“GABBY?!” I scream, reaching for my weapon and whipping my head around like a maniac. I hear a muffled grunting noise and my gaze lands on her.Fuck.She’s not alone. There’s a tall figure pressing her against the alley walls, staying well in the shadows between two large trash cans hoping to avoid detection. The only thing I truly notice about the figure is his immense size. The man attacking Gabby hides his features with a ski mask, but he’s only an inch shorter than me. It’s nice that he comes with a bag tohold his brains in, even if his size should give me some pause.
If he changes his mind and attacks me instead of Gabby… Well, at least she’ll have time to get away. My body moves with a natural instinct towards violence that I honed over years of my membership in the Rebel Barbarians Motorcycle Club.
His hands move to Gabby’s neck for the sin of her attempts to scream and get my attention. She flails out madly, attacking him with fury I didn’t realize she would have. My animal instincts take over me completely. Within two steps, my hands reach out as if controlled by somebody else. The urge towards violence grows swiftly into pure pleasure from it. Euphoria surges through me as I close the gap between us.
He would have been better off running away. The man keeps his hands on Gabby’s neck until my own hands reach their target and his bones crunch in my grasp. He loses control over Gabby’s body and whips around in an effort to fight back. I twist his arm, pushing the shoulder out of its socket as he screams and flails with the fury of a scorpion pressed into sand with a boot heel. He made a mistake laying his hands on Gabby. Using the back of her assailant’s neck to maneuver him, I swing him around with his own weight and shove him hard against the wall.
He’s too big to move easily, but he lets go of her and Gabby sinks to the ground, gasping loudly for breath. I throw a punch at the bastard’s stomach and he groans.
“Who are you?” I snarl at him, throwing another punch that knocks the wind out of him and forces him to sink to the ground. I hear Gabby let out a sound halfway between a gasp and a pained yelp.
The assailant doesn’t answer.
“You’re going to die, anyways. Might as well tell me.”
Her assailant gasps and heaves for breath. I don’t bother ripping his mask off, but I look into his eyes and waitfor a response. I note the color. Deep, dark brown. Wrinkles around the edges. He’s old, which gives me an advantage over him. Killing him will be easier than I thought. I don’t hesitate at my gut reaction to end his life.
He touched Gabby. This was the only possible outcome.
Her assailant’s face changes because he sees something in me he’s not too familiar with. I haven’t been in this position for many, many years. I gave it up for Tylee and my family. I never wanted to end up like Ryder Sinclair, though God bless he got out. Despite my desire to stay on the right side of the law, I’ve always known that if I were in a position like this one, I would do what I thought was right to protect the weak.
I would want anyone to do the same for my daughter.
“You stupid fucks are all gonna pay,” he says with an accent that sounds almost Midwestern. His tone is far too arrogant, which makes me think he’s accustomed to wielding power.Where’s his gun?This fool has no control here for all his posturing. Maybe I knocked the sense out of him with my first hit.
Doesn’t matter, he doesn’t answer me the way I want to hear. I kick him in the nuts hard this time and as he groans and sinks to the ground, I reach into my jacket for the 9mm Hellcat micro-compact pistol I didn’t think I would ever get to use.
“I’m sure I will when I meet my maker. But right now, you’re the one who touched my girl, so it looks like you’re next in line.”
“You’re breaking the law,” he groans, clearlytrying to fight back tears. He might not be there yet, but I don’t want to get into the bad habit of thinking ill of the dead. He didn’t seem so weak when he had his hands wrapped around the neck of a much smaller woman.
“What the fuck does that mean?” I ask him. Gabby scrambles to her feet and I feel her body moving slowly behind mine,
Quietly, I reach for her with my free hand and make sure she doesn’t run away and tempt this man’s baser instincts by provoking him to run. People can be foolish when they get jumpy.
“I work for the government. I have rights.”
“The right to choke a woman?”
“You bikers are fucked,” he says. “You hear me? You kill me, you’re going to spend the rest of your fucking life in prison. The feds are onto you. We’re onto you.”
“That doesn’t worry me.”
It doesn’t worry me, but I will certainly pass that information on to Ethan Shaw and the head of the Murray crime family in Boston. Both of them will have several concerns about a low-level attack dog having any information about us. But does it matter what this guy knows if he doesn’t give it up? He’s more of a risk to us alive. And I don’t care. I would have done it just for her.
My finger hovers around the trigger. I give myself a beat to reconsider, but as if guided by a darker, more primal force, I gently tug on the trigger and shoot Gabby’s assailant in the chest.
The next few minutes feels like it happens fast. If the gun weren’t so loud, I would have heard Gabby’s scream. Instead, I feel it shooting up my arm as her body vibrates with terror and the force of it escaping from her lungs. There are sirens all around me already, and I’m counting on the bar scenebeing so fucked up and crazy that nobody hears this gunshot.
It’s a big gamble to take on a murder. But he had his hands around Gabby’s neck. He would have hurt her.
I shoot him again, aiming directly for the heart. I’m sure the little Hellcat does it. That thing packs a more powerful punch than you would expect. Gabby tries to slip her hand out of mine, but I grip it tighter. Her body presses against mine and I feel her face resting against my cut.She’s hiding her face.I feel a pang of guilt at taking this innocence from her.
She’s probably never seen somebody die before. Fuck, she’s probably never kissed or held hands with a killer. Blood spurts at first, but then seeps as the man who touched her slides his body to the ground. His blood soaks the wall and flows from him into a puddle.
This is going to be a huge mess to clean up. I step back as my ears ring. I should have covered them and told Gabby to cover hers. She clutches my cut, shaking terribly as I pull her away from the dead body. I try to peel her away from me to look her in the eye, but she clutches me tighter and refuses to move her face. I have to grab her cheeks with force to pry her off me and when I look into her eyes, I know I changed everything in both of our lives in a way that I had no right to do.
Is this why Tylee hates me? Because my life is always going to be a fucking mess like this?