RIDING DIRTY (Steel Titans MC Book 4) by Franca Storm (best books for students to read txt) 📗

She shook her head as she shrugged on her tactical jacket and rapidly checked the magazines of both her Glocks. Damn, the woman could dress fast. I’d never seen anything like it. “It’s too risky. We need to get gone before they arrive.”

“What?” I said, as I shoved my gun into the holster at my right hip, then shrugged my leather jacket on.

She hightailed it to her closet and pulled out a duffel bag, slinging it over her shoulder, clearly a go-bag. “There’s a tunnel through a hidden door in the basement. It’ll take us out to a garage located in the depth of the forest. I have a vehicle parked there all gassed up and ready to go at a moment’s notice.”

“We ain’t running, Willa,” I told her as I patted the pockets of my jacket to double check that I had my wallet and keys, along with extra ammo. “We take advantage of them coming to us and we end this here and now.”

“Assuming both vans are filled to max capacity, that’ll be way too many dropped bodies.”

“Then call in your cleanup guys ASAP, give them a heads up right now.”

She shook her head adamantly. “That’s not the plan.”

As she went to turn from me, I grasped her arm and drew her back around to me. “There ain’t always time for a plan. Sometimes, you just gotta run with what you got and improvise.”

Our gazes clashed.

I saw her taking my words in.

Then she relaxed in my hold and blew out a breath. “We don’t even know how many there are. We don’t know who they are, we’re just working off assumption.”

“Well, you got any other enemies looking to come at you right now?”

She tossed me a look. “I’ve pissed off a lot of people over the years. But, yes, this is too coincidental. It has to be Nolan or Freeman, maybe both of them with their muscle.”

“So, we do this then. We end this here and now, yeah?”

Drawing in a breath, she conceded, “All right. Between the three of us, we can work it. But we keep Freeman and Nolan breathing until we get all the intel we need in those areas. How far has Freeman gotten with building the Strikers Rising? Does Nolan have any contingencies in place? That sort of thing. If we’re going to end this, we want to make damn sure we actually have. Otherwise, we have no hope of walking away and going to ground.”

I stopped short. “What? You’re telling me you’re actually going to do it, follow me into retirement, get away from all this?”

“I—”

A thunderous crash tore through the bedroom.

We both reacted on instinct and dove for the floor as glass exploded all around, millions of jagged shards raining down like one of those stupid-ass confetti cannons.

The second I recovered from hitting the floor with a jarring thud, I jerked my head up to see four masked men climbing over the wreckage of the now shattered bay windows and barreling into the bedroom, coming for us. They were decked out in heavy-duty storm-gray tactical gear, way more hardcore than even Willa, each wearing balaclavas hiding their identities. They moved real fluid, in tight formation, like every move was choreographed and thought out long before they made it, working off each other well.

I sprung to my feet and swept my leg at the closest one that was coming around the side of the bed. He dodged it, jumping out of the way, then thrust his fist at me. I brought my arm down, knocking it away and using the in to grab a hold of him and haul him into the wall.

Before I could get any further, a battle cry tore through the room and I looked to see Willa charging the other three. “You think you can invade my territory and remain breathing? You arrogant shits!” She leapt onto the bed and used the momentum to execute a flying kick that struck the closest guy brutally, knocking him back into the one behind him, the both of them crashing into the glass wreckage littering the floor like a biting, jagged carpet from hell. The remaining guy came at her. Adrenaline shot through me and I fisted my hand in my opponent’s balaclava and used it as leverage to smash the back of his head into the wall. Once. Twice. Until he went limp in my arms, passing out cold. But as I ran to Willa’s aid, she grabbed the incoming guy by his shoulders, jerked him into her and used his weight against him, taking him with her as she dropped to the bed, rolled backward, then threw him over her shoulder. Jesus Christ.

He ricocheted off the bed and landed at my feet. I put him down with a boot to his face.

The next thing I knew, Willa was pulling her gun and firing off two shots in quick succession to the two guys she’d kicked back, a bullet through each of their temples. They dropped like ragdolls with a hefty thud on the glass-covered floor.

She spun and got off the bed, striding over to me. “These guys are military trained. Fuck. This is worse than I thought.”

Before I could get a word out, the bedroom door flew open and another one of the soldiers barreled on it. His mission was short-lived, though, as a shot fired and he jerked forward, blood spurting from his throat.

As he dropped in a lifeless heap on the floor, Rick came into view, his gun in firing position.

He took in the situation quickly, his eyes wild, his breathing heavy.

“You guys all right?” he asked, looking each of us over quickly.

“We’re fine,” Willa answered.

He let out a breath of relief, then spun back to the door and locked it. “I already took down two before this guy. They’re fucking everywhere.”

“What was all that about having eight minutes?” I asked Willa.

She shoved a hand through her hair. “Some of them must’ve come on