Rowe by Jessica Gadziala

CHAPTER TWO

Rowe

It was supposed to be a pretty easy job.

Hell, it wasn’t even a big enough drop to warrant Fallon sending any of the OG members.

Which meant it was me, Slash, Crow, Seth, and Vance. Because it was only a couple dozen guns we were dropping off to what seemed like a low-level, up-and-coming organization. Not even big enough for any of us to have heard about them, even.

And, therefore, no alarm bells had gone off, prompting the higher-ups to send more of us, or any of the older, more established brothers.

“Vibe is off,” Crow declared as we got out of the SUV and off our bikes at the drop location.

I didn’t believe in vibes, so I shrugged that off as Vance and Slash unloaded the duffle bags of guns.

It was, admittedly, a little more desolate than I’d been expecting. Most of our drops were either in major cities or to sprawling estates with security guards at the gates to buzz us in.

This was something like a half-abandoned town with boarded-up houses with knee-high weeds and old, peeling eviction stickers taped to the front doors.

I personally thought letting the previous tenants continue to stay and maintain the properties would be better than letting them go to shit, but that was beside the point, I guess.

It wouldn’t be unheard of for some of the local kids from a downtrodden area with shitty schools because of low taxes, who had next to no chance of getting out of the vicious circle that was ancestral poverty to decide that they would make the money with street corner arithmetic.

Vance shot me raised brows, shooting his gaze in Crow’s direction, silently agreeing with me and his vibe comment.

“Here,” he said, handing me one of the bags to allow one of his hands to be free.

“It’s too quiet,” Crow went on, reaching up to run a hand through his inky black hair as he sucked in his cheek, making his piercing there disappear for a moment. “Place like this, no noise? No kids. No dogs. No one even driving around? Something is off here.”

The longer we stood there, the more I started to agree with him. Not because of vibes, but because no one was approaching us. We weren’t early or late, we were exactly on time.

And after five minutes turned to ten, I could practically feel all of us start to tense up.

Slash, a future president himself, and therefore somewhat ranking over the rest of us, was the first to break the silence.

“They get three more—“ he started just as a black SUV started to pull down the street.

Down the street.

The dead-end street.

Blocking us in.

I genuinely didn’t believe in vibes, but the moment before that car slowed to a stop and the window moved down, I knew. I knew shit had just gone south.

“Shit,” Crow hissed even as Slash, Seth, and Vance were reaching for their weapons.

Too late, though.

The gun was already pointing out the window.

Street sweeper. The standard drive-by weapon.

I was getting good at knowing that kind of shit, for better or for worse.

And our handguns didn’t stand a chance. It didn’t mean we didn’t try to use them, of course.

From our ducked positions behind the bullet-resistant SUV that had been worth its weight in gold if you asked any of us, we took turns popping up and squeezing off a few rounds.

“The fuck is this about?” Vance hissed, shaking his head as he fell back against the side panel of the SUV, adrenaline making his breathing fast and shallow.

Of all of us, Vance was the one who’d seen the most action. Not with the club, per se. But with the fireball he’d wifed up and her mission to take out as many traffickers as humanly possible.

“Chris is going to have a field day about this,” Seth agreed, wincing when another hail of bullets hit the SUV. “She couldn’t find dick about these assholes.”

“Maybe because these assholes gave fake information,” Slash suggested, took a deep breath, then popped up. “Oh motherfucker,” he said, squatting back down. “Incoming,” he told us.

It had only been a matter of time. None of us had said it, but we’d all been thinking it. There was no way for them to get us unless they got out of the relative safety of their vehicle.

Slash reached up, moving the rearview mirror around until, I assumed, he got a view of them.

I watched as he waved toward us, silently giving instructions.

Slash and Seth were to go toward the back of the SUV. Vance and Crow were going to go toward the front.

Which left me in the middle, behind the safety of the vehicle.

I tried not to take offense to that. To be fair, they were each more experienced than I was in any sort of action sort of scenario, even if, arguably, I had just as much experience with shooting.

Still, it was a bitter pill to swallow, knowing that I was not likely to be the first line of defense until I proved myself able to handle the position.

Even as I thought that, though, Slash was calling out to the others, making them rush to the edges of the car, take aim, and start shooting. While I squatted with my back to the SUV, doing nothing but listening and trying to discern if any of our bullets hit home.

“One!” Slash called out a moment later.

But how many were there?

“Fuck,” Crow hissed, falling back and letting Vance move forward.

He slammed back against the SUV, chest heaving, face contorted, making me search his body, looking for the bullet I knew must have been wedged somewhere.

It didn’t take long to notice the bright red seeping through the blue material of his jeans.

“It’s lodged in the muscle,” he explained before I could even ask if he was okay. “I’m fine.”

“Enough of this,” Slash growled, moving to stand, and moving out from the safety of the SUV.

The others followed.

“Get back here, fuckers,” Slash called, voice rougher than usual, which was saying something.

“They’re retreating,” I said, glancing up to look in the rearview Slash had positioned, watching as what looked like four men made their way back to their own vehicle.

