Touch Me

2. Karl

Karl

“Still don't think this is a good idea, Karl,” Fed said as he leaned back against the elevator wall. We were riding up to the ninth floor of the New Orleans Sheraton, on our way to meet what may have been our new man on the inside. “This Sven guy sounds like he ain't offering us anything Bradley can't.”

Fed was my best friend, my confidante, and my second-in-command of the Fire and Brimstone MC. He was a real bruiser, but had as sharp a mind as any when it came to this kind of game.

“Look, man,” I said, running a hand back over my slicked back, brown hair, “this Sven guy's promising us a bigger haul from Volkov. Says he knows the routes, that he can make this a safer bet for us. Every time we go out and hit one of those trucks, we open ourselves. We get one of the drivers, though, a driver like Sven, we get a better, safer shot.”

We'd been ripping off Volkov Arms for almost the last year. We had a contact, Bradley, who worked in dispatch. They shipped the guns, we pulled 'em over. Then, we offloaded them to our contacts. Before, we'd been knocking over electronics shipments. But you just couldn't compare the price of a flatscreen TV to a clean semi-auto rifle, especially not when they hit the streets.

Between this little racket and Club Hellfire, we were pulling down a healthy income for me and all the members of the club. What we'd been making when my dad was in charge was chump change compared to the kind of numbers we were putting on the sheets, now.

The number on the elevator kept rising, and we followed with it as we ascended to our meeting in the sky. Fed glanced up at the numbers, at the bright digital 7 displayed, saying, “Still don't like this s**t, brother. Seems too f*****g easy.”

I looked at the floor and laughed, shaking my head. “Man, you got a f****d up idea of easy. You think knocking over semis full of guns is f*****g easy, even if we got an inside man on it?”

“Guy’s gonna want a bigger cut than Bradley,” he said as the elevator slowed and that weird feeling of weightlessness entered my chest.

“Bigger cut of a bigger pie, though,” I said as we exited the elevator together. “Sven can have a couple more points than what Bradley took, as long as F&B is bringing in bigger shipments with less worry.”

“Down there, right?” Fed asked, pointing down the hallway. “923?”

“Yeah,” I said, nodding. We headed down that way.

“Still don't like it,” Fed mumbled.

“Said the same s**t when I first proposed this,” I reminded him. “And look where we are now? Same risk, more reward. Just remember who the boss is, here.”

“Nah,” Fed said. “I get it, Karl. You're the boss, man. Ain't nobody said different.”

“We'll make it work, man,” I said, my voice as confident as I felt. “We got this s**t on lockdown, man. Trust me. Ain't no way we ain't coming out on top with this.”

We stopped outside 923. It was just a room in a hotel, same as every other room in this joint. Fed looked one way up the hall, and I looked down the other.

There was the sound of a gunshot on the other side, then a scream, a long, pained scream. I took a step back, reaching for the gun I had beneath my vest. Beside me, Fed did the same. We locked wide eyes.

“s**t,” Fed whispered.

“s**t,” I whispered back, nodding.

Another gun shot.

Fed took another step back, tucked his pistol away, back beneath it. “I say we book it.”

“Good idea,” I agreed. “This s**t's t**s-up on arrival, man.”

I tucked my gun back in my jacket, and we both turned to leave.

Room 923's door, though, came flying open.

A bare slip of a woman, not much older than her early twenties, ran out of the room on heels almost bigger than her, auburn hair flying out behind her. Her eyes were wild, scared, angry, in shock.

Before I could get out of the way, she slammed right into me, almost barreling me over, her handbag slapping me in the shoulder and side of my head.

Instinctively, I wrapped my arms around her and held her close. “Hey, hey,” I said my voice calm and soothing. “Chill out, lady. Everything's going to be okay.”

She looked up at me with terrified dark brown eyes that peered out from a ring of heavy mascara and dark eye shadow.

Something about those eyes, they did something to me. I didn't know what, or why, but they just looked right into me.

“Are you,” she started to ask, licking her lips in the most enticing of ways, “are you the Boss?”

“Uh,” I said as I looked at Fed, and he looked back at me, both of us shocked, “how'd you know that?”