She stumbled after him, her eyes still wide with shock. “Don’t you … I mean … if you still want … I don’t have anything to give you to thank you.”
Holt turned when they reached the front door, shook his head. “You’re a pretty girl. You got a nice body, but you don’t need to use it to get ahead. Get off the streets, or you’ll wind up on drugs and never get out. Go home. Finish school. Get a good job so you can look after yourself. Find a nice guy who’ll look after you.”
“I can’t go home,” she said. “My stepdad … I ran to get away from him. If he finds out where I am, he’ll hunt me down.”
“How old are you really?”
Her eyes filled with tears. “Nineteen,” she whispered. “But I’ve been here for four years since my mom died and I was left alone with my stepdad.”
Christ. She’d been a kid when she started out. So young and all alone. If he went ahead with his plan to off his Sinner brothers, he’d leave a bunch of kids with only one parent to care for them—kids who might wind up on the street like her. How could he fuck up all those kids, most of whom he’d known since they were born? He had no grudge against them or the old ladies. Maybe he’d give the brothers with kids a pass.
“If Benson can’t help you sort something out, you tell him to take you to the Sinner’s Tribe MC. He’s in good with them. When you get there, ask for Tank. He’ll introduce you ’round and you can decide if that life is for you. You can trust him. He won’t take advantage. But don’t go to the clubhouse alone or they’ll get the wrong idea.”
Not that there would be many Sinners left after he paid them a visit. Although now that he thought about it, a lot of them had kids. Jagger, Gunner, Sparky and Shaggy were single, although if he offed Jagger, Arianne would hunt Holt down for the rest of his days. And what if those single brothers had kids they didn’t know about or kids they supported but kept secret from the club? And what about the old ladies? He’d eaten dinner at their houses, talked with them at parties. Hell, he’d even gone to a christening or two.
“Fuck.” He thudded his hand on the wall. He wasn’t cut out for revenge if it meant innocent people would get hurt—people he knew and cared about. Maybe Naiya’s suggestion was a good one. He would capture one of them and ask what the hell had happened and who was involved, give them a chance to explain. Then he wouldn’t have innocent deaths on his conscience. He would go after the right men, and leave the others to rebuild the club.
He wrote Benson’s contact details on a twenty-dollar bill and handed it to her. “Let’s find you a cab.”
“Could I stay with you?” She looked up at him, her eyes wide, pleading.
“I got a girl,” Holt said. “Left her behind. Now I gotta go back and find her.”
*
“Nice shirt.”
Naiya groaned inwardly and plastered a fake smile on her face before looking over at the man standing beside her at the bar. With Guns N’ Roses’, “Appetite for Destruction” playing in the background, and the scents of stale beer and pot filling the air, Rick’s Bar and Grill at the edge of Trenton wasn’t the kind of place she would normally go without a friend. Too many men assumed she was looking for a hook-up, and after three hours, she had a standard response down pat. However the shirt comment threw her off, and for a moment she didn’t know what to say.
“I passed through Bolton once,” he said. “I remember the beaver shirts. Never thought anyone would actually wear one, but it looks good on you. Cute.” He sat on the stool beside her and asked the bartender for a jug of water. In his dark suit, crisp white shirt, and muted blue tie he looked like a city banker or a businessman, certainly not the type of person to patronize a seedy bar in a small town in the middle of nowhere.
Pleasantly surprised, Naiya shrugged. “I didn’t buy it thinking it would be an invitation, but apparently that’s what it is when you’re in a bar full of drunk juveniles.” She mocked one of the many male voices she’d heard that evening. “Can I see your beaver? Nice beaver. Can I pet your beaver?”
He laughed, the smile softening an otherwise hard face, all sharp lines and angles. “It could be worse. My sister went to fairy tale theme park and came back with a shirt that said PUSS IN BOOTS. She only wore that one to a bar once and never again.”
Naiya’s tension eased as he talked about his sister, and she sipped her third Mai Tai of the evening. With a fierce sweet tooth and a dislike of strong alcohol, she was a cocktail girl all the way. “You don’t look like you belong here either.” She gestured to the suit, and then waved vaguely over the collection of rough drunks seated at the tables behind them. “Or at a place like Bolton.”