Wild Rider (Bad Boy Bikers Book 2) (21 page)

She couldn't kill anyone. Of course she couldn't. She was thinking she would scare the guard—but there was no scaring someone with that much meth in their system. The guard's skin was sallow and thin, malnourished, his hair torn out in clumps. He had a wicked, crazy smile on his face, lining up his shot, taking his time.

Beretta opened fire, nailing him in the hip and sending him spinning. Then he shot him in the chest, and the guard went to the ground. Beretta continued to shoot him, though, again and again, until his clip was empty.

Close. Too close. My fault it was that close
.

Locke sprang up and ran to the dead man, kicking his ribs, letting out a roar of frustration.

“Mother
fucker
,” he shouted, waving his gun in the air. “Do you see what I fucking mean? We have to get out of here. Tank,” he spoke into his headset. “We're on our way.”

There was only static in response. Beretta felt a low pit form in his belly. He hoped they weren't too late.

“Yeah,” said Ace into his headset. “Meet us at the rendezvous.”

“How are we going to get there without him?” asked Locke. “Without him covering our getaway?”

“I guess we can sneak out how we came in. Circle around through the wilderness. It’ll take awhile, but...” Ace shrugged. “All we've got is time, now.”

Helen climbed up on the back of the dump truck. Beretta, watching her, was about to tell her to come down. They needed to get going and soon.

“Wait,” said Helen. “What’s under the tarp here?”

She lifted it up, gasping as she did. Beretta rushed after her—thinking the worst. Some kind of ambush. More men with guns. He had a sudden, knowingly ironic fear of her being taken hostage.

But it wasn’t anything like that.

Money. A mountain of money, stuffed inside trash bags and gym bags and grocery bags. More money than Beretta had ever seen in his life, waiting under that tarp.

They had found the stash.

“Tank,” said Ace. “If you can hear me, belay that order. We got a new plan. Hang tight for thirty seconds. We’re coming for you, and the money’s coming with us.”

––––––––

H
elen's adrenal glands had to be close to exhaustion, and yet even so she continued to feel the pump of energy through her system, demanding that she remain alert and cautious. She was stuffed inside the back of the dump truck with Beretta, grateful that she could feel his strength right up until the point that she remembered she was furious with him.

The dump truck rumbled to life. It was large and heavy—weighed down even more with the tonnage of cash they carried. Locke drove, the most experienced hot-wirer of any of them, and also the only one who had any previous time with driving a truck.

“Did this for the city of Lubbock about, oh, four, five years back,” he said over the heavy noise of the truck. “Handles just like I remembered.”

“Fucking go already!” Beretta growled.

Locke hiccuped a little laugh and floored the gas. He powered through the bay door, not bothering to open it. If they opened the door, it would give the men with guns outside too much time to adapt and turn their attention onto them.

With a huge, tumbling crash, Locke broke through the door and skidded out into the concrete in front of the steelworks. For a moment, time stood still and all the gun fire stopped. The Copperheads stopped to turn, jaws hanging slack, dumbfounded at what they saw.

Outside it looked like an actual war zone. The explosion from the van had completely torn open one side of the steelworks, leaving a huge crater in the ground where the van had been. Chunks of it—and chunks of other steel and dirt—were splattered everywhere.

Across the street, she saw the van fender sticking outside the side of a tall brick building. There were men in tatters on the ground, blood following everyone. Bricks set on fire littered the streets. Everyone was hit one way or the other, most covered in dirt and grime from pushing themselves against trashcans and building corners for cover. Bullet holes were in everything. Cars. Lamp posts. Street signs—even the street itself was marred and full of long, jagged marks.

The Copperheads saw them exiting. At first, they did nothing. Eyes wide with shock.

Then Rattler saw them. It must have been Rattler—he fit all of the descriptions that Helen had heard. Bald. Covered with scars and ugly tattoos. Skinny—far too skinny. He had an assault rifle in his hands and he pointed and yelled in their direction.

Helen could not hear what he said over the din of the truck, but she assumed it must have been something close to “get them, shoot them, make them pay.” Thick syrup-like drool splattered out from his lips and landed all over his chest and gun.

