Into the Blood (Broken Outlaw Series Book 2) Read online

  “What the fuck’s that?” he asks, putting another nerve-rattling hand against my shoulder. “A grand?”

  “Twelve hundred,” I say as Javi scans Chase. “And what do you got, pretty boy?”

  I put a hand up, which Javi does not like. His head whips around and his eyes land dead on my hand.

  “He’s not involved, Javi,” I say, lowering my arm back to my side. He lifts his hand from my shoulder and spins a forefinger in the air, his eyes scanning the ceiling and then he looks back at me.

  “He’s here. He’s involved,” Javi says, coldly, before his eyes drift back over to Chase. “Now, what do you got?”

  “Honestly, all I’ve got is the three hundred in my wallet. That’s why I’m staying here. I’m broke.”

  Javi laughs. “Well, well, well, looks like I’m leaving here with fifteen hundred today then, now doesn’t it?” he asks.

  Chase pulls his wallet out, grabs a wad of bills and hands them over. Javi takes it, pockets it, and eyes the wallet to ensure that it’s empty. He nods and turns back toward me. My back is now against the wall and a hand has drifted nonchalantly to the knife tucked into my back pocket.

  “You have two more weeks, Gabi,” Javi says, flashing his malicious smile again as he opens the door. “Two more weeks and we kill every last one of you.” He glances back at Chase before motioning for his men and heading out the door. They leave, grumbling and laughing as the door shuts behind them.

  Chase looks at me, confused and just a little bit pissed off.

  “Well, there’s that,” I say, forcing a timid smile as I slip past him and to the couch, taking a seat and burrowing my head into my shaking hands. I take deep breaths as I feel him approach and sit down on the loveseat across from me.

  “And what exactly was that?” he asks. Pulling my face from my hands, all I can do is shake my head.

  “I guess you’re involved now. I should have never had you stay here. I should’ve known. I’m sorry for that.” My head falms back into my palms and I let out a long sigh.

  “Don’t worry about that. It is what it is. I appreciate the place to stay. Even if it did just cost me three hundred dollars.” I look up quickly, ready to give it to him good—because fuck, I just lost twelve hundred, let me lick my wounds a little first—but he has a playful smile on his face. “I’m more worried about what just fucking happened,” he says, pointing to the door.

  I don’t say anything at first. Instead, I take a sobering breath. “A few weeks ago, I was running heroin for Javi, about twenty keys.” His mouth drops, and I can almost see the judgement radiating off him. “Give me a break. It was good money and after the Army I didn’t have shit.”

  He puts a hand up and shrugs. “Hey, no judgment here. It’s just… twenty kilos… fuck.”

  “Yeah.” I roll my eyes. “Judgement be damned, it’s actually not the most I’ve ever moved. What can I say? That spic fuck pays well.” I laugh and pull a joint from my ear before offering it up.

  “Fuck yeah,” he says.

  “Good… I’m gonna need it for this story.”

  The highway is vacant and dreadfully dark, but that’s just how it needs to be for things such as this. Dirty deeds must be done at night, cloaked by darkness. I’m not usually this nervous, but I’ve got about ten kilos over what I normally roll with. That’s a nice little tidbit of information Javi forgot to mention when he sent me out to Cali in this piece of shit van. The engine groans as if responding to my thoughts. I turn up the classic rock, attempting to block out the engine’s complaints and these creeping, paranoid thoughts.

  It doesn’t work. The gram of coke I downed when I hit the Idaho state line probably didn’t help much either.

  Everything at night looks like a fucking cop car. With every glint of my headlights off the mile markers, my heart races and nerves spike. Mind you, I’m not scared of going to prison, my life isn’t much to write home about… but I’d rather not. And twenty keys will get me put away for a real long time. I think about the stack of hundreds waiting for me in Javi’s sweaty hands when I arrive back in Trinity and I’m settled a bit, though my eyes are still peeled to the road, the speedometer reading a steady sixty-five.

