Corrupted: A Motorcycle Club Romance (Blacktop Sinners MC)

by Kathryn Thomas

  “I guess because I’d like to know. In the cold light of day, I don’t know if I can live on half-answers.”

  “Maybe I’m not ready to give out everything, Tess,” he said, his voice low, strained. “Besides, I have a few questions of my own. I left one of my possessions behind at the hospital. I was wondering if you’d seen it?”

  She frowned and nodded. “The switchblade? Yeah, since you left it, we assumed it was trash. Since it’s actually worth a small bit, we put it in the hospital’s sort of lost graveyard. You can go back for it if you need it. Hell, I can get it for you. I did notice the funniest thing about it, though,” she said, biting her lip.

  He had only known Tess a few days, but he knew a few of her nervous tells by now. She was avoiding something.

  “What? Something’s still on your mind, so spill.”

  “What type of security do you do?”

  “Need to know basis only,” he hedged, damned if now he was going to lose the knife and his life to her games. He cared about her but not enough to risk his freedom or to reveal exactly what he did for the Blacktop Sinners. “What’s wrong with my knife?”

  “I…it had red stains on it still by the hilt. Was it blood?”

  “Excuse me?” He asked, forcing his tone to stay level. If he hadn’t panicked before Bones’s bloodthirsty kill now and ask questions later policy, he certainly wasn’t going to now. “What kind of question is that?”

  “Well it is the mountains. Maybe you were hunting a rabbit or it was from a squirrel you skinned. It just was odd. Before I give it back to you, I’d like to know exactly what was on it. It’s not human blood is it?”

  His muscles tensed, but he kept himself from flinching under her scrutiny. “Of course not, and that’s an insane question. Who the hell runs around with a switchblade covered in blood?”

  “Someone who wasn’t intending to get caught? Someone who crashed not too far from a warehouse shootout? Seriously, Derek, what’s going on here? Look me in the eyes and tell me it’s just a hunting knife---poor choice of one but still---tell me it’s nothing.”

  “I need that knife,” he said, not trusting those intense hazel eyes not to see right through him if he lied.

  “Then,” she said, standing up and storming to the bedroom. “I need to go home. I don’t deal with liars, and I certainly don’t deal with whoever the hell you really are.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Derek dropped her off at her apartment after the most awkward truck ride ever. He was just grateful that Boone was only so big. He’d passed through Houston just once on a trip post juvie, and it took an hour to get anywhere in that town. The fifteen minutes of icy silence between him and Tess till he let her out was its own special kind of never ending Hell. Once he was home, he had spent almost an hour in his truck, his head resting on the steering wheel and his blood boiling in his veins. He’d just have to do this the tough way, break into the hospital, and get to the lost and found himself. It would be easier to get caught, far more likely to be conspicuous, but his clock was running down, and the finesse approach had blown up spectacularly in his face.

  Swallowing, he hopped out of his Ford and headed through his garage to the door. It was stupid. It was no better of him to let himself imagine what a life with Tess could be like than when he was a kid and daydreamed that this set of parents, finally, would be the real ones, the fairy tale kind that everyone else got. Except he wasn’t ten anymore and should know better. There weren’t happy endings, not for used up men like him.

  Not for killers.

  He might have gotten his own hands dirty only when his brothers needed it, only when it was protecting his president or his club, but Tess would never understand that. She was a good girl, and even suspecting the knife had been used in a murder had turned her cold and against him. The fact that it was all an accident and he wasn’t even the guilty party (this time) wouldn’t do anything to thaw her. Healers and killers didn’t run together; nurses and outlaws didn’t ride off into the sunset together. Hell, outlaws always rode off into the great unknown alone. He should understand that, know better.

  After all, except for Ron and then for his brothers in the club, he’d always been alone. Right now, when it mattered, except for Ron defending him to the board, he was still fucking alone.

  No, scratch that. As he walked into his kitchen, he realized with a sinking sensation that he must have spent a lot more time collecting his thoughts in the darkened garage than he realized. Right now? He had visitors.

  Sitting around his kitchen table like it was any other Saturday, here for round two of pancakes were Bones, Bullet and Smitty. It did not escape Derek’s notice that Smitty had his brass knuckles grasped in one hand, albeit not yet formally in placed over his right fist.

  Shaking his head, Derek strode to the fridge and pulled out a Coke. Opening it, he took in greedy gulps as he leaned against the cool, stainless steel of the appliance. “You’re early. I’ve got more than twenty-four hours, and you know it.”

  Bones shrugged and glanced at Smitty. “We’re here as an incentive committee.”

  “Extra special bonus?” He demanded. “This is between me and Spike---”

  “You’re wrong, Grinder,” Bones continued, the veins in his neck pulsing as he talked. Someone needed to lay off the steroids just a notch. “You betray the brotherhood? And it’s between all of us.”

  “Well since I didn’t do that and am about to head over to the hospital to steal back the knife, then no one has to worry.”

