I blew out my breath in a long stream. “Goes like this. You remember seeing that house down on The Battery the day we helped Shy move? The one on the other side of her folks’?”
Tail jerked up from his slouch against the bar. “Yeah.”
“I grew up there. That’s my folks’ house.”
“What about this house now?” Tucker asked.
“It was money,” Cole explained.
“How much money?” Boomer scowled.
“Multimillions.” My jaw jumped. “Can we just fucking wrap this up quick? Because Shy’s out there, and that fuckhead took her prosthetic off her!”
“He what?” Tail gritted out.
“He took it off and threw it on the ground.” My nostrils flared.
“We’re gonna kill him.”
“Correction. I’m gonna kill him.” Frustration ramped through me. “Point is, Diablo and his street gang know where I come from. They know Shy has money of her own too. I used to run with them—”
“Run with them?” Sherlock Tucker grated on my last ounce of control.
“Run. Them. The illegal races for our Satan’s League. I was in charge.” Curling my hands behind my head, I looked up at the ceiling. “My arrest record and all that shit. So Diablo’s been bribing me.”
“For how much?” Boomer asked.
“A hundred large.”
“Jeeesus.” Tail cracked his knuckles. “That’s big change.”
“Look.” I paced back and forth like a mad bull. “None of this shit matters! I can get the money.”
“You just happen to have one hundred thousand dollars on hand?”
“Yeah.” I rubbed my jaw. “Somethin’ like that.”
Coletrane whistled between his teeth.
“My folks paid me off to stay away.”
“Fucking hell, man.” Boomer shook his head.
I shrugged. Didn’t give a shit about that ancient history anymore. Shy was the only thing that mattered, and getting her back safe was paramount.
Because I’d fucking die without her.
“Money’s still sitting in the bank. I just need to get it out.”
“Nah.” Boomer swaggered forward. “We don’t bargain for our woman. We make the assholes pay.”
“Promise me.” I lifted my eyes to his, and met equal grim determination. “I need her home. I need her safe. She can’t get hurt.”
****
Night had fallen, hot and muggy, and I was still feverish with black fucking fury.
On the hunt for Diablo and the Satan’s League crew.
I had a piece of advice for the shit heel—before I cut his throat from one side to the other—bribery worked better when you gave a handoff time and a location.
As it was, we’d ridden from one end of the tri-counties to the other, searching every bar, every back alley, every loser locale I could remember—each place more desperate than the last.
And me?
Even more desperate as threats, fists, and the possibility of jail time turned up nada.
My rank past coming back to bite me in the ass.
Rage didn’t even begin to cover what I felt by the time we stopped our bikes outside the last doss house on my list.
I kicked in the door.
Tail drew his gun.
The rest stayed outside.
We’d agreed only Tail and I’d do the illegal shit. Mostly.
Everyone else had something to stay shiny side up for.
We stepped over broken glass, broken bottles, used syringes.
Nice.
And then there were the passed-out bodies, crumpled like marionettes with their strings cut.
“Who are you looking for?” Tail tailed me.
“A bald, bulldog-looking dude.”
“That one there?” He pointed to Lurcher who lumbered to his feet from the middle of a naked pigpile as soon as he saw me.
“Yeah. Him.”
Lurcher didn’t get more than six feet away before I tackled him out through an open door into a yard filled with the filth of decades of party-hard nights.
The fuck used to be an enforcer for Satan’s League. Now he was so far out of his league I muscled him against a burned-out barrel.
I gripped his jowls between my hard fingers. “Where’s D tonight?”
“D?” Piggy-eyed fuck played stupid like it was catching.
“Diablo.” I snarled into his face.
“I don’ do business with him anymore.”
“Then why’d you run the second you saw me?” I bent over him, my teeth clanking together. “Did D warn you I’d be coming?”
“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, Rush.”
“Stop dicking me around!”
And he might’ve actually talked immediately, but I went all enforcer on him. With my fists. I didn’t give Lurcher time to speak let alone duck, hammering my fist into his fat midsection.
Tail watched from the sidelines, unconcerned.
Bashing Lurcher halfway across the littered yard, I unleashed the merest nth of my fury. A punch to the face. A kick to his kidneys. A wicked crack of my skull against his.
“Where. Is. Diablo?” With my hand tightened around his throat, I gritted the words out.
“The races. Tonight.” He wheezed.
“Where?” I cocked my fist, readying for one more lights-out blow.
He whimpered and cowered. “It’s Friday night, dude. Where they always been.”
I hopped off the fat lump of flesh. I had all the intel I needed now. Should’ve figured it out hours earlier.