by Tessa Bailey
“Sabrina.”
“Uh . . . yes.” I blinked. I guess he’d dug a lot deeper into my history than I’d suspected. “Sabrina MacKenzie.”
“Holt now. I know her.”
“You do?”
He nodded. “She lives in Prescott. That’s where my brother lives too. Emmeline, my sister-in-law, and Sabrina are good friends.”
“Small world.”
“Especially in Montana.”
“Anyway, I interviewed Sabrina. And I was jealous,” I admitted. “I was jealous of her story. She’d put herself out there and held nothing back. Dad had just bought the paper and had been begging me to move here. But I’d stayed in Seattle, holding out for a story like hers. It never came and the years, they kept passing by. Finally, I gave up. It was time to come home.”
I’d wasted five years after my interview with Sabrina busting my ass in Seattle. Every time I brought up a story idea to my producer, they’d nod and smile and tell me it was a good idea. Then they’d assign it to someone else, normally a man. Because I was needed on screen. I was the pretty face that came into people’s homes to tell them news, whether good or bad.
I was tired of being the pretty face.
Here at the Clifton Forge Tribune, I wasn’t going to win any awards. I wasn’t going to save countless lives by getting illegal handguns off the streets and away from children. But I could do honest work. I could tell the truth.
And if I wasn’t going to have a family, I’d have this paper. It would be my legacy instead of a family.
I wouldn’t fail at another career.
“Any other questions?” I asked, vulnerability thick in my voice. Why had I told him all of that? Why couldn’t I have just left it at “I worked in TV and now I don’t”? Instead, I’d opened up a piece of my past and splashed it all over the room for him to scrutinize.
His stare raked over my face, seeing too much. The sadness. The failure. The regret. Even my closest friends in Seattle, not that I’d had many with my work hours, didn’t know about those feelings.
“No. No more questions.” The chair’s wheels slid as he stood. He pushed it into Dad’s desk, then returned to sit on mine again.
“Good.” I bent and plucked my laptop from my tote. “I have a busy day.”
“Bryce.”
I met his gaze. “Kingston.”
“I think I prefer King,” he grumbled.
“Then go away, King. I need to get to work.”
Dash stood, moving for the door, but an impulse made me call out and stop him.
“Wait.” I needed my power back. I needed control. So I stood from my chair, walking right into his space without hesitation. His eyes flashed as I reached up and threaded my fingers into that hair. It was silky, like I’d expected. With a firm grip on those thick strands, I yanked his mouth down onto mine.
He froze for a split second but then he caught up to the kiss. His arms wrapped around my back, crushing me to his chest as his tongue pushed inside my mouth. The taste of cinnamon exploded on my tongue as he plundered. Not to be outdone, I made sure to meet him beat for beat, pouring everything I had into that kiss. A weekend’s worth of frustration and longing, all delivered with sucking and licking and fisting his hair.
I gave as good as I could before ripping my lips away, placing a palm on his sternum and shoving him hard with all my might.
Dash staggered backward a foot. His lips were swollen, and we both breathed hard. Confusion was written all over his handsome face—along with lust. He longed for more.
And now, I had my power back.
“I’ll agree to the truce after I question your dad,” I said. “Set it up. I want to talk to him, tonight.”
Chapter Nine
Dash
“Dad?” I called through the house. No answer.
The lights were off in the kitchen and living room. His bike was missing from the garage.
“Fuck,” I muttered, clenching my fists.
He wouldn’t skip out on bond, not when the garage was on the line. I should have pressed harder on Friday when I’d picked him up from the courthouse, but he hadn’t wanted to talk then. He didn’t want to talk now.
An hour after I’d left Bryce at the newspaper, my head was still spinning from that kiss. I’d gone to the garage to kill time with an oil change as I waited for Dad to come in. When I’d texted him yesterday, he’d ignored me. All damn weekend. Finally, he’d responded last night, promising to be at the garage by ten. When eleven o’clock had rolled around and he still hadn’t shown, I’d come here.
