Free Guns & Burning Rubber: The Iron Brotherhood series by Samantha Westlake Page A

back behind him, pulling something out from a pocket.  Kara half expected it to be a knife, but instead he emerged with a black rectangle - a smartphone.  And as he clicked the display on, Kara recognized the phone as her own.
    She had to say something.  “Okay, okay, you caught me!” she said, rolling her eyes as if this confession was no big deal.  “Look, I’m sleeping with a member of the Iron Brotherhood, and they told me that it would be great if I could check out one of your parties…”
    She let her voice trail off, carefully putting up a look of scared realization, as if she was only now understanding that perhaps things weren’t totally cool.  “I didn’t mean any trouble,” she finished, trying to appear wide-eyed and innocent.
    Savage just stared at her.  This time, it was Alicia who intervened, quickly crossing the few feet of space between her casual leaning position and the handcuffed captive.  Alicia’s pointed, high-heeled boot connected hard with Kara’s stomach, knocking the air from her lungs in a whoosh.
    “Tell us the truth, you bitch!” the woman screeched down at her, as Kara tried frantically to regain control of her breathing, gasping for air.  “We know that you’re with the police, or the government, or someone!  You’re trying to investigate us!”
    Even as she sucked in air and tried to control the red-hot splinter of pain radiating out of her stomach, Kara couldn’t help making a mental note of Alicia’s choice of words in the back of her mind.  ‘Us,’ the woman had said.  She hadn’t picked up the impression before that Alicia was directly involved with the Hellraisers, as opposed to simply on the periphery of their social circles, but this language seemed to suggest it.
    “Maybe she is with the Brotherhood,” Savage suggested, glancing up at Alicia’s angry standing figure as Kara tried to recover from the kick.  “I’ve heard that they aren’t happy about our expansion.”
    “So what, they’d send in one of their fuck toys to dig around?” Alicia retorted, throwing another kick in Kara’s direction.
    Kara saw this one coming out of the corner of her eye, and was able to turn and move with the kick, reducing the power of the blow.  Alicia barely noticed, now spinning to confront Savage.  Clearly, the woman had some power here - she acted like she was in charge of the whole gang!
    “Listen, you ass, I don’t care what you do to her, as long as I know where she ends up,” she hissed at the big man.  “And that place better be a hole in the ground, somewhere that no one will find her!  How long it takes for you to get her there, or what sort of games you play with her in the meantime, that doesn’t matter.  Just get it done!”
    But perhaps Alicia had pushed the big president of the Hellraisers just a little too hard.  The man moved forward and, in a single swift motion, grabbed Alicia by the throat, under the chin, and lifted her up until her boots were dangling just an inch off the floor.
    “Watch it, girl,” he snarled at her.  “No one talks to me like that - not even my own blood.”
    His own blood?  Alicia was related to Savage?  That did help connect another piece of the puzzle - namely, why Alicia had been so willing to sell out Kara at a moment’s notice - but it didn’t matter much now.
    In Savage’s powerful grip, the woman struggled a little, but finally she dropped her eyes, backing off - for now.  But as the man dropped her back down to the ground, Kara caught a brief flash of an angry, raging, howling beast contained behind her eyes.  Alicia reminded the FBI agent of a half-rabid dog, holding back for the moment but just itching to break its leash and cause chaos.
    “Who else knows that she’s here?” Savage asked, after a tense second of quiet glares between the man and woman who seemed to be in charge of the Hellraisers.
    Alicia shrugged.  “No one, probably.  Maybe Cross, her former boy toy, but I can