Crossing my arms over my chest, I leaned back against the wall behind Bash’s desk and waited, fighting the need to shield her.
As if that was his cue, Bash stood and moved until he was standing directly in front of Kelli. The look on his face, the menacing glare that was flashing out of his electric-blue eyes, had Kelli losing some of her courage. She gulped, but she lifted her chin when it started to lower, forcing herself to stare down the MC president.
“I want everything. Every last detail, from the moment you set foot in this town up until this very second. You will tell us everything. Understand?”
“And if I don’t feel like it?”
He bent, his hands going to both chair arms as he leaned in so that his face was barely an inch away from hers. Instinct told me to push him away from her, that he could hurt her. Clenching my hands into fists, I fought my instincts and waited.
“If you don’t, Raven will come in here and beat it out of you. Either way, we will get the answers we want.”
Chapter 3
Kelli
A sliver of fear crawled up my spine as I watched Bash Reid’s disturbingly beautiful face come closer. He wasn’t the first guy I’d had to go toe-to-toe with, but he was probably the scariest.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone shifting closer and gulped. No, I was wrong. That man—he was the scariest motherfucker I’d ever come up against. With his shaved head, larger-than-life frame, and that tattoo of the black widow on his neck, he scared the ever-loving fuck out of me. There was a soullessness about him at times, but the moment he set eyes on his wife, every single person in the universe could see his one and only weakness.
Spider came closer and put his hand on Bash’s shoulder, urging him to back off. I balled my shaking hands into fists so they wouldn’t see my weakness just as Spider leaned in closer. “Don’t be afraid, Kelli,” he murmured in that deceptively soothing voice. In the blink of an eye, this man could have slit my throat and not even hesitated. “We don’t want to hurt you, sweetheart. We’ve all listened to the files on the flash drive, and we know you didn’t betray us. We just want the full story.”
He glanced at the others over his shoulder. “Right, brothers?”
Throats were cleared, and I could see some of the brothers nodding their heads as others gave verbal answers of assertion.
Spider stepped back, his calmness giving me a false sense of being in control. But I wasn’t stupid. I knew who was really in control of everything, and he was smiling down at me like some damn angel of hope. I felt sorry for his poor wife. “Let’s start from the beginning. Why did you come to Creswell Springs?”
For one fleeting moment, I silently begged Colt to save me. To stand between me and his MC brothers. To fucking put me first. But no sooner had that thought filled my head and my bruised heart than I mentally recoiled at my own ridiculousness. He would never stand between me and his brothers. Or anyone else, for that matter.
Not now.
Had he ever? If I hadn’t kept so much from him, would he have wanted to protect me now?
Would he have loved me—just a little?
Stupid, Kelli. Stop being stupid and focus. You never needed anyone before, and you don’t need anyone now.
Realizing I had no choice, I leaned back, getting comfortable so I could tell them my life story from the moment I came to this fucked-up town.
“Kevin Samson was my older half brother. Our father needed someone to keep their eye on him, to report back if he got into any trouble or whatever. Since the old fucker tries to control me using my mother as bait, I agreed.”
“So you were originally sent here to spy on your brother, not us?” Jet asked from where he stood across the room with Matt and a few other MC brothers. Of all of them, I suspected Jet was the most level-headed. It was why he was once the MC president. His one moment of insanity, however, cost him months behind bars and even longer away from the woman he loved. But there was no current danger to his lovely Flick, so I expected him to remain sane in the face of everyone else’s crazy.
“Basically. When he started making trouble for you, I reported back to Calvin, told him he needed to step in and get the dumbass out before he got himself beaten and dumped in a ditch somewhere. But his motto when it came to Kevin was more or less ‘boys will be boys.’ I told the old fuck Kevin was getting in too deep, that he was going to end up hurt, in jail, or dead.” I grimaced, remembering those conversations with my sperm donor. “I didn’t understand why he still wanted me to continue to watch Kevin if he wasn’t going to do anything about the idiot’s behavior.”
