Page 59 of Graveyards & Greed

She stared back at me, clutching the cross on her necklace, and nodded.

Chapter 23

Sylvie

I peeked through the yellow curtains and looked down to the parking lot. Not a police car in sight. I thought about texting Kilian to see if he’d had better luck, but I remembered my phone was out in the hall acting as a camera.

Drakos caught my eye and nodded toward his screen where the feed showed two figures in jeans and patched vests coming down the corridor. I took a breath and let it out slowly, working to steady my nerves. My hand drifted down to one of my holsters, and I palmed a gun.

“Ready?” he murmured, his voice eerily calm as he watched the screen.

“Yeah.” My heart ricocheted against my ribs. Someone must have told them which apartment Trina and Camilla lived in because they walked right to her door.

“You take the man on the left, I’ll take the one on the right.”

“Got it.”

The first kick to the door didn’t break the lock, but it was enough to send my heart racing. So they weren’t going to bother knocking first. Then another, harder thump sounded, shaking the door in its frame. The thud of a boot rattled the door again, and on the third kick, the doorframe started to splinter.

Drakos jerked his chin, his eyes laser-focused on his phone. “Your man is standing about eighteen inches to the left of the door handle, average height,” he told me quietly.

I nodded. The door splintered with another kick. One more would probably do it. I aimed and let off two quick and precise shots through the drywall. I hoped they found their target. Drakos shot through the door with an eerie calm. The blast of gunfire and the thuds of bodies hitting the floor were grotesquely intimate in the confined space, and the acrid, smoky smell of gunpowder filled my nose.

“They’re both down,” Drakos murmured, checking his phone.

I lowered my weapon as he tucked his phone in his pocket. An eerie silence followed, a stark contrast to the loud shots just seconds ago. Taking in deep breaths, I tried to shake off the adrenaline.

Drakos held his gun out and pulled the battered, bullet-ridden door open as we both cautiously looked outside. Two bodies lay on the floor in the hallway. The barrel-chested man with faded tattoos on his forearms had a small chunk missing out of his skull. It hadn’t been a clean headshot, but the bastard was dead, so I’d take it. The younger man clutched his gut and breathed heavily as he bled out onto the hallway carpet. Drakos had shot him in the stomach and shoulder. From the amount of blood pooling underneath him, he’d probably bleed out before medical assistance arrived unless we intervened.

Drakos walked back into the apartment and hit speed dial on his phone. “Gideon, I need Dedra Holdaway here ASAP. We’re on the third floor of an apartment building in North Las Vegas. Use my phone tracker to get the location. If she’s not available, call Dickson. He’s the next best criminal defense attorney. We killed a biker and critically wounded another.”

I heard Gideon’s long sigh over the phone as I half-listened to their conversation. Holstering my gun, I walked out into the hallway to retrieve my phone when the door to the main stairwell banged open. Another man in a leather vest stopped and looked around, taking in his two fellow bikers lying on the ground.

“What the fuck’s goin’ on?” he snarled. His stringy gray hair was tied back in a ponytail, showing off the open sores on his face. I couldn’t see his teeth, but he had the gaunt, hollow look of a meth user. He stared down at his two fallen friends, then his eyes slid to me as if trying to figure out how I fit into this mess.

I blinked up at him as my hand slowly inched to the gun I’d just holstered. He brought his arm up, his hand wrapped around what looked like an old Colt midnight special. Well, fuck. That would teach me to stay alert and not holster my fucking weapon until I knew we were in the clear.

“Who’re you?” he asked.

My shoulders hunched up and I gave him my best wide-eyed, innocent stare. “Hey, I don’t know what’s going on either. I’m just a tenant.” I could still hear Drakos talking on the phone inside Trina’s apartment. Shit, this was not good.

The man’s eyes squinted at my holstered guns. “Then why are you armed?”

That was a good question, and I scrambled to come up with an answer. It was too bad this guy wasn’t further along in his meth addiction and had fewer working brain cells.

“Because I work for Bolter Gaming in security. They make me wear a gun. My boss thinks I’m not intimidating enough without one.” I gave him my best “aw-shucks” smile.

The meth-head biker started lowering his gun when the younger injured man on the floor spouted off his mouth. “She’s a fuckin’ Spade, Buzz. Shoot her ass,” he gasped.

Before I could even duck, Kilian stepped into the hallway and deftly whacked Buzz in the back of his head with the butt of his gun. Then he delivered a brutal kick to Buzz’s knee. The man’s leg buckled with a sickening crunch, and Kilian followed it up with a merciless stomp to the man’s gun-wielding hand. Drakos walked out of Trina’s apartment and stopped short when he saw Kilian standing over the meth-head biker. Kilian nodded at Drakos and casually leaned down to handcuff Buzz.

As he collected the gun, Fennick strode into the hallway behind him and looked around. “You couldn’t save one for me?” He glanced down at Buzz who lay on the ground, moaning loudly in pain. Fenn nudged him with his foot. “I would have just shot you in the head. Shut up and be grateful.”

“Good timing.” My casual tone belied my galloping heart. Christ on a cracker, that had been close.

The younger man with the wound in his belly lay moaning and cursing in the hallway, looking gray and waxy. I walked over and looked down at him. He watched us with hate-filled eyes as Drakos knelt beside him and peeled off his jacket, applying pressure to the man’s wound. “Why is Terrance LeBaron doing this?”

“Fuck you,” he rasped.

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