“No fair. I didn’t get a kill,” I huffed.
Mateo ran his thumb over my chin, wiping a line of blood away and frowning at me. “There’ll always be a next time.”
“I want a now time,” I growled and Mateo looked to Niall and Jack, concern blossoming in his gaze.
“We need to figure out a plan,” he said heavily. “Stay here.” He strode away from me to join the others and my pout pushed out even further as I stared at their little man club.
I didn’t even get a kill and now I was being cut out of an official Society of Psychos meeting? This sucked hairy butthole.
My heart shrank to a tiny pea, a pea which tumbled down into my belly, whirling around in there and sobbing as it went.
My men started arguing, pointing at each other as curses carried up the sky and Brutus barked at them like he was in on the conversation too. I didn’t care to listen to what they were yapping about. I was the only one who had a right to be a moody Joel, they’d all gotten a kill. But me? No, I was here in the wake of a massacre, and I had no victims among the dead.
I hurled the gun away from me with a snarl, the thing hitting Niall’s new Jeep and leaving a dent in the side of it. Then I twisted on my heel and huffed my way back to the house.
I wanted some Coco Pops, but I didn’t even deserve Pops right now because I hadn’t shed a single drop of blood tonight. I was supposed to be the Pink Pussy, but I was just the Bald Beaver instead. And there was nothing worse than a bald beaver.
I hung my head, stomping to the front door and not even looking where I was going because I just wanted to go sit in the shower and scream.
A large sweaty palm slapped over my mouth, and I jerked to attention before I was yanked back against an enormous body the size of three bodies stitched together horizontally.
I sensed who it was before I even heard his voice, my instincts screaming with the memory of him as the scent of liquorice twisted around me.
Señor Castillo.
“One wrong move and I’ll empty my gun into you, whore,” he said in my ear, dragging me backwards. “You’ll be my shield until I’m out of here.”
I fought against his hold, feeling his snooty Simon of a gun poking into my ribs as he towed me towards Niall’s truck while the sound of my men arguing still carried up to the sky. The lights flashed on the car as Señor Castillo opened it with a key he must have stolen from the house, but still my men didn’t see.
I weighed up my options, not wanting to be made into swiss cheese by Castillo’s gun, but also not wanting to play human shield so he could escape.
He drew me down onto his lap in the driver’s seat, yanking me tight to his body as he pressed the button to start up the truck. The moment the engine growled, my men stopped shouting at each other and I twisted my head, trying to see them out the back window as Castillo drove the truck in a fast circle to turn it around.
Niall started shooting and I screamed as the passenger window exploded and a bitch of a shard of glass cut my arm.
Angry Jack knocked Niall aside as he heard my scream and Castillo accelerated down the drive, leaning around me as he kept one hand on the gun pressing into my body while using the other to drive.
“Rook!” AJ bellowed as my three men came running our way and adrenaline spilled into my blood.
Castillo had to veer around the fancy car he must have arrived in with the other men and we bumped over the grass, the gun slipping for a second so it was no longer jammed into my side.
That was my moment. No matter how small, how much of a fragment of a heartbeat it was. I wasn’t going to be torn away from my heathens. I wasn’t going to end up dead in a ditch somewhere at the hands of this sweaty man. I remembered when Dead Man had tried to kill Niall with a windscreen wiper lever and thanked him for his clever idea. I snapped off the lever behind the wheel then stabbed it backwards with all my might in the direction of Castillo’s face.
He roared as it sunk into something fleshy and the gun went off with a bang that I felt everywhere. I was so full of adrenaline, I couldn’t be sure if I’d been shot or not. But it didn’t matter now.
I twisted around in my seat, stabbing with the broken bit of plastic again and again as Castillo clutched his bloody eye, screaming and trying to push me away.
He dropped the gun as he flailed beneath me, snooty old Simon now down in the footwell and stopping him from accelerating any further as it got stuck under the pedal.
The car rolled down a bank and my head hit the roof as we bumped along, but I never stopped stabbing, driving my makeshift weapon into Castillo over and over as hot blood splashed my face. The huge man was no longer in control, it was me who held the power now, the goddess of his destruction come to make him pay for all the cruelty he’d dealt in his life. My mind was in a murder haze as I continued to stab and stab and stab, and it was only when the door wrenched open beside me that I realised the car had rolled to a halt and Castillo had long since stopped moving.
AJ dragged me out of the car, and I was suddenly surrounded by all three of my psychos, pressing against me, our hearts beating as one rebellious creature who defied the laws of life. We were the outcasts of this land, the rejects of the world, but together we had something real and ours which no one could take from us.
Niall drew me from Jack’s arms and we shared a bloody kiss that tasted of our fallen enemies. He smiled at me like a jester as he rested his forehead to mine and I felt our souls winding even deeper together.
“It was Señor Castillo,” I breathed. “He’s the last on my kill rock. Now he’s deader than a daisy in winter.”
“He came with the Alonso brothers,” Mateo said and I looked from him to AJ as relief filled me over their deaths. “They won’t be the last to come here. They will have told someone where they were going.”
“Fuckin’ cartel ruining my safe house,” Niall muttered irritably.
“Your safe house?” Mateo hissed.
“Yeah. Mine. All mine, seeing as I stole it from ya,” Niall said smugly.
“Well, I wasn’t the one driving when they followed us back here,” Mateo said bitterly.
“I’ve never once missed a mark on my tail before now,” Niall snarled. “Not until you two fellas decided to distract me by making Brooklyn come all over the back seat when I should have been concentrating.”
“Your lack of concentration isn’t my problem,” Mateo snapped.
“Well fuck you for bringing yer enemies to my door, el burro,” Niall said as I jumped down from his arms and he stalked away to the house.
“What now?” I asked, looking from Mateo to Jack who was frowning at the closest corpse and seemed more interested in his thoughts than our conversation.
Mateo stepped towards me, his features setting and clarity washing over him. “First, we must destroy the evidence, hide the dead, and wash their blood from our flesh. When that’s done, we will make a plan.”
I gripped Brooklyn’s wrist and dragged her up the hill, stepping around the body of Carlos Alonso and cursing as I hauled her through the front door then towards my room.
“Where are we going, Dead Man?” she asked curiously. “Did the killing get you all hot under the cobra?”
“The cartel don’t do things by halves, mi sol,” I said to her urgently, drawing her into my room and throwing the door closed between us and the outside world before releasing her and doing a quick sweep of the place.
Once I was convinced there was no one in the room, I dropped to my knees and hauled the go bag I had ready out from under the bed. I’d gathered up some weapons and found a few of my fake IDs around the house in places Niall either hadn’t checked or just hadn’t cared about. I knew he’d had a few made up for her, so I’d find them before we left too.