BLEED FOR HER

by Hilliard, RB

  “Fuck! She’s not here!” Ponytail shouted. He was so close. All she had to do was poke her finger out from behind the door crack and she could touch him.

  “Greeeeeat,” voice two drawled. “And now we’ve got a dead guy to deal with.” Had Ponytail not chosen that moment to move positions, he would have heard Reyn’s sob. She couldn’t believe that Tom was dead. Voice two continued to talk. “I suppose you could always plant the gun. It’s not like you weren’t going to off the bitch and do it anyway.”

  “Motherfucker!” Ponytail shouted. “What are we supposed to tell Rye? He said to kill the girl, not her boyfriend!” Reyn frowned. Rye who? And plant what gun? All of hers were stowed in the safe. She didn’t know anyone names Rye, much less why they would want her dead.

  “We could always bury the body and pre—”

  Ponytail cut him off before he could finish the sentence. “Goddammit! Rye just texted. Something’s going down at the dealership. We’ve got to go.” Oh, thank God, Reyn thought.

  “Why do we have to do all the work?” voice two whined. “First, that old broad from earlier and now this? I didn’t sign up for this shit.”

  “Quit your bitching and come on,” Ponytail snapped.

  “Wait, what do we do with the dead guy?” voice two asked. Was this some kind of joke? While she was hiding for her life and Tom was lying dead on her great room floor, they were busy arguing like children.

  “Leave him,” Ponytail muttered.

  Reyn heard footsteps and then nothing. She waited for them to walk past her, knowing that they would be sure to see the shoe and discover her. When they chose to exit through the basement instead, she almost dropped to her knees and cried. She knew there would be time for that later. For now, she had to hold on, keep breathing, and survive.

  Chapter Two

  REYN WASN’T SURE how long she stood behind the mudroom door. It was definitely long enough for her fingers, which were still clasping the raincoat and the remaining shoe, to go numb. Now that she thought about it, her feet were starting to tingle as well. Her mother called them “pins and needles.” Tears pricked the backs of her eyes. God, she missed her mom. As soon as she got out of this mess, she was going to give her a call. That was if she got out of this mess. Quickly dismissing the thought, she drew her focus to what she knew. Those men wanted her dead, which meant they would be back. She needed to get the hell out of the house before they did. At that thought, her right knee threatened to buckle. With a loud groan, she hobbled out from behind the door. Her fingers lost purchase on the coat and the shoe made a clattering sound as it dropped to the floor. She bent over to rub her aching knee, all the while thinking, Who were they? Why did they want her dead? What should she do? Should she call 9-1-1 or just make a run for it? What if they were waiting? Wait, no, Ponytail said they had to be somewhere. She needed to get her gun. What she didn’t do was think about Tom. She knew if she went there, she may never come back.

  Giving her knee one last rub, Reyn straightened to a standing position. In slow, precise movements she inched out the door and stared down the hallway. Her bedroom sat at one end of the hall and at the other was the guest room, and her gun.

  “Right,” she whispered, and blanking her mind, she bolted out of the mudroom and shot down the hallway toward the guest room. She’d barely made it across the threshold when headlights from a car, no, make that a truck, flashed through the open blinds as it pulled into her circular drive.

  “Shit!” she screamed, and turning on her heel, she raced back down the hallway and into the mudroom. What now? One thing was for sure, if she stayed, she would die. It was the fear of this that spurred her to grab her purse and run. Thankfully, it was no longer raining outside, but still, the wet pavers were slick, not to mention cold under her bare feet. It was a good thing she was in Texas and not Virginia. Octobers in Virginia were a lot cooler than Texas. Yes, this was what she was thinking while running for her life. Not about Tom being dead on her great room floor, or that Ponytail and his sidekick had returned to murder her, but about the differences in the weather between Virginia and Texas. She would have laughed had she not been so terrified. About halfway to the garage, she heard a loud roar. Harley pipes. From the sound of it they were coming in fast. She knew this because she’d once lived with a man who owned several Harleys. A man who, along with his best friends, lived to ride. Back then, she did too. God, she loved those bikes. She also loved the man, until he ruined it. Until he ruined her. Now, she hated them both. Hadn’t she paid enough? Seriously! Even from the grave Zeke Mirenis was still fucking with her.

