Seriously?
If the Kings really gave himCyclopsas his club name, I am going to light into Prez and work my way through the entire Executive Committee. That is some bullshit, calling him Cyclops because he’s blind in one eye. That doesn’t define him, doesn’t speak to who he is as a person. And having only one functioning eye sure as fuck hasn’t made Zak any less deadly, any less lethal or dangerous. If anything, he’s more so because of it, because he has to rely on his other senses a little more. Hell, Zak does everything anyone with two working eyeballs, zero nerve damage and no limp can do but way better, and calling himCyclopsseems to be totally out of line if you ask me.
Guess now I know why he still hasn’t told me what Cy was short for.
Jerk.
“I don’t care what you think is going to happen,” I hiss at Rocksteady. “I know how this is going to play out and I can promise you, Cy will not be the one leaving here in a body bag.”
He laughs, low and menacing. “I like a bitch with spunk. You’re wrong, but you’ve got balls and I can appreciate that. Maybe I will keep you around, fuck that sass right out of your mouth. I—“
“Rock,” Bebop grunts from the door. “We got company.”
Rocksteady grins in my face, sets George 2.0 down, the puppy scurrying toward me and burrowing into my coat as our insane captor stands in the cargo doorway.
“It’s ok, baby,” I whisper to the whimpering ball of fur in my coat. “Daddy is here and he’s going to take us home.”
“Well, lookie what we have here.” Rocksteady cackles. “Cyclops riding in alone to rescue his princess from the evil dungeon.”
Evil dungeon?
Ugh.
This guy is an idiot.
And why the hell is Zak alone?
There’s at least three Cobras that I’m sure of, but I don’t doubt there’s more, there has to be if they were planning on a fight between them. Otherwise, they really are fucking stupid because not only is that incredibly bad strategy, it’s also just ignorant because all it takes is four Kings to wipe the floor with eight or more Cobras. I saw that shit with my own two eyes.
“Let her go, jackass. Blondie hasn’t done anything to deserve this.”
Rocksteady laughs again. “Really? Shooting me in the foot and embarrassing my sister don’t warrant this kind of action, Cy? Not to mention she’s rejected my advances twice now, and if she’d have just gone home with me that first night at the bar, we wouldn’t even be here at all.”
“What do you want?” Zak sounds so calm to anyone else, but I can hear the fear, the worry, the rage in his tone. “There has to be a way to work this out where no one gets hurt.”
“We are way past that, my friend.”
I hear gravel crunching under boots. “What about that information your sister was trying to get? That doesn’t interest you?”
Rocksteady pauses and I think he glances inside the car before he shakes his head. “This ain’t about that. Your old lady disrespected my sister and you disrespected me. This isn’t between clubs, it’s between men and making shit right.”
“So your president doesn’t have anything to do with this? Didn’t send you to kidnap my old lady for some reason?”
“You blindanddeaf? This is my show. Mine! I took your bitch to make an example out of her. Nobody fucks with Rocksteady and gets away with it. Nobody. And now I’m gonna make you watch as I turn your angel into a fucking corpse. Get him!”
My heart starts slamming into my ribs as I hear the obvious sounds of a scuffle. Skin hitting skin, leather on leather, gravel flying just as loudly as the curse words. It sounds like there’s no less than fifteen people outside and since I wouldn’t be able to see anything even if I wasn’t tied up in a cold dark boxcar, I’m just sending up prayer after prayer that my man is ok.
Please let him be ok.
But my prayers go unanswered when three gunshots ring out followed by a whole lot of silence.
Rocksteady jumps down from the boxcar, says a few things I can’t quite hear and that’s when I decide I have to do something.
Very carefully because I don’t want to draw any attention to myself, I push up to sitting, George 2.0 sliding down between my boobs and sitting snug in the pocket my winter coat creates around my nonexistent cleavage. I scoot until my back hits the wall, my wrists burning from the zip ties while I feel around with my fingers for anything I can pull myself up on.
No luck.
I wiggle further and manage to get up on my knees but just when I’m going to try to stand and jump out of the boxcar myself, Rocksteady climbs back in followed closely by Bebop and Shredder—I’m guessing—the two of them dragging a relatively limp but still fighting body between them.
