Sinner's Steel

by Sarah Castille

  “One hundred or so.”

  “Well, be sure to tell them that Evie is the best custom painter in Conundrum, probably the entire state, and while they’re here getting some new artwork, they just might want to browse the store and see what’s on offer. Like me.”

  Oh, God. Connie could lay it on thick, and she was going all out this morning. But then she’d said last night that she thought outlaw bikers were more exciting than the everyday bikers who frequented the shop. Not that Connie had led a sheltered life. Her facial piercings, tattoos and short, perky bob hinted at her rock star roots—her dad was the guitarist in a famous heavy metal band and her mother was the band manager. She’d spent her childhood on the road, and she was always chasing the same kind of adrenaline rush that had eluded Evie ever since Zane ran away.

  “You painted all those tins in the shop out back?” Jagger’s eyes sparkled. He had always encouraged her artist talent, whether it was drawing pictures in the mud beside the creek that ran through Stanton, or sketching portraits of her friends.

  “Never made it to college so, yeah, my artwork is now splashed on the gas tanks and fenders of Conundrum’s bikers. But I draw the line on stolen bikes.” Especially since the bike in question belonged to a member of Viper’s MC.

  Jagger’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly, and his voice dropped to a low, commanding tone. “I need it covered before I move it.” He folded his arms and glared, a look all the more frightening for the weapon holstered under his leather vest. “The Evie I knew would have jumped at the chance to take a bit of a risk.”

  Evie startled at his sudden change of demeanor. So this was the new Jagger. Did he really think he could boss her around, and drag her into his criminal world? Well, she knew the old Jagger and the old Jagger wouldn’t make her do something she didn’t want to do. She just hoped that part of him was still here.

  “This Evie isn’t interested in doing anything illegal,” she countered. “Like handling stolen property. I have a child at home and no one to look out for him if his mother lands her ass in jail. And since I have a strong feeling you aren’t going to pull that gun on me and make me do your bidding, you’re welcome to come and catch up in my shop while I work.”

  She would have to steer the conversation clear of her relationship with Viper—if that was what it was. Somehow she didn’t think either of the two outlaw biker presidents would be happy she knew the other. And as for risks, she’d taken one big risk in her life and it had led to both her greatest heartbreak and her greatest joy.

  Jagger’s annoyance was evident in the firm press of his lips and the tightening of his shoulders, gestures she knew very well. She suspected few people ever disobeyed him now that he was president of an outlaw MC, and the fact that she had made him capitulate gave her no small amount of pleasure.

  “I’ll just stay out here,” Connie called after them. “Alone. Stocking the shelves. Just in case any of Jagger’s friends stop by.”

  Evie bit her lip to suppress a grin. She looked back over her shoulder as she led Jagger to the shop. “I’ll send Gene out to help you.”

  Bill’s mechanics worked in the front half of the garage Bill had built when he first purchased the shop. Bike parts, rags, lifts and jacks were scattered over the wide, concrete space. Evie waved to the grease-smudged mechanics as she skirted around a few bikes to get to her paint shop in the back, stopping to tell Gene he was needed in the store.

  “Connie actually likes Gene,” she said to Jagger. “But in a brotherly love kinda way.”

  “Like you, me, and Zane.”

  “Yeah. Kinda like that.” She headed for the cupboard to gather her supplies. Bill had spared no expense fitting out the back end of the garage for her custom paintwork. He’d cut large windows on both sides and a skylight in the ceiling to fill the space with natural light. Long wooden benches ran along each wall, holding paints, supplies, her portfolio, and an assortment of fenders and gas tanks at various stages of design. She’d set up a few stands in the center to hold the tins while she worked, along with stools for any clients who wanted to watch.

  “Amazing work.” Jagger pointed to three finished fenders waiting for pick-up. “I don’t know why I haven’t heard about you before. I thought I knew all the good detailers in Conundrum.”

  “I’ve only been here a few years,” Evie said with a shrug. “If you have anything not stolen, I’d be happy to do a piece for you.”

