I could tell. The spot Saint had dragged me to was worse than the windswept lookout post we’d climbed all those months ago to watch the Sambinis smuggle coke into Porth Luck and collect a Crow-facilitated delivery of girls. And it was raining.
Score.
Saint didn’t seem to mind the gale in his face, his chestnut hair plastered to his skin.
Alexei’s face seeped discontent. “This office is terrible. Of course you chose it, wingman.”
“You heard from him?” I snapped a glare to Saint. “And you didn’t fucking tell me?”
Saint shrugged. “You didn’t ask.”
Fuck. I hadn’t. I’d spent the night with Embry, talking bollocks to keep his mind off the pain he was in while Saint and Mateo had listened to the wire downstairs. And I’d sulked, scowling at my blank phone screen every moment Embry was distracted enough not to notice.
Huh. Maybe that was the answer.Next time, just fucking ask, you moron.
If I applied that to everything, I had nothing to worry about, but the inclination to rehash what Mateo had told me, to put it to Alexei and force his past to the present... it wasn’t there. I didn’twantto know.
And I didn’t care to decipher why.
“There’d better be a good fucking reason you clowns have dragged me up here.”
“Quantify a good reason, Cam. Does it involve sex? Because it is too cold, even for me.” Alexei’s grey eyes sparkled with humour.
I tilted my head, enchanted by it. “You like alfresco fucking?”
Alexei glanced at Saint. “I like lots of things we have not found the time for yet.”
Yet. That tiny word. I loved it. It gave me hope that he was mine to keep forever. More than that, he wanted to be. If we survived this last round of carnage, we had all the time in the world to love each other... right?
Fuck. If only life was that kind, but a man could dream. “If I’m not fucking you in a thunderstorm, give me something else to smile about.”
“We are going to bomb the compound below,” Alexei said as if he was telling me he was gonna bake a damn cake. “It is a good vantage point from up here. A place to detonate undetected while being sure it is vacated of any soul you do not wish to kill.”
Shock wasn’t an emotion I was entitled to. I’d grown up in a world where my father, Rubi’s father, Nash’s uncles... they’d done this shit a thousand times. Pipe bombs. Rigged cars. Anything and everything to get the job done. Damn, my first task as a patched member had been to deliver a fiery message to Frank Crow’s enforcer.
But the Crows’ compound wasbig. To destroy it would need a device far beyond anything I could live with.
I started to shake my head.
Saint spoke before I could. “It’s vandalism, not murder. I already told him we only have two targets.”
His deep voice washed over me like a wave far calmer than the ones that raged below us, and his touch, his hand on my hip, was a fucking tranquilliser dart.
I simmered down. Focused on Alexei. “Okay. You have my attention.”
“Vsegda, biker boy. But we are talking about business.”
Still didn’t speak Russian, but I got the gist and rolled my eyes. “Just fucking tell me.”
“I will tamper with the electrics to cause a fault and lay explosives that are undetectable, particularly when an accidental cause of the fire is so obvious. The rat—”
“Stop calling him that.”
Alexei bared his teeth at me. “No. He is what he appears until this ends.”
“But you think he’ll help you obliterate his club’s home?”
“I do. Ifyouare right about this man, it is not the Crows that matter to him. It is being part of something that he can be proud of. This building, this place, it means nothing.”