Biker’s Collar: Property of Scrap (Rebel Barbarians MC #6)

Chapter 26 – Owen

Twenty-Six

Owen

Two Weeks Later

I am in love with Vickie. Tonight, I’ll prove it to her by killing the man who hurt her and making sure she sits pretty by my side as I take over Las Vegas at my brother’s behest. I understand what Wyatt wants from all of us now — a club so fucking big we never have to deal with this again. More recruits. More members. More loyalty and power to the Rebel Barbarians.

With Vickie’s memories from her time in Vegas, intelligence from Southpaw, and my own memories from previous Vegas-related screw-ups, I track Hakeem first to the YMCA where he plays pickup basketball twice a week. For years, he hasn’t shaken up that routine. Vickie remembers it well and she hasn’t been under this monster’s thumb in ages.

She won’t ever have to worry about that sicko again after tonight. Although, I truly doubt whether Vickie worries about him. By now, she’s tough enough to handle just about anything.

I take her along in the car Southpaw gives me for the job. I can tell it used to belong to a Hollingsworth because I find long red hairs all over the place. Dog hair in the backseat too. Doesn’t make the Chevy Suburban any less fun to drive. Vickie can’t relax in the front seat as we wait for Hakeem to leave his Wednesday evening pickup game.

I have back up out here in Vegas and they’re waiting at the apartment complex where we plan on trailing Hakeem to complete the job and double check for a police presence. Deacon and Magnum are stationed a few miles away from this pick up game waiting for updates. I’m glad that I have Vickie with me instead of running this surveillance alone. She makes everything about the job and being out here less lonely. I haven’t been tempted to leave my post and gamble once. That rarely happens.

My phone pings with a new betting opportunity, so I pull it out to quickly throw $13 dollars into a minor league baseball game, earning me a pinch on the thigh from Vickie. Surveillance is boring. She can’t expect me to be completely clean. I’ll find out if I win in two hours. Two exciting hours of uncertainty. Vickie rolls her eyes, conscious of my gambler-vision and expressing her disapproval that I’ve “lost focus”.

“Don’t you think it’s weird we’ve been watching him for a week and he hasn’t noticed?” Vickie asks, giving me a very serious look with those wide brown eyes. I wish we could drive this car to a secluded parking lot and have a high-school style make out session, but we both need to get our heads in the game. No more gambling. No more fantasizing about her sweet ass lips around my dick again. I move in the driver’s seat to dull my erection.

“He’s at the top of the food chain. He doesn’t worry about predators.”

“The Hakeem I remember was paranoid as fuck,” she says. “I just find it weird that he hasn’t noticed.”

“He still has those sidekicks with him,” I remind her. “It’s not like he’s running around alone.”

We have five more minutes until he leaves the basketball game. Those sidekicks might end up six feet under tonight too. I haven’t mentioned that to Vickie, but I’m sure she figured it out. She has a gun too. I don’t know if she’s ready to use it. If she were supposed to use it on me… then yes, she would. But I don’t know if she has it in her heart to shoot those sidekicks — especially based on what she says next.

Vickie gives me the stern look I expect. “His nephews are just teenagers.”

“Teenagers can pull triggers.”

“Hold on,” she says. “He’s leaving early.”

She sits up and her gaze beelines to Hakeem as the bald bastard leaves the YMCA. It’s fucked up that he uses what should be a center for the community to recruit teenagers into his gang of criminals that kidnap and sell women across Las Vegas and out of state.

The worst part is knowing how badly Hakeem affects Vickie. Her body language changes whenever he gets close, like she’s afraid he can see straight through the tinted Suburban windows. Once he’s dead, she’ll know how much I love her. It will feel real to her. We can start our lives together in Vegas with absolute certainty that nothing bad will ever happen to Vickie again.

It’s the least I can do for her. Wyatt promises me that he’ll keep helping with the Waverly situation and once I take over Vegas… I’ll have enough money to keep Kaylee-Marie in line. There’s promise in this city. A lot of hope if you play your cards right.

Hakeem’s nephews walk on either side of him, all three of them smiling. They walk towards Hakeem’s latest ride, a white Audi SUV with tan leather seats. License plate QHH-5674. They still haven’t seen us. I put my hand on Vickie’s thigh and look over at her. Hakeem starts the SUV but it won’t get moving until we hear Playboi Carti blasting out of the advanced speaker install.

She looks so fucking scared, especially because she knows we’re going to do it tonight. I just want to make her feel better, so looking over at her, I say the first thing that comes to mind. The truth that I’ve been trying to keep from bursting out of me.

“I love you, Vickie.”

“What the fuck?”

This isn’t the reaction I expected.

“What do you mean?”

“Is now really the right time?”

“I mean it,” I tell her. “And… You’re beautiful.”