  “How ’bout my new bike outside?” He gave her a cheeky grin. “Someone defaced it with a Black Jack patch, but really I want it to have this.” Jagger spun around to show her the Sinner’s Tribe patch on the back of his cut, the top and bottom rockers proclaiming the name of his club and the Conundrum chapter.

  “I hear outlaw bikers are very particular about their patches, especially if someone paints over them.”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “You afraid of the Jacks?”

  I’m dating a Jack. The words almost slipped out, but she bit her tongue. “I don’t like to piss off my customers. It’s bad for business.”

  “Is that why Axle was here? Is he a customer?” He dropped the question almost casually as he examined a charcoal drawing she had tacked to the back wall, but the tension in his shoulders suggested it was anything but casual.

  “No. It was personal.”

  “I remember this.” Jagger pointed to the charcoal variation of the photograph Zane had given her the night he disappeared. “We’d just finished Grand Theft Auto and Zane had the highest score. Did you do the drawing?”

  “Yeah. I still have the picture, but I wanted something larger.” Evie tilted her head to the side, considering. “We didn’t come out quite right in charcoal, though.”

  “Zane looks exactly the same now, except for—” He cut himself off with an irritated grunt.

  “You’ve seen him?”

  Guilt flickered across his face, but it was so fleeting she thought she might have imagined it. “Yes.”

  Her cheeks heated and she turned away, wanting and not wanting to know what had happened to Zane. She grabbed a soft cloth and rubbed it vigorously over the fairing she intended to paint that afternoon.

  “Does he live around here?” She tried to sound nonchalant but the question came out sounding almost desperate.

  “Yes.”

  Puzzled by his abrupt, monosyllabic answers, she looked up, but Jagger had turned back to the drawing. She had the original picture in a frame beside her bed—the frame Zane had made for her—and she often wondered if she could ever be that girl again. Happy. Content. Secure in the knowledge that nothing and no one would ever hurt her while she had Zane and Jagger by her side.

  “So … what does he do now?”

  Silence.

  “Jagger?” She gave the fairing a vicious rub, hating herself for wanting to know about the man who had broken her heart.

  “Not sure what he’s doing right now.” He shifted his weight and the hair on the back of Evie’s neck prickled. Jagger had never been good at deception. Even when they’d played video games, he would send his characters headlong into danger, often winning simply through his brute force attacks. Zane, on the other hand, excelled at games that involved risk, stealth, and strategy. Evie was the one who took chances, or tried the crazy moves that no one thought would work. Together, they made the perfect team.

  Stan, the senior mechanic, revved an engine near the door, and the familiar scents of paint and turpentine were overshadowed by gasoline fumes. When the noise dimmed to the usual clatter and bang, they chatted about their hometown and old school friends and her failed marriage to Mark.

  “I was sorry to hear about your dad.” Jagger’s face softened. “He was a good man. A good sheriff. I know you two were close.”

  Emotion welled up in Evie’s throat. Not a day went by that she didn’t mourn the loss of her father or wonder what had happened the night he caught Zane and her together by Stanton Creek. She’d waited all night for Zane to come and tell her what happene
d, to let her know he was okay. Instead, her father’s deputy showed up at her door to tell her that her dad and Zane’s father had been found dead outside Zane’s father’s trailer. Zane was missing. Suspected of murder. She never saw him again.

  “My mom died, too,” she said softly. “She couldn’t handle life without him and her alcoholism became worse. She drank herself to death two years after the funeral.”

  “Ah, Evie.” A pained expression crossed his face. “I wish I’d been there for you. I can’t imagine how hard it must have been for you to go through that alone.”

  Not totally alone. Ty had given her a reason to go on. But she didn’t mention Ty for fear that Jagger would want to meet him, and once he did, he would know, without a doubt, the identity of Ty’s father.

  “You had a good excuse.” She forced a smile and changed the subject. “So how did you come back from the dead?”

  While she prepared the bike for painting, Jagger told her about his brief stint in the army, the shrapnel that had lodged in his heart, his miraculous recovery and honorable discharge, his new life as a biker, and the love of his life, Arianne.

