“Aw, shut the fuck up, will ya!” Cutter rolled his eyes. He’d heard enough. “You don’t give a damn about anybody down there, so don’t insult my intelligence, you hypocritical fuck!”
Denton’s face transformed almost instantly. Gone was the meek mediator. Now a stony, cold visage stared out at Cutter, devoid of feeling. When he spoke next, it was like a whole other person was standing there.
“Be that as it may, I intend to get what I want.” He nodded to Frost, who turned and headed toward the house. “I always do.”
Frost went inside the kitchen and retrieved Lulah. His hand gripping her upper arm tightly, he walked her briskly back to the two men. He then roughly forced her to her knees. Cutter started forward, but Frost had his pistol out and to Lulah’s head. The wide-eyed look of terror on her face froze him in his tracks.
Now, Denton spoke calmly, confident that he was in complete control of the situation. “Alright, Mister Hawkins. I think you have someone to call.”
***
Tiger looked down at the ruins of Lulah’s neighborhood, and his stomach churned. The Night Mare circled at five thousand feet, and he peered through the cockpit scanner at the house where, just the day before, he’d made love to the woman of his dreams. Now, her home was a smoking wreck.
And he was to blame. It’d all been his fault. He’d brought this calamity upon her and her beautiful little family. What in the hell had he been thinking? He was a fugitive, wanted by a ruthless bounty hunter. On the run with a creature the whole world seemed to want dead … and obviously would stop at nothing to achieve it, even if it meant killing an innocent mother and her two kids.
No! You don’t know that! Stop thinking the worst! Still, it was apparent all hell had broken loose down there. From what he could discern, not only had the mercs came for Amber, but another faction had as well, maybe even a third. A merc AC had even been shot down and jutted from the roof of a neighbor’s house, smoke still rising from it. There were bodies everywhere, several of them mercs, but not all. Amber might’ve been hell on wheels, but there was no way she could’ve done all that damage.
Could she?
And what about Amber? Had she gotten out? She and Tex would’ve stood a better chance at surviving such an onslaught, but still, there was no guarantee.
He raised the visor on his helmet and leaned his head back against neck rest of the pilot’s chair. Racked by guilt, he wanted to puke.
“I should’ve never left,” he said to no one in particular. “What was I thinking?”
“You couldn’t have known what was coming,” Ruff tried to console him. He was on the ship radio, using his ID code to patch into emergency frequencies. “You couldn’t have prevented this.”
“I could’ve been there. I could’ve helped them.”
“Oh yeah! Dyin’ with ‘em … that would’ve been a big help, fo’ sure!” Shaniqua put her two cents in.
“I don’t remember askin’ your opinion,” Tiger grumbled, but he knew she was right. They both were. But logic and common sense did little to ease the pain stabbing him through his chest. Tiger was not a creature of logic. He ran on emotion. Love. Loyalty. Compassion. And on the other end of the spectrum, he sometimes ran off of anger, rage, vengeance and resentment … the sincere belief that justice wasn’t blind, and the scales weren’t balanced. Those with money and power decided what was right and what was wrong and everyone else played by their rules, and even when they did, they couldn’t win.
The house never lost.
As Tiger peered down into the smoke, he was reminded of just how much he hated those who thought themselves above the law. No, not above the law. They made the law. They did as they saw fit. Destroying other people’s lives, their homes, killing little kids … just because some powerful corporation had a recall on one of its products. These were the kind of people, the type of institutions, be it political, governmental, or corporate, that he would fight against as long as he drew breath. It didn’t matter if he won or lost. What mattered was that he fought for what was right. When the day came that right ever stopped opposing wrong, then they, as a society, would finally be lost for good.
And they weren’t far from crossing that line now.
Seemingly, as if on cue, his PDC went off. Cutter.
He wasn’t going to answer as new rage filled him. Cutter had to have been behind this. Every fiber of Tiger’s being screamed out ‘treachery!’ How else had they found Lulah’s place so quickly?
No, the man who he once considered his best friend had sold them out; for money, no doubt. Cutter’s transition to asshole was now complete. He’d taken everything from Tiger, his woman and now his trust.
Tiger had long suspected Cutter and Lulah had something going, but the look in her eyes the other morning had finally confirmed his suspicions. She never had to say a word. Her mannerisms and behavior during and after Cutter’s call had told him everything he needed to know.
He’d wanted to be angry, but what right did he have? Where’d he been all these years? What right did he have to lay claim to something that was no longer his? How fucking
