Gypsy Brothers: The Complete Series (25 page)

FOURTEEN

I make my way down the staircase and up the long, curved hallway that runs the length of the lower floor, my eyes everywhere, listening for any noise that could signal someone approaching. I know that several of the brothers are likely keeping guard in shifts, but it makes sense that they’d focus on the perimeter of the property rather than the inside.

I creep toward the other end of the house, trying to guess in my head where the garage would be. If I saw correctly, the brothers had wheeled the bikes around the far side of the house, away from the bedrooms. It had to be fairly close or else they would have ridden the bikes, so I take a guess and head in that general direction.

I’m in luck. After a few false starts into the scullery and then a storage room, I happen upon the garage, which is housed off the hallway, the doorway nothing different to the rest of the doors that dot the long corridor. I test the door, and my heart leaps with joy when the knob turns easily. Of course, it’s locked from the outside. I’m so grateful nobody has locked it from the inside, too.

I close the door behind me, twisting the lock so that if someone tries to come in, I might have time to hide, the moment of truth and action suddenly upon me. I’m terrified now, my heart feeling like its about to beat right out of my chest.

The bikes are parked at the far end of the garage, and I press forward, determined and sick-to-my-stomach nervous. It takes me a few moments to pull the bags and phones out of the lining of my handbag and line them up in front of me with shaking hands. I turn each phone on, relieved that Elliot had the foresight to fully charge them and keep them turned off before giving them to me.

Next, I tiptoe over to the first bike in the line and unscrew the fuel cap, maneuvering one of the slimline phones and packages of nails and metal ball bearings inside. I’m sweating in the humid, airless garage, sweating and fucking panting. I must look a sight right now, stuffing explosives into motorbikes in my goddamn nightgown while I hyperventilate from fear, and lack of fresh air.

After fumbling for what seems like hours on the first two bikes, I manage to get the rest of the explosives into the remaining fuel tanks pretty smoothly. I look around for a rag to wipe across each of the bikes. Little drips of gasoline having gotten onto each bike, but of course there is nothing out of place in the pristinely clean and neat room, so I improvise. I use the edge of my nightgown, thankful that I have chosen to wear black, and mop up any little spills.

Satisfied, I step back and survey the bikes, each one now stuffed with explosives. I’ve chosen to stuff an extra bomb in the fuel tank of Dornan’s bike, so that no matter what else happens, that fucker is blown to smithereens when I press the detonate button.

I fish out my own iPhone from my bag and activate the app Elliot has loaded onto my phone, the one that tracks the GPS of all five mobiles now floating inside the gas tanks of each motorcycle. I breathe a sigh of relief as six green dots appear on the screen in front of me. They all work, so they should all explode.

That’s a big
should
.

I’m not an idiot; I know things could go wrong. If I don’t time it correctly, they could ride too far away, rendering the detonator useless. I need to be within a five-mile range of the phones inside the bikes for the detonator to work. I don’t know why, I’m just following Elliot’s instructions.

And then there’s the matter of them leaving at the same time. If they leave in a staggered sequence, I’m screwed, because it will mean some of them may blow up closer to the house, or even inside the garage.

I check that my own phone has a full battery and then exit the GPS app, shoving it back into my bag. Satisfied, I sling my bag over my shoulder and tiptoe out of the garage, shutting it soundlessly behind me.

Relief courses through me, and I feel like weeping all of a sudden.
Again.
I walk along the hallway, back to the room where Dornan is still presumably sleeping, and now that I’m home free, I’m much more casual.

Which is kind of stupid, because when I reach the top of the curved staircase and round the bend to the cluster of bedrooms, my knight in shining armor is standing in my path, wearing nothing but a pair of tight black boxer shorts, his hair mussed up and arms folded tensely across his chest.

“Oh,” I say, raking my gaze over him. “Hello.”

“Where do you think you’re going?” Jase asks, his voice full of anger.

“I’m trying to find a bathroom,” I spit back at him. Thank fuck he found me after I laid the bombs, or I’d be royally screwed, and probably end up with a bullet in my head.

“You have a bathroom in your room,” he replies, like I’m a moron.

“Yeah, and if I wake your father, I’ll never hear the end of it,” I hiss.

He leans closer and sniffs my shirt. “What are you doing?” I say, pushing him out of my personal space.

“Why do you stink like gasoline?” Jase asks, suspicion alive and well on his face.

I narrow my eyes. “Because your father just draped himself all over me. Do you really have to ask? Do you want me to draw you a picture?”

