Rush Allen carried on.
“Tore Tabby apart. Blames herself. She let them drift. She wasn’t the only one but she’s the only one left alive to feel guilt and make up ways she could have made a difference. Could have changed history. She’s certain that if she continued to try to intervene, she could have saved Natalie.”
He stared into my eyes.
“She couldn’t,” he finished, his point not even vaguely disguised.
“Your friend is not my friend,” I returned.
“Do you now Camilla Turnbull?” he asked.
I felt my shoulders tighten up.
“Do you?” he pushed.
“No,” I forced out.
Turnbull.
Something to do with Harrietta?
“She’s Harrietta’s daughter,” he informed me.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“Sent in to play Valenzuela for Lannigan,” he continued. “Got played and ended up with her throat slit, laid out on a picnic table at our Compound on Chaos with a note stapled to her forehead.”
Yikes.
“Mr. Allen—”
He leaned toward me and dropped his voice in a way even his men, all standing close-ish, could probably not hear.
“You can try to distance yourself from me, sweetheart, by using that bullshit. But we both know what’s happening here. I’m Rush. You call me Mr. Allen again, I’m clearing the room and we’re gonna have a different kind of lesson.”
And again, he did not try to disguise his point.
And his point did not set my clit to tightening.
It set my nipples to tightening and my clit to tingling.
He leaned back and I told my nipples (and other) to behave.
“You know Scruff’s Roadhouse?” he asked.
Goddamn it.
“No,” I snapped.
“Natalie’s body was put in a body bag and dumped behind it. Woman who owned it is called Reb. Anyone call you Reb?” he asked.
“If they’re not my brother, his man or his woman, not if they want to keep their teeth.”
Suddenly, he grinned.
It transformed his face from angled and hewn and gorgeous, to playful and almost boyish.
And gorgeous.
His grin disappeared.
“Well, Reb was a tough nut. And she wasn’t a big fan of having a body dumped behind her bar. She’d never been a big fan of Chew’s. You know Chew?”
It seemed I didn’t know anything.
And he knew it.
Which blew.
But whatever. I couldn’t hide something he already knew so I didn’t try.
“Chew?” I asked.
“Chew. Biker name for Arthur Lannigan because the man has a thing for tarantulas.”
Tarantulas?
Oh God.
“Now Reb, she never liked Chew. There were tarantulas in that body bag with Natalie. Reb got it in her head that Chew tossed that body behind her bar, rather than Valenzuela doing it that way to frame Chew, and Reb ran her mouth to the police. Coupla months ago, takin’ out her trash, on her back walk in her own backyard, she lost that mouth when she took a bullet to the face. Now that,” he leaned into me again, “that was all Chew.”
I stared at him, feeling my heart accelerating.
I knew nothing about any of this.
“Women are dying, Rebel,” he stated. “Now I’ll be even clearer about what I’m tryin’ to get you to understand. There’s another club messed up in this shit, and a woman was informing to us on what was happening with them. She was ours. She had our protection. And we fell down on that job and she was left on a cement floor, beat to shit by an entire club of bikers, having to be hospitalized, broken bones, left with scars. Another woman, another one of our own, was kidnapped. She wasn’t hurt but she witnessed Valenzuela order the murder of two of his own men, she also witnessed their deaths. She’s okay now, but only after a lot of lookin’ after and some serious counseling. Do you see a pattern here?”
Oh, I saw a pattern.
I didn’t confirm that.
I continued staring at him.
“That’s all pussy, baby,” he said quietly. “Not one dick in that mix. Now you can take all of that as a warning to our Club, which is how we’ve taken it, and I can promise you, we’ve also taken steps to look after our women. You can also take it as what it definitely is. There are those who are expendable. And pardon me bein’ coarse about this, I’m doin’ it to make a point, but the expendables got snatch.”
“Are we done?” I asked.
It was his turn to stare at me.
Then he glowered at me.
Finally, he sat back and sighed.
“We’re done,” I announced and stood up.
I’d taken one step to the side of his chair when he spoke.
“You can’t bring her back.”
I looked down at him.