  Smitty shook his head, his beady eyes regarding Derek with nothing but disdain. “Spike’s sentimental. He’s always favored you.”

  “And I’ve always had his back,” Derek countered.

  “Until you didn’t,” Bullet snapped, his mullet even greasier than a day ago if that was possible. “Convenient that you had the president in the perfect position to ruin him, get him shot or sent to the pen forever.”

  “Not me,” Derek countered, draining his drink. At least the caffeine was getting his neurons firing, something they hadn’t done worth a damn all morning. “It’s not time’s up yet so get the Hell out of my house before you remember why I’m the chief enforcer.”

  “Not for much longer,” Smitty said, as they stood. “Blacktop Sinners don’t got time for traitors.” With that, he stalked over surprisingly fast for his size and slugged Derek hard in the stomach.

  He bent over and gasped with the loss of air in his gut, with the flash of pain from the brass knuckles the old dick had slipped on in time to really sock it to him. Wheezing and trying to regain equilibrium, Derek glared up at all three of them.

  “I’m going to prove it wasn’t me, and then you’ll all be wearing the biggest shit eating grins in history.”

  Smitty’s expression softened for just a second as he spoke, “I hope so, kid, hate to think you fooled us all.”

  “But,” Bones added. “Your whole bit would be a fuck ton more intimidating if you weren’t gasping like a damn fish out of water. Right now, clock’s ticking, you bastard. Get the knife or we’re going out back, and you won’t be returning, even to traction.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Tess was locked in the hospital lab all alone. She had no idea why she was doing this, why she was running the test on the blood dried on the knife to determine if it was human or not. It wasn’t too extensive a procedure, but she had to know. She was terrified that it would be human, that the blood would prove to link the blade to a crime. What would she do then? Would she call Ricardo and hand it off? Despite everything, her instincts were screaming at her that Derek wasn’t some cold blooded murderer, that he might need the blade back but hadn’t killed anyone that night in the warehouse.

  Or maybe it was all just how she wished things could be.

  God gave her a great orgasm for the first time in two years, and her brain melted into nothingness. No, if it was used in a crime, she was a state reporter. She was obligated by law to report all of her suspic
ions and get it to the right hands. If the switchblade had human blood on it, no matter how a part of her still cared and burned for Derek, she’d have to do the right thing. Ricardo would know what to do with it, and she had to trust it.

  The egg timer by her set up dinged, and she turned to the blade, pulling it from the solution. She swore when it came out tinted purple near the hilt. The solution would only change color when exposed to the proteins endemic in human blood. There was no way that he could claim he’d been hunting and, frankly, Derek hadn’t even tried that excuse. She’d tried to cling to it in her mind, but he’d never lied like that. Here it was, a switchblade with human blood on it that Derek was desperate for and, clearly, he wouldn’t be if it was only spotted with old blood from an accident or something self-inflicted while drunk or sloppy.

  God knew she’d seen a variety of colorful hunting and fishing accidents that started with beer or Jim Bean and ended with a leaking artery.

  If only this were one of those times.

  Sighing, she shoved the purpled blade into her scrub pocket. There was nothing else to be done. Tess was nothing if not responsible, the dependable one. Jason could ride a motorcycle or be the scared child in foster care, not her. Sarah could indulge her temper and be the rebel around the house when they’d been teenagers. Never Tess, not the interloper scared, even then, that the slightest step out of line would get her sent back. Sure, she fantasized about a walk on the wild side, but she never seriously would do it, would throw away truth, justice and the American way for a man she simply and clearly didn’t know.

  Nope, this was it.

  Gathering her things, she headed to her apartment. She was still off for Saturday, and she’d need to prep her thoughts and what evidence she did have to explain everything to Ricardo.

  Hell, maybe she’d need a shot of liquid courage to get her ready as well.

  ***

  Tess barely opened her car door before someone huge swept her up in his grasp. She screamed, but the three men dragged her fast in through her front door. The largest of the men, a dark-skinned behemoth who was almost as broad as Derek, kept a firm grasp on her as he shoved her into a chair. Tying a thick cord of rope around her, by the time the large man was done, she was thoroughly tied to the chair.

  The hell?

  It was the only thing she could think even as her heart beat so fast and loudly that she felt it might burst right out of her chest, erupt, and shatter her sternum into a dozen pieces. God, good thing she’d left the blade in her locker at work. She hadn’t wanted the damn thing in her car or home, and Ricardo could come collect it as easily at Boone Regional as he could her apartment. Of course, these men clearly didn’t believe that or they wouldn’t have her trussed up, freaking kidnapped in her own damn house.

  “Let me go!” She shouted and then started to scream, hoping any of her neighbors would notice. Unfortunately, she lived in university adjacent housing, and most of them were gone in the summer months. Trentville Estates was a damn ghost town until mid-August. “Help!” She shrieked, logic screaming at her even then that it was hopeless.

  A sharp pain stabbed into her cheek, and she stopped screaming then, too shocked at first to do more than process the fact that the guy with the fugly mullet had backhanded her. It hadn’t caused anything to break, but her jaw was already swelling; that much she could feel.

