Rough Ride (Chaos #5)(16)

Sadly, I wasn’t the first beat-to-hell woman who’d walked through his doors looking for protection.

Or a means to get revenge.

Surprisingly, Zip was the kind of man who cared about it.

“That’s sweet,” I noted.

“Shee-it,” he muttered. “I ain’t sweet.”

“But it was sweet, what you just said,” I disagreed.

“See,” he started, “I wanna arm you so whatever motherfucker did that shit to your face…and your throat…you got the means to drill holes in him. That ain’t sweet.”

Okay, maybe it wasn’t sweet.

“It was eight mothereffers who did this,” I shared.

His eyes got big.

Then they got mad.

Then they got mean.

After that, they snapped to Snapper.

“This the girl Bounty worked over?” he asked.

“You heard,” Snap remarked.

“All over the street,” Zip declared. “Always been useless assholes. Now I’m more glad you Chaos boys carved those dipshits up.”

“She’s got Chaos protection,” Snapper stated.

“Yeah, I get that, you’re here,” Zip returned.

“So she doesn’t need a gun,” Snapper concluded.

“She yours?” Zip asked.

“Yes,” Snapper said.

“No,” I said at the same time.

Zip looked between Snap and me, an expression of resignation slid over his features, and he mumbled, “Christ, not another one of these.”

I didn’t know what that meant but I quickly carried on in hopes of ensuring a sale for ole Zip, “I have a mom. We’re close. She could become a Bounty target if they can’t get to me. So she probably needs a gun too. And lessons.”

This was a lie, considering Mom already had a gun. She actually had four. They were Dad’s. She also knew how to use them. She wasn’t a fan of firearms, as such. It wasn’t like it was a hobby. She was just a fan of the second amendment, because she’d been my father’s woman for nearly forty years and he was a big fan of firearms as well as, obviously, the second amendment.

Maybe I should have just asked for one of Dad’s.

Then again, if I’d asked, it would make her worried about my state of mind.

So I hadn’t asked.

The fact that she could, indeed, be on Bounty radar was something I needed to chat with her about.

It was clear I didn’t know Beck and his brothers as well as I thought I did.

Now I knew anything was possible.

It was also clear I should have probably gone out shooting with my dad one of the times he’d mentioned it. But this was part of my mom not being a fan, as such. She said Dad could teach me to shoot when I was old enough and when I was old enough I got more interested in shopping, movies, and boys with bikes (not in that order) and I forgot to ask my dad to teach me to shoot.

“Chaos covering her mother?” Zip asked Snapper, taking me out of my thoughts.

“Just get the binder, Zip,” Snap ordered on a sigh.

Zip shot a squinty-eyed look at Snap before he grumbled unintelligibly and moved away.

“I’m not sure I want to look at whatever this binder is,” I decreed and Snap stopped watching Zip move and looked to me.

“You definitely don’t wanna look at Zip’s binder,” he confirmed.

I decided to change topics.

“This house you all moved me into, is it one of yours?” I asked.

“Yup,” he answered without delay, no beating around the bush for Snapper.

“Did you evict someone for me?” I asked.

“Yup,” he answered, again without delay.

Holy crap.

He actually had.

“Like, in a day?” I queried, my voice higher, my eyebrows searching for my hairline.

“Gave them two days,” he told me.

“That’s…well, that’s crazy.”

“Had another property open. Bigger, nicer, moved them into that. Same rent. So I didn’t evict them, exactly. And they had no complaints.”

Bigger property, same rent as the smaller one.

And for the time being, I was rent free.

He was going to bleed money for me.

Oh God.

“Snap, you didn’t have to do that.”

“You’re wrong.”

“I can stay with Mom until—”

“Rosie, it’s done.”

I closed my mouth.

Zip showed with the binder.

Snap’s leather creaked as he reached out, took it from Zip’s fingers, dropped it to the case and opened it at random.

The second my eyes fell on what was inside, I took a step back.

Left side, eight by ten, man on his back in the street, chest covered in blood that came from several holes, eyes open and staring unseeing, since he was very clearly dead.

Gross and creepy.

Right side, eight by ten, man on his side in a gutter, half his skull gone, blood everywhere, brain matter a blood-covered white-gray wodge of goo that wasn’t all contained in the place it should be, even more very clearly dead.

Way creepier and off-the-charts gross.

This was a curious thing for a gun shop owner to have.

Unless he was a responsible gun shop owner who wished to impart the seriousness of owning a gun on people like me.