Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 132437 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 662(@200wpm)___ 530(@250wpm)___ 441(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 132437 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 662(@200wpm)___ 530(@250wpm)___ 441(@300wpm)
“I’m really sorry,” Allhan said. “Th-they’re Shuli’s friends. Were… Shuli’s friends. I’m not their type, but you know, he let me hang if I was down here, and th-they were okay with me. But I d-don’t actually know them.”
The patient nod that came back at him had all kinds of handle-the-kid-easy in it. “That’s all right. We’ll contact him.”
“I have Shuli’s number if you need it?” What the fuck was he saying. Of course they had Shuli’s digits. “And what about the two who were taken alive?”
“The descriptions you gave are very helpful, and I’ve sent them around to everyone. We’ll find them, I promise.”
The vow was spoken with the kind of banked aggression that nobody needed a translator for, and Allhan glanced up at the cameras that were mounted on the club’s flank and the surrounding buildings’ eaves. The true power of the Black Dagger Brotherhood was about so much more than fighting. They had ways of operating in and around Caldwell that put human surveillance to shame, and he had no doubt that his boss, the Brother Vishous, was going to co-opt every single monitoring device in the entirety of the fucking zip code if he had to.
Allhan also knew that he himself would be at the forefront of that effort.
He’d spent the last six months positioning himself for exactly this kind of work.
As his stomach went sour, a set of brilliant headlights pierced down at him, sure as if he were the target of an interrogation. Lifting his arm to shield his eyes, he turned his head and discovered he was standing at the start of the passageway. As the glare of the approaching vehicle penetrated the narrow chute, the bodies on the snow became as obvious as screams in silence and he relived rolling each one of them over.
A sudden suffocation had him taking some deep breaths that did shit for the congestion in his lungs, even as the cold registered in his nose and the back of his throat.
“Can you dematerialize?” the fighter asked him.
“Ah… yeah.” Maybe? “Sure.”
“We’re going to take this from here.” Xcor’s hand eased down on Allhan’s shoulder. “I want you to head back to the Wheel.”
“Okay.”
Except he stayed, lingering on the fringes, as the Brothers John Matthew and Qhuinn got out of an enclosed box van. They had bundles in their arms, and at first he wondered what they were carrying as they walked by him and entered the passageway. When he heard flapping and caught a whiff of plastic, he realized it was the body bags.
When his shoulders bumped up against the club’s cold, concrete flank, he realized he’d backed away, and without thinking, he reached into the pocket of his hoodie. The cigarette he took out had been hand-rolled, and the Bic that came with it was red. He had nicked both of them from the home he’d been welcomed into for the last couple of months.
Vishous had so much of both the coffin nails and of the lighters that there was no way he’d miss them.
And it was weird. First, Allhan had gotten used to the scent of Turkish tobacco because wherever V was, there was usually a cigarette lit, one being put out or another getting readied for the smoking. After he’d gone through his transition, he’d noticed whenever he took a deep breath and the smoke was in the air, he felt better somehow. Calmer. More relaxed.
He’d been worried about tonight, even before all of this heartbreaking tragedy. So that’s why he’d taken what he had from the Brother.
With hands that shook, he flicked the lighter and put the cigarette between his lips. Leaning into the little flame, he did what he’d watched V do a million times, sucking in—
The hacking cough came out of nowhere and nearly snapped his torso in half. As he doubled over and had to hold himself up by bracing against one knee, he was aware of everybody looking over at him. The two Brothers. Xcor. Payne, who had also shown up. Then again, he was loud enough to wake the dead, and wasn’t that a fucking depressing thought rather than a bad joke.
When he could breathe halfway normally again, he straightened and put the cigarette right back to his lips. This time, he was more cautious with the inhaling, and though things burned their way down and his lungs felt like concrete, he managed to hold for a moment and exhale without too much of a problem.
One by one, the bodies were taken out of the passageway.
Meanwhile, he smoked his first cigarette all the way down to the tips of his fingers and then he dropped what was left in the snow and stomped on it with his damp Converse. With no filter, the hand-rolled was biodegradable so he left it where it was.