  “Evangeline. You have a client.” Connie’s voice echoed through the speaker system. Usually she piped in music depending on her mood, her tastes ranging from death metal to Buddy Holly, and the occasional polka.

  “I’ll let you get to work.” Jagger took one last look at the picture before turning to Evie. “The boys will be round with a cage to pick up the bike, and I’ll be sending a few brothers to watch the shop in case Axle comes back since I get the feeling if he comes in you’re not gonna call.”

  “Ratting on customers is bad for business.”

  Jagger gave her a considered look. “Are you gonna warn him we’re around if he shows?”

  She supposed that would be the right thing to do if Axle came with another message. Viper had stopped carrying a phone after the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) took a sudden interest in the biker war in Montana and set up camp in the Conundrum sheriff’s office. But she didn’t want to get on Jagger’s bad side either. “Also bad for business. I’m hoping to paint a few Sinner tins in the near future.”

  “You don’t want to get involved with Axle or the Black Jacks,” he said. “They aren’t friendly guys.”

  “And you are?” She pointed to the one percent patch on his cut that marked him as the one percent of bikers who didn’t follow civilian law.

  “We’re nice outlaws.” His face softened again, and her tension eased.

  “Isn’t that a contradiction in terms?” She was glad Connie wasn’t around to hear Evie steal her phrase.

  “Aren’t you?” He gestured around the shop. “This is the last place I ever would have expected to see my sweet, innocent sheriff’s daughter who played video games, painted landscapes, and thought the world was really a beautiful place.”

  “It was a beautiful place,” she said. “Now it’s just real.”

  FOUR

  Don’t mess around unless you know what you’re doing.

  —SINNER’S TRIBE MOTORCYCLE REPAIR MANUAL

  Zane watched Big Bill’s Custom Motorcycle shop all afternoon.

  From his vantage point on the picnic table outside the diner across the street, he could see everyone who went into or came out of the building. And what he couldn’t see—Evie and her shop out back—he imagined. And then he would picture Mark and their son, and his stomach would twist in a knot. But this time there was nowhere to run. Conundrum was his town; the Sinners’ town.

  The shop closed at 6 P.M. and the mechanics and salesclerk left together. He hated them simply because they knew Evie and because they made her smile when she locked the door behind them.

  How long had it been since he’d seen that smile?

  When she didn’t follow them out, he crossed the road, and walked around the building to the back of the shop. Jagger had spent the morning with her, and whatever she’d told him made his best friend unusually distant and frustratingly uncommunicative. But he had grunted his approval when Zane offered to take first watch on the shop in case Axle returned.

  Although tempted to look in the window, he didn’t want to scare her, so he leaned against a storage shed across from the back door. Should he wait or should he go in? What would he say? Did he really want to see her?

  What the hell was he doing here?

  He pushed away from the wall, intending to return to his bike when the shop door opened.

  Evie.

  Although he was prepared this time, he couldn’t stop the rush of blood pounding through his veins when she stepped onto the gravel, a piece of fairing in her hand. She wore tight jeans that clung to the swell of her hips, and a T-shirt, cut low enough to expose the crescents of her breasts. Her ponytail swayed gently as she held the fairing up to catch the light. More beautiful now than she had been as a girl. His words died in his throat. All but one.

  “Evie.”

  She froze, her head snapping to the side. And then her eyes widened. Recognition dawned. With a gasp, she dropped the fairing and staggered back. “Zane.”

  He had imagined this moment every night for the last nine years: the words he wanted to say; the emotions he’d kept bottled up inside—anger, despair, loneliness, and a pathetic longing that just wouldn’t go away. In the fantasy, he lambasted her for not waiting for him, accused her of betraying him, let loose a stream of shouts and curses about her inconstancy, and after unburdening his heart, he walked away.

  But he did none of those things. Instead, he concentrated on fighting back the desire to take Evie into his arms and hold her, the way he’d held her the last time they were together. Although his need for redress was strong, stronger still were the feelings he’d had for her since he was ten years old.

