by Dee Tenorio
“No, I know where they are. Not sure why they’re in there, but I know where.”
He didn’t bother answering the unspoken question. These latest charges might hold onto Frank a little longer than the previous ones, but Cade knew the aggravated assault charge would get downgraded to simple assault, meaning yet another misdemeanor no one would enforce. The charges for his men—trading punches with local sheriffs when they came to arrest Frank—didn’t have much weight in the long run, either. Those would get reduced until the incident sounded like a football game instead of a full-out melee, complete with broken bones and bloodied faces. One day in county lockup was about all they could hope to get. In twenty-four hours, it’d be back to business as usual in Marketta.
“It’s been a long couple of days, okay? I haven’t slept or eaten, and I just got back from Corcoran and found out I had to drag my ass down here to bail everyone out. And according to the officer behind the desk over there, I can’t. No one’s giving me any information about why there was a riot in the goddamn street and I’ve had it up to here with your abused male pride bullshit. What the actual fuck happened around here?”
Seriously? She had no idea? “No one called you?” Not even Shana’s boy?
Well, no, he guessed that wouldn’t have happened.
“How bad are your hands this time?”
Cade looked down at his bruised knuckles, flexing them despite the soreness.
“Well, I guess I should just be grateful you’re not dead,” she grumbled in response to his non-answer. “Yet.”
“You come here just to spread your bad mood? ‘Cause there’s plenty of that already.”
His hands flexed again, the urge to grab her and taste her almost as violent as the desperation to shove her away. Why was she here? She’d gotten what she wanted and left as soon as the coast was clear. Did she really think he’d forget that?
She suddenly dug her heel into the ground like it had done something to make her mad before finally expelling a frustrated breath and jumping to her feet again. “Just tell me this. Are you trying to get killed? I’m only asking, you know, so I can celebrate for you when you finally pull it off.”
“I’m doing my job,” he answered mildly. She knew this. They had this conversation after every altercation.
“I thought you were here to keep people safe.” Yup, spitting mad. “I can’t believe you let Rick drag you into a brawl!”
“Rick didn’t drag me into anything. We went to arrest your boss. His men got aggressive.” Most of them had that reaction to Cade. Something about his size gave them the thought that pushing him showed off their courage. Three of them trying to knock him to the ground just proved their interest in losing teeth.
“You know they had to wire Cavuto’s jaw shut, right?”
“Did they?” There. That sounded almost like he cared.
She glared down at him, hands on her hips for a solid, irritated minute. “You are such an asshole.”
The feel of a genuine smile on his face was as much a surprise as the chuckle that escaped him.
“You think this is funny?” She tried to sound mad, but he could see the curve touching the corners of her lush mouth. Relief that he was acknowledging her again.
When she’d finally tried calling him after her disappearing act, he’d barely had the fortitude to turn her away. Thankfully, pride could give a man all kinds of strength. He’d managed three weeks of ignoring her, including her knocks at his window only because he knew she was going to apologize. While he could put up with a lot of her shit, he knew he couldn’t handle hearing her turn that night into something ugly. Into pity.
His smile faded and he looked down at his hands.
She sighed, getting him to glance her way while she dragged her fingers through her wild hair. “Wheels of Pain has been part if this town for over twenty years. It’s had time to dig real deep, you know?”
“You think we should just let them keep doing what they’re doing? Let them keep using this place to move cocaine and God knows what else into the country? Or maybe we should just let them keep terrorizing this town like it’s their own personal head?”
“Of course not. It wasn’t always like this, okay? It wasn’t so openly violent. It’s gotten completely out of hand under Frank’s control.”
“Like your uncle was much better? I’ve read the reports, Trina.”
“My uncle is a lot of things, but he kept his crew in control so the town wouldn’t turn on him. Frank doesn’t give a shit. He thinks he’s above it all and takes just about anyone who comes asking—the skeevier the better. The people in this town may not like what the club does, but the club also puts money in their pockets. Keeps food on their tables. Without it, Marketta dies and everyone here knows they’ll die with it.”
“What are you getting at?”
“I’m saying, you’re not going to clean things up without getting people to help you. They don’t want to live like this, they just don’t think they have options. What reason are you giving them to choose a side that takes food out of their children’s mouths? Right now, you’re just Rick’s scary henchman. Things like this fight, like the last five fights, the last ten… How are you supposed to protect people who don’t trust you? What are you doing to prove it’s worth the risk to help you?”
He hated that she had a point.
The size of Wheels of Pain was startlingly large, with thirty to forty of the men based in town at any given time. Since Marketta was the only spot off the mountain pass for miles, they got more than their share of truckers pulling speed hauls on top of that. Throw in the occasional rival biker gang traveling through, just for aggravation, and it was a damn powder keg.
Fights spilled out of the Katrina’s bar almost nightly. Women were hassled left and right, and the only ones busier than the sheriff’s department were the understaffed clinic employees, dealing with all the injuries. Since almost none of the arrests they made managed to stick past arraignment, frustration warred with futility on a regular basis.
