Page 43 of Venom's Sting
Oh yeah, the old man is batshit crazy. Hopefully one of the three stooges has enough sense to follow our orders, though I can only see Big Joe.
Suddenly there’s a cloud of dust on the periphery and the noise of another vehicle approaching. Within seconds a black panel van pulls up. Dan gets out of the driver’s seat, “She’s inside,” he says as he comes over to stand beside Siege.
What the everlovin’ fuck is going on here?
Siege is all kinds of suspicious. “What are you trying to pull off? Let her out and we’ll exchange at the same time.”
“Sure,” Dan murmurs.
He walks over to the side of the van and knocks, the door slides partially open and Hal jumps out. He holds out his hand. “It’s okay, girl. You’re gonna be back with your daughter in no time.”
Siege pulls Edmund to his feet and allows him to start walking towards the van, ‘cause we all expected Carol to slide her hand into Hal’s and step out. That’s not what happens though. Edmund suddenly starts running towards the pickup truck, diving headfirst into the trailer. Hal jumps in behind him, as Big Joe gets into the driver’s seat and Rufus slips into the other side of the vehicle. Big Joe hesitates for a second and looks at Dan, who’s standing there with his mouth hanging open. Then suddenly there’s a squeal as the wheels spin and Big Joe speeds away towards the exit to our parking lot. None of us shoot because we don’t know what to make of the situation.
Siege steps towards the van but from my vantage point in the tree I zero in on the tinted windows. Unable to see if Carol is inside, I focus my binoculars on the open door. That’s when I see the van is filled with metal drums.
“Run,” I shout, holding down the button for my mic. “Get the hell out of here, I think it’s rigged to blow.”
Siege, Rigs, and Dan all start running in different directions. We all wait for so long that I start to think maybe I was wrong. Minutes tick by and Rigs takes a couple of steps closer to the van. I’m praying he stays back because what other reason would theyhave for leaving a van unless it was rigged to explode? I close my eyes, wishing I was wrong.
But I’m not. The van explodes, sending shards of metal and glass in every direction.
“Holy shit!” Rigs exclaims. It’s not like our club preacher to use profanities but seeing him covered in gray dust having narrowly missed being blown to pieces, I guess he’s allowed a curse or two.
When the smoke clears, I can see the explosion took off part of the front of our clubhouse, not only the porch but I can see directly into the empty bar area. Something dark twists in my stomach. How could we have been so far off base about this exchange? Dan sure called this one when he said his old man would bring a bunch of guys and try to take our clubhouse by force.
I jump out of the tree and begin pacing. If we were caught unawares by this slick motherfucker, Amy and my mom might be as well. I turn around to see if my bike is salvageable, because it was sitting all the way on the end of the front row of the parking lot.
Before I make it even halfway, Rage is at my side. “That was some seriously fucked up shit.”
“Yeah, it was. Not entirely unexpected but it wasn’t at the top of our list either.”
I march right up to Dan and punch him in the face so hard he falls to the ground. “What the fuck? Why didn’t you warn us about your old man trying to blow up our clubhouse?”
Siege is standing nearby and spits on the ground before adding, “Do you have any idea how much damage your old man just did to our building? Who do you think is gonna pay for that?”
Dan scrambles to his feet, looking a little shell-shocked. “I didn’t know anything about this. My father’s been acting strange ever since I passed along your message about the trade. He got really suspicious about the part about a rival club spying on your clubhouse.”
Rigs speaks up, “That was our fault, we underestimated how paranoid your old man is.”
“When I got back, my brothers all started freezing me out, giving me menial tasks to keep me busy. Big Joe said Ed was earning too much money to be cut loose, that if we rescued him then he’d owe us big time. He reckoned that Ed’s drug business would make us even richer than any inheritance we got, so it was worth giving Carol back and doing the trade. I thought she was in the van, those bastards double-crossed me.”
Siege rakes one hand through his hair, clearly exasperated with the situation. “Someone is going to pay to repair this mess.”
I try to get everyone back onto the right page. “Our original goal was twofold, to figure out what those vans were doing in our territory and to find Carol Grayson. We achieved the first goal, figure out Edmund had a meth lab, destroyed it, and sent messages to his contacts letting them know never to step foot back in our territory. We just failed the second goal of getting Amy’s mother back unharmed.”
I glance over at Rage, thinking he’s going to back me up in trying to get everyone to storm the Grayson farm and help Amy,but he’s tapping away on his cell phone. The next thing I know, he’s running full speed into the damaged building and climbing through the rubble.
Siege and Rigs step closer. “We need to come up with a new game plan to rescue Carol, and we have to do it quick,” Siege says plainly.
Rigs adds, “That last thing we want to do is run off halfcocked, all hot headed because of what went down today. We already know that she’s not being actively harmed.”
Before Rigs can continue, Dan speaks up, “You mean up until now she wasn’t being harmed, if they don’t think there’s a use for her then I’m scared she’ll be seen as expendable.”
Anger churns in my gut. “We should have just killed the fucker instead of trying to play nicely. People like that only understand one language.”
Rider throws in his two cents worth, “I gotta agree with Ven on this one. We could have given the lot of them dirt naps.” Gesturing around to the handful of Rufus’s men who got their legs shot out of from under them, he adds, “As it stands, all we’ve got is a bunch of floundering fish out of water. I’ll bet none of them know anything of worth.”
“We need to get out to that farm. Rufus and his men already have a head start on us and Amy decided to go there looking for her mom since they were all here.”