Hawk leaned forward in his chair, his face set in hard lines as he watched me closely. If there were anyone who should still hold a grudge against my dead brother, it would be this man. Kevin had nearly raped his woman. If given the chance, I would have held Kevin down while Hawk did whatever the hell he wanted to the evil motherfucker I unfortunately shared DNA with. “Did you know Kevin was planning on burning down the bar?”
“I didn’t have a clue. By that time, I was just living my own life. What was the use of keeping tabs on Big Bro if Daddy Dearest wasn’t going to take me seriously?”
“If your job was to keep tabs on Samson, why did you stick around after he died?” Bash demanded, pacing in front of me like a caged tiger, anxious to be set free and obliterate me with a single strike of his massive paw.
I shrugged, pretending like I wasn’t about to piss myself if the man so much as said “Boo.” When was the last time I used the bathroom? I couldn’t remember. Colt hadn’t stopped except to fill up with gas, and I’d used the restrooms every chance I got, but that last stop had been hours ago. “I figured the job was done after his death, but Calvin went a little insane. Kevin was his reason for living, I guess. I don’t know. Don’t really give a fuck. I was set to pack up and go home so I could take care of my mother. But he said I still owed him. He wanted me to get closer to the MC. Wanted any piece of dirt I could dig up on you guys after the ATF gave up and cleared out.”
“That’s when you moved in with Quinn?” Raider tossed out.
“More or less,” I agreed. “I knew she was connected to the MC, but I also knew I wouldn’t be getting anything out of her. Colt didn’t tell her anything about the club, and I wasn’t really trying that hard to get information on you guys anyway.”
“Why not? You got daddy issues?” Matt asked scornfully.
I turned my head until I met his metallic-blue eyes. The loss of his brother had taken its toll on the younger Reid. I could see the wariness etched into every line on his face. Life had dealt him a shitty hand lately, but at least he had people who loved him standing behind him. I was kind of jealous of that. “I hate Calvin Samson just as much as any of you. If he hadn’t been holding my mother’s well-being over my head, I never would have come here in the first damn place.”
“What’s your mother got to do with any of this?” Spider asked, still so soothingly calm it made me feel weak, because I knew good and well that he could strike at any moment and destroy me. Maybe I should have just let him. Gotten it over with so I could be at peace in whatever reality came after death.
My heart ached at the thought of my mother, wasting away in a nursing home a little more with each passing day. The experimental drugs were helping, but they could only do so much at this late stage of her disease. “My mother has Alzheimer’s. Calvin pays for her nursing home bills and the drugs that increase her number of good days. If I didn’t do what he wanted, he was going to stop all of it.”
“What a jackass,” Matt muttered, sounding the slightest bit empathic.
“When he gave me the ultimatum to give the mayor and DA every last detail of what I knew about the MC, I realized it was time to figure out a Plan B. So yeah, I traded Calvin’s secrets for the cash to take care of my mother.” I nodded at where the flash drive was sticking out of a laptop on the desk. “You know the rest if you’ve listened to all those files
.”
“How do we know that’s everything you told them?” Hawk questioned in a hard voice. “Maybe you recorded this and then turned around and gave them shit on us.”
“Yeah, that totally could have happened.” I met his gaze without flinching. “But it didn’t. I wouldn’t do that to Quinn.”
“And now we’re just supposed to trust you?” Hawk shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“I have no reason to lie. But more than that, I didn’t have anything to tell anyone. Colt didn’t let a single thing slip about club business, and I wasn’t trying to find out anything. If I really wanted to get shit on you, all I had to do was fuck around with any of at least six different brothers.” I lifted my gaze, signaling the ones I knew for a fact were loose-lipped. They were the ones who came into Paradise City often, and after one drink and a single lap dance, I could have gotten any of them to spill the beans on what the MC had been up to. It would have only taken one slip of the tongue and I could have gotten all the information needed for the Feds to invoke RICO. “Moose over there, he would spill every last secret the MC had if I flashed my tits at him long enough.”
