Storm: (Blood Legion MC) (Bad Boys of X-Ops Book 3) (21 page)

Mortal Danger

IT WAS FULL DARK by the time we bellied up to the train depot, me in night-op gear, Angel in fucking street wear with the Legion leather on top.

At the NOL Amtrak rail yard, we slithered between forgotten freight engines and decommissioned stock cars far away from the busy terminal.

Finding a nice little hillside bunker behind a pile of stacked steel girders after I’d planted a few tricks on the train line, Angel and I laid in wait.

Big-ass halogen lights shined all over this neglected part of the train depot like searchlights.

Night dripped down, heavy as the weight of Blaize’s life on my shoulders.

My woman. My lover.

My love.

Sweat trailed along my temples, and I curled over my gun sights. With a grunt, I swung my head toward Angel, who hunkered beside me.

“Mouth breather.”

“Loser.” He butted his shoulder against mine, an AK punched against left arm.

“Jesus. Should’ve blacked out your hair. Glow much, blondie?” His shiny curls all but shouted
lock on this target right here
.

“Not my fault I got the looks in the family.” His white grin flashed in the dark.

“Doubt it.” I knocked against him. “Watch and learn, kid.”

Squeezing my trigger, I hit random halogens, shuttling the rail yard into a darker shade of black.

I stuffed the M2 into a holster and dug my hands into the earth. With my fingers covered in black soil, I initiated Angel, blacking out his face, making a sooty mess of his hair.

“You keep your head down,” I ordered, crouching on one knee.

“Blaize is really in charge?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s—”

“Hot. Yeah, I know.” I checked my ammo. “You better keep your eyeballs in your head and your sights on the tangos.”

“Tangos?”

“Threats.”

Just like that, the threats started rolling in. A three-pronged vanguard. The long silver, black, and thundering double file of Legion motorcycles entered from one direction. A veritable cavalcade of black SUVs rolled in from the left. That would be the terrorists infiltrating home turf. And drawing the circle closed in a mix of trucks and motorcycles, Los Reyes de Guerra.

Melting pot indeed.

Fuck.

Guns, drugs, and cash—the RICO trifecta.

I waited for all the players to exit their rides, unstraddle their bikes, converge together between two rusted hulks of abandoned train cars.

No sign of Blaize.

If Venom had handed her over to one of the other bastard groups, or worse, already done away with her, I’d . . .

Fuck it.

Pulling out a remote, I blew the three charges I’d placed earlier—a neat trick I’d picked up from Walker.

The train yard below flashed into bright white with a massive flash bang. I hoped the unexpected explosions would lead to a whole lotta suspicion amid the shady motherfuckers huddled below.

How about that for a snafu, assholes?

“Holy
fuck
!” Angel shouted.

“Shut up.” I clapped a hand over his mouth before he could give away our position. “And don’t be a loose cannon.”

Fuck the goddamn RICO statutes and live-hostages protocol. I was gonna kill every asshole present until nothing but a bloody red swamp remained, filled with their various body parts.

Angel ripped my hand away. “So you do this kinda thing a lot?”

“Yeah. Not usually on US soil though.”

And usually
with
some freakin’ backup, AKA my team of misfit wanderers.

With the perps shouting accusations at one another below, I decided it was strike-time.

“I’m going in. Need to get sights on Blaize. Cover me.” Holding my Walther M2 at the ready, I glanced back once at Angel. “But don’t shoot unless it looks like I’m in trouble. Don’t want you taking heat.”

Taking a roundabout route down the hillside, I crouched low and circled the train cars. I listened to the argument—growing more heated and hopefully headed toward the deadly zone—erupting between Legion outlaws,
el capitan
drug runners, and haji shitheads.

Peering between two railcars, I still couldn’t locate Blaize. Not a fucking goddamn woman in sight.

Couldn’t see Burn either. Which was unusual. And he’d had a motherfucking hard-on for Blaize since day one.

A sickening sense of foreboding shivered up and down my spine.

Continuing my recon, I widened my circle.

Then I heard it.

A scream.

My name
.

BLAIZE!

Following the sound, I dodged to one of the outlying stock cars. The door was rolled wide open, and some kind of light shone from inside.

I heard a low curse then Blaize hissing, “Get your hands off me before I fucking kill you.”

I jumped up inside, exchanging my gun for my KA-BAR.

Fucking Burn. Holding a goddamn lit blowtorch too close to Blaize’s face, his mouth at her ear. The mad psycho was living up to his serial killer roadname. I smelled singed hair on the air—Blaize’s—beginning to crackle.