“We’ve been sitting in this car getting stinky with Wendy’s fries for the past three hours,” Vickie says, looking prettier when she gets all frustrated with me. “There’s nothing beautiful about this.”

“I disagree,” I tell her, squeezing her thigh again. “And I mean it. I love you, Vickie.”

She looks over at me and scowls.

“You’re terrible.”

“Thanks?” I can tell she wants to say it. I won’t let her hide from me – or drug me and run out the window. I need to hear her say the words. I need her to open up to me so I can have proof that this time what’s between us is real.

“I mean…” she says. “I… I love you.”

“Wow. That looks like it hurt.”

“It’s not easy for me to say how I feel.”

“So you mean it?”

Vickie glares at me. “Yes. I love you. I mean it.”

“You say it like it’s a threat.”

“It might be,” Vickie says, lightening up and smiling. She still looks fucking beautiful. I have no regrets about finding her again and wrapping that collar around this thick ass trouble maker’s neck.

“Let’s put Hakeem in the ground,” I grunt, trying to restrain myself from my true desires, which are more about putting my dick in Vickie than killing some Vegas criminal. “Because I need you… I need you real fucking bad.”

“He’s finally moving,” Vickie says. “Same as always, heading to the apartments.”

“We don’t know that.”

“We do, because we’ve been running surveillance,” Vickie says. “And we’re not worried at all about how easy he’s made this for us.”

“Let’s not call the job easy until it’s done, Vickie.”

“We could get him from here.”

“We would have every cop in Vegas on our ass,” I remind her, trying to be patient with Vickie over her eagerness to see Hakeem dead. Now that it’s inevitable, her energy shifts to reluctant enthusiasm. She might not want to be there for the dirty work, but she wants this man gone.

My promises about what comes next might have a role in her excitement.

“Fine,” Vickie responds with a reluctant sigh. “Let’s follow his ass and hunt him down. I still think this is suspiciously easy.”

“Life doesn’t have to be difficult, Vickie.”

“This is ending a life,” she says. “It’s different.”

I follow Hakeem all the way to the apartments. We pull into the parking lot behind Hakeem’s complex, obscuring our truck behind a white Ford F-150, conveniently blocking a parking lot camera that would have otherwise captured footage of our vehicle.

I feel around for the revolver in my inner jacket pocket and Vickie whips out her binoculars. Hakeem keeps his freshest victims in an eight unit apartment complex about twenty minutes north of the strip. He hides these women in plain sight.

When I turn the car off, Vickie leans forward, like something caught her eye.

“He just opened up 215,” she says. “The nephews went in.”

I put my hand on her thigh, patiently waiting for her to tell me Hakeem’s next move. He has a classic routine. The nephews play video games in whatever unoccupied spot Hakeem has in the apartment complex since there’s such a high turnover rate for the girls.

The young men lounge around in there for a while until a man picks them up around 10 p.m. That’s what we observed and I think we can get the job done before then. Vickie shifts her hips as she watches Hakeem move. Just watching her slight, subtle movements gets me rock fucking hard.

“Okay,” she says. “He’s on the first floor now… He just opened 113 and… he walked inside. This man did not just leave the door open.”

Vickie sounds suspicious and disbelieving. I’m finally starting to see her point.

“He left the door open?”

“Hold on…”

I shuffle around the car searching for my pair of binoculars. Confirming what Vickie saw doesn’t make me feel any better. The door is still open.

“We gotta move,” I tell her.

Vickie throws a sharp look in my direction. “Owen. This is an obvious trap.”

“What if it’s not? What if we’re just lucky?”

She looks bewildered. “You have a problem.”

“What?”

I open the door. We’re heading after Hakeem. No question. Vickie follows me, even if she’s clearly still fixing her mouth to argue. She has her hand on the gun and lowers her voice once we’re outside of the truck.

“This is an insane gamble ,” she says, throwing weight behind the word ‘gamble’ that clearly, Vickie means to provoke guilt. I shrug her off.

“We can pull it off. Now hush. Stay close.”

Vickie draws her body closer to mine. She might question me, but she trusts me… I hope that lasts through the night. That I can protect her and keep her safe, never giving her reason to doubt me. Consciously, I know Vickie can handle herself, but my male instincts crave nothing more than a nearly sacrificial level of protectiveness.

The open door has officially roused my suspicions. Vickie stays close as I fix the silencer to my gun. Ideally, she won’t need to fire at all. Cleaning up this body will be a lot easier if we use less ammunition and we don’t have any witnesses.

“Where are the others?” she whispers.

“They’re coming. Let’s go…”

Our bodies stay close to the walls. I glance over my shoulder at Vickie every few seconds to make sure she’s safe. I don’t know why I bother worrying about her. She looks focused and she’s holding that gun like she knows what she’s doing. I’m glad I can throw her ass over my shoulder easily.

Vickie follows me to the door of 113 and the two of us walk straight through the door, ready to end Hakeem’s life.