Page 73 of Blood Revealed

“Fuck you do that for?” he whines.

“Formywife,” he says, spitting his hatred with every word. Coyote clearly looks confused. “Brinley, motherfucker. Was Brown, now Hendrix.”

“You married Fat Ass?”

Never seen the brothers swoop in so fast, Crass catching Hero’s hand before he crushes the bastard’s throat. “Calm, brother. You’re gonna kill him before we get the intel.”

“Focus,” I shout and his eyes go back to me. “Escalante. I need to find him.”

“You don’t wanna be messin’ with him,” the drugged-out asshole says and I lose it, throwing a punch hard enough to knock teeth out.

“Tell me what I need to know,” I order.

“Big place. Near the border. Right on the Gulf. Prison fence surrounding the land portion of the property. You see the towers; you found the place. Now give me my shit.” He reaches for it, but I step back.

“Got a city? Something?”

“Told you what I know, man. How many mansions on the Gulf close to the border, surrounded by prison fence do you think there are?”

Right. I can go with that. “Fine,” I say. “We’re done, then.” I throw the syringe to be swallowed up by the blackness of the room. He lunges to follow but is stopped by a brutal punch to the gut. His guttural grunt of pain makes me smile. Hero, the man who took the shot, goes in for another. He’s taking all the fun and we can’t let Coyote somehow try to warn Escalante that we’re coming.

I have never taken such pleasure in beating a man senseless in my life. It takes every other brother to keep us from killing him. “You know we’ve been made,” Chaos says. “Houston PD can track this shit if he ends up dead. Think of your wife.”

She’s all I can think about.

Got the Outcasts on the line before we clear the rot of the building. “On the Gulf at the border. Heavily fortified,” I tell my contact.

“Meet up at the compound. Escalante’s a nasty motherfucker. You go in, be needin’ all the backup you can get.”

I hate taking the extra time, but he’s right. It’s the best way.

More men with guns make themselves visible as we make our way back through the neighborhood. I nod, showing I see them and that we’re no threat. Not unless they start shit.

We’re fucking lucky they don’t start shit.

Two hours into our drive toward the border, we veer off the main drag to hit the ghost town owned by the Outcasts. Not all the brothers have arrived back from Thornbriar yet, but they’ve got good numbers between the men who couldn’t make it to the celebration and friends they’ve roped in to helping.

“It’ll be dark by the time we make it,” Horse, so called I think because he’s got the face of one, one of the Outcast’s allies says. “Might be able to use that to our advantage.”

“Right. We go in hot—one concentrated hit. But there are women we need to protect. None of this guns blazing shit. Targeted. Got me?” I look around to every guy in the room. We spend the next twenty minutes shoring up the rest of the plan. There’s not enough time to do more than what we’ve got.

At the twenty-five-minute mark, my brothers and I are back on the road with our friends and allies in tow.

We spend another three and a half hours on the highway. Once we get close to Brownsville, we split up, circling the area to find our target.

Boss calls it in. “Got a fence and towers in our sights.”

We’re so close, I can feel it. My heart races while I take down the coordinates. Chaos calls it in to the rest. To get the jump of surprise, we can’t go in on Harleys. That level of rumble will set anybody’s teeth to chattering, bringing us attention we don’t want.

At the meeting point, we climb into the vans we rented and go in lights off, taking up the closest position we can without being spotted.

I use a pair of binoculars that Crass was smart enough to pick up for us in Houston to check out the towers for movement.What the hell?The first tower is empty. I swing the binoculars in the direction of the second tower. Empty as well.

This place is supposed to be fortified. I get on the phone. “Send out scouts,” I order Jonesy, one of the Outcasts. “Need to know if the other towers are guarded or not.”

“On it,” he says, clicking off. Now it’s another damn waiting game. It takes another ten minutes for the reconnaissance teams to report back and the news is troubling. On the surface, empty towers mean we’re clean going in, butwhyare they empty? All the team leaders coordinate our strike times and at the beep, we go in silent but ready to fight. There are at least twice as many stables on this property than at the Juarez property back in Kentucky and we need to look inside each and every one. Each team leader takes a section of stables. Boss and Hero go in one. Crass and Blue. Sneak and Boetcher. Duke and Scotch. Chaos and me. The other clubs break up into their own groups, but as we’re the ones who know what Hannah looks like, we need to cover as much ground as possible to not possibly miss her.

There’s gunfire in the distance. The pop, pop, pop, pop of an automatic weapon, most likely an AK. Then there’s the rumbling whoosh of a chopper blade. Spotlights shine down on the ground, but not near us. Other side of the property, near the waterline. We drop low to take off in the direction of the lightshow. Before we go running into the fray, we take stock of the situation using the stable closest to the mansion as cover.

---