Never Have an Outlaw's Baby (Deadly Pistols MC #3)(28)

Dust slapped his big arms around me, pulled me close that night, promising we'd rip the throats out of the sorry f*ckers who'd done my brother one day, when the time was finally right.

Prez got me drunk. Held me back. Stopped me from going deep into Georgia on a suicide run, with nothing but my gun, a pack of grenades, and enough rage to blast myself to kingdom come.

Would've done it, too. Would've driven into the Deads' clubhouse and blown myself up like something outta the shit overseas.

Firefly's rifle cracked. I blinked.

We'd stopped talking. I slid my knife against the stone hard and fast, thinking about skinning the f*ck outta every sick motherf*cker I could find who wore the bloody hand on their cut.

His shot went straight through the boards hiding the dummy whose head I'd taken off, and kept going. The mannequin's body joined its head in a million pieces, shattered beyond redemption.

“Goddamn, this baby's got a kick. Helluva a scope on her too,” he said, more to himself than me. “Haven't had this kinda firepower in my hands since the army days.”

“That's one big f*ckin' check mark in our column,” I said. “Quit worrying so much about the op. We're gonna kick their asses so hard into the ocean, the Grizzlies will be on their damned knees, begging for our routes. Haven't ever let death stop us before, and we're not gonna start.”

“Brother, I'm telling you, you've got it all wrong. Ain't death I'm worried about.” He looked up, anger in his big blue eyes. “It's my wife and kid coming up without me that's making me stand here and practice the shit outta this gun 'til I've got it right. It's a motivator – not a damned detriment.”

“Whatever. We'll see about that.” My fingers began burning.

I had to test my knife. Firefly's mad eyes stayed on me the whole time as I laid my hand against my tree bark, taking the freshly sharpened blade in the other. I started stabbing that f*cker right between my fingers like a jackhammer.

All the brothers winced when I did it. Turned their stomachs, expecting me to lose a finger or two every time.

Fuckin' pussies, all of 'em.

They thought I was outta my damned mind.

Maybe I was, ever since that night when the lights went out forever.

My blade stabbed faster, faster, dangerously close to carving off one of my digits, closer on the next thrust. Fucked up as this shit was, it always took the edge off.

Reminded me how close death and dismemberment lurked every day, wearing this patch. Reminded me to be fearless, hard as a stone, ready to do whatever it took to keep my Veep patch and mean it.

Reminded me that giving yourself something to lose was f*ckin' stupid. With two brothers going soft thanks to their girls or babies on the way, it'd be up to me to pick up the slack, to charge in and cut every throat we needed to, without any second guessing.

Some of those sick bastards probably had old ladies and kids, too. That family shit would make them hesitate, and it'd be fatal when my knife went through their throats, before they put theirs through mine.

Firefly sat on a log, cleaning his gun, when my fingers finally cramped up and gave out. I dropped the knife, letting it clatter against my boot. Picked up some mud when I reached down to grab it, and I wiped it on my thigh, feeling a little hate streaming out my body.

Wish there were a whole lot more going with it, but f*ck if I hadn't stopped wishing long ago.

Bingo started barking just then. He'd dropped his bone, causing it to roll down the small incline, just outta reach from the spot where he was straining on his chain.

“Shit. Hold up, boy.” I looked down, noticing how the f*ckin' thing had gotten lodged in that little pit we used to hide our spare guns.

Not an easy climb. I got down on one knee and slid, turning to see Firefly standing by my dog at the last second.

Lost my grip somewhere along the way and fell three feet, smack in the mud, right on my ass. Overhead, Firefly and Sixty looked down at me, laughing their asses off.

“You need a rope down there, bro?”

Fucking shit. Sixty's crap didn't deserve a response, so I reached into the muck, digging around the cold metal box to see where that damned bone had gone.

Took about a solid minute for my hand to come up with that chewed up, dirty, mottled white stick. That was when the wrecking ball crashed through my brain.

I toppled back against the wall, twitching like a current went through me. My eyes weren't seeing the club's spiderholes anymore.

Instead, I saw the hell in grandpa's fire pit three goddamned years ago.

My brother's bones. What was left of his scorched cut. They'd burned him, bones and all, incinerating his leather, his clothes, his flesh. His whole f*ckin' body.

Everything except the head I'd found, next to grandpa, who was barely breathing after his heart attack.

They'd ripped out his f*ckin' eyes. My eyes, the same hazel set we shared as twins.

That sick, soulless grin from my own flesh and blood haunted me. Stalked me like a demon through time and space, always sideswiping me like this during the most mundane bullshit.

Damn. Damn!

I quietly cursed the shit out of everything now, swinging the bone, holding my muddy face up to the sky and screaming.

“Joker! Fuck's sake!” Firefly's booming voice cut through the nightmare. “Get a damned rope. We're coming down for him.”