Her hand flew out in an angry gesture that took in the entire spread of the town around them. “Until you come up with some way to replace what the townspeople lose when the club disappears, you’re going to keep getting nowhere, Wheels of Pain is the lesser evil compared with the mess in the sheriff’s department. At least people have an idea what to expect from them. But you…?”
But he was in Marketta for one reason and one reason only—to back Rick. He was not there to make cow eyes at a woman who had zero interest in him beyond sympathy. A woman whose sultry gait he had no business memorizing.
That spark he wished she didn’t light in him flared up in his gut. “What about me?”
It took a damn fool to find her beautiful while she bluntly delivered her answer. “You’re a time bomb. They’re worried you’ll lose your shit some night if they push the wrong button.”
He stilled, grinding his teeth. He’d picked that up, the way the men around town eyed each other when he came in with Rick on a patrol. He could care less what Wheels of Pain thought of him, but it was clear the rest of the town was as afraid of him as they were of the bikers. If what she was saying was true, probably even more scared.
She looked down briefly, her eyes closing as if reigning in temper. “You’re supposed to be the law, Cade. Not judge, jury, and executioner.”
“And what are you supposed to be, Trina?” He rose from his place on the ground, stepped toward her, but all she did was raise her chin and let those dark blue eyes of hers flash at him.
Another step, putting him close enough to smell her. Fresh and feminine, but not flowery. Enticing. Tempting. It made him want to bury his hands in that thick mane and hold her in place while he ground his mouth over hers. “Am I supposed to think you’re really the tough biker chick you want everyone here to believe you are? Or am I supposed to think you’re some kind of secret guardian angel because you swoop in to help Shana and her son every time they call?”
He wasn’t sure when she’d started backing up or even that he’d intimidated his way toward her, but she was up against the tree now, her entire body hidden from prying eyes by the wide trunk.
This was the true danger of her. She didn’t just make him feel when he didn’t want to. She could make him feel everything in a rage. Too much sensation, too much want, too much need. He didn’t want to kiss her, he wanted to devour her. Not sleep with her again. Not make love to her. No. He wanted to fuck her. Hard. Over and over again. Until the overload had passed and he could go back to…
Hell, he didn’t even know what.
At least before he’d come here, up in his cabin where the world was very small and close and silent, he’d known what he was. Accepted it, even if he didn’t understand what he’d become. Now, though, now he couldn’t find a foothold at all.
Her arms unfolded, hands finding purchase at his waist. Pulling him closer, until her hips practically cradled him, her body pressed against the full length of his. He put both hands on the trunk, kept himself from her by the smallest of margins.
Her breath was coming in fast little pants, brushing his lips and chin. He wanted it to be her mouth. Wanted her hands pulling at him desperately again. Furiously. Wanted her to want him as much as he wanted her.
The bark of the fir tree crunched under his grip.
“Or are you the kind who’d pity fuck a cop to get him wrapped around your finger?”
She didn’t flinch at his strangled whisper. “Pity has nothing to do with us. It never has.”
He wanted to believe that more than anything in the world.
“I’m not your father.” He’d done his research, wondering if she’d been telling him the truth. She was. Her father had stayed in Vietnam until the bitter end. Came home, married three years later. Katrina arrived three years after that, but her mother hadn’t survived her birth. David Killian’s life seemed to fall apart after that, leaving a trail of drunken disorderlies on his record. But he held on for his daughter. Eight years, anyway. Then he’d used his service pistol to blow his brains out while she was in school. “You’re not responsible for what happens to me. No more than for what happened to him.”
Her eyes widened, her mouth tightening with clear anger. “Don’t try psychoanalyzing me, Cade. It’s hypocritical.”
He let his fingertips graze her face, unable to keep from soothing the hurt he saw there. He felt the smoothness of her cheek, cool and firm. Strong from her steady smiles. Smiles he couldn’t decide if he should believe in or not.
“Then stop playing your games with me.”
Her fingers wrapped around his wrist, soothing the fiery heat that had taken hold of him and doing nothing to pull his touch away. “You’re not a game. You’re a risk. Not just to me, to yourself. You have to get a better hold of this.”
This being his emotions, such as they were.
“You want to protect these people, protect me, but you can’t do that if they’re scared of you. The sheriff is a joke. Someone has to make a change. Give them something to believe in. To hope for.” Her low whisper lost none of its urgency, not when her gaze stroked his face like a caress he could feel over every inch of his skin. “Frank wants you out of his way. What he can’t control, he fears. What he fears, he destroys. It’s as simple as that.”
“And you? Are you afraid of me?” He had no business standing here like this with her. Touching her. Less than an inch from tasting her again. The hunger in him wouldn’t settle for just a taste, either.
But if she was afraid of him, it would break the few threads of self-respect he had left.
She shook her head slowly. “I’m afraid for you. There’s a very big difference.”
Yes, there was. It was the same fear he had for her, alone in that pack of murderers and thieves. His mind refused to accept she’d come from them, that she belonged there. “Come out of the club…”
Be with me instead.
He didn’t say it, but he knew she heard it all the same.
The same way he knew, from one heartbeat to the next, that she’d turn him down.
“Cade, I—”
He straightened away, the blood that had been flowing so hot and fast through his veins turning to ice. “I gotta go.”
