Shelter From The Storm (The Bare Bones MC Book 6)
Layla Wolfe
CHAPTER ONE
FOX
Nogales, Arizona
“Run! Hijo de puta, run!”
I had to blink and look twice. Not just because a shower of cocaine was raining down on me from above. My quarry, El Ba?o, had shot out a bunch of ceramic chollos stacked over my head. This turned out to be where they were hiding their coke, as I found out when I painfully tried to rub it out of my eyes.
“I mean it!” said the guy crouched down with me behind the crates of Mexican flowerpots. “If you run out that door, I’ll distract him.”
“Oh, wouldn’t you like that?” I sneered. I was in no position to sneer, really, but I had no idea who this guy was. I knew I’d come woefully unprepared for this shootout with members of the Presención cartel. Thinking I’d just be taking out El Ba?o, alone in a darkened warehouse at one in the morning, it had suddenly turned into the grand opening of a new Disneyland exhibit, complete with fireworks and exciting, heart-pounding rides.
I’d only brought my Springfield .45 semiautomatic with me. I could have easily strapped on my assault rifle, but I’d left it behind in my Harley’s custom saddlebags. I thought I’d go in, pick off El Ba?o from sixty, maybe eighty yards. Instead I must’ve walked into the middle of a major deal. Guys were popping up right and left. Like a whackamole game, whenever I hit one guy, two more would spring up in his place.
Already I was shot in the arm. Bullets cracked overhead, zinging by me, thumping when they hit a column behind me, or embedding in the eighteen-wheeler parked there. I’d tried to use a dead beaner as a breastwork, but that guy was soon so riddled with holes it was like hiding behind a sieve. That’s how I wound up behind these pottery crates with this other guy who also seemed to be aiming at El Ba?o, so named because he’d once left eight guys for dead stacked up like firewood inside a porta-potty.
I wasn’t about to give my quarry up to this Johnny-come-lately, especially not a guy who looked like he’d stepped out of Saturday Night Fever. I’m not kidding. This guy had a polyester shirt emblazoned with an eagle, and the airplane collar was so big he could’ve landed it at JFK. But he wasn’t flying under the radar with his shiny white belt. He looked more like a soap opera actor than a sicario, and I’d been in the business long enough to know all the players. “You want to take the credit for burying El Ba?o.”
He shrugged. He had a very thick but proper Mexican accent. He didn’t seem at all stressed that ceramic pigs stuffed with cocaine were exploding above our heads. “I am only thinking of your health. You only have that Springfield that is almost out of ammo, whereas I’ve got a spare AK under my blazer.” Indeed, under his white linen Miami Vice style blazer, I could see the outline of an assault rifle. If he knew I was almost out of ammo, so did the beaners. “Plus, you are hiding behind a crate filled with terra cotta gangsters. I, however, have chosen this new shipment of a sturdy lavabo to hide behind.”
How did this stylish hitman know that I knew Spanish? And why was he so maddeningly correct in his assessment of my predicament?
“Hey pendejo!” bellowed one of El Ba?o’s enforcers. “Me cago en tu puta madre!” I shit on your whore mother! He punctuated his enthusiasm with a burst of semiauto fire.
I had to crawl even closer to my new protector when another chollo shattered overhead, raining down white and black pottery shards on my head.
The slick sicario finally showed a twinge of irritation. “There is no room behind this sink for both of us!” He popped up to let loose a shower of .45 rounds on the cartel members, then just as quickly crouched down with me.
He said, “Look, you are hit. You have just enough rounds to get you through that door, if they are not distracted by me.”
My skeptical legal-minded brain was working overtime. “You just want to get the credit for the hit.”
His eyes widened with surprise. “I just want to get credit for staying alive! Now go! Vaya con Dios!”
I persisted. “How will I find you?”
His smile was a dazzling display of capped teeth. “How can you miss the likes of Santiago Slayer?”
Maybe Slayer gave me the confidence to make a run for it across the empty expanse between the sink and the door. Maybe it was the fresh downpour of bullets that zinged our way. I knew the worst bullets were the ones you didn’t hear, and as I hauled ass out the open warehouse doors like a true yellow coward, I didn’t hear a thing. Just a loud but dull roar in my head, like a tape loop of synthesized meditation music at a spa.
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!