  Headlights lit up the driveway right as she hit the side door of the garage. It was just her luck that it was locked. Any other time and she would have been happy for this, but not now. Now, she needed to hide. Panting heavily, she scurried to the back-right side where she barely managed to duck out of sight before the first of the three bikes shot down the driveway. If she didn’t think fast, she was going to get caught, not because she’d picked a bad hiding place, but because she was breathing like she had a three-pack-a-day habit. Just the thought reminded her of Tom, who liked to have the occasional after-sex cigarette. Tom who was currently putrefying on her great room floor. Stop! she screamed in her head, which actually helped to focus her.

  As two more headlights shot down the driveway, Reyn, who was now trying not to think of Tom, made a monumentally stupid decision. She decided that there was no way to be seen from the backside of the garage. All she had to do was grab the support beams and hang on. Whatever she did, she could not look down. It took a second for her to maneuver around the back, because it literally jutted out over the bluff. Getting to it was harder than it looked. After sizing up the situation, she made her move. A move that caused both feet to slip out from under her and her to plummet off the back of the bluff. Before she had a chance to scream, her head collided with the side of a tree, and the world faded to nothing.

  _______________

  Buck was angry. The past three months had been rough. Shit had been hot at the club and bad things had gone down. It wasn’t just one thing, either. First there was the fire. After that, Ax’s gun went missing. Then tonight Sledge’s ol’ lady, Aimee, got jumped while leaving work. Aimee was okay, but they all knew the score. The only reason it wasn’t more serious than a few scrapes and bruises was because someone had witnessed it and decided to intervene. The shit of it all was that neither Aimee nor her rescuer got a good look at the guy before he got away.

  The minute Buck caught wind about what happened to Aimee, he got a bad feeling. It was strong enough that he called Goose and told him to do a drive by. If he hadn’t, then Goose wouldn’t have seen two shady looking fucks, one of which was seen shoving a gun into the waistband of his pants, entering Reyn’s house. He should have put eyes in her house. When it came to Reynolds Walker, Buck should have done a lot of things.

  Buck first set eyes on Reyn five years ago, back when he and a bunch of his buddies were working for Dooley Shane. Dooley had been friends with Ax’s uncle Grizz. It was because of this that Buck and Ax got hired. At the time, Dooley owned a bunch of garages that specialized in motorcycle builds and repairs. Or so they thought. As it turned out, the guy was one jacked up individual who was involved in a hell of a lot more than that—and none of it good.

  Around that same time, Buck’s buddy, Gage, who was also working for Dooley, hooked up with a hot-as-fuck redhead named Piper. The bitch had attitude. We’re talking a giant pair of brass balls. One night she and a few friends showed up at the same bar Buck and his crew were hanging out at. One of those friends was a blonde-haired, blue-eyed beauty named Reyn Walker. It was love at first sight for Buck. Reyn wasn’t just gorgeous, she was genuine and sweet. So damn sweet it made his teeth ache. The girl practically screamed “I’m a virgin.” Every man in that bar would have killed for the chance to pop that cherry. Buck wanted her. As it turned out, he wasn’t the only one. Zeke wanted her too. Zeke was Dooley’s right-hand ma
n and a mean motherfucker who no one was stupid enough to mess with. Regardless of the fact that Buck spent half the night talking to Reyn, it was Zeke she went home with. It was also Zeke who ruined her life. Buck swore that if Reyn ever stepped foot back in Austin, he would protect her. He’d clearly failed. And the thought that the same someone who’d been fucking with the club, was now fucking with her, made it worse. It made it personal.

  The door swung open and all eyes turned to Ax.

  “Anything?” Buck asked.

  “Nope. Her ride is in the garage, though.”

