by Unknown
“Back to my sister and who you’re sending after her,” Marcus asked, looking around the room at the men.
“Any suggestions?” Bone asked, waiting.
“We could have Death put his guys on it. It might take a favor or two but we could work with that,” Dog suggested, speaking of the Blue Bandits MC’s Prez.
“I don’t want to involve them unless we have no other choice. They might not be actively at war with them like we are, but involving them would cause other issues. Besides, them asking questions about her may cause the Headhunters to get rid of her anyway,” Bone told them.
“Shit, I didn’t think of that,” Dog muttered.
“There is another option, one that would almost be like sending me after her,” Tick reminded them.
“You mean Slick. Huh, that could work.” Bone scratched his chin, his eyes narrowed. “He’d need a bit of convincing though. I have a feeling he thinks he’s out.”
“Yeah, that is never the case,” Tank chuckled earning a grin from several of them.
“Who the hell are you talking about?” Marcus demanded, wondering who they were jabbering on about sending after his sister.
“The question is will he do it or not? As you say, he thinks he’s out and lately he and the club haven’t had a good track record. I mean first Katie and then Charity.” Tick looked at Bone who began smiling. That smile sent a cold rush of shivers down Marcus’s spine because it was deadly.
“He’s not getting a choice.”
“He’d do it anyway. Even if he isn’t happy about it, he’d still do it because she’s in trouble and when we tell him that, he won’t say no. I may not be friends with the man anymore, but I do know that his character hasn’t changed in the years he was over in Bandit territory. He might be pissed but he’ll go after her,” Trick told them from where he sat.
“Tell me who you’re sending after my sister!”
“Don’t get cocky, Marc. I don’t deal well with cocky,” Bone growled, his eyes narrowed on him in a cold stare.
Shit, that was a scary look, but he needed to know that whoever they sent after his sister was going to be able to find her and protect her. He didn’t want just anyone sent to fetch her. He wanted the best.
“It’s someone who was with the club years ago. He’s almost as good at tracking as Tick. Tick was training him when he was with the club and still a prospect in case we needed another person to track someone down. He was over in Bandit territory for years, which means that he is familiar with their club and is able to ask questions and look less suspicious because no one would affiliate him with us.”
Marcus waited. This sounded good so far but he wasn’t sure that the man was still going to be able to find his sister.
“Fine, but I’m going with him,” Marcus muttered.
“Need I remind you again that you don’t make the rules here? You’d slow the man down and then where would Raven be? Plus you’ve started to get a name after the few times we’ve sent you in to get intel on the Jackals and if someone recognized you, she’d be as good as dead. So no, you won’t be going with him,” Bone informed him with a scowl.
“She’s my sister!”
“Yes, and she has the best chance if we play this the right way, dipshit. We fuck this up and it is going to be fucking dangerous for her.”
Tank’s speech was delivered with an angry slam of his hand on the table in front of him. Marcus knew that they were right but he didn’t like leaving his baby sister in the hands of a complete stranger.
“Fine, but I want to meet him before he goes after her, damn it.”
“Done, let’s head over there now. The sooner he leaves, the better,” Bone told them standing.
Marcus stood on the doorstep with Bone, Trick and Tank. Bone pounded on the door and a voice was heard calling out from inside for them to hold it together and wait until he was ready to open the fucking door. Marcus wasn’t sure that this was the best idea.
This asshole had left them out here pounding on the door for almost twenty minutes, and they thought he’d be able to find his sister before those bastards who had her killed her? The door was finally thrust open and a dark haired, green-eyed man about Bone’s height was standing in the doorway glaring at them.
Chapter 4
Travis Hoyt, formerly “Slick” to these men, stood in his doorway staring at the men, three of which he would have been happy if he hadn’t seen ever again. The fourth man he’d never met so he didn’t have an objection to him, at least not yet. Not that he hadn’t enjoyed being a Devil, it just brought home the fact that he wasn’t a part of that life anymore. He wasn’t upset over that turn of events now, but it still wasn’t a reminder that he wanted thrust into his face every time he turned around like it had been lately.
