After we'd finished that, she'd gotten changed for the party, and took the gun I'd brought for her, this one loaded down with blanks, and left to head toward the clubhouse. I headed out a couple minutes later when I figured it would be safe since whoever these guys were would be watching her, not the apartment building as a whole.
From there, I got back to the clubhouse, finding the guys standing around, keen-eyed, aware, but trying to appear like they were enjoying the party.
"Ambulance is parked down the street from the fire station," Seeley murmured to me as he walked past.
"And the cop?" I asked, looking over at Donovan.
"He's ready too," he told me, nodding.
"Okay," I said, taking a deep breath, looking around for Shy who was told to act like a partygoer until one of us approached her. Then she was supposed to "open fire" and take us out before running out like everyone else would in the chaos. "Let's get this started," I said, grabbing a cup off the island, then making my way toward Shy like I was just a random biker, and she was just a random pretty girl I wanted to fuck.
Shy's eyes widened, not having anticipated it being me, which made her pause for a moment before she reached into her purse, and pulled out the gun.
"Do it," I whispered while pretending to chat her up.
"I don't want to hurt you again."
"It will just bruise Do it," I demanded, not wanting someone to see the gun before she could raise it and shoot.
I was sure she was freezing up when, suddenly, she raised a wobbling arm, slid her finger to the trigger, and squeezed out three blanks.
The impact sent me flying backward, landing hard even as the impact from the blanks sent pain across my chest and shoulder.
It went exactly as we'd expected.
At the sound of gunshots, there were screams and panic, everyone trying to exit out of the two doors, running back toward their cars and bikes, getting the fuck out of there as quickly as possible.
Shy was with them.
As I stayed exactly where I was, pretending to be dead as my men fussed around me, checking my pulse, pretending to call the police, putting on a big show just in case anyone was still around watching, or recording like everyone seemed to do these days.
"This is gonna feel weird as fuck," Huck mumbled nearby as Seeley's friends with the ambulance they bought after some local EMS upgraded wheeled in a squeaky stretcher, then knelt down next to me to pretend to feel for a pulse and respiration, then my eyes.
Last I heard, paramedics didn't pronounce death or do the job of removing bodies, but I went ahead and figured that the only reason I knew that was because Gus had worked in the medical field and liked to shout out shit like that at the TV when we watched movies. Most people wouldn't be any the wiser when they pronounced me dead, scooped me into a body bag, then strapped me down to a stretcher, and rolled me out.
It wasn't until the doors closed and we were driving away that the straps released and the bag unzipped, letting me take my first full, deep breath in several minutes.
"How'd it look?" I asked, looking at Huck.
"I would have bought it if I was a bystander," he said, shrugging. "Now we just wait until Arty can work his magic and the social media posts go up, and we should be good. Teddy is meeting us behind the club to lend you a car."
"Good," I said, pulling my legs out of the bag, and moving to sit off the edge of the stretcher.
"She's pretty, huh?" Huck asked, making my head snap over.
"What?"
"She's pretty. Shy. She's pretty."
"Okay," I said, brows knitting.
"Just saying."
"What are you saying?" I clarified.
"That you would be the last person on board for this plan if it were any other woman," he said.
And, to be fair, that was probably accurate. I did tend to be the rational one, the one who told everyone to stop and think shit through, the least likely to jump headfirst into some asinine plan.
If you asked Harmon and Saskia, they would tell you I was the last person to accept them into our lives, that I was the hardest one to get to know, or to get on the good side of.
So, yeah, it was out of character for me to agree to any of this shit.
"Shy being pretty doesn't have shit to do with it."
"Oh, fuck off," Huck said, letting out a chuckle. "What? You think I don't know what it's like when a woman makes you full-stop?" he asked.
"It's different."
"Yeah, alright," he said, rolling his eyes.
"Her sister was kidnapped. She was desperate."
"Right. Because you go all-out like this every time a woman is kidnapped in the area."
"This wasn't some random story we heard on the news. It was in our house. And it was in our best interest to get to the bottom of this, and see who wants us dead this time."
"And this has nothing to do with you wanting to fuck Shy?"
"I barely know the woman."
"You know how many women I 'barely knew' before I took them to bed before I met Harmon? Want me to try to remember how many you 'barely knew' before fucking them? You're deflecting."
"If I came across her on the street randomly, would I think about talking to her? Yeah. But that's not what's going on here."
"Yeah, okay," Huck said as the ambulance slowed to a stop.
There was the shortest of pauses before the doors opened. And there was Teddy, waiting with his driver and two of his cars.
"It's going to be weird to read about your death tonight," Teddy said, shaking his head as he looked at me. "Has anyone checked those out?" he asked, waving a hand toward the holes in my shirt where the blanks had torn through.
Reached down, I lifted up my tee to show the thin bullet-resistant vest yet another of Seeley's unknown contacts had dug up for me.
"I'm good. They just knocked the air out of me."
"How's the girl?" Teddy asked.
"She ran off, like planned," Huck said.
"Yeah, but how is she?" Teddy asked. Huck and I must have sported identical confused looks because Teddy sighed at us both. "Her sister has been kidnapped. She shot a stranger. She is working in cahoots with you to try to get her sister back and take out her kidnappers. And she was just forced to pretend to kill you. Did it not occur to any of you that she might not be handling all this as well as you are? Of course not," he said with a sigh.
"We didn't exactly have time to coddle the woman, Teddy," Huck said, shrugging.
"Just checking in to make sure she's alright is far from coddling," Teddy insisted. "Check. In. And. See. If. She's. Okay," he said, enunciating each word as a sentence as he looked at me. "There you go," he added when I finally reached for my phone to do just that. "Alright. Now that that's handled, I'm out. Keep the car as long as you need it," he invited, jerking his chin toward the other car before he and his driver climbed inside.
"Alright. I'm gonna walk a few blocks over to meet Che. Everyone else has their orders too," he added. "Let me know if you hear anything from her," he demanded, holding up the balled-up hoodie he had in his hands, and tossing it at me. "At least put that on with the hood up. Try to sell this," he added before starting to walk.