Wrong Side of the Tracks by Ashley Zakrzewski

ChapterNine

Three things woke Hawk up from a deep sleep. The first was Izzy crawling around on the floor, naked, looking for something. The second was the sound of a buzzing cell phone. The third was a loud knocking on his bedroom door.

“Hawk!” Eagle pounded the door again. “Wake your ass up!”

“Izzy?” He rolled off the bed and pulled on his jeans. “What are you doing under the bed?”

“Looking for something,” she said from the floor on the other side of the bed. “Who’s at the door?”

“Eagle.” He zipped up his pants. Then he threw her a black robe he never wore. “Put this on.”

She stood and slipped on the robe. He turned away quickly because if he saw her naked again, he might never answer the door.

“Hawk!” Eagle turned the knob, but it was locked. “Open the fuck up!”

Hawk unlocked the door and opened it to find Eagle in the hallway with Drac standing a few feet away. “What’s wrong?”

“We’re under attack.” Eagle pointed toward the window at the far end of the hallway. Loud sounds came from that end, where the building faced the front of the compound. “What the hell is that?”

“Gunfire. Black Jacks.” Eagle looked past Hawk’s shoulder and frowned. “Get your shit together and meet us downstairs.”

“Did you call the police?” Hawk found a T-shirt and pulled it over his head. Usually they didn’t deal with police, but their compound had never been openly attacked before.

“They’re not answering,” Drac said. “We’re not close enough to civilian homes or businesses for them to care.”

Which meant the cops were letting this play out, hoping it would mean the end of the MC.

Eagle pointed at Izzy who now stood in the center of the room, wearing Hawk’s robe. “All women in the basement.” Then he left and headed for the emergency stairs.

Drac moved into the doorway and said, “Grab all your weapons. There are at least ten attackers. After you stash the woman, meet us in the armory.”

Hawk closed the door and ran a hand through his hair. When he faced Izzy, she already had her jeans on. “I’m almost ready.” She pulled on her bra and he helped her with the back clasp. “What’s happening?”

“I’m not sure.” He handed her her T-shirt. Then he searched around for his boots and his gun. “But we need to hurry.”

Once she had her shoes on, she dug around her duffel bag and frowned. “Cali still has my gun.”

“You won’t need it.” He took her hand and led her out of the room. By the time they reached the first floor of the motel, he heard gunfire and the acrid smell of smoke burned the inside of his nose.

She covered her mouth with her hand and pointed to where smoke was entering the hallway from beneath the door that led to the weight room. “Now what?”

“This way.” He dragged her through hallways and down a set of stairs until they reached the tunnel that led to the Powder House. Because that building had been built as an armory, the builders had included places to hide as well as ways to escape.

When they reached the basement, beneath the Powder House, he opened the door and ordered, “Get in. Don’t come out until I say so.”

She opened her mouth but he kissed her before she could argue. Gently, he pushed her inside the basement, shut the door, and locked it. Then he ran down another tunnel, and up the stairs, until he reached the main clubhouse room with a long bar, many pool tables, and lots of couches.

Gunfire and shouts sounded from outside, but he didn’t bother checking the situation through the window. It was too dangerous. Instead, he ran down the back hallway and pressed a hidden button in the paneling. The paneling moved aside to show a steel door with a keypad. He typed in the code, entered the armory, and every man who was loading ammo into weapon clips turned to face him.

He ignored their pointed looks and annoyed frowns. Instead he passed by tables filled with laptops and rifles and stopped next to Acid who was watching the screens on the wall that streamed the security cameras mounted outside the gates and inside the compound.

Hawk squinted at the screens and wished he had his glasses. “What’s going on?”

“We’re surrounded by at least ten Black Jacks.” Acid pointed to the cameras outside the gates. “They have M4s and AK47s. They’ve been setting small fires around the walls, and they threw a few Molotov cocktails. But I’m not worried about those. Volt and Fate are putting out the fires in the motel.”

“Any chance the Black Jacks have plastic explosives?” Hawk asked.

“There’s always a chance,” Acid responded with his annoyed voice.

Thor came up behind them. “How come we’re not out there, returning fire?”

Acid glanced at Thor and Hawk. “If we kill any of those Black Jacks, we’ll just start a war with an MC that’s almost as large as ours. And we don’t need any murder charges added to our rap sheets.” He pointed to another camera stream that watched the road, closer to town. Two police cars were parked on the shoulder. They sat there as if waiting for something more interesting to happen. “I am sure Thomas Pole, and the rest of the local PD, are hoping we come out, guns blazing, so they can arrest us on federal and state murder and gun charges.”

Thor charged his personal shotgun and placed it on a nearby table. “What should we do?”

“We ask for a parley,” Eagle said. “We know what they really want.”

“We’re not giving them Izzy,” Hawk spoke directly to Acid. “I’m not letting her go back to her stepfather.”

“But we can’t give up the ring,” Thor said. “That money would make us solvent for decades.”

“Not really.” Cali came forward holding his own AK47. “I was reading about that ring. If we find it, we’d have to sell it on the black market. Since it’s an antiquity of tremendous cultural value, the U.S. and Irish governments would require us to give it up without compensation.”