His pride was still smarting from losing Charity to Tick. He’d really liked her and he’d thought that maybe they would end up having that happy ending that seemed to be finding all these bastards lately. Not that they weren’t good men who deserved to be happy, he just would have preferred it not being with the woman he’d thought was going to be his own happily ever after. Fuck, and now he was sounding like a chick.
Travis was just freaking lonely and that sucked. He didn’t really know the Devils that well anymore, but this was his home so he’d come back when his mother had passed almost two years ago. Now he stood staring at the men who were on his doorstep, wondering what the hell they wanted.
“Whatever it is I didn’t do it,” he finally informed them. They all looked grim, especially the tall thin one with a buzzed head.
“Slick,” Bone said, and Travis’s brows rose to his hairline because it had been years since he’d been called that. Then he was floored by the man’s next words. “We have some business you need to handle.”
“Umm…you do realize that I am not in the club anymore, right?” he asked.
“You know better than that. Once you’re in, you’re in and only death gets you out,” Tank growled
“Normally that’s true, but I was a special case, remember?”
“Yeah, and you knew it wasn’t going to be forever, just as we did. I’ve been letting you adjust and grieve. Been a little busy with the Jackals on our doorstep lately or this would have happened months ago. Now we have a job and you’re the man to do it.” Bone gestured at the living room behind him before demanding, “Let’s sit down.”
Travis knew that cocky demand wasn’t to be ignored. Although he hadn’t been part of the club in years, he knew that tone. That was the ‘do as I say or end up with a gun pointed at your face’ tone and he was smart enough not to push the man’s buttons. Stepping into the living room, he walked towards the beer he’d been enjoying before these idiots had begun banging on his door.
He’d tried to ignore them as he sat back in his lounger but they’d refused to give up and after twenty minutes of banging, he’d been ready to beat the shit out of whatever idiot was pounding on his door. Only these weren’t the type of men you got into a fight with unless you were damned sure you could take them down. He’d likely be able to handle Trick and Bone, but Tank was another story, the fucker was huge. He sat down, sipping on the beer. The thinish man with the buzz cut glared at him for some reason.
Buzz-cut looked at the beer bottles on the coffee table. Yeah, it had been a while since he cleaned up, but what the fuck? Was he the cleaning police?
“This isn’t going to work. He’s a fucking lush,” the man growled, pissing Travis off royally. He wasn’t a fucking lush. Hell, he normally didn’t even drink. Just over the last week, he’d been a bit depressed. Maybe he had been hitting the bottle hard, he suddenly realized, looking at the fifteen bottles covering his coffee table. Well shit. That wasn’t something you wanted to learn about yourself.
It was likely a good thing this asshat had shown up here and made him realize that if he didn’t want to become his daddy, he better get his shit together. Travis set his beer down on the table.
“Who’s
this shit and why is he insulting me in my own fucking house? And just how attached to him are you?” he asked, glaring at the younger man.
“Slick, he’s jus—,” Trick began but Travis cut him off.
“Name’s Travis. Hasn’t been Slick in almost ten years.”
“As I was saying, Slick. He is just worried about his sister who’s with the Headhunters,” Trick went on as if he hadn’t just told him that wasn’t his name anymore.
“Fuck, that isn’t good.” Travis knew of the Headhunters; they were bad news. They were nearly as bad as the Jackals and if he remembered correctly, they’d been collecting women to sell to the Cutthroats MC. The men in the Cutthroats MC weren’t really men; they were monsters. They didn’t have a drop of compassion in them anywhere.
“No shit, motherfucker!” Buzz-cut roared, moving forward to grab him. Only Tank jerked him back and roared, “Calm the fuck down or you’re leaving. Understand?”
The man nodded, but fury was still evident in every line of his body.
“This is Marcus,” Tank indicated Buzz-cut. “His sister is in Blue Bandit territory with the Headhunter MC and we need you to go and find her.”