  Buck continued to take in the scene—Dead guy on the floor . . . T.V. remote lying next to him . . . drink on the coffee table—hoping that it would give him some answers. It looked as if the poor bastard barely had a chance to take a sip of his drink before his brains were blown out.

  Where are you, Reyn?

  The sound of Rider clearing his throat interrupted Buck’s train of thought. At Buck’s questioning look, Rider asked, “Coincidence or no?” Hell no it wasn’t coincidence. Just because Steele and Jake felt that justice had been served and that vengeance had been properly delivered, didn’t mean that everyone else thought so. Over half their fucking club had been taken out. Ax agreed with Buck in that enemies always had friends. It was those friends they needed to worry about. Somehow, Buck had to convince Steele of this.

  His eyes shifted back to the dead guy. “This was no coincidence,” he clipped. Maybe this would confirm to Steele that he needed to make a move. Either way, they’d taken it too far. It was one thing to target the club and quite another to go after their families. Buck wasn’t just mad because he’d been forced to up his vigilance on Reyn’s house, which wasn’t easy as she had no idea that he even existed. That is, she had no idea that the Buck of today existed. He was pissed because after tonight she would know that he’d been watching her. She wouldn’t like that, not after everything she’d been through. If it was just anger that he was feeling, he’d be fine. He knew exactly what to do with anger. It was fear he couldn’t get a handle on. Fear could cause a man to lose his edge. It made people do stupid shit, made them make life altering mistakes. Buck couldn’t afford to make mistakes, not when he was staring down at Reyn’s boyfriend’s brains splattered across her living room floor. Not when she was missing. She’d been through enough. His job was to see that she lived easy. In doing that he’d made her a target. The guilt of this beat at him.

  “Who is this, again?” Cupcake asked. Cupcake’s real name was Sam. Shortly after he became a prospect, he was told to grab the cupcakes for Sledge’s daughter’s third birthday. By the time he made it to Sledge’s house, he was three cupcakes short. Hence the name Cupcake. He hated it, which in turn made everyone else love it.

  “The guy has to be pushing fifty,” Loco noted. The guy was fifty-two, to be exact. Old enough to be Reyn’s daddy, which was exactly what she wanted. Oh, Buck had no doubt that Reyn cared for the guy. That was her nature but love him she didn’t. After a few times of seeing them together, he could tell that she was playing it safe.

  Not voicing any of this out loud, Buck asked, “When’s Steele getting here? I need this locked down so I can look for Reyn.”

  The words had barely left his mouth when the back door flew open and Goose shouted, “We found her, but we need ropes! She’s down a fucking ravine, man!”

  Chapter Three

  BUCK’S HEART WAS in his throat as he raced across the room. “What do you mean she’s in a ravine?” he choked out.

  “Behind the garage,” was all he heard, before he was out the door and sprinting down the driveway. At the edge of the garage he came up short. What the hell?

  “Who builds a garage on the side of a cliff?” Ax panted from beside him. Buck was wondering the same thing. The garage had floodlights, but they were pointed in the direction of the house, so that did them no good. As he stared down into the pitch-black abyss, fear erupted into anger. What the fuck was she thinking when she bought a house with a goddamn garage hanging off the side of a cliff? It was beyond dangerous. It was a liability. All it would take was one wrong step on a rainy night like tonight, and . . . Buck couldn’t even finish the thought. That she might be lying dead in that gaping maw of nothingness made his chest ache.

  Pushing back the panic, he shouted “I need a light!” After a moment that seemed like an eternity, one of the guys returned with one of those military-grade mag lights that sliced through the darkness. Flipping it on, Buck immediately spotted her. She was about halfway down the ravine, crumpled against a tree. A raw, primal scream shot from his lips as he bolted over the edge. He tried to keep his footing, but the ground was completely saturated and he was forced to drop to his ass and slide. He didn’t care. All he wanted was to get to Reyn. Shouts echoed from above as he slid in beside her. She wasn’t moving. Fear lanced through him. Please be alive, he thought as he curled his fingers around the front of her neck. Her pulse fluttered beneath his touch, and the breath he’d been holding gushed from his mouth.