There were a few grumbled agreements, and I lifted a brow at Hawk, daring him to call bullshit.
“Right, let’s talk about your meeting with Bubbles.” Bash was back in my face, his eyes twice as menacing now. “Tell me everything.”
I gulped hard, the sound seeming to echo in the suddenly deathly quiet room, but I gave him all the details I had on my father’s latest fuck buddy.
Chapter 4
Jos
Getting a call at one in the morning was never a good thing. The moment my cell started going off—with the generic Darth Vader tone I’d assigned to my dad’s number, announcing in that kind of creepy voice, “This is your father. This is your father. This is your father!”—I knew something was wrong.
For one, Dad called maybe once a month to check in on me, and I’d had the obligatory ten-minute chat the week before. He’d told me not to worry about him or Grandpa Chaz, which I rarely did. But something had been off—and not just his command for me not to worry about them.
Just from his voice, I’d known something was up. He’d seemed stressed. For another, he kept telling me he loved me. Dad telling me he loved me was about as frequent as his phone calls, and even then, it was usually casual. “Love you, Jos,” he would say as he hung up from every other call we’d ever had.
Not that last time, though.
“I love you, honey,” he said not two seconds after I answered.
“I love you, Joslyn. You’re the only good thing in my life.”
“I love you, sweetheart. You know that, right?” I knew then and there something was going on, and it wasn’t a good something. Three “I love yous” from him in less than as many minutes had my palms sweating, and I’d had to switch my phone to my other hand to dry it before I dropped the damn thing.
My voice had been choked when I’d repeated the words back to him, assuring him I knew he loved me. And I did. He might not have been around much my entire life, but that really wasn’t his fault. Mom hated that he was in the MC with his dad. When she married him, she thought she could change him. When she didn’t, when he picked the MC over her, she got pissed and moved to Oakland. Weeks later, she found out she was pregnant with me.
For the first twelve years of my life, I was carted back and forth to Creswell Springs, usually with my dad and grandpa on the back of one of their motorcycles. Damn, I’d loved my summers upstate with those two men. But that last year was the same summer I grew breasts, and when I came home excitedly telling my mother about the crush I’d developed on not one, but at least three boys, Mom put a quick stop to my visits with my dad and his MC.
If he wanted to see me, he would have to come to Oakland. Which sucked, because Dad’s job and his time with the MC were valuable. I didn’t get to see him as often as I wanted to after that, but he started the calls to check up on me once a month. I was just happy to get that from him and my grandpa.
Blindly, I reached for my phone, trying to get it before the noise woke up the baby sleeping in the crib on the other side of our shared bedroom. Heart racing, I lifted the phone to my ear as I sat up in bed. “Daddy?” I whisper-shouted, trying to catch my breath. My heart was racing so quickly, my body was shaking. Nausea churned in my stomach, and I fought the urge to gag as I heard the noise in the background.
“Jos.” My dad’s hoarse, emotional voice filled my ear, and my racing heart stopped so suddenly I nearly blacked out. “Sweetheart, I’ve got bad news. Grandpa… He’s gone, Jos.”
Grandpa.
Memories of summers following the larger-than-life old biker around every summer, pretending to be his secretary as he oversaw his construction crews building houses, and a dozen other things flashed behind my tightly closed lids. He never once treated me like a little kid. Chaz would smile down at me with a patience he rarely showed any of his men or even my father, explaining every aspect of his successful business and how one day I was going to take over for him.
Now he was gone.
Dad didn’t tell me what happened, but I somehow knew it wasn’t because he was closer to seventy now than sixty. Old age wasn’t something my grandpa needed to worry about. He had a young soul, whereas I’d always been told I had an old soul. Mom, being her usual bitchy self, once told me, “Well, one of you has to be the adult, and it sure as hell ain’t gonna be Chaz.”
Now, as I drove across the invisible Trinity County line, I was still worrying what exactly had happened to Grandpa. Not that I expected anyone to tell me the truth about what led up to the events that took place the night before, but I’d be damned if they wouldn’t at least tell me how he died.