Her eyes widened when she spotted me. Burn swung around, dropping his hand to his gun tucked into the back of his pants.

Stalking panther-fast to him, I cracked the hilt of my blade against the side of his face. “Not so fast, dick-for-brains.”

Blood spurted from his nose, hitting me in the face. Dragging him to me, I knocked the fucking torch away. I yanked the gun from his grip, quickly stashing it on my body. With my hand clenched in the neck of his shirt, I hauled him to me for a bone-cracking head butt, snarling with vicious rage.

Burn staggered from my grasp. Only for a second before I was on him, throwing him to the floor.

There was such black-fucking-fury in me he had no chance of escape. I locked in against him, taking in his scarred face, his scared expression.

He looked up one final time from wide-alive eyes before I muttered, “Time for you to take a dirt nap,
couillon
.”

The knife went in easy, tearing through the flesh of his neck and serrating right across his jugular. A warm pool of blood gurgled out of him, dripping through the cracks in the floor.

Cleaning the blade on his leather, I turned on my heel toward Blaize.

“Storm! You shouldn’t be here!” Her face was pale, and there was a bruise on cheek, a scrape on her forehead.

She seemed to be tied down to a chair set in the far corner of the empty car, but I couldn’t really tell because she was covered from her neck to her lap in a big leather jacket bearing the Legion insignia.

Shit
.

She’d been here far longer than everyone else, had to be. Alone with Burn.

Fuuuuck
.

“Where the hell else would I be?” I headed to her, but before I could reach her, Venom jumped inside.

Kouto leaped in, too, right behind him, brandishing the wicked-looking machete.

With one swift scan, Venom stalked to Burn’s blood-leaking body.

“Well, damn. You killed Burn?” Shaking his head, he edged closer to me. “That ain’t no way to treat a brother.”

Stationed between him and Blaize, I trained one gun on him, the other on Kouto, who only grinned wider.

He chanted some fucking juju shit beneath his breath, goading me with long arcing sweeps of the glistening sharp machete blade.

Venom slowly pulled out his Ruger, loosely handling it, aiming between me and what he could see of Blaize.

Right about now would be a frigging great time for my team to show up. Bastards didn’t even know what was going down unless they’d bothered to check their damn phones.

My shoulders tensed. My jaw hardened. I remained fixed in place, locked on my targets.

“How long have you known?” I asked, trying to decide who to kill first.

Probably Venom.

Blaize whispered something behind me, but I couldn’t make out her words.

Venom continued waving his piece around like
eenie meenie miney blow their heads off.
“About the time your girl here took up arms. I mean”—he cocked his gun—“that time she saved my life. Sometimes it pays to be paranoid.”

“You always had that in spades.”

Kouto was slowly trying to circle to my side.

“I did laugh when you almost shit your pants yesterday. When we were gonna rape Blaize here.” Venom’s lips twisted in a sick manifestation of a grin. “Guess you didn’t think it was so funny,
huh
? Figured out the whole friggin’ shebang, Storm. You were rotten the first time you joined the Legion, and in even deeper with—who? what?—this time.”

“That’s right.
I’m
the people who put down maniacs like you.
Put you behind bars
. Put you in your graves.” Ready to squeeze my triggers, I muttered, “I should just execute you now and save the American taxpayers some money.”

“You could. But there’s somethin’ you haven’t figured out yet. And I’d like to stick around when you see my big surprise.” He angled toward me, whispering, “
Tick tock . . . tick tock . . .
”

Kouto laughed from his belly, and I took that moment to pop one off. The bullet hit him in the shoulder, spinning him around.

Venom grinned wildly, not even concerned about Kouto. “Tick . . . tock.”

Kouto righted himself and drew the machete up.

“STORM!” Blaize yelled.

And it was in the moment of silence that followed her outburst I finally heard it. The quiet low-key beeping.

Tick.

Tock.

Blood drained from my face, and I almost dropped my weapons.

I glanced behind at Blaize.

Tears streamed down her face.

“Storm,” she whispered.

Kouto paced closer, blood dripping from his wound.

Venom looked down the barrel of his revolver at me.
“Gotta hand it to the towelheads. They sure know a thing or two about rigging explosives. Even when the explosives come from a bunch of Kentucky rednecks.” He waved his piece at me. “Go on. Take that jacket off her. Be gentle though. Or
BOOM
.”

Backing away, I slipped one gun at my waist, keeping the other steady and sighted. When I reached Blaize’s side, her face crumpled for just a second.