  “That’s better,” the black guy said, his voice low and menacing. “You’re that bitch nurse that Derek says has been giving him so much trouble. You don’t look like a damn problem.”

  She frowned back at all of them, finally noticing the matching leather jackets they wore, the only difference between them being the collection of distinct patches on each sleeve. “I…who are you?”

  The mullet guy smirked and slipped off his jacket. Turning it around, he showed her the side with the flaming rose embroidered on the back. That symbol she knew well. It had been on the shredded remains of Derek’s. Even though she’d suspected, even from that first sight of his leathers and then feared frantically with Ricardo’s gossip, Tess hadn’t truly believed it. It was hard enough falling in love with a man who chose to ride a motorcycle, to embrace that level of death and danger as her brother had. It was completely different and worse---far, far worse---to fall for a common criminal.

  “We’re the enforcers for the Blacktop Sinners, and that’s all you need to know, Florence Nightingale,” Mullet groused. “You play nice, tell us where the switchblade is, and we’ll let you go. So is it in your car?” He grinned and leaned over her. “Do I need to frisk you?”

  “I don’t have it,” she said, and that was true. It was an absolute defense because, try as they might, they wouldn’t turn it up anywhere in the next ten miles. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Derek says you do, claims you made him forget it with your nagging demands, bitch,” the black guy said. “So, we repeat: do you have it?”

  “No.”

  There were stars this time exploding in her vision, and she whimpered. “God, stop. I don’t have it. I don’t want it, and I hope all of you, especially Derek rot in Hell.”

  The oldest man among them, the one gone soft with middle age, held up one hand. “I believe that you don’t have it here because you have to be smart enough to know who we are and what we’re capable of.”

  “I am.”

  “Then you know that if we found out that you were lying to us right here,” he continued, pulling out a huge Bowie knife of his own and pressing the tip to her throat. It was sharpened to a razor’s point, and she felt the blood well up at its touch. “Then I’d have to slit your lying throat, bitch.”

  “I don’t have it,” she said, ashamed at the way the tears fell down her cheeks. “I don’t want to know about this, and I don’t want to deal with this. Like I said, you all are free to go to the hospital and find it yourselves. I don’t want anything. Please, this is between you and Derek.”

  The black guy nodded. “We’ll search your car anyway, to be sure, and your place.”

  “No, you won’t,” a familiar voice shouted, and she wanted to laugh in relief but all Tess managed was a muffled sob.

  Here was Derek, striding into her living room like an avenging angel, but he was the reason she was even in this mess to begin with, all because of his lies and evasions, because he was a gang member and nothing more. Still, his broad shoulders and brilliant blue eyes were the best thing she’d ever seen in her life, especially in that moment, and she couldn’t help but smile at his approach.

  He glared at all of the assembled men and pulled open the lapel of his denim jacket. It was enough to show all of them that there was a gun (maybe a nine millimeter?) in his pocket. “It doesn’t have to get this messy yet. I have more time. Let me get the blade and get it home to the clubhouse. She doesn’t know anything, but you hurt a nurse or kill her? We’re in for an even bigger world of hurt. No one cares in town if a meth king pin gets what’s coming to him. End of the day, Gunner Hansen being gone doesn’t make the town pissed. A town staple like Tess gets snuffed out by gangland warfare? It’s all on our heads, and everyone from the mayor to the damn PTA will hunt us down no matter who we pay off, got me?”

  Mullet and the black guy narrowed their eyes at Derek, but neither said anything.

  They didn’t move a muscle.

  It was the older man who had the floor. His beady eyes considered Derek for a long time before he nodded his assent. Sighing, Pig Face gestured to her bonds. “He’s right. You can’t do worse than murder a pretty blonde in her own home. This hits national damn news in no time and then the feds find an excuse to be on us too. Let it go.”

  “But Smitty,” Mullet objected.

  “No,” he said, staring at the black guy. “Bones, untie her. Derek has about forty more hours. He gets the knife to us or we start with punishing him and think of something creative but untraceable for his girlie there. After all,” he said, his voice as level and reasonable as any professor sh
e’d had lecturing in boring Latin about the human body in nursing school. “After all, brakes fail in this great nation every day, don’t they?”

  She shuddered, but kept her chin held high and her eyes glaring at all of them. “But not today, you untie me now.”

  Derek nodded. “You heard her. I wait any longer, and I start castrating with my bullets.”

  Bones grumbled to himself but untied her bonds. Turning back to Derek, he shook his head. “Forty hours. Get the blade, and don’t you even think you’re not still deep in shit and probation because you are.”

  “Boys, boys, play nice,” Smitty purred. “Bones, Bullet? We’re out of here.”

  Tess didn’t stand up from her chair until she heard the loud roar of three motorcycles tearing off from her complex. When she was sure they weren’t coming back any time soon, she got to her feet. Derek rushed for her and tried to sweep her up in a hug. Furious, she slapped hard at his hands and stepped away from him.