“Blood patch?”
“I’m up on all the biker lingo.” Connie grinned. “They get a blood patch every time they kill someone. They wear them around the bottom of their cuts. I guess so it’s not staring you in the face. Tank says some of the guys don’t like wearing them, but they don’t have a choice. The patches are handed out by the mother ship and they gotta do what they’re told.”
Evie stared at Connie aghast. “And you think that’s okay?”
Connie’s smile faded. “C’mon. You watch TV. Don’t look so surprised. And it’s not like they go around killing innocent people, or looking for people to kill. It’s just … you know … the way it is. They live in a violent world. They deal with people who are always armed—drug dealers, criminals, underworld characters, and other bikers. Someone tries to kill them, they gotta defend themselves.”
“Oh, God.” Evie scrubbed her hands over her face. “After Zane told me what really happened in the trailer park, I was so happy to know he hadn’t pulled the trigger, that he wasn’t a killer. Now you’re telling me he is.”
“Honey.” Connie put a sympathetic hand on her shoulder. “It’s about bad guys killing bad guys who are doing bad things or hurting the people they care about. Tank says they don’t involve civilians unless it’s biker business. You know all this. You saw what happened to Bill.”
Evie gripped the table so hard her knuckles whitened. “TV isn’t real. The Black Jacks are bad. I just figured … the Sinners … God, I think part of me knew but I didn’t want to accept it. I can’t think of Zane and Jagger that way.”
“Tank says because of the war that’s going on between the clubs, most of the brothers have a coupla blood patches.”
Evie’s shoulders sagged. “Viper told me. He said he and Zane weren’t so different. He made me wonder if maybe Zane did kill my dad, but after Zane told me what happened, I figured everything else Viper said was a lie. He told me Zane shot one of his men in the back, killed three of his men in Whitefish and that he kidnapped Viper’s old lady and put her in the dungeon in the clubhouse.”
“No shit. There’s a woman imprisoned in the clubhouse?” Connie looked over her shoulder at Sparky and whispered. “Maybe we should call the police.”
“We don’t know if it’s true, Connie. But we need to find out.”
Not just to rescue the woman, if she did exist, but because she needed to know just what kind of man Zane had become. And whether she could accept him as he truly was.
*
They were waiting for him when he pulled up to the clubhouse three days after he’d disappeared.
Zane gritted his teeth and parked his bike. He had expected nothing less than the full executive board, but it was going to take a hell of a lot of willpower to cross the driveway and follow them out back, especially since he had returned empty-handed.
Well, not totally empty-handed. He pulled the phone from his pocket and checked the picture file one last time. At least the punishment would be worth it. He had filled the whole damn memory card with pictures of the Black Jack clubhouse, including the door to the dungeon where T-Rex was being held prisoner.
Zane took one last look at the midnight sky, clear save for a sprinkling of stars. He’d have plenty of time to look at the stars when Jagger was done with him. The last time he’d disobeyed a direct order he’d been flat on his back for three days and pissed blood for an entire week.
Yet, despite that beating, he’d left the club three days ago to go hunting. After his night with Evie, unburdening himself of the secret he’d carried for so long, he’d decided three things: first, T-Rex had to be rescued; second, Viper had to die; and third, he couldn’t wait even a day if it meant Viper was out there and Evie was in danger. Simply put, he couldn’t go through the hell of thinking he’d lost her again, and with Viper on the loose that was a very real possibility.
He’d spent the first day of his hunt watching the Black Jack compound from a hill, well hidden with trees. Security was tight, just as Doreen said, and he was glad Jagger had held off the raid until they pulled in some support clubs. But Viper wasn’t inside. Nor had he been seen in any of the bars, restaurants, clubs, strip joints, or whorehouses around Devil’s Hills where the Black Jacks were based. He knew this because he’d checked them all. The second and third days, he’d called in every favor, paid informants, and talked to every low-life scumbag he could find. Viper was off the grid. No doubt in hiding, the snake that he was. The hunt was a bust and he would pay a heavy price.