“And why is it that you can’t send Tick? Thought he was everyone’s favorite errand boy,” Travis snidely demanded. He knew he was being a dick, but the man had taken the woman he wanted and it fucking sucked. He was becoming bitter he realized. Being lonely was making him an ass.
Tank snickered for a moment before he said, “Yeah, he is, but now it’s left up to you. We send Tick and they find out she’s part of the Red Devils. Then they kill our girl before we can get her back.”
“Wait. Why the hell did they take her in the first place if they didn’t know she was part of the Red Devils?” Travis waited for an answer, his hands resting on the arms of the leather lounger.
“She went with her boyfriend who turned out to be part of the Headhunters, but at the time we didn’t know that. Now that fucker has her and who knows what the fuck he’s doing to my baby sister!” Marcus roared, his face red and his hazel eyes wild.
“How old is this girl?” Travis asked, his stomach suddenly in knots thinking of a young girl in the hands of one of the worst clubs around.
“She’s not a kid! I wouldn’t let a kid run off with her boyfriend! She’s twenty-five,” Marcus bellowed looking as if he were seconds from stroking out. Damn, that man needed to calm the fuck down or he was going to have some kind of epileptic fit.
“Well you kept calling her your baby sister, how was I to know she was an adult, asshole? Still don’t understand how this involves me. I told you, I am out of the club and have been for years and this isn’t my problem, no matter how sorry I am that she’s in trouble. You have an entire fucking club to send after her.” Travis stood looking at Bone who sat perched on the end of the couch, waiting for him to say something.
He knew him well enough to know that when the man was silent, he was the most deadly. Bone processed quietly and then he exploded into action. The man didn’t talk much when beating the shit out of something worked better.
“Slick,” Bone’s voice held the edge of fury he’d heard only a few times in his life and would like to never hear again. “That little girl is friends with my very pregnant old lady. If something happens to her because you refused to go after her, how do you think my stressed out pregnant old lady is going to take that? Not well I’d gather. And we all know how well I take Molly being upset, don’t we.”
Shit, the man was playing hardball, Travis thought grimly. Bone went nuts when Molly got a fucking hangnail; her being devastated at the loss of a friend would make the man apeshit crazy. He’d likely come over here and put a bullet in him just to make himself feel like he’d done everything he could to make Molly feel better.
“Why me?”
“They don’t know you’re part of the club, and don’t tell me that you haven’t made enough contacts there to be helpful because I know you better than that. You would have made all the connections you’ll need to help you find Raven,” Tank told him.
“How long is this reinstatement going to be for?” Travis asked, wondering if they’d drop him like a hot potato when he was done doing this job for them.
Bone snorted, looking at him like he’d lost his mind. “Who’s reinstating you?”
Well shit, that made his chest ache. They wanted him to help them but they weren’t even asking him to be part of the fucking club again.
The ache in his chest disappeared when Bone continued. “You never were uninitiated. You and I both know that. Hell, even Death Rider knew that. As the Blue Bandit Prez, he just couldn’t have a fully patched member of the Red Devils in his territory without it causing problems with his own club. So we all agreed you were out, even when we knew that wasn’t true.”
Oh, well fuck. He’d had a family for the past two years and hadn’t known it. It made his heart squeeze a bit to know that if he’d gone to see Bone, he’d likely not have slipped in and out of the depression he’d been dealing with for the past five months. Not that he was making this that easy for these bastards. They weren’t gonna just show up, say here’s the patch we should have given you months ago, and then send him off to be a good little errand boy, he thought angrily.
“Not going after this girl like your fucking errand boy. I’m not a schmuck, so go find somebody else.”
“Don’t make this get ugly. You’re not happy and I’ve been too busy to handle it. You are going after her or we could go that other route. The one nobody likes to talk about. Trust me, that’s no way to go out,” Bone growled, standing to his feet.
Fuck, yeah, that wasn’t something he was interested in. A body bag wasn’t something he wanted to check out any time soon. Looked like he was going after this asshole’s idiotic sister. Yay, this should be loads of fun.