He eyes my bag, and I can practically see the cogs turning in his pretty head. “Why are you carrying a bag around to go to the bathroom?” he asks, snatching the bag from my shoulder.

He unzips the bag, which now holds nothing except a change of clothes and a big ol’ maxi-sized pack of tampons.

“Because I have my period, dickhead,” I say. “Would you prefer I carry around this massive box of Tampax for your brothers to see?” I reach over and rip the box out of the bag, waving it in his face. “I can only
imagine
the tasteful jokes they’d make about that.”

Seemingly satisfied with my story—but still not happy—he thrusts the bag back at me, and I grab hold of it before it falls to the ground. He turns on his heel and stalks off, his ass looking mighty fine in those tight boxers he’s wearing.

I slip back into the room I’m sharing with Dornan without waking him up, and sit on a wicker chair on the balcony, the muggy night air warm but bearable outside.

I sit, and I wait for the sun to come up, and for my day of reckoning to begin.

***

Dornan wakes the moment the sun begins to rise, the world bathed in an eerie orange glow, half darkness, half light. I watch from my spot on the balcony as he dresses, quickly and efficiently. He even has a proper gun holster that he wears across his chest over a plain black T-shirt, with a gun strapped under each arm. A leather jacket over the top—plain, I’m assuming because they’re going for the element of surprise—and he’s dressed to kill.

Too bad for him that he’s the one who’ll be dying.

He strides out to the balcony, and I rise from my chair to greet him.

“Morning, baby girl,” he says, dipping his head to my lips and taking what he thinks is his.

I stand on tiptoes and kiss him with fire. I kiss him with rage. I kiss him with every ounce of feeling I’ve got left in my body. I have to stop myself from biting down on his tongue and tasting his blood.

He’s breathing heavily when he finally pulls away from me, a devious smirk on his lips.

“Damn, Sammi,” he says, wiping his finger over his bottom lip. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you wanted to eat me alive.”

I smile darkly. “Something like that,” I respond.

He gives my ass one last squeeze and steps back, tucking one of my stray hairs behind my ear. It’s a foreign gesture for someone like him, and my stomach roils a little at his tenderness, however fleeting.

“I’ll see you tonight,” he says. “Don’t go anywhere.”

I sit back down, smiling as he grabs his stuff and walks toward the door.

“I’ll be waiting,” I call to him as he leaves the room, flashing me a smile and a wink as he closes the door behind him.

I hear his footsteps retreat, and suddenly I’m a ball of nerves. My stomach burns, and I feel an unpleasant gagging in my throat, barely making it to the bathroom before I empty the contents of my stomach into the toilet bowl. Gasping for breath, I spit a mouthful of acidic saliva into the toilet bowl, flushing the remnants of yesterday’s gas station hotdog and fries away.

I make it two steps out of the bathroom before I decide I’m not finished, and rush back to the toilet bowl, gagging on the remaining vomit that’s burning its way up my throat.

I stand there for a few minutes, making sure I really
am
finished this time, before I flush again and rinse my mouth out. I see movement in the mirror, someone moving around in the room beyond, and I whirl around, banging my hip against the bathroom counter in the process.

“Ow,” I complain, stumbling out of the bathroom.

Jase is sitting on the unmade bed, dressed this time, in jeans and a dark gray T-shirt that shows off his tattooed biceps beautifully. I swallow thickly, searching the room for a glass of water.

“Don’t you knock?” I ask, locating a glass of water on the nightstand closest to my side of the bed. I grab the water and take a long drink. I almost spit a mouthful of water across the room when Jase speaks next.

“Vomiting in the morning,” he observes casually. “You’re not knocked up, are you?”

I choke on the water in my mouth, forcing it down my throat before I speak. “No, I am
not
,” I reply shortly, annoyed at his presence. “What do you want?”

He narrows his eyes at me. “I don’t have a bike, remember? I’m stuck with you while everyone else gets to ride out to the warehouse.”

Of course I know. It’s the only way this plan will work. Because I refuse to hurt him.

I raise my eyebrows. “Don’t act like you’d rather go with them on some revenge ride. You’re nothing like the rest of them.”

The sound of one motorcycle starting drifts up from the driveway below, quickly joined by the rest.
Game on.
I haven’t got much time, and Jase wants to stay and exchange witty banter? When all the while I’m thinking
Go Away
! Because I need to get my phone, and I need to see where those six little green dots are so I can press the button and end this thing before they’re out of the five mile buffer zone.