After taking a deep breath, she nodded at me.

I swallowed—and pulled the leather cut from her with fingers that shook.

A homemade bomb vest was strapped around her midsection, interconnecting wires leading to a clock steadily ticking down.

2:00

Le Grand Mort

“JUST IN CASE YOU’RE wondering,
cous
, that’s minutes. She’s been stuck in here for a couple hours already with that thing strapped to her.
And just in case
you get any fancy ideas, try to remove the vest and it detonates.” Venom shrugged. “Burn tried to keep her company. But you killed him, so . . .”

A harsh sound escaped my chest followed by a reverberating roar.

Kouto made his move on me, raising the glinting steel.

I spun to engage him but someone—
fucking someone
—got to him first.

Venom scurried away during the chaos even though I shot after him, rogue bullets pinging off the metal sides of the traincar.

Kouto’s eyes peeled wide in shock. One of his assailant’s arms cranked his throat at an extreme angle. I watched, just as wide-eyed, as the sharp blood- and gore- slicked end of a knife drove right through Kouto’s chest wall.

When Kouto’s huge frame—dead on dead—
thunked
to the floor, Slade was left standing behind him.

“Tried to tell you you’ve been made,” he said.

“You too, Killian Slade.”

It was time for the silent killer to show his shock—popped open mouth, big surprised eyes.

“No time for that shit now.” I kneeled beside Blaize, her deadly situation immediately apparent to Slade, who hunkered beside me.

I should get a fucking tat of that, right across my chest:
No Time For Shit
.

Because Blaize was strapped to a bomb, and the fucking countdown was on.

“Jesus Christ. I knew Venom wanted to do a number on the two of you, but I had no idea.” Replacing his blade with his gun, Slade pushed up to his feet in one easy move.

He stalked away and leaned halfway out the rolled-open door. “Got it, hoss. I’ll keep watch. You figure out a way to get her out of that thing.”

Blaize was sweaty. Her shirt ripped to her waist. She shivered. But her tears had dried up. Her lips set in a firm line despite the shudders wracking her body. Tethered to a bomb for over two hours already, with only one minute thirty left.

Every single muscle on her body flexed in sharp angles.

I laced my fingers through hers, careful not to nudge against her. I kept my distance when all I wanted was to rip her free and drag her into my arms. Keep her there, with me, safe.

Forever.

Her fingers gripped mine.

I looked her over with wavering vision, unable to draw a full breath into my constricted chest.

“You know anything about this shit?” I glanced back at Slade, hoping I didn’t jar Blade, or trip the bomb, or make the one single mistake that could end her life.

“Fuck, man. Not a clue.” His white teeth showed from the long dark beard.

Pulling my hands from Blaize’s, I leaned my head forward against hers, brushing our skin together lightly. I balled my fists.

“
Cher
, you know which one to cut to defuse it?”

“Never did bomb training.” Her laugh came out low and dry. “Probably a mistake.”

“FUCK! This is Walker’s game, not mine.” I held Blaize’s face gently between my hands.

“Whatever happens, Storm, I love you.” She rubbed her lips against mine, and the taste was salty with more unshed tears.

Drawing away, I pulled out my cell, calling Walker, a-fucking-gain. “Don’t you dare say that like it’s the end, Blaize.”

Beep beep beep

“It is the end.” She stiffened in the chair.

I didn’t even dare cut her bonds, let alone one single fucking wire connected to the bomb.

1:00

“Fuck you,
cher
!” I dropped the phone on the floor. I huddled against her knees, wrapped my arms around her legs. “I love you.”

“Don’t die because of me.” Blaize’s voice strained in a raw whisper.

“I can’t leave you.”

“Yes, you can. You have too. You can still get Venom—”

“
Goddammit
! You think I give a crap about that right now?” Kissing her lips, touching her softly, I swore to hell and back. “
Fuck
. About to get us blown up and still lecturing me?”

Tears covered both our faces, and my grip on her grew slippery.

Time was not on our side.

:50

“Incoming!” Slade shouted.

“Hold your fire! HOLD YOUR FIRE!” came the echoing yell from the train yard.

“Holy shit!” Slade dropped back.

Turning, blinking goddamn tears from my eyes, I did a double take. “Walker?”

The Lakota man—the explosives expert—ran across the railroad car.

“Get out of the way.” He pushed me aside.

Straight down to business, he muttered, “Damn, Blaize. You don’t do things by halves, do you?”

“Walker?” Stunned, I sat back on my heels.

“Didn’t think we’d let you get all the glory, did you?”