When Dad didn’t want to be found, he wasn’t easy to track down.
What was he hiding? Why wouldn’t he talk to me about this? Murder wasn’t uncommon in our past life, but this was the first time he’d been arrested for the crime.
Son of a bitch. I left through the side door, going outside to climb on my bike. There was no point continuing my search. When he was ready to talk about Amina Daylee, he’d show.
The return trip to the garage was fast. I spent the time wondering how I’d convince Bryce to keep this truce if Dad wasn’t talking. She’d be pissed as hell, and I doubted another kiss would buy me more time. To feel her lips on mine, it would be worth a try. I’d be more than okay with a repeat of this morning if it meant I got her hand in my hair and her slim body pressed against mine.
I pulled into the parking lot, surprised to see Dad’s bike in the lot and him inside talking to Presley. “When’d you get here?”
He glanced at the clock. “About five minutes ago.”
“I went to the house.”
“That’s what Pres said. Sorry I’m late. I took a quick ride this morning to clear my head.”
“You didn’t go out of town, did you?”
“No, he didn’t,” Presley answered for him. “He promised he didn’t cross the county line.”
“We need to talk.”
Dad nodded, not moving from his chair across from Presley’s desk. “Yeah.”
“I’ll get Emmett and Leo. Pres, would you mind taking Isaiah and grabbing some lunch for all of us? Send Emmett and Leo in?”
“Sure thing.” She stood and reached for her purse. “Sandwiches?”
“Sounds good. Here.” I fished out my wallet from my back pocket and took out a fifty.
Presley took it and hurried from the office. Minutes later, Emmett and Leo came into the office from the interior door that led into the garage. The rumbling sound of the garage bay doors closing accompanied them.
I flipped the sign on the office door to CLOSED as the guys took a seat. Not exactly the long table in the clubhouse where we used to have meetings, but a stark reminder of just how much things had changed.
Silence stretched on long and tense as we waited for Dad to speak. The clock on the wall ticked in a mismatched rhythm to my heartbeat.
“Draven.” Emmett broke first.
“We went to high school together.” Dad’s eyes were trained on the papers scattered on Presley’s desk. “I knew her from years back.”
We all knew that already, thanks to Bryce’s newspapers, but I doubted Dad had read them since he’d been released. None of us interjected, though. We let him take his time. The president, current or former, deserved that respect.
“She called me out of the blue. I hadn’t heard from her in ages. Met her at the motel,” Dad continued. “Talked for a few hours, catching up. Spent the night.”
“Did you fuck her?” I asked.
His eyes snapped to mine, a hint of remorse flashing through his gaze. Then he gave me a single nod.
So Bryce had been right about that too.
“Spent the night. Got up to go home. Shower. Came to work. You were here for the rest.”
“She was stabbed,” Emmett said, his fingers steepled by his chin. “Any idea if the cops have a murder weapon?”
Dad sighed. “According to Jim, they found one of my hunting knives at the motel.”
“How would they know it’s y
ours?” I asked.
“Has my name engraved on the side. Your mom gave it to me ages ago.”
“Shit.” Leo let his head fall back into the wall. “You’re fucked.”
The room went quiet again—Leo wasn’t wrong. If the police had the murder weapon and could put Dad at the scene, there wasn’t much else they were missing.
“Anything else?”
He shook his head. “Don’t know. Jim advised me to stay quiet. I met with Marcus twice and he asked me some questions about what happened. How I knew her. Didn’t tell him much other than we went to high school together. After that, they pretty much left me alone in my cell. Didn’t ask anything else.”
“Yeah, because they don’t need to ask questions,” Emmett said. “They have you at the scene during the time she was killed. It was your weapon. Unless we can prove it was someone else, they have all they’ll need to put you away.”
“What about motive?” I asked. “Why would you kill her?”
Dad hesitated, his eyes dropping to his feet. But then he raised them and shook his head. “No idea.”