“So we find a dirty dealer,” Eagle said.

Cali shook his head. “The last dealer who tried to sell that ring ended up in the Mystic River.”

Hawk’s hands began to sweat. “Who was the dealer?”

Cali shrugged. “Some hotshot Boston lawyer who worked for O’Cleary. Although it’s not clear who did the killing, the details of the man’s torture point toward the IRA with help from the Black Jacks.”

Hawk suddenly felt nauseated. “That same lawyer tried to kill Izzy by poisoning her. But the Black Jacks may still want the ring. They may not know about that antiquity law.”

“Hawk?” Acid asked. “Do you have the ring?”

“No.” His heart clenched in his chest. “Izzy wasn’t wearing it, and I didn’t have a chance to ask her about it.”

Eagle placed his hands on his hips and slipped into the lecture mode they all knew well. “We can’t kill our attackers or show our weapons to scare them away. We don’t have the ring to trade or sell. We are screwed.” Eagle looked at all of the men who now surrounded Acid. “The only way to end this without us going to prison—and without bloodshed—is to give the Black Jacks something else they want.” He looked directly at Hawk. “We give them Izzy.”

* * *

Izzy sat on the couch next to Mandy and looked around the basement. She was pleasantly surprised by what she saw. She’d expected spiders, mold, and dark corners. Instead, she found a large room with a modern kitchen in the corner, leather couches and club chairs spread throughout the room, and a giant television mounted to a brick wall. The entire space was even air conditioned with advanced temperature controls.

Hannah, Betsy, and Mandy had changed into shorts and T-shirts. They were now cuddled on a couch eating popcorn and watching a romcom movie on the huge screen. Luckily, Lara had left the compound before things got interesting so she wasn’t around to give evil stares and ask awkward questions.

“Here.” Mandy handed Izzy a granola bar. “You look pale.”

“Because there’s a literal attack going on upstairs,” Izzy said. “With guns.” And Cali still had her handgun.

Hannah waved a dismissive hand. “We’re safe down here. We use this place during lockdowns and nothing has ever happened to us.”

Izzy took a bite of the granola bar, surprised to find she was hungry again. “What’s a lockdown?”

Betsy answered first. “When the club hits some kind of trouble and expects a retaliation at the compound, all the women and children who are around—and any other civilians—are sent down here to wait it out.” She ate a huge handful of popcorn and added, “It’s not too bad in here. You’ll get used to it.”

Mandy offered Izzy a smile. “I stock my own snacks down here now. Just in case.”

She shook her head as if that would change the situation. “How do we know what’s going on upstairs if we’re stuck down here?”

“We don’t know,” Hannah said as she finished a bag of toffee popcorn. “We just wait it out.”

She scoffed and got up to pace the room. Hawk had locked the main door after pushing her inside, but there had to be another way out. She might allow Hawk to give her the occasional order, but she was not a waiting around kind of girl. Not after being almost poisoned to death.

As the other women watched the movie and ate snacks, she investigated every inch of every wall in the room. She had another reason for wanting to escape. Back in Hawk’s room, she’d received a text from Agent Miller. But because of how fast the situation changed, she’d not been able to respond to the text. And she had no cell service in the basement.

The text she’d received while carrying Hawk’s breakfast had just requested she confirm her location. She’d responded to that one, but she’d also told her contact she wasn’t ready to make a deal. But the text she’d received after she and Hawk had made love told her that not making a deal was no longer an option. If she didn’t meet them within a few days, with the ring, they would come after her. And if she didn’t hand the ring over, they’d arrest her for theft of a cultural artifact. A federal crime that carried serious jail time.

Unfortunately, the protocol they’d worked out earlier in the day included a clause that said if she didn’t respond to their future texts within an hour, they would come to her at the compound. Where Hawk and his brothers probably stored all their legal and illegal weapons.

She blamed her poor choice to agree to the protocol on her temper. She’d been annoyed at being ordered around by Hawk, upset that Agent Miller had changed the deal, and had agreed just to get off the phone.

She glanced at the clock on the wall. It’d been thirty minutes since she’d received the call. So she had thirty minutes left to respond. Now she just had to figure out a way to escape.

It took her ten more minutes before she found a trap door in the floor beneath a rug in the kitchen area. The women were still engrossed in their movie, so she moved the table herself and rolled up the rug. The trap door opened easily, like it had been recently oiled, and the ladder leading down into the space below smelled like freshly cut pine.

She rummaged around the kitchen until she found a small flashlight attached to a paracord she could wear around her neck. Then she climbed down the stairs, into the cool darkness, praying there’d be no spiders or other kinds of critters. The good news was that once she climbed off the ladder and found herself in a tunnel, she didn’t see any rats or spiders. The bad news was that the tunnel was long and dark, and she had no idea where it led.

She wasn’t sure of the time, but since it was fleeting she walked deeper into the tunnel. She had to respond to that text. If she didn’t, and the FBI showed up, she could lose Hawk forever.