Chapter Twenty-Three

Hawk

H ow the fuck do I keep finding myself in these situations? I asked myself that question just as an expensive leather boot crashed down against my back and I let out a rough grunt. "That all you fuckers got?" I asked with a smile, ignoring the way my jaw hurt like a son of a bitch.

"How about this, dick face?" A kick landed on my ribs, and it hurt like hell, but I managed another laugh.

"It's okay. My grandma hits me harder than that, but not bad." I had the dumb fucking luck of running into The Mercs, a group of nomadic bikers who existed solely to fuck shit up. They hated organized everything—motorcycle clubs, religion, gangs, cops, and the government in general. The thing they hated most of all? Rats.

And they thought I was a major fucking rat.

They were wrong, of course, but they weren't the type of guys who listened to explanations or reason. They reacted instinctively and didn't make apologies when they were wrong. Like now.

"That's for Buzzard, you piece of shit." An uppercut landed right underneath my chin as I tried to step up.

"Who the fuck is Buzzard?" I got to my feet again and sent my boot into the nose of one of the Mercs, flashing a satisfied smile at the agonized wail he let out.

"Our boy," the leader said. "He's one of us and the word around town is that you're the fucking reason he's locked up." He lunged forward with a knife, and I jumped to the side to avoid a personal meeting with his blade. "How did you know?"

"Look, man, I don't know who the fuck Buzzard is, let alone whatever I'm supposed to have ratted him out about. I swear." I only knew the Mercs by reputation. Up until this moment, I wouldn't have been able to pick these assholes out of a lineup. "If I wanted him gone, I would've killed him, not informed on him."

"Of course, that's what you'd say now that we have you at a disadvantage."

"Do you?" I asked as another motherfucker lunged at me, I grabbed his wrist, twisting it until the ligaments snapped and the knife fell. I picked it up quickly and drove the blade straight through his hand. "You sure about that?" It felt good, but it was a hollow victory since it was still four to one with that one asshole on the ground crying for his mommy.

"Nice job, but you need to tell the cops you lied about Buzzard." The voice came from the leader, but the punch that landed on my side came from the back.

"I don't fucking know your boy and I wouldn't talk to the cops about shit. Ever." It had to be the fucking Ochos who spread this rumor. "You have bad intel, man." Snitching wasn't my style, and if the Mercs didn't kill me tonight, tomorrow I would start taking out the Ochos, one by one.

"Wrong answer." Three punches landed all at once and I knew I was in trouble. For every shot I landed, at least two landed in return. I was getting my ass handed to me and I didn't like it at all.

I needed to think. To regroup and figure out a way to gain the upper hand. They took my piece in my hip holster, but I still had my twenty-two in my ankle holster which the dumb fuckers hadn't thought to check for—I just had to get to it quick enough to take two of them down and make it an even fight. They wanted to make a point which was why they hadn't just come out and shot me with my own damn nine mil.

I was on my own since nobody knew where the fuck I was, and worse, I was on my hands and knees, which put me at an even bigger disadvantage. I'd called Diesel when I'd seen the fuckers just after I'd left the gas station, but when it was clear they were gonna give me chase, I couldn't hang around to shoot the fucking breeze with my prez. I only hoped that Slate could get a handle on my location from my phone's GPS.

A switchblade opened behind me on my left side, and even as I braced for impact, I scrambled to get my own blade. I wrapped my hand around the smooth wooden handle of the blade just as the blade pierced the skin of my back and sliced down from left to right.

"Son of a fucking bitch!" Yeah, that hurt like a motherfucker, but I shoved that pain down deep and pushed onto one foot and then the other. When I was sure of my footing, I opened my blade and spun quickly, slashing across the chest of the first person I encountered. He cried out and I smashed the handle with my palm, burying the knife deep into his shoulder joint.

"Fuck," he cried out, and dropped to his knees.

I smiled, but my triumph was short-lived when another hit landed on the back of my head. "Shit." My vision blurred and the sounds around me came from far away. I was down, but I wasn't out, not yet and not completely. "Don't. Know. Buzzard." I didn't know why I was still trying to convince these assholes of anything, but it was all I could think to do until I came up with a better plan.

"Bullshit." A grunt sounded and then the distinct sound of a fist landing against bone and then a fall.

"You fuckers don't like a fair fight, I see." It was Rocky's voice, but I was sure it was a hallucination because there was no fucking way they were here.

"How about now, assholes?" That was Rebel's voice, and when I flipped over onto my back to see that they were both real, a slow smile spread across my face.

"What took you fuckers so long?" I jumped to my feet and wobbled just a bit before I spun and punched the first Merc I spotted. In the next few minutes it was an all-out brawl. Fists flew, kicks landed, and pained grunts made a symphony of sounds.

Fifteen minutes later, the Mercs limped away back to their bikes. "This shit ain't over. Until Buzzard is free, we're at war, motherfuckers."

I was doubled over with my hands on my knees. "Anybody know who the fuck Buzzard is?"

"No idea," Rebel answered, and shook his head. "Should we?"

I nodded and spat out some blood. "Yeah, because, apparently, I snitched to the cops and got this Buzzard asshole locked up. He's looking at fifteen years and they're pissed."

"We have to get to the bottom of this shit," Diesel said. "It's becoming a problem." That faraway look in his eyes said he was reaching his breaking point.

"I'm not a fucking snitch," I shouted at my brothers, even though I shouldn't have to.

Diesel's jaw clenched. "Yeah, Hawk, we fucking know that. When the hell did you get so damn sensitive?"

I frowned. "When you didn't back me up with the Vipers."

Rocky clapped his hand on my shoulder. "It don't matter what they think, brother. Let them think there's friction in our ranks. Let them think we're fighting and fractured. It works to our benefit."

"It has to be Los Ochos," I said instead of responding to Rocky. "This all started with them."

"Technically, it started with Laura," Rebel offered up with a smart-ass smirk on his face. "They want her, and right now we have no good reason not to hand her over."

"She's a fucking civilian," I countered angrily. "An innocent one at that."

"It has nothing to do with the fact that you like her, right? Too fucking much."

He wasn't wrong about that. "Irrelevant. The point is that I promised her I would help her, and I will. But that doesn't mean those Ochos assholes have kept their word. Laura is safe, but they're fucking with me. It's time to fuck back."

No matter what happened, no matter what Diesel said, the Ochos would have to fucking pay.

Soon.