Page 40 of Tanner (Dirty Misfits MC 5)
“Yeah, I’m buckled,” I said breathlessly.
Tanner nodded. “Good.”
And when he hit the gas, propelling us forward, I watched as a dozen or so motorcycles came out of nowhere. All of them, blacked out. All of them, topped with men in black leather jackets with eyes of steel and hearts of ice.
“Go, Tanner! Hurry!” I exclaimed.
To which he booked it down the road as quickly as he could before he took a sharp left, sending us careening down a dark alleyway.
Nineteen
Tanner
“Tanner!” Summer exclaimed.
“Hang on just a bit longer,” I growled.
I had to keep weaving in and out of alleyways because none of us had come prepared to shoot it out with people while driving around in beat-up old cars. I swerved around dumpsters and lost one of our side mirrors back a few miles as I tried to lose the four bikes that were still on our tail. I hadn’t seen Porter and Cole surface after they took a nosedive off the edge of the road and plowed themselves into a group of four or so bikers that had been perched and waiting for us.
Then, Summer blurted out a question that worried me.
“Holy shit, do they know where Chey is?”
I put on my best confident voice as I careened us back onto the main road. “No. There’s no way.”
“But I thought the distrac—holy shit!”
Our tires skidded as I drifted around a corner and tore back down an alleyway.
“The distraction was to keep us safe while we dropped Chey off. But that’s it. That’s all the time they could buy us.”
She sniffled. “Well, at least it’s—look out, Tanner!”
I played chicken with one of the bikes before he pulled out a gun, and at the last second I swerved. The man fired his gun and hit the guy chasing us from behind and I watched in the rearview mirror as both of those assholes took bullets to the chest that were meant for us.
But when Summer tried to turn around, I gripped her shirt and sat her back down.
“What gives!?” she exclaimed.
I turned my gaze toward her. “Don’t look back. Ever. You got it?”
Her eyes welled with tears. “Okay. I won’t.”
I settled my hand on her knee. “Thank you.”
Just as we got back onto the main road, Cole and Porter came tearing out beside us. I looked over and found Porter aiming a gun out his window while Cole kept his head on a swivel, but when I heard that bike engine coming up behind us, I knew I had no choice.
“Summer, I know you can shoot, so you have to listen closely, okay?” I asked.
She wiped at her tears. “Okay, yes. All right. What do you need?”
“I put a sawed-off shotgun under your seat. It’s gonna have a hell of a kickback, but you’ll be able to mount it on your window glass once you roll it down.”
She did as I asked and rolled her window down about halfway. “Okay, now what?”
“See the notch at the bottom? Settle it on the flat part of the glass and pull back. That’ll cock the gun.”
I heard that glorious sound before she turned her body toward the window. “Now what?”
I nodded to Porter before he fell back behind us and came up on my side.
“Now, you take aim and shoot once the guy comes up beside us.”
I looked over at Porter and he gave me a thumbs up. I watched as Cole kept his eyes trained on the road while two Black Assholes tried to come up on our asses. They split off, one of them heading toward Cole’s side and one of them headed to Summer’s.
But the second that man came in line with Summer’s shotgun, she fired.
Knocking the man clear off his bike.
“Go! Go! Go!” she exclaimed.
While Porter and Cole dealt with the last person that had found us, I raced through town. I blazed a trail through yellow lights and wrapped our way around red lights so that we didn’t stop until we were at least ten solid miles into town. And once we found our way into an area I liked to call “Park Central,” we pulled beneath the shade of a massive tree in the parking lot.
“Holy shit,” Summer said breathlessly.
I dug out my cell phone from my pocket. “I want you to call Sloane. Make sure they’re both okay.”
She slowly looked over at me. “I thought you said—”
“Just do it, please!”
Then, I turned my attention to my own phone and quickly dialed the first person that came to mind.
Blaze.
“Well, well, well,” he said as he answered, “long time no talk, Tan. My guys tell me that you were in Santa Barbara a few hours ago. Not gonna stop and give your brothers from other mothers a hug?”
I chuckled. “I know, it’s been a while. How’s the chapter?”
“Eh, little worse for wear, but we’re making it. About half of our guys are prospects right now, so.”