“We?”

Walker cocked his head.

Repetitive gun blasts rent the air outside.

“Hear that?” He bent over the bomb again, a grim look on his face. “That’s Jane.”

“
Jane
?”

“Justice and Bane.”

I would’ve laughed if I wasn’t so fucking relieved. If I wasn’t so goddamn piss-scared.

Studying the device, Walker asked, “Emulex?”

“You asking me?”

“This is rock-blowing shit.” He drew a small kit from his pocket. “Where'd the Hez get access to this?”

“Coal-mining turned coke-running cunts from Kentucky.” Using the tail end of my shirt, I wiped across Blaize’s brow.

She looked up at me as if saying her final prayers.

:30

“The clock’s really running out, Walker.” I swiped my thumb across Blaize’s wet cheek.

“So the Legion’s a multicultural operation?” He angled a pair of tiny sharp wire-cutters at the red, then the blue, then the brown wires as if
eenie meenie minie BLOW
.

Again.

:20

“Walker. If you don't defuse the bomb right now I will plant a bullet in your brain and send a wreath for your coffin.”

“
I love you
,” Blaize mouthed, her time on this earth counting down in single digits.

“WALKER!” I bellowed.

“Brown. Cutting the brown wire.”

:07

“You sure?” I braced myself to be blown apart.

“Cutting the grounding wire. Earth!”

:05

I held my breath. Held Blaize’s beloved face in my hands. Willed us always to be together, one way or the other.

“Do it,” she ordered.

Slade stood beside us as Walker made the snip.

:02

The clock fucking stopped.

“
Merde
!” I ran my arms around Blaize. “Cut her out! Cut her out of this shit!”

Slade and Walker worked quickly together, pulling off the neutralized Emtex vest first then snapping her free at her wrists and ankles.

Rocking back on my ass, I pulled Blaize against me. Fully against me. Her arms were probably numb. Her legs, too, but I held her in a tight embrace as she gasped. As she worked full unconstrained breaths into her lungs. As she kissed my neck and said my name over and over.

Utter relief pounded through my veins. “Holy shit, Blaize.
Holy shit
.”

She whimpered quietly while I rubbed her arms, her legs, took her back into my embrace, and held her close.

I wiped my eyes before glancing back at Walker.
“Jesus Christ, man. Did you wait long enough to get here?”

“Wanted to surprise you.” He grinned. “Good surprise, right?”

“Fuck, dude. You have no idea how happy I am to see you.”

“Hell, would’ve showed sooner if I’d known I’d get this kind of reception.” He quickly packed away his tiny bomb kit
.
“Only got the boss lady’s text midmorning. Then all your messages piled up when we were en route and incommunicado. Blow the phones up much?”

Standing up, I pulled Blaize with me. I kept an arm tucked around her then grabbed Walker into a tight hug.

I pushed him away just as quickly. “Now, fuck off. Not into threesomes with you.”

“Not into threesomes with anyone, I hope.” Blaize spoke with a dry and crackly voice.

“No, ma’am.” I dipped my head.

“
Hoo-wee
!” Walker hollered. “You finally sealed the deal with the boss la—”

“Shut it.” I smacked him on the side of the head. “Has anyone seen my brother?”

“Your brother?” He looked completely confused.

“Technically my half brother. Angel. ’Bout as tall as me. Blond.”

“Aren’t you just full of fucking secrets?”

“Not anymore apparently,” I grumbled.

Slade looked over from checking to make sure Kouto and Burn were dead
dead
. “Didn’t see Angel.”

“Shit. I told him to stay put, but he never listens to a goddamn word I say.”

“We need to get out there.” Blaize unwrapped herself from me. “And I need a weapon.”

Damn. Couldn’t keep a good woman down. She appeared to be almost fully in control again.

First I pulled my jacket over her ripped and torn shirt then I lifted her chin between my fingers. “You okay?”

While I studied the depths of her blue eyes, I heard Slade and Walker.

“Dude. Twice in six months is too often.”

“Heard that.” Slade answered Walker with a fist bump.

“I’ll be fine after we shut the rest of this shit down,” Blaize answered me. Without even peering at Walker she said, “And about that unsanctioned side trip to Jacksonville, you’re not out of the woods yet.”

“Goddammit. Don’t I get bonus points for saving your skin, Miss Carmichael?” He laid the brown-nosing on thick.

“The boss is back.” I handed Blaize one of my M2s. “C’mon, let’s go see if
Jane
left anyone alive out there.”

“Knew that shit would catch on.” Walker beamed.