  It’s then two vans pull onto the highway from an on-ramp a few hundred feet ahead of me. Nothing to be alarmed about usually, as there’s always a few fellow night drivers out here on these desolate roads… but two of the same type? That’s what has the little hairs standing on the back of my neck. They’re cruising far slower than me and as I pass them I sneak a glance as best I can through my peripherals, but can only make out a dark figure, no details. As I continue forward, my eyes are glued onto the rearview and the four beaming headlights fading behind me.

  Once they appear as just dots in the distance, my nerves relax a bit, and my focus returns to the road. I almost wish it hadn’t. I wish I had looked back up and been transported to another time. To before all this recklessness and chaos. Before all the needless death.

  That’s not what I see though. What I see are two more identical vans pulling onto the highway from the next on-ramp. They’re going considerably faster than the previous vans, and keep equal pace in both lanes. My pulse beats so loudly I can hear it throughout my head. My darting gaze shifts to the rearview once more as the headlights come up quickly behind me now, high beams on and blinding me. I almost don’t see the mess of red brake lights ahead.

  I slam on my own brakes just before ramming into the back of one of them. A van behind me slams into the passenger side, spinning my vehicle into wild circles, the tires screeching below me and my brain fighting to comprehend what’s just happened.

  I don’t have time to. After the third or fourth spin, the van rolls, flipping over the guardrail and landing hard off the road. All I can hear is crunching metal, loud violent sounds that deafen me. Through the dizziness, I see a mess of green as the grass flies by. I see glass shattering into a thousand little pieces and spraying out everywhere. I pull my arms up to block my face when the van finally settles. My head comes crashing into the driver’s side window, and the lush green grass against my face fades to a sickening black. I see them approach through the blood running in my eyes, but they’re just sizable figures cloaked in the darkness, guns in their hands glinting in the moon light, and haunting ski masks pulled over their heads.

  “They took everything. Wallet, phone, every fucking key in the van. I ended up limping to Idaho Falls and that’s when I called Shane,” I say, nonchalantly, because it’s no longer surreal to me. This is my life… and somehow, someway, I’m going to have to face this. “And the funny thing is, I know it was Javi. I smelled his same horrible aftershave that night.”

  Chase shakes his head, his hands running down each cheek. “Well, fuck. Why would he?” he asks, taking the roach from my hand, puffing it one last time before dabbing it out.

  “I had turned him down a few weeks before that. He’s made a few passes at me since I started working with him, but this… this was bad.” I shake my head and purse my lips, my thoughts straying to the night he drunkenly made a move on me, a switchblade to my stomach, his sickening, whiskey breath hitting my neck.

  “I put a knee in his balls. He was down and out after that. I thought about running, going to a different state, but he didn’t remember shit the next morning. Or so I thought.”

  “So, why don’t you run now?” Chase asks, rubbing his chin.

  “Javi is part of a much larger network. And he’s big time. If he wants something done… it happens. If I ran…I’d be running forever.”

  “And what’s the alternative? Getting hacked up?”

  “We’re working on some things. But at the end of the day, I’m not afraid of death. Death and me,” I point to my chest, “we have a real close relationship. We’re fucking buddies. If it comes time for me to go, then so be it. But we’ll figure something out.” My eyes shift to the floor, bottom lip slipping between my teeth. I contemplate for a moment what dying at the hands of J
avi would be like. It shakes me to my very core. “We have to.”

  “Javi came by yesterday,” I say, casually, as Shane walks through the bedroom door, having been gone for two days, mind you. He sets his bike keys onto the vanity and takes off his jacket, tossing it to the floor.

  “And?” he asks, a look of concern growing on his face. He takes a few steps forward to the end of my bed and takes a seat, his hand resting against my naked thigh. I love the wrinkle of concern he gets, just at the bridge of his nose every time he’s worried about me.

  I scoot closer, inadvertently moving his hand closer to my panty line. “He took everything I had. Everything that’s not in the ground.”

  He shakes his head, his jaw clenching. “That motherfucker.” He looks back at me, that adorable wrinkle between his brows again. “Did he put his hands on you?”

