Everlasting - Christine Michelle Page 0,62

burdens that couldn’t be put off,” I reminded him. It was a fuck of a thing that life never seemed to let up for us. If it wasn’t one thing happening it was a handful of others. Deck missing, losing Lucy, and then Tiger Lily’s breast cancer diagnosis. It all stacked up. Judging from the sickly pallor of my best friend, I had a sneaking suspicion his wife wasn’t the only one whose health was in question.

“Are you doing okay?” I finally asked him.

“I will be once we bring my boy home,” he answered and then went back to quietly ignoring me as we pulled in and blocked off the front exit with the truck.

“Okay, let’s do this. Stay close. I have it on good authority that they’ll send a decoy out the back and run from the front.”

“How the hell would you know that?”

“Somehow, it seems my daughter or the women of S.H.E. managed to find an inside source.”

“Source identified at all?” He asked.

“Nah,” I answered back and gave him a knowing look. It meant that whoever had fed my girl her information might well die in the crossfire that night.

We were using the dark to our advantage since the sun had set about 30 minutes earlier. It was still light enough to see, but dark enough to blend with shadows. Perfect for sneaking up on unsuspecting mobsters while they tried to move our boy to another location.

“Heading over this way,” Merc told me. “I have a feeling.”

“I’ll take this side,” I told him and then signaled for two men to follow him while the others followed me. It was an even split among those of us who had arrived in the truck. I didn’t see Jay or any of the other men who had arrived on foot, but that was the point.

Just as we were about to storm the side door, it cracked open and the imposing figure of a younger man slipped out. I nearly shot first, but pulled back when he looked my way and the light from that side of the building hit his face.

“Toby?” I called out in a disbelieving whisper. I wondered, for a brief moment, if I was losing my damn mind. My son had been dead for more than a decade. There was no way it could have been him. Still, the shock of seeing a face that looked just like his was enough to give him a head start. I chased off after the man while the others moved to the door we were supposed to breach. An explosion stopped me cold in my tracks and I turned to look back and see that the door had been blown. A second explosion rocked the house, from further away, and I just knew that it would be Merc and his team who took that hit. When I turned back towards the forest that surrounded this side of the house, I realized I could no longer see the man I had been chasing.

“FUCK!” The word flew from my mouth as I turned to run back towards the door that I was supposed to help breach. Both of the men were dead. They had been newer nomads in the club, and I hadn’t gotten to know them very well while we’d been working up here because they tended to keep to themselves. Still, it was a loss for the club. I continued to move and came to Merc, who was thankfully far enough away that he avoided the brunt of the blast. He still had shrapnel sticking out from his thigh and his midsection.

“Shit, hang in there, man.” I grabbed some gauze I had stuffed in my pocket and wrapped the pieces tight to hold them in place. I was concerned if either was moved, we would have a bigger problem on our hands. “Do not remove them. Don’t let anyone else do it either. I have to secure the area. Play dead if you have to,” I told him just as I heard shouting from the door.

“Coming out!” I recognized the voice instantly. A moment later, J-Bird came out with Diamond, from the Tallahassee Chapter, by his side. Both of them were hauling a man out. It took a minute for me to recognize who they had with them.

“We got him,” Diamond called out.

“Thank fuck!” It was all I could say. “We need to get him and Merc to the hospital and have them looked at,” I called out.

“Don’t trust these hospitals,”