Biting back my laugh, I locked the car and tucked the keys into my pocket before leading the way into the dirty bar. The front door swung open with a bang when I pushed it, and I barely made it three steps inside before the hum of conversation dried up.
“Well, if this doesn’t feel clichéd, I dunno what would,” I muttered, peering around the room. It was packed with rough, tattooed, leather-jacketed men and just a couple of women. All of them staring at me like I’d just stepped off my alien spacecraft and demanded to meet their leader.
“Uh, ma’am, are you lost?” the gray-bearded bartender asked with an arched eyebrow. His gaze shifted over my shoulder to Kai but didn’t look any less confused.
I gave him a vacant-eyed smile and continued over to the bar where a couple of stools sat vacant. “Nope, I don’t think so,” I replied with a chirpy voice, “do you sell booze?”
The bartender barked a gruff laugh. “Yes, ma’am. What’s your poison?”
“Dirty martini,” I replied, getting comfy on my chair and totally ignoring Kai hovering over my shoulder.
“Cute,” the bartender scoffed, grabbing out a rocks glass and pouring in a heavy slug of cheap vodka. He then plonked in a couple of ice cubes and slid it over to me. “That’s the best you’ll get here.”
I shrugged and took a sip. “Fine by me.” Even if it did taste like sweaty ass.
“What about you?” the bartender asked Kai with a jerk of his head.
“Beer,” my big shadow rumbled back. A moment later, he had a cold bottle in front of him, and I nudged him to pay the bartender—because I hadn’t brought any money with me.
“Siren, are you going to tell me what we’re doing here?” Kai asked in a lowered voice, sliding onto the stool beside me. “You do know this is a Death Squad hangout, don’t you?”
“Of course I do.” I took another mouthful of my vodka. In the corner of my vision, I could see a familiar biker heading over to us. “Hey, Vega, how’s it hanging?”
The leader of the Dogwood Death Squad leaned a hand on the bar beside me and gave a sigh. “Danny. Can I please ask you don’t break anything this time?”
I chuckled, glancing past him to the suspicious, slightly murderous looks I was getting. “I can’t make you promises that I’m unlikely to keep. Don’t worry your pretty face, Vega, I won’t start anything.” I reached up and patted his rough stubbled cheek, and Kai reacted by jerking my stool closer to his.
“Bullshit. Who’s your friend?” Vega asked, giving Kai an amused glance. “Seems like a possessive type.”
My brows hitched and I gave Kai an overly dramatic gasp. “Oh shit, Death Squad don’t buy their guns from you? Awkward.”
Kai gave me a narrow-eyed glance. “Actually, they do. They just deal with Sam, not me.”
Vega made the connection quickly. “Ares.” Then his eyes flicked back and forth between us for a moment. “Interesting alliance. Alright, have at it. Just don’t kill anyone unless they deserve it.”
He gave a nod to his crew, who all abandoned their drinks and followed him out of the bar, leaving us in a half empty bar. The only patrons left were not Death Squad inducted, but I’d bet a few had been hanging around in the hopes of earning a place in Vega’s gang.
“Alright, are you going to explain?” Kai prompted as I sipped my drink again.
I didn’t answer, waiting for the rumble of motorcycles to fade away. Then I glanced around and picked my victim. He was young, muscular and tattooed. He was also leering at me in a way that said he was primed and ready for an inappropriate comment to make his buddies snicker.
Gulping the rest of my vodka, I locked eyes with the guy. He immediately took the bait, getting up out of his chair and grabbing his junk suggestively.
“You see something you like, slut?” he sneered, and I bit back a laugh. Surely he wasn’t going to make it that easy.
I smiled back. “I see a wannabe Death Squad hopeful with an ego ten times the size of his micro-dick. You reckon you’ll get a free pass into gang life by harassing an innocent woman?”
His jaw dropped slightly, and his friends burst out into peals of mocking laughter, making my target’s face redden with anger and embarrassment. He spat some angry shit back at me, but I wasn’t even slightly listening. Instead, I hopped off my stool and shot Kai a sultry kind of wink before decking the wannabe with a powerful right hook.