  “No, nothing like that. I just feel like he’s running out of patience.” I pick at the sheets, my eyes counting their stripes. My mind wanders to sickening places, where dreadful things are done to me.

  “Did he get to my shit?” he asks, leaning back and looking through the crack in the bedroom door.

  “No, they didn’t fuck with the drum set. They just looked around. Made some threats and made their way out,” I say as my eyes settle back on his chocolate brown eyes, so full of depth and compassion.

  “You have two weeks left, babe. I don’t fucking get it?” He shakes his head again.

  I look away in frustration. “What don’t you get, Shane? He doesn’t care. If he thinks I can’t get it, and he knows good and well I can’t get my hands on one hundred thousand, he’ll just fuck with me before he eventually tortures, rapes and kills me.”

  Shane rears his head back, his face scrunching in disgust. “I don’t fucking think so. Don’t say that shit, Gabriela.” He takes both my shoulders with his hands and turns me to face him. “I will never let that happen. Never.” His beautiful eyes are so intense, so true it makes me want to believe him. It makes me want to lie in his arms and just cry until this is all over. I want to wake up to find it’s all been a sick dream. My mother would still be alive, and I wouldn’t have had to watch my father slowly kill himself over the loss. There’d be no rape. No Army. No war. Everything I’ve ever been through would all just disappear. I’d wake up in Shane’s strong arms on a beach somewhere, and we’d forget all about this ugly world.

  “And how, Shane?” Tears well in my eyes because I know all too well this is not a dream. None of it has been. My reality is my nightmare… and I’m sinking fast. “How will you make sure that doesn’t happen?”

  He shakes me, just a little, just enough to bring my tear-coated eyes to his. He has a stern, defiant look in his eyes. “Do I know the specifics yet? No… I don’t. Do I know that what I say is true… that I’ll fight to the ends of the earth to protect you? Yes… yes, I do. How do I know that?” He takes one of my hands into one of his, leaving his other hand on my shoulder. He leads my hand to his chest and sets my palm against his heart. I can feel it pounding in his chest. “Because I fucking love you. I’ve loved you since the moment we both stood in formation as fresh fuck privates.” He laughs a little and it gets one out of me, but the shake of my body sends a few tears free falling down my cheek. He takes his hand from my shoulder and runs a finger up my cheek, catching the tears and wiping them onto his shirt. I smile, appreciating so much how genuine this man is.

  But he can’t love me. No one can. One day, if I live through all this, he’ll get sick of waiting around for me to get better and he’ll find someone worth having him. Someone who can give him what he deserves.

  My eyes nervously fall to the sheets again and I pull my hand away, covering myself with the comforter before reluctantly meeting his gaze. “You don’t love me, Shane. You can’t.”

  He pulls back a bit, a questioning look on his face. “And why not?”

  I fight the urge to look away, lifting my chin and fighting back any tears that may want to come again. “Because I can’t love you back.”

  He shakes his head, redirecting his attention to his jeans, he unbuttons them and slips them off.

  “You may think you don’t love me, gorgeous. You may have even convinced yourself of it.” He turns back around to me, gripping the bottom of his v-neck with a ripped, tatted arm. With one swift motion, he removes his shirt, tossing it to the ground. He smiles, that mischievous perfect little smile of his, before sliding beneath the covers with me, his head on the pillow beside my crossed legs. I sit there, motionless, waiting for him to continue, but he initially doesn’t.

  He kisses my knee, keeping his lips there for a moment before pulling back. “But I know you love me,” he finally says. “And I know, truer than any other words I could ever say, that I love you too.”

  I scoff and roll my eyes, though I know what he’s saying is true. He’s not looking at me anymore. His eyes are following the spinning blades of the overhead fan.

  “Well then, smart guy, if you love me so damn much, where you been the past two days? I know you weren’t working.”

  He chuckles, the evil kind of chuckle you get when someone knows something you don’t.

  “And how do you know that?” he asks, eyeing me curiously.

  I point to the dresser where his beloved, nickel-plated Sig Sauer. “You forgot Betsy. You would’ve come back to get her if you had a job.”