He was gazing up at me.
“Honey, you can’t bring her back,” he whispered.
I stood still, looking deep in his crystal-blue eyes.
They were concerned too.
It was sweet.
I didn’t have time for sweet.
Or hot.
Or my nipples tightening, my clit tingling or men who could soothe hurts by cooing in beautiful voices and looking at me with sweet in their eyes.
“My goal is not to bring her back,” I educated him.
“It says a lot about you. You got grit. That’s commendable. And it’ll be commendable, until you end up dead,” he went on.
Now that pissed me off.
“Don’t patronize me.”
It took some effort, but I stood still as he straightened from his chair, getting on his motorcycle-booted feet, now very much in my space.
He tipped his chin down to keep a lock on my eyes.
“That’s not patronizing.” His voice was deteriorating, sharing he was losing patience. “That’s askin’ you to be smart, which infers I think you’re bein’ dumb. And Rebel, I’ll not infer dick with that. I’ll say it straight. You’re not bein’ dumb. You’re bein’ really, fuckin’ stupid. So like I said, that’s not patronizing.”
All right.
Great.
So he was sensitive, insightful, honest and hella smart.
But even if he thought I was stupid, I knew better.
“Are you and your brothers doing something about this?”
“Yeah, Rebel, and that’s a promise.”
I nodded tersely, once.
“And you’re all . . . what? Former law enforcement? Veterans? Trained commandos?” I asked.
His mouth grew tight.
“That’s what I thought,” I snapped, rolled slightly up on my toes and bit, “Patronizing.”
“You know about those women bein’ dead?” he asked.
“You know I didn’t.”
“So you don’t know what you’re dealin’ with. We do. We got history. We got time on the streets. Not havin’ either of those, you can’t know what they mean, but trust me, they mean a lot more than some videographer getting her panties in a bunch and goin’ undercover in the dealings of one of the most disturbed criminals Denver has ever seen.”
I ignored the “panties in a bunch” comment, as well as the “videographer” comment since I was a goddamned filmmaker, both so I could prevent my head from exploding, and instead suggested, “Then help me out, take my back, and we’ll work together to get this done.”
More growling. “That is not gonna happen.”
“Why? Because I have snatch?”
“Well . . . yeah.”
“Sexist,” I spat.
“Realist,” he shot back.
I looked around, feigning like I’d forgotten the train of conversation. “Didn’t I say we were done?”
“Rebel—” he rumbled.
I looked back at Rush Allen.
“Toodles,” I said chirpily.
And with that, not looking at a single member of his silent posse, I bounced out of Jason’s Lodge, booked as fast as I could without running to my Subaru, got in, fired her up and got the hell out of there.
I got lost on my way home.
And I did not meditate when I eventually got there.
Instead, I slammed tequila and fought the urge to call Diesel and Maddox and spill all before I asked them to come up to Denver and take my back.
But they would, in a shot.
Which would put them in danger, which was not okay.
They’d also try to talk me out of doing what I was doing, and they wouldn’t go as gentle (huh) as Rush Allen did.
They might even kidnap me and imprison me in their guestroom, which would mean I’d have to listen to their sexcapades since all three of them (Molly included) were utterly incapable of not going at each other on a more than healthy basis, and I’d already accidentally heard some of that and I barely survived it.
So it was going it alone.
I had Hank (even though he was pissed at me) and Eddie (even though he was livid with me) and Jimmy (even though he wanted to shake some sense into me).
And as an aside, I was now pissed at all of them.
Why hadn’t they told me about Natalie and Camilla and the woman called Reb?
Dammit.
But whatever.
I’d be okay.
I would.
And Diane and Paul and Amy would get what they deserved.
Justice.
The Boy Who Was No Good
Beck
Two months earlier . . .
Beck sat with his “brothers” at their club meeting.
“So it’s official. They’ve yanked our charter. And fuck them,” Web grunted, tossing a letter on the big folding table, which was one of three bunched together that made their club table.
Folding tables.
Total shit.
Okay.
Right.
The mother charter had spoken.
His motorcycle club was no longer Bounty.
They were nothing.