  A familiar voice called from above. “She okay?” Steele had finally arrived. He turned his head to answer, when out of nowhere, Reyn surged up. Like some crazy ninja, she clocked him with her elbow. He took a step back and she lashed out. Digging her fingers into his cut she twisted sideways and shoved him down the ravine. A giant tree limb lying in his path was the only thing that stopped him from crashing to the rocky bottom.

  Ax’s “Damn, that looked painful,” was followed by humor-filled chuckles. Buck did not laugh. His cheek hurt like a motherfucker, and he was beyond furious. She’d tricked him.

  “I don’t know who you are or what you want, but I swear to God, if you try to take me, I will not go down without a fight!” she called out. Buck fought back a smile. Her bravado would have been convincing but for her shaking voice. No one said a word. For once, the peanut gallery was silent. Buck pulled himself to a seated position, all the while thinking about what to tell her.

  “Reyn, darlin’, it’s Buck. I’m not sure if you remember me.” He knew he sounded stupid, but how else was he supposed to talk the Little Ninja down? “I was friends with Gage—”

  She cut him off with two pain-filled words, “Why now?” The light coming from above nearly blinded him and he shouted for the guys to quit shining it in his damn eyes.

  “But then we can’t see,” he heard Cupcake grumble. Buck wanted to scream. Here he was, trapped on the side of a fucking ravine while attempting to talk down a clearly pissed-off woman, and all the shitheads cared about was getting a show. When he got out of this mess, he would give them a fucking show. The light shifted to Reyn. Buck could see her gorgeous face. He could also see the look of defiance in her eyes as she glared down at him—as if daring him to fuck with her. He wanted to fuck with her. He wanted to strap her to the tree she was standing in front of and sink balls deep inside her. The realization that this was not what he should be thinking wasn’t lost on him. It also wasn’t lost on him that she’d asked him a question and was now looking at him as if he was mentally challenged.

  “I’m not quite sure I understand what you’re asking,” he finally responded.

  “You’ve had five years to exact your revenge, so why now?” Revenge? Buck frowned.

  “Honey, this has nothing to do with the past. I didn’t kill your boyfriend. Someone did, though, and that someone is who we’re after.” His cheek throbbed with each word that he spoke. He needed Doc to take a look at it, as well as to make sure Reyn was okay. “Look, I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty uncomfortable right now. If we could get off the side of this hill, I would be happy to explain it all to you.” She shook her head and winced, which told him that she wasn’t okay.

  “No. We talk here or we don’t talk at all.” He cursed softly. He’d forgotten how stubborn she could be. Fine, they would do it her way.

  Without giving away important information, he said, “Some things have been happening at our club.”

  “What club?” s
he cut in.

  “Steele Raiders.” When she didn’t respond, he said, “It’s a motorcycle club.” Her eyes widened in what looked a hell of a lot like fear, and he scrambled to explain, “I know what you’re thinking and it’s not like that—like it was with Zeke. Zeke, Dooley, all of those guys rode bikes, but that was the opposite of what this is. We’re a brotherhood.” When she didn’t respond, he added, “We live by a code. We have honor, something those shitheads wouldn’t know about if it smacked them in the face. We don’t hurt women, we protect them.”

  As he searched for something else to say, Steele called down, “You’re a friend of Buck’s, which makes you a friend of the club. We’ll help you figure this out.” Her head shook again. This time when she winced, Buck fought back a growl.

  “I don’t need your help!” Reyn shouted back at Steele. Buck’s jaw ticked in irritation. She had no idea what she’d just been given. It was because of her obvious ignorance that he didn’t react.

  “Reyn, it’s Ax. Remember me?” Ax called out. A flare of jealousy ignited inside of Buck. Reyn and Ax had been friends back in the day. Ax and Gage had been close, and since Reyn lived with Gage’s girl, Piper, that meant she’d spent a decent amount of time with him.

  “Ax?” The vulnerability in that one word made Buck want to punch something, or better yet, someone.