slung his backpack around, pulled out his computer, which he never went without, and had it booted up in minutes. Under normal circumstances Hollywood would’ve made a quip about the other man and his toy. Not this time. He sat with his feet planted on the pavement, looking around them. Unease snaked down his spine. “Roq, you good, brother?”
“Got a little chill, I think I need my jacket. You bring yours with you?”
Fuck it all. He knew this wasn’t going to be an easy in and out ride. “Yep, got mine too.” He moved cautiously, hoping he hadn’t ridden straight into an ambush.
“I got us a match. We can now play WOW with a group.” Keys pumped his fist in the air and made a whoop sound.
If shit wasn’t so screwed up, Hollywood would’ve laughed at the other man’s antics. The deep rumble of bikes broke through his musings. He shifted, grabbing his gun from the custom holder by the headlight. In one swift move, he had the Glock out and down by his thigh, hidden from view when the two men pulled up next to Roq.
“It’s cool, brothers. It’s Axl and Ridley.” Roq kicked the stand on his bike down before getting to his feet.
Keys nodded but didn’t move, his fingers continued to fly across his screen. Hollywood kept looking around the darkness, that tingle still making him feel uneasy. “You still needing that jacket, Roq?”
“It’s probably because you got a spotter up on the roof looking down at you with a high-powered scope about a hundred yards to your right. Don’t worry, I don’t think he’s that good of a shot, and if he was, Cannon’s got him in three, two, got em,” Ridley said.
“Eliminated the threat. Fucker was doodling you boys’ pics and even drew hearts around your heads and made splatter images outside them. PS. You’re welcome.”
“Cannon, get over yourself and get down here. Did you clean up your mess?” Roq asked.
The man named Cannon sighed loudly. “This is not my first rodeo, daddy. The poor guy had an accident. He was playing with his knife and fell on it. Damn thing went right through his eye too. Clumsy fool, he shouldn’t have been playing around. I did take his drawing though, you know, so there’s no questions about who the fools he was making hearts over were.”
“Bingo. I found her. Damn, brother, she’s as slippery as a greased-up pig at a county fair,” Keys muttered.
Hollywood wasn’t going to ask what the hell Keys was talking about. All he cared about was finding Talena and getting her the hell out of the shit she appeared to have gotten herself in. “Let’s move then,” he said.
“Let me see if I can pull up some video of the area where she’s at. We’re some tough fuckers, Hollywood, but there’s six of us. We could be riding into the middle of as many as a hundred or as little as one. Let’s make sure we’re prepared.” Keys stared back at him. The computer held steady over the tank of his bike.
The last damn thing he wanted was to wait, yet he agreed it was the wise thing to do. “You’re right.” He raked his hand through his hair while Keys tapped away on his computer.
“While we rode around, we saw a lot of cars coming in. This isn’t a throw some money in your tank and race on the backroad kind of shit.” Ridley paused, looking up and down the road. “I didn’t see the car Keys had said your sister drove. A vehicle like that would’ve stood out. Even with all the rides that did come in, I’d have noticed something flashy like that.”
They’d stopped underneath a bridge where several homeless groups were gathered around dumpsters with fires blazing in them. Christmas was right around the corner, and it was unseasonably cold in California, especially when night fell. Not a single one seemed to pay any of the men on bikes no mind. Hollywood thought it strange, but maybe they were used to the comings and goings of different vehicles, or maybe the people running the races paid them to keep quiet. “How about the homeless? Did you check them out?”
Ridley went still as did Cannon.
“An oversight we’ll correct.” Ridley nodded at Roq once.
Hollywood looked over at the homeless men, then back at the men who’d come to help him, stunned to find they were nowhere in sight. “Shit that’s spooky as fuck.” He knew men who could