Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 80902 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 405(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80902 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 405(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
Quickshot vaults over the bar. “Go get everyone out the back. Make sure all the girls are—”
“Like fuck I will. You have a baby at home. I’m not telling Natalie that I let you run into whatever the fuck just happened while I ran the other way. I’m going out there, you go to the back.”
He looks like he wants to argue, but nods and makes a break for the stage to check on any of the women who might still be left. Wild Child and Ripper come barreling out from behind the bar. They must’ve heard what happened from the office. We start heading for the door when a second explosion blows out the whole front wall of the building.
Debris flies through the air like shrapnel, tearing at my face and arms. The three of us are knocked back, and I hope to fuck nobody was any closer. If I hadn’t wasted those few seconds arguing with Quickshot, it would’ve been over. I can hardly fucking breathe. Soot and blackened particles float through the air, and there’s already sirens coming closer.
People are screaming outside, or at least I think that’s what I hear. My ears are ringing like fucking church bells. “Stay back! That might not be the end of it!”
“Everyone still got all their fingers and toes?” Wild Child yells.
Ripper lets out an anguished scream and holds up his stump hand. “Fuck! Oh wait. I was already down five fingers. Never mind.” He lost that hand years ago, but not his dark sense of humor.
“Who’s in there?” Sledge bellows from outside.
“Havoc!” Shelby screams. “Let me go, Phoenix. He was in there!”
I get as close as I dare, both because there might be another bomb, and because things aren’t looking real stable. “Still breathing! Stay the fuck back!”
“Do you hear that?” Wild Child asks, going still.
Me and Ripper pause, listening. There’s a woman screaming for help.
“Fuck! It’s the apartment upstairs.”
The floor directly above the Roost is partly rooms for the bar, but the building has residential apartments as well, and one is right above the entrance.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I growl as we run past the bar and head upstairs to see what we can do.
There’s an emergency exit into a shared hallway from the second floor. I throw it open, and immediately a cloud of dark smoke billows in. I can’t tell where it’s coming from.
After a moment, it clears a little as it drains into the Roost. There’s several apartments in this hall, along with stairs going down and up. But the apartment we’re looking for is gonna be towards the front.
We gotta be fast. I'm no fucking hero, but fuck if I'm gonna let someone burn in if I can help it. No death worse than that.
Except maybe what I'm gonna do to the fuckers who started this.
“Over here,” Ripper gestures with his metal prosthesis.
I put my hand on the door he pointed at. It’s warm but not so hot that I’m getting burnt. “Someone in there?”
A female voice screams from the other side. I try to remember who lives there. Some college kids I think. The only people willing to deal with living directly over a biker bar.
“The hallway’s safe. Come out!”
Quickshot shakes his head. There’s blood trickling down his face from a cut over his eye. “I think she would if she could.”
“Out of the way!” Barreling down the hall like a fucking manic, Sledge charges past, leading with his shoulder, and slams into the door. There's a splintering crack and it slams open. More smoke billows out immediately.
“What the fuck are you doing in here?” I scream after him. “We said to stay back.”
“Yeah. Like any of us were going to do that,” Phoenix coughs out from behind me. “There’s people outside watching the women. Nitro’s checking for more explosives, but thinks we’re clear.”
“My leg’s stuck!” a panicked voice yells from inside the apartment.
We pass through a small kitchen into a living room where the front windows have all blown out. A fire is spreading through the room, slowly engulfing a sofa and close to jumping to the nearby rug. Off the living room is a bedroom which is right over the front door. A part of the ceiling has collapsed onto the bed, and there’s a young woman with a bloody leg on the floor, where it looks like she’s been trying to crawl.
Sledge gets the debris off her leg easily, then scoops her up and throws her over his shoulder. “Anyone else?”
She shakes her head. “No, my roommate is gone for the weekend.”
“Get her downstairs, we’ll check the rest of the building. The fire department should already be on the way,” I order. Sledge nods and takes off.
Me, Phoenix, Wild Child and Ripper work our way down the hall and take the stairs to the next floor. By now, panicked people are streaming down the stairs. The worst of the damage was up front, but fire can spread fast. We should get the fuck outta here too.