For a moment, the whole bar seemed to hold its breath. Then the guy groaned on the floor and started to climb back to his feet. That seemed to be the cue for his friends to leap to his rescue, and the next second saw five of them charging across the room, brandishing beer bottles.
“I thought you weren’t gonna start anything,” the bearded bartender yelled over the noise at me with an accusing glare.
I just shrugged, grinned, and ducked a sloppy swing from micro-dick’s friend. To my amusement, the punch glanced off Kai instead, and he responded by lifting the guy up by his T-shirt and throwing him into a wall.
Dogwood never disappointed when I needed a good old-fashioned bar fight to temper my emotions.
19
Kai dragged me out of the fray by physically grabbing me and tossing me over his shoulder, the big brute. His grip on my waist was iron tight, and when I thrashed to get down, he smacked my ass so hard it made my pussy throb. Dammit.
“Quit it,” he growled, tossing me into the passenger seat and pinning me with his forearm while he buckled me in. I rolled my eyes and let him, because I’d burned off my need for violence already.
While he slammed the door, then rounded the car to the driver’s side, I pulled a packet of baby wipes from the glove compartment and cleaned the blood off my knuckles.
Kai slid into his seat and shot me a feral sort of glare. “Wanna tell me what the fuck just happened?”
“I thought that was fairly obvious,” I muttered, inspecting my face in the mirror. Some bastard had caught my jaw with a lucky hit, but it was only bruised. My existing damage was a million times worse. “I needed to blow off some steam, and it was either fight someone or fuck. And seeing as fucking is not an option…” I gave a sarcastic gesture to the bar we were speeding away from.
Kai shot me a hard look. “We will circle back to that erroneous statement when we get back to your safe house. Why don’t you tell me why you needed to burn off steam? Is this about Mo’s history with the Guild?”
I scoffed. “What clued you in, smart guy?”
The glare he sent my way was pure fire, and it made my nipples ache. “I can imagine you weren’t expecting to hear any of that. The Guild probably keeps its members fairly in the dark on these less moral projects.”
That really made me laugh. Fuck, I wasn’t even drunk, I was just high and floaty from the fight.
“What’s so funny?” Kai did not appreciate my mood, apparently.
“You,” I snickered. “You’re funny, Big Man. You think anyone in the Guild has morals? That’s cute. You do realize we do anything for the right price, don’t you? The fact that someone was contracted to impregnate your sister then steal the baby? Not even slightly shocking. Nor is it even close to the worst thing I’ve seen in the Guild.”
His hands tightened on the steering wheel like he was picturing them around my throat. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to fuck him just once. Sex didn’t need to involve emotion… it could just be a physical act.
“So what was that fight all about?” he demanded, the edge of anger in his voice warming me inside.
I wet my lips, then sighed. Fuck it. What did I even have to lose by sharing some honesty with Kai? Especially after everything Mo revealed about her past. She didn’t need to tell me any of that, and it’d clearly pained her to do so. I sure as fuck hadn’t done anything to earn her trust.
“I didn’t know about Project Remus,” I admitted. “And I had no idea that babies were being stolen from their mothers at birth… but it’s not a huge stretch to guess they had paid off the right hospital staff and forged the documentation. It really wouldn’t be hard with the Guild resources.”
He said nothing, just waiting for me to elaborate.
Fuck it. “The orphanage thing, though? The Guild raising little baby assassins and spies with no family ties and no one to report them missing if they die on a job?”
Kai made an irritated sound. “We have evidence.”
I rolled my eyes. “I don’t doubt it. I’m the evidence. Theoretically I was surrendered by my birth mother at just a day old, but now you’ve got me questioning whether that’s really what happened.”
His reaction was to stomp on the brakes, spinning his head to look at me in surprise. “You—”
“Watch out!” I snapped, shoving his head down and reaching for one of my guns in the back seat. Because when he braked our car, I noticed we had a tail in the wing mirror reflection.
It was someone on a motorcycle that quickly caught up with us when Kai stopped our car abruptly. The red of our taillights glinted off the metal of a gun in the biker’s hand, and a split second later, our windshield exploded in a shower of safety glass.