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

not our best one, the guy we’re real close to patching in, because he’s so damn good. We’re at war. We need our best guys manning the clubhouse. Yeah, the militia’s off the table, but we still got Nolan and Freeman gunning for us. Nolan’s got his guys at his back and—”

“Nolan’s off the table.”

“What?” I barked. If he thought for a second that I was gonna back down on taking that asshole out, after I’d already gotten close twice and then lost it, he had another thing coming. “Liam, there ain’t no way that—”

“He’s dead, Slade.”

Talk about a shock to the system.

It brought me up short.

I couldn’t wrap my head around it fast enough, let alone actually respond with anything.

“We just got word from Van.”

“Who did it?” I croaked out. It was a toss up between Will Decker and Blake Freeman. They both had the motive and the ability.

“Freeman. He tore into the driveway on his bike and ripped through the bay windows of the place Nolan was holed up at with a TEC-9, taking Nolan out in the process. He went down in a hail of fucking bullets.”

“Jesus Christ,” I breathed.

“Yeah, it was a wild, unhinged move on Freeman’s part. He didn’t even try to cover it up. He moved so fucking fast that Van couldn’t even keep up with him while he had eyes on him, and you know how good he is.”

“The asshole’s lost it,” I realized. “Losing a partner in Willa, then the militia.”

“You need to get the hell out of there as soon as Wyatt arrives and Willa gets those meds in her system. Nobody is safe until we can get a lock on him and take him out.”

“I hear you. When is—”

The call dropped.

Startled, I eyed my phone to see that there weren’t a signal no more.

Son of a bitch.

I really doubted it was random, or just some coincidence.

I just get word on Freeman losing his shit, he’s been working with ex-military guys, with access to the exact kind of tech that could fuck with a cell phone signal. A fucking cell jammer. Nah, it weren’t no coincidence. It had to be him.

Adrenaline shot through me, fast and brutal, as the realization set in.

Some of those jammers didn’t have a range more than thirty feet. Others, like the kind the law used, could bring down all cell service within a one-mile radius.

Either way, it meant one thing.

That motherfucker was real close. Too fucking close.

I had to act fast.

My first instinct was to wake Willa and get her the hell out of Dodge.

But I stopped myself.

There was only one way out of here, through the front door just beyond the reception area. Willa was back down the opposite way. I needed to see if the way was clear first, before rushing her headlong into danger. Telling her that I thought Freeman was coming for us would be a surefire way to put her right in the line of fire, because she wouldn’t accept it no other way. She’d want to be front and center. No fucking way was that happening.

I shoved my phone into my back pocket, then hurried down the corridor, speeding up to a run, and drawing my gun in the process.

I tore into the reception area, locked and loaded.

Scanning the room, I didn’t see nobody, no sign of things looking off or nothing.

Everything was as we’d left it earlier, the lights muted, the place dead silent.

It was the calm before the storm.

That was confirmed in the next second.

The front door tore open, ripping off its top hinge.

I took aim.

Seconds went by.

Nothing.

I took a step forward.

A gloved hand came into view.

Before I could even fire off a shot, it tossed something into the middle of the room, just ten feet from me.

A five-inch, black cylinder.

Small, but a bitch of a thing.

A fucking flashbang!

I reacted quick, diving for the reception desk, the farthest corner of the room.

I weren’t fast enough.

The grenade detonated.

I was still way too close to the blast radius.

It was a fucking sucker punch to the senses.

As I hit the ground hard, my ears were ringing painfully. I couldn’t see shit for the life of me, couldn’t get my bearings, or sense a damn thing.

I forced myself up onto my knees, struggling with it.

I got one foot back on solid ground, about to push off it to get back to my feet, when hands suddenly grasped my shoulders, fingers digging in hard.

They used my weight against me and hauled me into the couch.

I grunted as I hit it with a bone-jarring thud, the thing tipping over at the impact.

The blows came hard and fast then.

I brought my hands up to minimize some of the damage, hating that I was completely on the defensive, because of the ringing, the blindness, and the intense disorientation.

I took way too much damage for the start of a fight, before my vision started clearing just enough to make out the shape and movements of my attacker, and the ringing dialed down enough to be bearable, for me to think about more than the agony of it.

But it was too little too late, as I saw the flash of a blade coming at me.

I hissed as it plunged into the right side of my chest.

The wielder leaned in close as he twisted it, making me choke, and I was finally able to make out his identity.

Just as I’d thought.

Blake fucking Freeman.

Damn, he was a dirty fucking fighter. A coward too.

He ripped the blade out, wiped the blood on his tactical pants, then stepped back.

The ringing ebbed off more and I could make out what he was saying, as he turned away and started for the corridor. “Where is she? I know she’s here,” he was muttering to himself.

Adrenaline surged. I clenched my fists.

The fucker had made a mistake thinking stabbing me would put me out of the fight.

Nah, the searing pain sparked something in me that I’d been trying to hold back for way too long. I’d