“You’re offering me a partnership?” She says. “You think I even want your help?”
“I don’t give a shit whether or not you want my help, Agent Perez. But I know you want revenge on the piece of shit who killed your partner. And I’m the only man who can give that to you.”
* * * * *
After hours of driving, and another few hours of waiting, we’re outside a low-range hotel on the California-Nevada border, looking at a blip on a map that confirms our target’s location. No one pays attention as we pull into the parking lot — this is the kind of place where no one looks twice as long as you keep your eyes to yourself.
“Fuck, Stone, we’re only an hour from Vegas. How about we make a detour once this shit with Cooper is over?” Axel says. “Think about it — most of those casinos will give you free drinks as long as you’re at the tables, and I tell you what, I can play slots real fucking slow if I have to. We could practically drink for free.”
“Axel, when this is over, we’re going back to the clubhouse. I want to see my family. Hug my daughter. Fuck my wife and then take her out to dinner without having to look over my shoulder,” Stone says.
I look down, check my gun while Stone talks about his family. How’s he going to react when he finds his daughter’s gone and I was the one who told her to leave?
“Tell you what, big boy: if BD Cooper is really in there like you say he is, I’ll meet you in Vegas once all this shit is over. And the first round of slots will be on me,” Agent Perez says. There’s a hint in her voice when she says ‘big boy’ that makes me give her a sideways look.
Is she hitting on Axel?
A fucking FBI agent flirting with big ol’ Axel?
Axel must hear it, too, because he shoots me a grin behind Agent Perez’s back and then slips his arm around her shoulder.
“You’ve got yourself a deal. A week from now, it’ll be just you, me, and all the tequila you can handle.”
“We’ll see if you can keep up, big boy,” she says. There’s a little purr in her voice and she leans back into the big man. “But that’s provided he’s in there. And we actually get that son of a bitch.”
“Oh, he’s in there, all right,” I say. “I took the little GPS chip out of your partner’s phone and soldered it into the power supply for one of the USB ports.”
“How’d you get his phone?” She says, eyeing me suspiciously.
“BD sent me to break into his hotel room. The old bastard wanted to kill your partner himself — it was personal to him, your partner hunting him all these years — but he didn’t want to get his hands dirty, otherwise. So he leaned on our club, threatened some of our families, to get us to do his grunt work for him.”
“We held out on him for a while, agent,” Stone adds. “But I’m fucking tired of these people coming after my family. If you have a problem with how we handled this, charge me and leave my men alone. I’m the one who bears responsibility.”
I give Stone a questioning look. Until today, he had no idea of the shit that had gone down, and now he’s stepping up to take the fall if this goes sideways? Will he still feel that way when he finds out what Adella and I have been up to?
I doubt it.
If he throws me to the feds, I’ll deserve every damn year of whatever sentence they give me.
“If I come out of this with BD Cooper, then I don’t give a shit about whatever you and your club did to make that happen. I want this bastard, and I want to watch him squirm,” she says.
“Speaking of which, how do you want this to go down?” Stone says. “This is your raid, Agent Perez.”
She smiles. It’s slight, dark, sinister.
“The warrant says dead or alive. BD Cooper’s a menace and, in the words of inimitable Dolph Lundgren in Rocky IV, ‘If he dies, he dies.’”
Axel squeezes my arm and leans in to whisper. “Did you hear that shit? She likes Rocky, brother.”
Agent Perez turns and looks at Axel.
“I do. I like most action movies. Lethal Weapon, Rambo, The Terminator. And, if you play your cards right, I’ll even be in the mood to see a boxing match while we’re in Vegas.”
“Is that code for something, Agent Perez?” Axel says.
“Call me Megan. And what do you think? Is two people engaging in a strenuous, bare-chested, sweaty activity possibly code for something else? Because, if so, I can’t imagine what.”
“Oh sweet mercy,” Axel says. “You all need to hurry and figure this shit out, because I’m about to charge in there myself so we can get the real party started.”
“Keep it in your pants, Axel. For now, at least,” she says. “And get your guns ready, boys. We move in now — straightforward and dirty, that’s how we’re taking care of this.”
Four of us — Stone, Agent Perez, Axel and myself — walk through the parking lot, guns in our hands, murder in our hearts. Revenge waits for us inside the confines of this fleabag flophouse.
First, we head toward the front office. Agent Perez flashes her badge at the wide-eyed slovenly man behind the front desk and rips a room key out of his hands. Moments later, we’re charging through the hallway, heading toward the third-floor room where our quarry awaits.
Outside his door, Perez raises her closed fist, calling us to a stop.
She holds out three fingers,