My gut twisted. I could count on three fingers the number of times Dad had lied to me. Now I’d be adding a fourth. It wasn’t obvious to Emmett and Leo, but there was something he wasn’t saying.
With Emmett and Leo here, I wouldn’t call Dad out. I’d ask about it later, when it was only the two of us. For now, we had other things to discuss.
“So it’s a setup.” It had to be a setup. Right? Dad would have told us if he’d killed the woman. “Who would want you to take the fall for this?”
Dad huffed. “That’s a long list, son.”
“Make it anyway,” Emmett ordered. “We gotta start somewhere.”
“I’ve got some ideas,” Dad said. “I need to make some calls, then we’ll regroup.”
“Fine. There’s something else.” I paused, taking a deep breath because I doubted the reaction to my announcement would be positive. “Made an agreement today with Bryce Ryan.”
“Who?” Dad asked.
“The hot new reporter in town,” Leo answered. “Dash has been following her around all week.”
“That so?” Dad’s eyes narrowed.
“It’s not like that.” Now it was my turn to lie. “Told you yesterday she’s good. I dropped by the paper today to have a word this morning. We made an agreement. She tells us what she’s got. We do the same. But first, she wants to talk to you.”
“No.” Dad stood and went to the door. With a flick, it was open and he was storming out.
“Where the hell are you going?” I chased after him. He moved fast, not stopping as I followed him outside. “Dad. What the fuck? We aren’t done talking.”
“Got nothing else to say right now, Dash. You wanted to talk. We talked. Now I need to go. Get some space.”
“What for?”
“What for?” He whirled on me, anger coloring his eyes. “A woman I knew for over forty years is dead. A woman I cared about. And she’s dead because of me. So is it too much to ask that you give me some fucking space and let me get my head wrapped around that?”
Fuck. I took a step away, holding up my hands. This wasn’t about Amina.
This was about Mom.
This was about her murder and the guilt Dad had been carrying for decades.
The love of his life was dead because of his choices. He’d cost Nick and me our mother. And now another woman was dead because no matter how normal his life was these days, Dad would always be a target.
“Someone wants you to spend the rest of your life rotting in a prison cell, Dad. I’m just trying to see that it doesn’t happen.”
“I get it.” He blew out a long breath. “Amina, she was . . . there’s history. I can’t think straight right now. Been trying to think it through for over a week. Before I can talk about it, I need to work it out in my head.”
“’Kay.” He might need time, but I was going to keep pushing hard to find out who’d really killed that woman. I wasn’t letting the cops steal my only living parent for a crime he hadn’t committed.
Dad walked to his bike, stopping three feet away to speak over his shoulder. “Stay clean on this, Kingston.”
My spine straightened. Dad hadn’t called me Kingston in years. It was like Mom rattling off our first, middle and last names when we were in trouble.
“I mean it,” he said. “Don’t do something stupid to land yourself in a cage too. Worst case, I spend the few years I have left wearing orange. I’d handle that a lot better if I knew you were free.”
I nodded.
“That’s what it was always about. Being free.” He walked over to his bike, touching the handlebars. Though the Tin Gypsies were no longer, he still had the old motto etched on the gas tank.
Live to Ride
Wander Free
Dad and Emmett’s father had started the Tin Gypsy club back in the eighties. They’d recruited some friends until it had grown and grown. In the beginning, it had been a bunch of young guys who’d wanted to ride bikes and say fuck you to any authority or convention. They wanted the chance to make some extra money for their families.
This was back when they restored bikes with scrap parts, the metal more like cheap tin than the steel machines we spent fortunes on now.
When Dad spoke of that time, it seemed simpler. It might have stayed that way if Mom hadn’t died.
Dad blinked a few times too fast and my heart twisted. Was he crying? I hadn’t seen Dad cry since Mom’s funeral. Even then, it hadn’t lasted for more than a few heartbreaking tears. He’d been too angry to cry. Too focused on vengeance to let his grief show for long.