And so, shoot the Copperheads did. The assault fire opened up and rattled against the truck, tearing into it.

But the dump truck kept going.

“Son of a bitch armored the truck,” Locke laughed. “He knew he’d have to run out with his money and he armored the truck!”

A bullet cracked against the windshield and splintered into a hundred pieces around it. A big dent was left in the clear surface.

“Whoa!” said Ace. “Hurry it up.”

Locke nodded, pushing hard on the gas. Sirens could be heard in the distance—the cops finally making a move. Or, maybe the fire department. Either way, it was bad news. Beretta was already on the radio.

“Tank, are you ready?” he asked.

“Ready.” His voice sounded pained, tired.

They drove up next to the building where Tank had parked his M-60. The brick and mortar was covered in bullet holes, more and more near the top. Like it had been chipped at with some massive chisel. The Copperheads had done their honest best to clip him. The fire escape had been dislodged from the building, surgically removed by the constant spray of bullets.

There was a heavy thump as Tank landed in the back, rolling on the pile of money. And then, after a moment, the thumping continued as he opened fire with his handguns over the top of the lip of the truck.

“Holy shit,” said Tank, crackling still in their headsets. “This is a lot of fucking money!”

Locke stepped on the gas, speeding away from the steelworks.

But, the time that it took to pick Tank up allowed the Copperheads to regroup. They followed after the dump truck on their bikes. Sirens and flashing lights closed in on the steelworks behind them, but they were all focused on the fire and destruction that the Wrecking Crew had left behind. As Locke pulled up onto the highway, the bikes crowded around him, trying to veer him off the road.

“They want to funnel me,” he said, his grip shaking on the wheel.

“This thing weighs ten times as much as their bikes,” said Beretta. “Knock 'em off!”

Locke nodded and swerved one direction and then the other. Bikes shattered around them, knocking into the barricades and tumbling and flipping across the concrete into opposing lanes of traffic.

Rattler was outside—Helen could hear him.

“Gut you!” he shouted. His voice like some mutated wolf's. “Burn you! Tear you to bits!”

He held a sledgehammer in one hand, pounding it against the passenger side window. It spun around him like a whirligig. Locke swerved to knock him away, but Rattler was too agile, moving back and to the side, keeping himself alive.

With another huge swing, Rattler broke through the heavy glass of the passenger-side window, shattering it into Ace. Ace turned to cover his face from the shower of broken shards. For a moment, Helen thought of what she could do to help. She had a gun in her hands still, but had no idea if she could really fire it at someone. Then there was the box cutter, still stashed in her jeans...

But she didn't need to move at all. In the chaos of movement and collision, Beretta had dropped his gun and Locke tended to Ace. But Beretta, moving fast, grabbed the hammer as it broke through the window and yanked it forward into the cab, pulling Rattler close—straight off his bike and into the door.

“Gut you!” Rattler snarled again. “Gut all of you fuckers!”

“Not today.”

Beretta headbutted him in the nose, smashing it and sending Rattler flying back off the truck. He landed on the side of the road, rolling and tumbling hard on the shoulder. If there was any justice in the world, he wouldn't get back up.

Helen watched, through the mirrors—and saw when he did, dusting himself off and clearly yelling at them still.

Still out there in the world, still wanting to kill them. But it didn't matter.

They were gone. They were safe. They had done it.

––––––––

B
eretta had headbutted two men today and his forehead was hurting more than a little. His side ached still from getting shot days ago, and he hadn't had a good night's sleep in more than a week. He was hungry and he wanted a piece of chocolate.

Even so, he felt good.

Miles away, in the middle of the city, they had another getaway car stashed away. An SUV, the long kind with eight seats and a wide trunk. All of them working together, into the getaway car the cash went—so much that it all almost didn’t fit. After that, they dumped the dump truck and took off in the SUV. Helen and Locke rode with cash sitting on their bellies and there was more all over the floor.

They just marveled at how much it was.

“I have my salary in my lap,” said Helen, thumbing through a stack of bills. “This is how much I made last year. And it’s in my lap. Jesus Christ. I’m in the wrong business.”

