“I was sorry to hear about your dad.” Jagger’s face softened. “He was a good man. A good sheriff. I know you two were close.”
Emotion welled up in Evie’s throat. Not a day went by that she didn’t mourn the loss of her father or wonder what had happened the night he caught Zane and her together by Stanton Creek. She’d waited all night for Zane to come and tell her what happened, to let her know he was okay. Instead, her father’s deputy showed up at her door to tell her that her dad and Zane’s father had been found dead outside Zane’s father’s trailer. Zane was missing. Suspected of murder. She never saw him again.
“My mom died, too,” she said softly. “She couldn’t handle life without him and her alcoholism became worse. She drank herself to death two years after the funeral.”
“Ah, Evie.” A pained expression crossed his face. “I wish I’d been there for you. I can’t imagine how hard it must have been for you to go through that alone.”
Not totally alone. Ty had given her a reason to go on. But she didn’t mention Ty for fear that Jagger would want to meet him, and once he did, he would know, without a doubt, the identity of Ty’s father.
“You had a good excuse.” She forced a smile and changed the subject. “So how did you come back from the dead?”
While she prepared the bike for painting, Jagger told her about his brief stint in the army, the shrapnel that had lodged in his heart, his miraculous recovery and honorable discharge, his new life as a biker, and the love of his life, Arianne.
“Evangeline. You have a client.” Connie’s voice echoed through the speaker system. Usually she piped in music depending on her mood, her tastes ranging from death metal to Buddy Holly, and the occasional polka.
“I’ll let you get to work.” Jagger took one last look at the picture before turning to Evie. “The boys will be round with a cage to pick up the bike, and I’ll be sending a few brothers to watch the shop in case Axle comes back since I get the feeling if he comes in you’re not gonna call.”
“Ratting on customers is bad for business.”
Jagger gave her a considered look. “Are you gonna warn him we’re around if he shows?”
She supposed that would be the right thing to do if Axle came with another message. Viper had stopped carrying a phone after the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) took a sudden interest in the biker war in Montana and set up camp in the Conundrum sheriff’s office. But she didn’t want to get on Jagger’s bad side either. “Also bad for business. I’m hoping to paint a few Sinner tins in the near future.”
“You don’t want to get involved with Axle or the Black Jacks,” he said. “They aren’t friendly guys.”
“And you are?” She pointed to the one percent patch on his cut that marked him as the one percent of bikers who didn’t follow civilian law.
“We’re nice outlaws.” His face softened again, and her tension eased.
“Isn’t that a contradiction in terms?” She was glad Connie wasn’t around to hear Evie steal her phrase.
“Aren’t you?” He gestured around the shop. “This is the last place I ever would have expected to see my sweet, innocent sheriff’s daughter who played video games, painted landscapes, and thought the world was really a beautiful place.”
“It was a beautiful place,” she said. “Now it’s just real.”
FOUR
Don’t mess around unless you know what you’re doing.
—SINNER’S TRIBE MOTORCYCLE REPAIR MANUAL
Zane watched Big Bill’s Custom Motorcycle shop all afternoon.
From his vantage point on the picnic table outside the diner across the street, he could see everyone who went into or came out of the building. And what he couldn’t see—Evie and her shop out back—he imagined. And then he would picture Mark and their son, and his stomach would twist in a knot. But this time there was nowhere to run. Conundrum was his town; the Sinners’ town.
The shop closed at 6 P.M. and the mechanics and salesclerk left together. He hated them simply because they knew Evie and because they made her smile when she locked the door behind them.
How long had it been since he’d seen that smile?
When she didn’t follow them out, he crossed the road, and walked around the building to the back of the shop. Jagger had spent the morning with her, and whatever she’d told him made his best friend unusually distant and frustratingly uncommunicative. But he had grunted his approval when Zane offered to take first watch on the shop in case Axle returned.
Although tempted to look in the window, he didn’t want to scare her, so he leaned against a storage shed across from the back door. Should he wait or should he go in? What would he say? Did he really want to see her?
What the hell was he doing here?
He pushed away from the wall, intending to return to his bike when the shop door opened.