She held onto his shirt, almost pulling it from his under his belt. “Don’t leave like this.”
“Like what?” he asked, backing away so he didn’t make a bigger fool of himself by grabbing her and forcing her to feel the same gut-wrenching need that he did. As if he could.
“You’re mad.”
She had no idea. “Do me a favor, Katy,” he added. The look on her face said the name stung. Good. It felt like shit in his mouth, knowing there was nothing personal in it. Katy was who she was to everyone else. To the people who judged her without knowing her.
There couldn’t be anything personal in it. Not as long as she stayed with a group like that. Not until she was willing to cross to his side of the line, something he could see was never going to happen. “Don’t come back to me again.”
“Cade—”
But he couldn’t listen. Not if he wanted to keep it together. Not if he wanted to keep her out of harm’s way. So he walked. And hated himself a little bit more every step of the way.
…
Katrina leaned back into the uncomfortable leather booth seat, one booted foot stacked over the other. She crossed her arms snugly over her body as she relaxed.
She finally had a few minutes to rest and for the first time in a long, long while, the bar was something close to quiet. She had her room in the back to sleep in, but she’d found scratch marks on the locks and she didn’t trust any of these bastards farther than she could kick them.
She never thought she’d find herself missing the guys from the crew she’d grown up around. Those men were hard, yes, but they’d had a code. Not of honor, exactly, but trust. Not one of those men would have tempted Red Dog’s wrath by violating the bar or his niece.
These men now…Like a pack of rabid wolves, they were bound together only because they had a similar goal—money. They’d do anything for it and screw anyone over to get more. The rapid growth of the crew under Frank’s control had only made a bad thing worse. She was far safer out here in the open where the exits were only a few feet away. Trapped in a small room with four walls and a deadbolt? Like hell.
She couldn’t wait to get her hands on enough real evidence to put each and every one of them in prison for the rest of their lives. She’d spent two years around these fuckers with precious little to show for it. Who would have thought it would be easier to nail Red Dog? When she’d come home, pretending to be little more than a street scrapper who’d run out of road, he’d eventually slipped up where she could find it. Frank wasn’t so complacent.
Wired recordings from the meeting room only gave hints but nothing she could prove or prevent. Random violence and the petty shit, she had to leave to Rick and Cade. Even the local corruption wasn’t enough. She needed to get evidence on his source, but Frank kept her too leashed to know where the cocaine was coming from or even where it was headed. She needed more. The way she was going, though, who knew when—or even if—she’d ever get it.
She’d just about fallen into a much-needed doze when someone shoved her feet off and dropped into the booth with her. Someone with the unpleasantly familiar smell of mud mixed with shit, his expansive body nearly knocking her out of her seat. The charitable part of her wanted to give the benefit of the doubt that this guy had just gotten splattered with some accidental manure on the road, but she unfortunately knew better.
“Hawkings, if you want to keep your balls, you’d best get your ass out of my booth.”
Instead, a meaty hand gripped down on her thigh.
Katrina slit open her eyes.
Eric Hawkings smiled at her. He kept the top of his head shaved, so everyone could see the tattoo of a snake coiled around his skull. His thick beard was somehow still orange despite the grime cov
ering him from head to toe. She had never seen him clean. Worse, he had a death wish to get between her legs.
“Move that hand before I cut it off.” She already had her switchblade open and in hand, tucked under her biceps.
He stroked upward, his grin turning into a leer. “Hey, I just figured, since you’re already fuckin’ that cop—”
Her blade slashed out, slicing through the top of his hand and halfway up his forearm before he managed to yank it back, swearing. Taking advantage of his preoccupation with catching his own blood, she lifted both feet and planted them on his body, kicking him unceremoniously to the floor.
Hawkings continued his swearing, looking for something to wrap over his wound. She grabbed a napkin from the dispenser on the table to clean the knife. There wasn’t much blood on it, since the cut was only a surface one, but dammit, she shouldn’t have to slice a guy to keep him off her.
If only that was what had her hand shaking slightly.
There’d been a time when Hawkings wouldn’t have come anywhere near her.
You’re in the shit now, ain’t you, Katy? She could almost hear her uncle’s smug rumble. He hadn’t cared much when she’d gotten into trouble as a kid, but he had seen it as her responsibility to get herself out of it.
She still found it bitterly ironic that it was never her father’s gentle voice she heard when she was in trouble. It was always Red Dog, deep and graveling, taunting her into action. Something about his heartless approach to everything made the gears of her mind work when nothing else could. Practical. Ruthless. Effective.
No one here cares enough ‘bout your skinny ass to save it for you. So what are you gonna do?
When she was eight years old, terrified of the life she’d been thrust into, she’d done a lot of crying. But Red Dog had no patience for tears and, she’d figured out fast they wouldn’t do her any good. If she was hungry, she made herself food. If she was bleeding, she patched herself up. And if someone wanted to hurt her, she either hurt them first or hurt them worse. He didn’t accept anything less and if she meant to survive, neither could she. It wasn’t what her father had wanted for her, but she still hoped he was proud of what she’d managed to become in spite of it. In spite of him…