  “I thought it was you,” she said softly. “Last night, when you spoke … your voice, and the way you were standing … but when you didn’t say anything—”

  “You look good. Older.” Fuck. Not the right thing to say to a woman, but his tongue wasn’t working the way it should. She was beautiful and sexy, with a confidence she hadn’t had as a girl. But he hadn’t expected any less. She had always taken his breath away.

  “Well, it has been nine years. People change,” she said bitterly. “Although it seems you haven’t, except for the whole biker thing. Still the silent, brooding type skulking in the shadows. I mean, who doesn’t say hello when you’re standing in front of someone you haven’t seen for nine years?”

  “Had a job to do.”

  “So did Jagger and yet he managed to say hello.”

  Damn. This wasn’t going well. He cocked his head to the side and forced a smile, as if her anger hadn’t touched him where it hurt the most. “Hello, Evie.”

  A smile ghosted her lips, and her voice lost its edge. “Hello, Zane. I go by Evangeline now.”

  Encouraged by her gentle tone, he took one step, then another, until he stood only a foot away, close enough to see her eyes glisten. “Why? You hated that name.”

  Desperate to touch her, connect, assure himself she was real, he cupped her jaw and stroked his thumb over her cheek. So soft. So utterly perfect. Did her hair still feel like silk? Did she still wear jasmine perfume? Without thinking, he leaned down, his lips brushing over the curve of her ear as he inhaled her scent and then …

  She slapped him.

  His head snapped to the side under the force of her blow and the pain shook him out of the haze that had brought him to her side. He grabbed her hand and slammed it up over her head against the metal door, an instinctive reaction and one born of years of hard living. Evie’s eyes widened, and then she scowled.

  “You have no right to touch me. After you left, after I lost everyone I cared about, I had to start over.” Her jaw tightened and she lifted her chin, her eyes both defiant and challenging. “I married Mark Dubois after I gave up hoping you would ever come back. He always knew me as Evangeline.”

  He threw down hi
s own gauntlet, one that he had carried for years. “I saw you together,” he spat out. “And your boy.” He drew in a ragged breath. “Because I did come back, Evie. Just like I promised. You didn’t wait.” He leaned in toward her, resting his forearm against the door beside her head, her wrist still in his grip. Intimidating? Yes, given his size relative to hers and the fierce emotion that made his body shake. But she wasn’t scared. Fear made Evie tremble and she wasn’t trembling now.

  “I waited three long years for you.” Her eyes blazed with fury despite the fact he was holding her against the wall, caging her with his body, more than capable of breaking the fine bones of her wrist with only the slightest squeeze of his hand. But his Evie had never been a coward.

  “Everyone said you killed my dad, but I didn’t believe them,” she continued. “I said you weren’t a killer. I said the Zane I knew would never do anything like that. You would never hurt me that way. So I waited for you. I thought you’d come back for me. Explain. But you never did.” Her voice tightened with emotion. “How hard would it have been to call or text? How long did you expect me to wait? But that’s not what it was about, was it? You got what you wanted from me and moved on. You hurt me, Zane. You made me realize I didn’t know you at all.”

  He would have waited for her forever, but he wasn’t about to tell her that. Not when she was clearly lying to him. “You already had a kid when I came back,” he growled. “So don’t pretend you waited. He was walking for fuck sake. How long was it? One month? Two? Were you seeing him before I left?”

  Bile rose in his throat at the thought of her and Mark together. A rising star on the football team, Mark had been sidelined after he was arrested for drunk driving. Zane had warned him away from Evie shortly after he was released on bail. She’d suffered enough with an alcoholic parent. She didn’t need to be dumped back in the cycle again. His Evie deserved better.

  Better than Zane.

  “No.” All the anger and passion drained out of her and she sagged against the wall, his hand on her wrist seeming to be the only thing that held her up. Evie? Backing down from a fight? Emotion welled up in his chest, an unfamiliar, uncomfortable sensation. He didn’t do emotion. He didn’t do feelings. He’d locked up that side of himself long ago when he became a Sinner and channeled all his energy into the club.