Vicious Rebel (82 Street Vandals #2) - Heather Long Page 0,13
this fucked up.
“Oh shit,” Freddie said abruptly. “I’m starving.” He tried to pull away from me to head over to the counter, and I dragged him back.
“Later,” I told him.
We didn’t need him puking in the car.
Jasper grabbed a carton of cigarettes and dropped three crumpled twenties on the counter. Then he eyed Candy. “Disappear.”
My phone chirped, and I hauled Freddie toward the door. The lock turned, and I didn’t have to glance back to know Candy had already taken off running for the backroom and out of the store.
Bernie stayed right where he was, his expression stone but his hands where I could see them.
“Put him in my car,” Jasper ordered as the five vehicles pulled up smoothly.
Fine by me. I all but shoved Freddie into the backseat of Jasper’s car. He didn’t wait for me or the rats before he replaced the rat driving his car and peeled out with a screech of tires. Hopefully, the ride back to the clubhouse chilled him out some.
“Should we clean up?” JD asked, and I shook my head.
“That’s their problem. Get out of here and scatter. Keep an ear to the ground.”
Unsurprisingly, Vaughn was the last out of The Smokestack, and he exited shirtless, carrying a bag over one shoulder. Most of the blood had been cleaned off, but he would still need a shower when we got back. I popped the trunk as I slid into the driver’s seat, and he set the bag inside it.
The weight as it landed in the trunk told me it likely had more than the axe in there.
Even before Vaughn fully closed the door, I pulled out, and the rats streamed away behind us. Two of them followed me to the next corner, then turned away. In the distance, the hollow scream of a siren followed by a powerful bleating of a horn suggested paramedics had been dispatched.
“We’re going to catch hell for that,” Vaughn said.
I shrugged a shoulder. “They should have answered the question.”
“He’s out of control,” Vaughn commented quietly.
“No,” I said, disagreeing. “If he were out of control, it would have been a full-on bloodbath.”
“He cut the asshole’s hand off.”
Yeah. Not much I could say to that.
“What’s next? He really starts dismembering people?”
I chuckled. “We dismembered a guy yesterday.” Or had he already forgotten?
“Fuck me,” Vaughn muttered as he ran a hand over his face.
“No thanks. Pretty sure you already dipped where you weren’t supposed to.”
“Don’t be a jealous prick.” He rolled his head from side to side. “You wouldn’t have sent her away either.”
Bullshit. I had turned her down. The light in her eyes when she’d flirted with me had vanished when she realized I was one of the people who’d taken her. The tough shell she wore couldn’t fully disguise the hurt, and I’d been a dick enough to lean into that. Her getting attached was a bad idea.
Her fucking Vaughn was a worse one.
“You want her, man,” Vaughn said quietly, and I scowled as I adjusted my grip on the wheel. The urge to punch him thrummed through me, and I stuffed it down with every other impulse I’d curbed since we’d found out she was coming to town with her show.
“Wanting and having are two different things,” I reminded him. “She’s not ours, Vaughn. This world isn’t for her…”
“This world is a fuck load safer for her than the other one.” Those words rocked me, and I frowned. “Don’t play like you don’t know that. Asshole partner abusing her. Management riding her and letting the pain go on because it made them money. Then someone fucked with those silks after I did my check, because I know they were damn secure.”
I believed him on the last. None of us would mess around where her safety was concerned.
“And you said someone went for her in the parking garage at the hotel.”
“That could have been a drunk driver.” It was weak. Neither of us believed it.
“That family of hers leaves her out on the road months at a time. She was miserable, the pain in her performances? The rawness of it? You don’t make that shit up, and she isn’t that good of an actress.”
On that, he was wrong—she was probably better than any of them realized. She hid those injuries from me in the first few days like they were nothing. Even her body lied when she wanted it to. The sheer amount of control she had over it… No kid should have to control themselves that much.