“I need to get dressed,” I say, stalking over to my bag. Jase doesn’t move to leave the room.

“By all means, stay and watch,” I say, my words dripping with sarcasm. He smirks, and it kills me that he hasn’t given me a real smile in what feels like forever.

The smirk disappears from his face as he leans back on his hands, apparently not going anywhere. “You’re not exactly shy,” he says, flicking his gaze up and down my body. “But if you’re feeling like covering up, there’s always the bathroom?” He jabs a thumb towards the room I’ve just exited, and I sigh dramatically, grabbing my handbag and heading into the bathroom. I lock the door behind me, heart in my mouth, as I unzip the bag and fumble for my phone.

I close the toilet lid and sit down, my legs suddenly like rubber. Breathing quickly, I navigate to the GPS app and watch the six dots spread apart minutely as the bikes leave the property, and I can just hear the faint sounds of their engines opening up as they hum down the highway.

I close the GPS app and switch to the other app, the one that has the detonate button. I dry retch as I hover my finger over the button that will start the two-minute countdown, and end in a fiery explosion.

For a moment, I waver. Maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe I
can’t
. But then I think of what will happen to me when the bikes all eventually splutter to a stop, when the fuel gets low enough for the plastic bags to block the fuel intake, and someone figures out what I’ve done.

I’ll be dead. Worse than dead. Elliot, too.

I swallow back fresh bile and hit that button, my hands shaking uncontrollably.

Because in less than two minutes, Dornan and his sons—all of them, apart from Jase—will be blown to smithereens.

FIFTEEN

I lock my phone and leave it on the high windowsill in the bathroom, changing into a black sleeveless top and cut-off denim shorts. I leave the bathroom and stride past Jase, perching myself on the wicker chair on the balcony.

It’s at that moment I spot something that could ruin everything. A lone motorcycle, parked on the driveway directly below the balcony I’m standing on. A bike that looks suspiciously like Dornan’s.

I tilt my head to the side, a growing sense of panic building within me.

“Whose bike is that?” I ask Jase, pointing to the motorcycle sitting stationary on the driveway. Jase unfolds himself from the bed and saunters over, not hurrying at all.

“Oh yeah,” he says. “Dornan got a puncture in his tire. He took Jazz’s bike.”

“Oh,” I say, suddenly feeling dread plant roots in my stomach and blossom rapidly throughout my body.

Dornan’s bike is here.

Dornan’s bike is going to explode in about ninety seconds.

Less than fifty feet from where we stand.

I back away from the railing, wondering how far the fragments will travel when the bike explodes. Sure, it’s down below us, but that doesn’t give me a reason to feel safe. Suicide bombers who use shit like this can wipe out entire blocks of high-rise buildings, and although I know Elliot’s made these on a much smaller scale, I don’t know enough about them to assume we are out of the firing zone.

I stand in front of Jase as the alarm clock on the nightstand beats heavily, its every tick slamming into my brain like a sledgehammer. He looks at me weirdly as I reach out and tug on his wrist.

“What now?” he asks, irritated.

“I need to show you something,” I say, tugging on his wrist. He doesn’t move, rooted to the spot.

“No,” he says. “I’m not in the mood for your antics right now.”

I panic, my stomach lurching again.
Holy shit. How am I going to get him inside?

I rush back into the bathroom and just get the toilet lid propped open in time to vomit, nothing coming out but clear bile. Gross.

“Jase,” I say weakly, still kneeling on the toilet floor. “Can you please come here?”

God, will you just please come inside already?

I lean my head against the cool tiled wall, listening for him. My heart leaps in relief as I hear his footsteps approaching the bathroom.

“What?” he asks, clearly unimpressed.

I stand on shaky legs. “Can you get me some water, please?”

God, these have got to be the longest two minutes of my entire life. Shouldn’t the bombs have exploded already? Maybe it didn’t work, which is both good and terribly bad.

Good because we aren’t about to have Dornan’s bike explode below us. Bad because if the bombs don’t explode, they’ll eventually be found and traced back to me, the girl who creeps down hallways stinking of gasoline and carries a massively oversized handbag, in the middle of the night, when she has a perfectly good bathroom to use in her own room.

Jase looks unimpressed and shakes his head. “I’m here to watch you, not to wait on you hand and fucking foot,” he says, turning to exit the bathroom.

“Wait!” I say desperately, tugging at his elbow.

It doesn’t matter though, because the two minutes are up.

And beneath us, the world explodes.