“They say crime doesn’t pay,” said Locke. “And if you ask Rattler, he’ll agree—”

“After he fucking guts you for talking to him,” said Tank, up in the front seat.

“Correct. Anyway, my point is, crime does
not
pay. But crimes against criminals
do
pay, it seems. I think
we’re
in the wrong business.” Locke let out a low whistle. “This is more money than we’d
ever
score selling crank on the streets.”

Beretta was in the back seat with Helen. He had unconsciously put his hand down on her lap. She slowly, deliberately, pushed it off. He gave her an apologetic look, but she was peering out the window.

It was going to take some time to heal that wound, he knew.

Luckily, she’d be able to do it with a cool couple million dollars to keep her quiet and happy.

That was the plan, anyway. They had so much that a million here and there wouldn’t make that much of a difference. And if there was one thing the Wrecking Crew would trust to keep a person silent even more than being one of them, it was a shitload of money.

She would be out of this life. Gone forever. She could go buy a house on the French Riviera or in the Swedish Alps or somewhere else that made her happy. And she would be safe.

That was all that mattered. That she was away from him—away from him, away from giant explosions, away from men with machine guns and assault rifles, away from cranked-up psychos with sledgehammers, away from anybody trying to kill anyone.

Off you go, fair girl, to a different country where the murder rate is negative, where people steal your car and replace it with a better one, where they hand out chocolates every day to early retirees like you.

He was being saccharine now but he didn’t quite care.

They arrived back at the motel, backing in once again so that the fewest people possible could see them taking out the cash. He grabbed Locke, talking low to him.

“When we’re finished divvying it up,” said Locke, “I want you to take Helen wherever she wants to go. The airport, the bus station, her apartment, wherever. Make sure she’s safe and see her off.”

“What are you gonna be doing?”

“Staying as far away from her as possible.”

“Oh,” said Locke. He shook his head. “That’s too bad, man. I mean, uh, you guys...you were really...it seemed nice.”

“Seems got nothing to do with it,” said Beretta. “Just do like I ask, all right?”

“You got it, boss.”

He walked out and over to Ace, who was picking glass out of his vest.

“What do you want?” said Ace.

“An apology, firstly.”

“Apology?” Ace scoffed. “What the fuck for?”

“I was right, wasn't I? The whole time, I was right. I told you where the money would be, and there it was.”

“Not that you fucking found out. We got your old lady to thank for that.”

“Fuck you,” said Beretta. “You wanted to waste all our fucking time—”

“That's your problem, Beretta. You think right and wrong is a matter of results. It's not. It's a matter of doing what you're supposed to. And when I'm in command, you do what I fucking say.”

He shoved Beretta, pushing him across the parking lot.

“Hey now,” said Locke. “Guys. We're free and clear, here. Let's not get started with—”

Beretta punched Ace across the face. Locke grabbed him, and Beretta punched him too.

This brought Tank into the fray. He sprinted from the other side of the SUV, picking up Beretta and tackling him down. The air left him in a heavy, hot rush. Everything felt like it collapsed inside of him.

“Pin that motherfucker down,” said Ace. “I'm gonna punch my goddamn thoughts into him.”

But Locke got in his way again, pushing him back—and when Ace took a swing at Locke, Locke punched him back. Tank got up, ready to solve
that
dispute.

Beretta rolled over, noticing for the first time that their motel lights were on. Hadn't they left them off? It had been the middle of the day when they left.

Helen entered the room, clearly disgusted with the display of the men fighting among themselves. She looked like a woman who was ready to wash her hands clean of the whole operation, and who could blame her? They couldn't even get along in victory.

There was a scuffling and a few thumping sounds as Helen entered the room, and she let out a startled cry. Instantly, Beretta’s pulse ran up. Gathering himself, his insides quaking with pain, he ran to the motel door—and was clocked over the temple with a gun for his trouble.

Everything went hazy and wobbly for several minutes. Not quite black, but pretty close. Whoever had hit him got him good. He heard gunshots, and for a moment thought he had been shot—but his vision returned and he saw that, aside from the head blow, he was unharmed.