Shelter From The Storm (The Bare Bones MC Book 6)(39)

“Oh, you changed your mind? You changed your mind? Holy shiz, Travis McShane”—I yelled that name extra loud, on purpose—“you were sent here to bury me but I’m supposed to forget all that because you changed your mind?”

Fox shifted in his boots, looked around at everything other than me, huffed and puffed. He clearly had no answer.

I slapped my thigh. “Oh, that’s just great! Just f*cking great! What am I supposed to do now? Should I tell my handler about you, and get relocated all the f*ck over again and start yet another brand new f*cking life just because you decided to change your mind?”

“Well what did you expect me to do?” he yelled. “Not change my mind? Just go ahead and do it?”

He had a point. We stood panting, shooting daggers at each other, our jaws askew, at a loss for words for once.

And then his f*cking phone chimed.

And he f*cking answered it.

It wasn’t just any call, it was some moron—Santiago Slayer, as it turned out—FaceTiming him, Skyping or whatever it’s called when someone does a video call.

“I’ve got to take this,” snapped Fox, holding up a forefinger. “Don’t go away. Hola, ese,” he said to the smiling, well-groomed face of his brother in the murder trade.

“Que esta pasando?” Slayer said smoothly. “How is the conflagration of the annual motorcycle going?”

“How the f*ck did you know where I was?” I heard Fox ask, although I was angrily storming away.

Slayer guffawed. “Oh, pfft. It is not that difficult when you have faces in all the right places.”

Fox guffawed right back. “One of the Bone Lickers told you.”

“Well, perhaps, but it always comes down to who knows who.”

I had stormed too far by then to hear any more of their idiotic conversation. I had almost stalked right past Tobias, too, by the time I recognized the sullen, lonely tech guy. He morosely drank a beer while casting glances at the fiery motorcycle.

“Tobias!” I said, almost angrily. “Have you gotten any news on my sister?”

He sighed deeply. “Sister, schmister. Everyone wants something from me except that which I’m prepared to give.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Yes. I’ve got news. Sorry. In the heat of having my fighting skills laughed out of town by every biker within a five hundred mile radius, I forgot to give you the intel on your sister.”

“Let’s go somewhere quiet. There’s a bar a couple blocks up.”

“Agreed, as long as it’s somewhere I don’t have to have my face ground into the combined crotches of Tracy and Wolfgang Fuckboy Glaser…”





CHAPTER FIFTEEN




FOX


A house divided against itself cannot stand.

I knew the day would come that Pippa would confront me with knowledge of who I worked for.

I just didn’t expect it to happen so soon.

I was unprepared, fumbling around like a moron in the bushes, not knowing what to say to her. When Santiago Slayer called me with an uncustomary bad sense of timing, I had to take it. I had no f*cking choice. Who knew when he’d move onto the next party or hit, and go off the grid?

“Que esta pasando?” He seemed to be in a hotel room from the sterile, uniform looks of things. Nauseatingly, he was shirtless, displaying a sort of gold monogrammed necklace, and two skanks cavorted on a bed behind him in their underwear. But he was all business for the moment. “I have found your Phil Din for you, and in the most unexpected of places, I might add.”

My antennae went up with the readiness of a radar system locking onto a mark. “Where?”

He chuckled. One thing you had to hand the guy. He didn’t let the stresses of this job get to him. “Well, you are not going to believe this, hermano. That pinche guey with the dissolving jaw posted his resume on LinkedIn.”

It was as though Slayer were speaking Russian. Linking a resume? Did sicarios even have resumes? “What the f*ck is that?”

Slayer closed his eyes with patience. “LinkedIn. It is a very lame and corny place where only pinche gueys would bother going if they want to network with other pinche gueys in a business atmosphere.”

I sort of got the picture. But not really. “So he posted his resume?”

Slayer guffawed. “Yes, isn’t that unbelievable? But not under the name Phil Din, naturally. He used the name Jim Fell. Ladies, ladies. Not now.” He smiled indulgently at the snatches in the background who had become bored with each other. They draped themselves over his shoulder, causing his handheld camera to shake. Another minute was wasted while he set his phone on a table and detached the women.

I was snorting with exasperation by then. “If he used the name Jim Fell, how’d you know it was him? Did his resume say ‘expert in ordnance, military grade weaponry, and snuffing out innocent people’?”

Slayer was suave. “Of course not. No, this gilipollas went ahead and”—he closed his eyes while he held his stomach and chuckled with mirth—“he goes ahead and—”

“Slayer.”

His eyes popped open. “Oh. Sorry. He goes ahead and posts his photo to LinkedIn.”

Even I had to laugh at that one. “His photo? Good one. That mug is a one in a billion.”