Torched: Afterburn (Iron Serpents Motorcycle Club Book 2) (25 page)

Apparently none of that had mattered to him, he was sprawled out naked under the comforter. The last thing he remembered was coming long and hard with her lips wrapped around his dick.

Had he passed out the minute she’d sucked him dry? Shit. “Babe,” he croaked. “How long was I out?”

“Just an hour. I figured you needed some sleep.”

“But you didn’t get yours.”

Her concerned expression dissolved into a mischievous one. “I took care of it myself. I’m handy that way.”

“What the fuck? Are you serious?” She better not have taken it into her own hands, that would be a surefire way to make him feel like a fucking failure of a man.

“No,” she laughed. “That takes too damn long.”

“Okay, good, that’s my job. Did you find something? Why were you looking so serious a second ago?”

Just like that, the frown returned. “I don’t think you wanna know.”

He was pretty sure he did. Propping himself up on his elbows, he asked again, “Liv, what did you find?”

“When’s the last time you talked to your father?” she asked.

What the fuck did that shitbag have to do with anything? “Twenty-some years ago when I left home. I saw him at my sister’s funeral, but he didn’t see me. Why?”

She sighed and rubbed her cheek. “His name’s George Branson Larter, right?”

“Yeah. Why the fuck are you looking him up?”

When she didn’t answer, he jumped out of bed and pulled the laptop out of her hands. She was looking at court documents from an aggravated assault case against someone named Christopher Mason, with George Larter listed as the defendant’s attorney. He glanced back at her, not quite sure why the find was significant. “Yeah, he’s a lawyer, that’s why I made a run for it as a kid. I knew reporting him for using me as a punching bag wouldn’t do anything, one of his buddies would just get him off and he’d do something worse.”

“He’s not just a lawyer, he’s the
militia’s
lawyer,” she explained. “Chris Mason is one of the founders. Over the past two years, your dad’s handled every criminal case their members have caught, everything from larceny to illegal weapons charges, even a murder. He’s pretty good too, only one guilty verdict and that was just for stealing a truck.”

“Shit.” Feeling like he’d gotten the wind knocked out of him, Torch took a deep breath and sat down on the edge of the bed. He knew he should’ve finished off his old man years ago. “I haven’t thought about that son of a bitch in years. You’re telling me he was part of this?”

Liv got up from the chair and sat down next to him. Reaching over to tap the mouse pad, she pulled up what looked like undercover surveillance pictures. “I don’t know if he was part of setting it up, but it’s probably safe to assume he knows about the whole thing. These are pictures from a week-long ATF stakeout of the compound about four months ago, they got a tip about a transport but it didn’t pan out. That’s your dad with Mason, Scully, and two other members. They have footage of him going in and out almost every day. I’d say there’s more than an attorney-client relationship going on.”

Gritting his teeth, he handed her back the computer, walked over to a wall, and slammed his fist through it. It was one fucking thing to go after him or the club—that was a serious enough offense to warrant broken bones and blood loss—but to knowingly let Scully go after their women?
His
woman? If Liv hadn’t run back to leave her helmet, she would’ve been right in the path of that fucking car too.

No.

No fucking way would that stand.

Call it honor among thieves, call it a code, there were lines you didn’t cross unless you wanted to fucking die. Scully, Mena, Russell, his old man, they were all just cogs in the militia wheel. He didn’t give a rat’s ass who came up with the ideas, who gave the orders, or who carried any of it out, they were all complicit and they were
all
going to pay one way or another.

Seething with barely-controlled rage and ready to rip every last one of them apart with his bare hands, he turned back to her. “I want everything you have on the compound. These guys think they’re ready for battle with the government? They just made enemies with bigger and badder outlaws than they’ll ever be. You fuck with the Serpents, you better be ready for a deadly bite. We’re going to war.”

“Babe...” Liv approached and gently placed her hands on his chest. Not willing to let her try to sway his resolve or tell him how to run his club, he braced himself for an argument that could turn explosive and hurt some womanly feelings.

But he should’ve known better than to make assumptions about this particular woman by this point, because what came out of her mouth next wasn’t an argument at all.

“How dirty are you willing to get?” she asked.

: 21 :

| LIVIA |

“You know what you’re doing, right?” Torch mumbled through my ear piece.

After spending a couple days watching the previous month’s FTX security footage to make sure I did, I sure as hell hoped so. I had yet to test the limits of Silas’ forgiving nature, but had a feeling stealing from his business partners crossed more than one ethical line, even for a man like him. But we weren’t
really
stealing, we were just… borrowing. He’d get over it.

“I wouldn’t risk losing you or my best client,” I replied.

“Hey, what about the rest of us?” Grimm huffed.

“It kinda depends on the day, honestly,” I shot back. “Don’t worry, you haven’t done anything to piss me off since this morning. Can everybody else hear me?”

One after the other, I got confirmation from Zed, Mace, Squid, and Biff; along with Torch and Grimm, they were in an unlit box van parked next to the pickup truck I was sitting in. Biff was driving, the rest were going in.

“Okay, we have five minutes until security does a shift change at midnight,” I told them. “They sit around and bullshit for about fifteen before the patrol guy goes out. I have the surveillance video set to loop for exactly that long, so it’s all the time you boys have. Hopefully they won’t deviate from that for the first time tonight, but if they do, I’ll fire off a few rounds and set a fire out here as a distraction—”

“And you immediately fucking drive away,” Torch reminded me.

“Yes, daddy,” I smirked, “I’ll let the big, manly men do everything.”

“I don’t like your tone, sweetheart,” he warned. “And I have about… three and a half minutes to climb in there.”