When I announced I was coming to Creswell Springs as soon as I could get packed, Dad told me where to go. Not to his house, it was too dangerous. The same went for Grandpa’s and even the Barker Construction Company’s office. As I stopped outside the gate protecting the Angel’s Halo MC’s clubhouse compound, a place I had a million memories of, I wondered what the hell was going on that had everyone even remotely related to the MC staying in the clubhouse.
A huge guy I didn’t recognize came up to my old Ford Escort and tapped on my window. With his shaggy dirty-blond hair falling into his eyes, at least three days’ worth of scruff darkening his jaw, and shoulders that made his shirt look like it might rip at any moment underneath his leather cut, this guy looked menacing. But I was used to guys just like him. I dealt with them at both my jobs every single night.
“What ya want?” he demanded in a smoker’s voice. I was pretty sure this guy smoked at least two packs a day.
“I’m Jos Barker. My dad is expecting me.”
“You Butch’s girl?” I nodded, and his hard face eased into something a little friendlier but no less intimidating. “Sorry about your grandpa.”
“Thanks,” I choked out.
Stepping back, he called out something, and it was only then that I noticed the men up on the fence. And the guns in their hands. I gulped at the sight of the heavy artillery, and the mother in me had my eyes going to the rearview mirror to check on the sleeping baby in his forward-facing car seat.
As much as the thought had churned my stomach when I was frantically packing enough clothes for the two of us and getting the diaper bag in order, now I was thinking maybe I should have just left my son with Mom, after all. No, I quickly reassured myself. Even with the guns—and Lord knew why they were needed—Reid belonged with me. The one and only time I let Mom babysit, I picked him up after work to find his poor little bottom chafed from having been left in a wet diaper for too damn long and screaming at the top of his lungs because who knew when she last gave him a bottle. She sucked as a mother, but she was a fucking monster as a grandmother.
After that, I took on a second job just so I could afford childcare while I worked to support the two of us.
The guys u
p on the fence opened the gate for me, and I was waved through. Slowly, because there were already people scattered around the parking lot, I maneuvered my way into a free spot. After turning off the car, I just sat there for a moment, trying to get a hold on the emotions too close to the surface.
The last time I was here was just over two years ago. I’d come up to see Dad and Grandpa on a whim. I spent just over two weeks here, but I’d left with more than I’d come with. The baby in the back seat could attest to that.
Nervousness mixed with my grief. The entire drive up from Oakland, I hadn’t allowed myself to spare a thought for Reid’s father. Now that I was here, he was all I could think about. Anyone who saw my son would know instantly who had given him to me—hell, he was a miniature replica of his dad. But would his father want to have anything to do with him? Would he care that I hadn’t told him we’d created something amazing during my short trip north? Would he accept Reid, want to be a part of his life?
Shit. I wasn’t ever going to know any of those answers until I came face-to-face with him.
Opening the door, I got out and then pulled Reid out of the back seat. He was wide awake now, and his curious blue eyes glanced around at all the big men in jeans and leather cuts. His hair was dark like his father’s, but those curls were all from me. He needed a haircut, but I just couldn’t bring myself to cut even one strand.
“Hey there, Jos,” someone called from behind me, and if I hadn’t been holding on to Reid so tightly, I might have dropped him.
Turning, I blew out a relieved breath when I saw it was Matt and not his brother. I gave him a grim smile as I rearranged Reid on my hip. My grandpa’s death must have been taking its toll on him, because he looked pale, with dark shadows under his eyes. There was a haunted look in his eyes that hurt to look at, and not just because his eyes were identical to Reid’s. “Hey.”
His eyes landed on my son and instantly widened. “Holy shit, it’s like looking in a mirror.” He groaned and looked over his shoulder, as if looking to make sure no one was listening before stepping closer and lowering his voice. “He’s not mine, is he?”
Angel's Halo: Avenged Page 3