire. They’d hear the dogs losing their shit long before you even got close enough to cut through. And with a gap that big between the fences, trying to jump over would just get you mauled unless you used a pole vault.”

He pointed at a cluster of small structures surrounding a rectangular one. “What are those?”

“Cabins. Only a couple of their guys live on-site right now, but it looks like they’re planning on bringing in the rest with their families and going off the grid at some point. They have solar panels, a few power generators, propane tanks, fruit trees, rows of raised garden beds, and even an animal enclosure. Surprisingly, I don’t see any security cameras, but I guess a closed-circuit system would take too much power to run twenty-four hours a day and the solar-powered kind use wireless signals, opening them up to remote spying.”

“Where the hell did they get the money to build all this in the first place? The fencing alone had to have cost a fortune.”

“Well, that’s partly why the Feds are watching them. Aside from stockpiling weapons, they’ve had to get more aggressive and turn to crime over the last year. These guys started out like your typical bunch of second amendment warriors about ten years ago, buying a piece of land and getting together for target practice in their spare time. No big deal. But then they decided to go full-on commune and started actively recruiting. Some of the money comes from members’ pockets, but the rest is from stealing shit and selling it across state lines. Also, prescription drugs.”

He smirked. “Selling those coins would probably bring in enough to finish up the whole compound—”

“Or the guns they wanted to buy from you,” she pointed out. “Wouldn’t
that
have been a bitch?”

Jesus, no shit. The militia would’ve basically gotten free guns by using money belonging to Buddha—and by extension, the club—in the first place. Talk about looking like chumps, that wouldn’t have been good for the club’s image at all when it got out. “Assholes,” he murmured. “Anything on the members? How many are there?”

She switched over to another screen, pulling up official-looking government documents. “By all accounts, they’re not as big as you’d think, maybe thirty guys so far. I’m running a search for known members tagged in law enforcement records.”

“Okay, let me know.” He hopped off his stool and leaned down to kiss her neck.

“Babe, don’t get me distracted,” she warned. “You know how easily I get sucked in.”

He chuckled and took a nibble on her earlobe. “You can suck
me
in whenever you like. My cock’s so fucking hard right now from hearing you talk business. You can take a ten minute break.”

She bent her head to the side and moaned. “Goddamn it…. No, knock it off and let me finish.”

“You know I’m acting president right now, don’t you?”

“Is that supposed to impress me?”

“No, it’s supposed to make you think twice about disobeying an order in my clubhouse.”

She snapped the laptop shut, turned around, and unzipped his jeans. “I’m sorry, I guess I didn’t hear the ‘order’ part of our conversation. My mistake, Mr.
Acting
President.” Her fingers made their way inside and stroked his desperate shaft over the fabric of his boxers.

He grabbed her wrist and yanked it out. “Not out here.”

“Why? I thought you were trying to assert your authority. Don’t you want your brothers to see me on my knees sucking you off?”

With a growl, he picked her ass up off the stool and slung her over his shoulder. “Fuck no, they don’t need to know what they’re missing. This shit’s all mine. Come on, let’s put your talents to the test and see if you can suck and search at the same time.”

“I feel like I should point out—”

“Shut up.” He smacked her ass, knowing exactly what she was about to point out, then turned so she could snatch her laptop off the bar. “I’ll be doing the shooting this time… my load down your throat, that is.”

“Charming,” she groaned.

: : : :

His eyes flew open in a panic and it took him a few seconds to realize the bloodfest he’d witnessed was nothing but a dream. Relieved to find himself in bed at the clubhouse instead of on top of a pile of dead bodies, he looked around for Liv. Naturally, she was curled up in the chair across from him, frowning at something on her laptop. Christ, she just couldn’t rest when there was work to be done, could she?