“Yo,” Crow called, drawing my attention. Once he had it, he jerked his chin toward the side where someone was running down between a set of houses. “Go,” he said when I hesitated, not wanting to leave him alone and wounded. “I’m fine,” he added.

With that, I didn’t stop to think. Because I knew this was it. My chance to get the guy, to prove myself a more valuable member of the team.

“Get the bastard,” Crow called as I straightened and ran.

I didn’t know if any of the guys followed as the others retreated, or if the SUV was swinging around to get their guy.

In my mind, at that moment, it didn’t matter.

All that mattered was getting this guy who had the home field advantage of knowing his way between buildings and had more experience than I did with leaping over fences.

If I could catch him, we could get some answers out of him, figure out who the fuck he was working for, and why they were coming for us.

Shit had been busy since I’d prospected for the Henchmen.

Growing pains, Malc, my best friend, had mumbled with a shrug.

And that seemed fair. By the time I came around, the old organizations in the area were having leaders that were aging out, leaving their kids to take over. Including the Henchmen with Fallon taking over for his father, Reign. It meant everyone was trying to figure out the new power dynamics.

It also meant that outside syndicates were flexing, stepping to us, trying to see if the new leadership was as strong as the previous one.

Leadership change was a vulnerable time for an organization. Everyone else knew that. So if they had any mind to try to prove themselves as some sort of superpower that shouldn’t be messed with, or if they wanted to take over the well-established gun trade on the upper East coast, making a move while the club was still growing was the best bet.

Or so they thought.

Some of us had a lot to prove. We were hungry to make a name for ourselves. And that hunger made us dangerous.

“Fuck,” I hissed as a loose fence wire ripped through my shirt and sliced into my skin, making me momentarily wonder when my last tetanus shot was as I followed the guy out of the neighborhood and into the business side of town.

Where the asshole disappeared behind an old, abandoned bar.

I did two turns around the place before I realized he’d had no choice but to go up.

“Shit,” I huffed as I got to the fire escape.

Up meant he had the advantage. He could not only see me coming, but he could take a shot without me easily being able to return fire.

But what other choice did I have?

I kept my gun in my hand, using just one arm to help me get up the rickety-ass fire escape, stretching my legs wide to reach over missing steps as I tried—and mostly failed—to keep my back close to the brick wall.

But there were no bullets as I got close to the top, making me wonder if he was out of ammo, if that was why he’d run instead of trying to seek the relative safety of his SUV and what was left of his men.

It made sense why he hadn’t just pushed ahead a little bit, hid behind the corner of a building, and waited for me to run past, then put a bullet in the back of my head.

He was out of ammo.

There was a surge of relief at that as I took a slow, steadying breath, placing my gun on the ledge of the roof so I could haul myself up the rest of the way.

It wasn’t a high building, really. It was probably just a little taller than the roof height of your average ranch-style home.

Apparently, this particular roof was a hangout spot for locals. Either the homeless or kids with nothing better to do. A couple of old red plastic Adirondack chairs sat next to what looked like a bucket of sand and spent cigarette butts. Old beer cans and bottles were scattered about with what seemed like candy wrappers and condom foils.

But no guy standing there with a gun.

“The fuck?” I hissed to myself, glancing down at the roads around the building, wondering if I’d been wrong, if I’d simply missed him, been too slow, not known the grid well enough to keep up.

That lasted for all of fifteen seconds, though.

Before a movement in my peripheral vision had my stomach clenching.

Even as I turned with my finger going to the trigger, though, the man was straightening from behind an abandoned stack of pallets I’d thought were too small to hide a full-grown man.

I’d pay for that mistake.

Even as my arm lifted, I could see the gun. I knew there was nowhere for me to hide.

I did the only thing I could do.

I squeezed the trigger.

But so did he.

I had no idea if my bullet found a new home in warm flesh, because one was lodging into the corner most part of my shoulder.

And the impact had fucked with my balance.

I knew what was happening a horrifying heartbeat before I felt my body free falling backward.

Time seemed to slow in that moment as I realized there was nothing that was going to stop me from slamming back into the unyielding pavement below.

It’s not the fall that gets you. It’s the sudden stop at the bottom.

Strangely enough, there was a certain serenity in the fall, in knowing there was nothing I could do to stop it. No amount of panic was going to help me. So my body just seemed to come to peace with the situation, making my heartbeat slow down and my breathing become slow and deep.

It wasn’t for a long second before I remembered some stats I’d heard about when I’d worked construction briefly before signing up to be a Henchmen with Malc.

Heights over one-hundred feet were almost always fatal.

Almost.

And the roof of the building was only maybe twenty-five feet.

I could and likely would survive it.

But what would come after the survival?

A coma?

That was no way to live.

Protect your head.

I didn’t know where that voice came from, but it spoke in my ear in a voice that wasn’t my own, in a voice that was a little too welcome, a little too familiar.

Husky, yet feminine.

Billie’s voice.

Protect your head.

I didn’t have time to analyze the order. All I could do was raise my arms, wincing as the movement sent pain shooting down my shoulder and up my neck from the bullet lodged there, and wrapping my hands around the back of my neck.

Before I could wonder if my guys would be able to find me, I was hitting. And I didn’t know anything else.