I smiled to myself at the thought of him trying to fix my
tone
in three minutes. Not likely, he’d need at least six to fuck me into submission. “Yeah, well,
I
don’t like sitting on the sidelines. Relax, baby, in an hour we’ll be back at the clubhouse with some new weapons and you can fire
yours
in me all night.

“Jesus,” Biff groaned. “You two know we can all hear both sides of this conversation, right?”

“I don’t mind,” Zed chimed in with a chuckle. “Does this make it an open invitation?” A loud thud signaled something flying at his head, presumably from Torch’s direction. “Ow! I was just kidding, man. Fuck.”

“Okay, guys,” I laughed. “You ready? I’m switching the outside cameras, the gate code is 7354.”

“Ready,” Biff responded.

I switched the video feeds, placed my laptop back on the passenger seat, and said, “Go.”

The van pulled away from the side of the entrance road and drove a quarter of a mile to the front gate. Biff leaned out and punched in the code. The doors swung open and we both went through, but I branched off to the right about two hundred yards in and parked behind a tree. After making myself comfortable and grabbing my laptop to keep an eye on the live cameras only I could now see, I watched as the guys pulled up to another chain-link fence surrounding the building itself and backed up to it.

All wearing ski masks, black clothes, and backpacks, Torch, Zed, Grimm, and Squid jumped out and cut an opening before squeezing through. I switched the interior cameras to show my looped footage in the control room and pulled up FTX’s key code software. Every door in and around the building had an override combo which changed every five minutes and was only accessible to the CEO and Head of Security, in case they had a breach and the building automatically went on lockdown.

“The code is 2987,” I told the guys as they reached the specific door we were after. “And just as a friendly reminder, please don’t kill anybody if you get caught. These are technically my clients.”

“Knock ‘em out if we have to, got it,” Mace replied.

I pulled up interior video. “You shouldn’t run into anybody, the hallway’s clear. Go sixty feet to the right, there’s an unmarked gray door. 7286 will get you in, the drones are stored in there.”

I kept my eyes on the screen, skimming all the feeds for any sudden movement. Luckily, the security team was following routine and chitchatting in the control room.

For the next few minutes, I sat back and kept an eye on things. The drones were light and under four feet wide, but we didn’t want to tip off FTX to the robbery right away, so the guys had to carefully pluck and rearrange. One by one, they set four drones by the door. The override code switched over just as they grabbed a fifth.

As if on cue, trouble showed up.

“Shit,” I muttered, spotting a black SUV at the gate. I’d only planned for the security already inside the gates, not coming in from the outside. Not once in the past four weeks had anyone showed up after midnight.

“What?” Torch asked.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said, as calmly as possible to avoid making him panic. “The inside code is now 1134, the outside door is 4509, the gate’s 9965. Memorize it… 1134, 4509, 9965. You guys need to hurry, we have company out here.”

“Babe, distract and move,” he ordered.

I switched a single exterior camera that was pointing at me back to a live shot, but hid the feed to the control room so the men inside wouldn’t see it quite yet. There had to be footage of what happened next, or they’d find out they were watching loops. “They’re coming in from the road, not the building, they’ll spot the van in twenty seconds from that direction. Just move. I got it.”

“Liv, don’t—”

“Torch, shut the fuck up and trust me,” I barked. “Get those drones out to the van.”

I grabbed a flashbang grenade and Molotov cocktail I’d set on the passenger side floor earlier and stepped outside my door. As soon as the SUV’s headlights came into view, I lit the cloth on the Molotov to get it going and threw the flashbang as far to the opposite direction of the guys as I could. As soon as it went off, I tossed the burning bottle in the same direction.

The SUV instantly sped by me, following the fire. “What’s happening over there?” I asked.

“We’ve got two loaded,” Torch replied. “Get out.”

“No, they’ll see you guys. The video’s still looping, we don’t have to worry about the inside team. I have an idea, just keep moving.”

“Liv, get the fuck out!” he yelled.

Ignoring him, I turned on my ignition and headlights and drove out from my hiding spot. I headed straight for the SUV, hoping the driver saw me.

He did.

As the vehicle made a quick u-turn, I hit the gas and turned on my brights to blind the driver.

“Liv,
go
! We’re loaded up,” Torch confirmed.

“Don’t move yet, hang on,” I muttered, concentrating all of my attention on the game of chicken I was about to play.

“Fuck! What are you doing?”

“Just
wait
,” I hissed.

I floored the accelerator and braced myself for a possible impact.

“Liv!”

With less than a few feet to spare, the SUV swerved out of my way, sending it rolling away in the dirt. I spun the steering wheel with my palm, factoring enough of a turn radius to avoid flipping over too, and went around it. Then I did it again.

“Biff, step on it!” I ordered. “I’m right behind you.”

“Jesus Christ!” I heard Torch roar. “What are you doing? Biff, go back.”

“No, don’t fuck this up,” I urged. “Let me know when you’re close to the gate.”

Bullets started ricocheting off my truck, but I kept driving in circles around the SUV, kicking up as much dry, sandy dirt as I could. After six or seven laps, the shooting stopped and it was almost impossible to see anything in the brown cloud I’d created. Thank fuck it hadn’t rained in days.

“We’re fifty feet out,” Biff said.

I switched my lights off, made one last half-circle so I could head in the right direction, and floored it again.

“Heading your way,” I told him. “Slow down when you hit the entrance so the gate doesn’t close on me.”

Moments later, I spotted the back of the van and laid off the gas to avoid slamming into it. “On your ass, Biff. Move.”

He went through, but the gate started to swing closed. I sped up again and made it just as the door scraped my back bumper.

Loud, raucous cheers erupted in my earpiece, damn near rendering me deaf.