“Fine, but I am not a damned prospect. Fuck that, I’d earned my fucking rockers and I never got them. When I get back I’m getting the damned things.”
Bone looked at Tank who nodded. “Agreed.”
“This is fucked up! My sister’s life is on the line here and he’s not even interested in helping her, just in his fucking rockers! I’m going with him,” Marcus growled, his eyes burning.
“No, I’ve already told you twice. Don’t make it a third time or I will get pissed and we all know that isn’t something you want.”
Bone’s tightly clipped words were said through his teeth and the glare he sent the other man brooked no argument.
“Fine, but I want him to report to me every step of the way. I need to know how close he is to finding her or I will go insane.”
“That seems fair, Bone. If it was Charity I’d want the same,” Trick the ruddy bastard said.
Travis wanted to wring his neck. It was enough of a pain in the ass that he had to go after this woman for a club he didn’t even belong to anymore. Now he had to report to the woman’s brother like a fucking five year old. He sure as hell hoped that the damned dickhead didn’t expect him to check in every five minutes. One call a day was all he was getting.
“When are you leaving?” Marcus demanded.
“In the morning,” Travis snapped back at him.
Marcus jumped towards him grabbing his shirt and slamming him back into the wall with a roar, getting right in his face. “My fucking sister is with a fucking monster and you’re waiting ten hours to leave! I. Don’t. Fucking. Think. So. You’ll leave within the hour!”
Travis had had enough of that and grabbed the man’s arm, twisting it behind his back before slamming Marcus’s face into the wall, his other hand gripping the man’s throat.
Pressing his nose against the other man’s, his eyes filled with all the fury he felt at being told what to do without being given a choice in the matter. “Now listen up, boy. Just because I am not part of this fucking club doesn’t mean I don’t remember how to take down chumps like you in my fucking sleep. Get this through your head. You’re not the boss of me. None of you a
re. Now get the fuck out of my house.” With that, he threw the man, who was now an ugly shade of purple from the lack of air, towards Tank who caught him.
Tank began helping the gasping man out the door. “Moron. I told you he doesn’t play nice and to let us handle this,” Tank was muttering as he half carried the man out the door.
“Damn, I forgot you were almost as good at combat as Ratchet is. Glad we didn’t have to test the body bag out,” Bone muttered as he stood, following Tank and Marcus out the door. “Morning’s fine, but let Marc know what’s going on. This is hard for him. He feels responsible and that’s wearing on him.”
“Yeah, I get it,” Travis nodded, watching Bone walk out. He turned, eyeing the man still in the room.
“I hope we’re good?” Trick asked from his position on the wall.
“You mean about Katie? Yeah, that wasn’t a surprise when she stared at you more than once during dinner that night. And I knew when you came after us with all the finesse of a charging bull that you weren’t immune to her either.”
“I actually meant my sister. I know that you two had a brief thing before she ended up with Tick.”
Travis knew he was scowling at the other man darkly but he couldn’t help it. He’d had a sore spot over that debacle for more than eight months now. That whole thing had been fucked up and he wasn’t over the fact that another man had ended up with the woman he’d gotten attached to.
“That’s another story. Might be a bit before that one fades.”
“Huh, well if it helps, she felt bad about it.”
“No, that doesn’t help. But she shouldn’t worry about it or me. She should worry about being happy. That’s all I want for her.” Travis ran a hand through his shoulder length hair.
“She is, you know. Happy.”
“I figured. I’m glad, but don’t think that means I’m over it. I’m not.”
“I think that she wasn’t right for you anyway. I just don’t see you happy with my sister. She’s a handful. You need a calmer woman, one who can handle shit without doing something nuts. Don’t let her sweet act fool you, that girl is just as much of a Devil as my Katie and Tank’s Annie are. All three of those women would be able to run this club blindfolded. Don’t tell Bone I said that,” Trick muttered laughing a bit at the last part of his speech.