  He shakes his head, laughing. “I hate you, ya know?”

  “Where were you, asshole?” I ask, scrunching my eyebrows.

  “Just a bit of planning,” he says, his hands moving to behind his head, fingers interlocked, and a shit-eating smirk on his face.

  “What kind of planning?” I raise a finger and aim it straight for him like a lecturing teacher, which draws his attention. “And you better fucking tell me.”

  “Listen, I may not know exactly what I’m going to do yet, but you’re crazy if you think I haven’t been planning. Haven’t you?”

  I put my hands up and drop them heavily to my sides. “Of course. I was SF too, Shane. I’ve run it around in my head a thousand times. I got nothing. So please, enlighten me.”

  He hesitates for a moment, garnering my best don’t-fuck-around stare and he rolls his eyes. “Three different cash trucks. Three different cities. One day. All the trucks will be exactly where we need them to be at the exact time we need them to be there.” His eyes drift again to the ceiling. All I can do is scoff.

  “How exactly do you plan on doing that, Shane?” I ask, sarcasm thick in my tone. He ignores it.

  “All I need is a driver.” He nods to me. “That’d be you. I’ll hit them with a roadside bomb on the highway. Nothing that’ll hurt them, just a little homemade explosive to disable the vehicle and jar the driver real good. I’ll hit the back door with some C4, grab the money, and you scoop me up. Then we’re off to the next one.” His eyes drift to the window and he looks as if he’s thinking over his plan again. He smirks and nods his head, approvingly. “Yup. Cheyenne, Fort Collins, and Aspen. It’s too fucking easy,” he says, his eyes meeting mine again.

  “Babe, please listen to what you’re saying. There’s an ice cube’s chance in hell we pull that off on our own. There’s just no way.” His eyes drop, and he looks guilty for something. I’ve known him long enough to pick up on that. “What, Shane?”

  He scratches his ear, his eyes wandering a bit before meeting mine. “I told Rock already, Gabriela. I told him the moment you told me what was going on. He’s in for whatever we need.”

  My lips curl in disgust, nostrils flaring in a sudden surge of both embarrassment and anger. “How could you, Shane? That’s the one thing I asked you not to do.” I pull back, crossing my arms and shaking my head. “I cannot fucking believe you right now.”

  “You can’t believe me?” His face changes completely, from quiet understanding to full on contempt. “Are you fucking kidding me right now, Gabriela?” He stands, snatching his clothes from the floor and putting them back on pie
ce by piece. He retrieves his jacket and then his hat and Betsy from the dresser.

  “Rock is a brother to the both of us. Of course, I’m going to fucking tell him. Besides that, have you looked at the situation you’ve gotten yourself into?” He points a finger at me. “Well, have you? Because if you have, you’d know that we fucking need him. And we need him bad.”

  He throws his hat on and then his jacket and opens the bedroom door. “There’s one important thing to take away from this conversation. You got yourself into this, Gabriela. Not me. You’re the one to blame for this. I told you to stay away from that shit time and time and time again.” He shakes his head, a disgusted look on his face, and I can’t say a word. My hands fidget in my lap and it takes everything I can to maintain eye contact. He’s right, I know it, and he’s the last person on this earth I want to upset.

  “When you realize that I’m here for you… to support you… to do what’s in your best interest always… you give me a call. Until then…” He pauses, letting out a deep sigh, and his scowl lessening. “I don’t even know. I just don’t know what to say anymore.”

  He walks out of the bedroom, closing the door behind him, and then I hear the front door open and close as well. As his bike starts up and the growl of the motor fades down the street, I drop my head against my balled hands and cry. Wishing so much that I had the strength to chase him. To wrap my arms around his neck and tell him how much he means to me. To kiss him without regard for anything else in this world.

  But I don’t have the strength. I’m fresh fucking out.

  The phone rings bright and early, jarring me from my sleep. When I see Irish’s name pop up on the screen through cloudy vision, I already know what’s coming, and it’s instantly sobering. I answer and sit up from the futon.