Without another word, he swung his leg over the bike. He plucked his sunglasses from his hair, hiding any emotion, and raced out of the parking lot like his nickname was Dash, not mine.
I hung my head, rubbing the tension away from my neck.
“We all know who set up Draven.” Emmett’s voice behind me was low. I turned to find both him and Leo standing a few paces away.
“Yeah.” We all knew. “Dad’s got to be the one to make that call.”
“You could,” Leo argued.
“I could, but I’m not going to.” It was the reason I hadn’t made that call when Dad was in jail. “Dad approaches the Warriors. No one else.”
Emmett and Leo nodded without another word.
“Let’s get to work.”
Maybe another afternoon working on cars would help me figure out what the hell was happening. Because at the moment, I sure as fuck didn’t have a clue.
* * *
“So much for your truce.” Bryce spun away, marching out of the garage. “I knew this was a mistake.”
“Wait.” I chased, grabbing her elbow. “Just wait.”
“Why?” She yanked her arm free. “This is quid pro quo. I give you something. You give me something. If Draven isn’t here to tell me his side of the story, then me being here is pointless. I’m leav—”
“My dad did not kill Amina Daylee.”
She faced me again, planting her hands on her hips. “How do you—”
“I just know.” I locked my eyes on hers. “He didn’t kill her. But someone did and if you believe in truth and justice the way I suspect you do, you want to find the real killer.”
“The cops—”
“—have a man pegged dead to rights. They aren’t going to dig any deeper than the surface.”
She huffed. “How can I trust—”
“You can—”
“Stop interrupting me.”
I clamped my mouth shut.
Her face was red and her chest heaving. “How can I trust you?”
Trust? “You can’t.”
Bryce let out a dry laugh. “Then what are we doing?”
I took a step closer. The pull to be near her was irresistible. I wanted her to believe me, at least once. “Don’t trust me. And I won’t trust you. Maybe we can just not stand in each other’s way and both get our answers.”
“Seems complicated.”
My hand drifted to her cheek, framing her face. “It is.”
“Dash,” she warned, putting her hand between us. It rested on my chest, firm, but she didn’t shove me away.
I inched closer. The pressure on her hand gave way. “Can’t stop thinking about your lips.”
Bryce’s eyes fell to my mouth.
My hand came up between us, covering her own and trapping it to my heart. I expected her to try and yank it away, but then it fisted in my T-shirt as she dragged my mouth to hers.
My tongue delved into her mouth, taking the time to explore the corners I’d missed on our last two kisses. With my free arm, I pinned her to me, my arm tight across her shoulders. I angled my head to get deeper and steal her breath.
She trembled, her knees wobbling, but she clung to me as fiercely. The kiss was hot and wet. Blood rushed to my cock, making it swell against her hip.
“More,” she moaned into my mouth.
I growled, letting go of her hand to grab her ass, hauling her up and around my hips. Her legs wrapped around my waist and her arms looped around my neck. Walking us to the closest surface, I set her down on the hood of the Mustang I’d worked on all day.
The owner was an arrogant asshole from Hollywood and I wanted nothing more than to fuck Bryce on the hood of his car.
That was definitely where we were heading. Bryce’s thighs squeezed tight around me as I laid her on the glossy hood. The metal buckled slightly as I settled my weight onto her, pressing my chest against her breasts. Our mouths broke apart, hers to gasp for air while I sucked and licked my way down her neck.
“Tell me now if you want to stop,” I panted against her collarbone.
She shook her head, her hands diving into my hair. “Don’t stop.”
I yanked hard at the V-neck of her shirt, dragging it down over a breast. Then I did the same to the cup of her bra, so I could latch my mouth over a supple nipple.
Bryce’s back arched off the car, thrusting her breast even farther into my mouth. Her fingernails dug into my scalp.
My hands tore at the other side of her shirt, seams splitting as I freed her other nipple. “Last chance.”