“Thought about it,” I agreed.
“Well, that’s one happy ending, at least.” Grandfather MC, Tucker, clapped a hand onto my shoulder. “Let’s say we make it two tonight.”
“Yeah. It’s all about Doc Ronnie now.” Boomer’s tight grin meant mean business.
****
No more joking once we hit the road, the eight of us on our bikes with Bo in the lead in his stripped-down Hummer. We were all about saving Veronica Hartley, but during the less than four-hour ride to Jacksonville my mind filled with a barrage of thoughts about Shy.
Her undaunted bravery in the face of her illness. The way she’d donated heaps of money so kids who went through what she did might have it a little bit better.
The soft curls on top of her head. The even softer ones between her legs.
Her insanely gorgeous face when she arched back in a screaming climax, and the taste of her skin, her pussy, her sweet nipples in my mouth.
Hammering down on my ’59 Harley Panhead as we sped toward the Florida border, I stared straight ahead at the endless strip of tarmac rolling beneath my wheels.
Guilt compacted everything in my chest.
Maybe I’d do Shy more good if I cut her loose.
Hated leaving her alone with her on Diablo’s radar.
Shit, I was already in so deep I hated not being able to wake up with her earlier that morning.
There was no out now, and I needed to come up with some fucking way to keep her clear of Satan’s League’s dirty paws, get Diablo off my back once and for all.
Turn over my seed money for the brewery I’d been sinking all my spare time into? I was tempted, but fuck. I wanted to prove myself worthy of Shy . . . maybe even to my family after all these years of estrangement.
Hell, Walker was gung-ho to kill cunts. Maybe I could hire him to make the hit? Shit, I probably just had to ask him, and he’d do it free of charge.
I didn’t particularly want my MC brethren all up in my past bullshit so that was not an option.
I shoved all further head-fuck thoughts from my mind when we roared into a gas station on the outskirts of Jacksonville on Bo’s insistence for a quick pit stop.
Pit stop and pick-up, it turned out. Because a hard-looking motherfucker on a Harley V-Rod slowly unstraddled when Bo exited his truck. Bo’s face grim and bleak, he stalked to the other dude and grabbed him in a backslapping hug.
“Oo-rah, Marine.”
“Damn glad to see you, my man.” Bo pulled back to bump fists with the dark-haired man.
“Hey, send me a call to arms and I come running, right?”
“Who’s he,” I asked the guys standing beside me.
“Killian Slade, First Sergeant,” Hunter supplied, watching the reunion of comrades. “The last two men to make it out alive after ten days of torture in the Helmand.”
“Fucking hell.” I had nothing but respect for the two Marines.
“Now you know why Bo was a little bit unlidded when he first joined Retribution. Been through hell. And Ronnie brought him back from the brink. So we’re gonna save her no matter what.” Hunter handed down the doctrine like it was law.
“Copy that.” Walker squinted at the pair as if he knew Slade as well.
Turned out he did. Both he and Hunter had pulled some hair-raising Hail Marys the rest of us weren’t totally privy to all in the line of duty, in order to save men and women who served our country.
With Slade enfolded in our ranks, we continued on our path with one single mission: save the lady doc, the love of Bo’s life.
I didn’t know how he kept his head together through the rest of the evening while we staked out the Iron Nails compound from a close by hillside in the shit-side of Jax-ville slums.
I’d have been off the wall if Shy was held inside, with no idea what was being done to her, but the man cranked down on his rage just enough to rein it in. We kept a quiet watch from that heat-beaten vantage point for a final hour before moving quickly and quietly into place outside the tall chain-link fence surrounding the concrete spread of buildings.
Coletrane dug out the wire cutters—because everyone carried those around as part of their freakin’ accessories—and started the metallic snip-snip through the fence. He stopped when the kind of guttural growling that only came from foaming-at-the-mouth, bred-to-kill dogs rumbled from beyond the fence.
“Cujo much?” Walker was the number one smartass on the scene.
“What now?” Cole sent a questioning glance around as four sleekly muscled Dobermans ranged into view.
“Make the hole bigger.” Tucker tweaked his mustache. “I got this.”
“He’s the fucking dog whisperer now?” Hunter asked, watching the big man slip through the opening Cole made.
Squatting down, Tuck started talking in soft tones, and the dogs’ vicious-killer heads quirked toward him.
The growling stopped. The ferocious bared teeth retreated. The stumpy tails started wagging.