by Kati Wilde
“Close enough,” Travis says and looks to my dad again. “I guess Mrs. Wall must spend a lot of time pushing job ideas Anna’s way. I remember in high school, we couldn’t turn around without her pointing us toward an application or scholarship. A real go-getter. I can’t imagine she’d give up on her own daughter.”
“On Anna? Clara doesn’t push anything on her.” My dad glances at me, slightly baffled, then all at once he frowns. “I thought you liked working at the Den. Are you looking for another job?”
“I do like it,” I reassure him. “And I’m not.”
“Well, then,” he says, shrugging.
And that settles it.
Every relationship in my family is basically that simple. Sure, we fight and push each other’s buttons, but when we boil it all down, they love me and want me to be happy. I want the same for them. And somehow, we’ve managed that. Not that it’s always been easy.
My dad calls himself a stumbler—whenever a bad situation comes up, he stumbles into something good from it. He claims his stumbling luck started when he met my mom, when he literally stumbled down a flight of stairs, breaking his leg and slamming into her when he reached the bottom.
Years later, about the time my mom and dad realized they couldn’t have children of their own, one of his cousins was killed in a car wreck, leaving behind a toddler—Aaron, my brother. They adopted him, then adopted me not long afterward.
Then I got sick. Acute lymphocytic leukemia. I was five.
The individual cure rate for children is high for that specific cancer, but not every family survives having a kid with leukemia. The stress, the fear, the medical bills…they can be as toxic to a healthy relationship as chemo is to healthy cells. Some parents look for more comfort than a spouse can give. Some siblings resent the family’s focus on the sick child. For my family, the two year battle seemed to unite us, instead. I was just a little girl, but I felt it. Even though money was tight, even though my mom had to spend so much time away from her office that she lost half her clients, even though my dad lost his job as a property inspector—which meant his health insurance went bye-bye—it was as if Mom, Dad, and Aaron banded together and decided that as long as I was okay, all of the other hardships didn’t matter. Even after the cancer went into remission, that never really changed.
And my leukemia was the bad thing that brought us here all those years ago. After losing his old position, my dad stumbled into a new job in real estate, we moved from Portland to central Oregon just in time for him to ride the local housing boom, and my mom began working as a counselor at Pine Valley High.
Everything since then has been pretty damn good.
I’m not a stumbler, but I know I’ve lived a charmed life—and it’s all because of my mom, my dad, and Aaron. Because they brought me into this family.
So what if I get choked up about it now and then? Like right now.
I simply can’t imagine losing any of them.
7
Gunner
“I guess Blowback didn’t have to break your pretty little head open, after all,” Zoomie says to me as we grab a couple of stools at the bar in the Erickson’s rec room. “Good thing, since you can’t afford to lose the brains.”
I toss her a bottle of beer and sit. “You’ve been doing all right without any.”
“When you’re this fucking hot, you don’t need brains.” Sliding her hand over her pale blond buzzcut, Zoomie grins one of her dazzling grins. Her knuckles are roughed up, and a butterfly bandage at her hairline tells me that when she and Blowback went looking for info about the Iron Blood, they didn’t always ask nicely. “But maybe Blowback’s just deferring to the prez, so he can bust your head open.”
Maybe. Three days ago, I put off the prez when he told me to come home in time to pay my respects to Red. Then Blowback showed up in Phoenix last night and told me I had two choices: to fly back to Oregon willingly or be dragged unconscious aboard the plane.
Coming from most men, that threat would be bullshit and bluster. Not when it comes from Blowback. And if most men threatened me, I’d change their tune quick. I’m good with my fists and feet. Damn good.
Blowback would wipe the floor with my bleeding corpse.
It didn’t come to that, though. I’m stubborn but not stupid. In the past week I tracked down members of every single club that attended the rally in Cactus Gulch. If there was any trace of Stone to find, if there was anyone who’d seen what had gone down in the Ponderosa’s back lot, I’d have found them. But by last night I was so damn tired, I don’t know whether I’d have recognized a trace if I’d seen it. The few hours on the plane this morning was the first solid shut-eye I’ve had in a week.
I’m still tired as hell, but my head’s on straight again. So it’s the right time to sit down with the prez and the few Hellfire Riders who are aware of what’s really going on with Stone.
There aren’t many of us. The prez wanted to keep this quiet and I assume he’s acting on the advice of Blowback, the Riders’ warlord. And although a part of me wants to blow this shit wide open, hoping something will shake out, it’s probably best to play it Blowback’s way—because although blowing shit open sounds damn satisfying, we don’t even have a solid target yet.
And, Christ. I don’t want to see the look on Anna’s face when we tell her Stone is missing. Seeing her standing over Red’s grave, seeing all her hurt and grief…that’s more pain than she should be feeling in a lifetime. Add on her realization of how I’ve been pretending to be her brother, texting her for more than a week? Jesus.
Better to just get Stone home.
Blowback settles back against the edge of the poker table. His posture’s casual, his arms crossed over his chest, boots planted at shoulder-width. But you only have to look at his eyes to see there’s never anything casual going through his head. They’re empty, as if every emotion in him is dead.
I’ve killed. It’s sometimes simple but it’s never easy, even if it’s necessary. For Blowback, killing another man is about as difficult as putting on a pair of socks.
His gaze warms slightly when it skips over to Zoomie, then flattens again when he glances toward the door. “We just waiting for Thorne?”
The prez nods and drags out a leather club chair from beneath the table. Normally we’d be holding a meeting like this in the prez’s office at the clubhouse, but Saxon doesn’t want to head out there. I’m guessing he doesn’t want to leave Jenny, even though her house is full of mourners and she’s surrounded by people wishing her well. He doesn’t want to be gone if she needs him.
It’s the same reason Blowback had to drag me home. I wasn’t going to leave Arizona, not without Stone—fearing that the second I looked away, I’d miss a sign pointing to where he’d been taken.
The prez sinks into the chair and slides a big hand through his dark hair, looking exhausted as fuck. It’s not often he shows that. Hell, he rarely even sits his ass down, let alone sits low in a seat with his legs sprawled, rubbing his face and letting loose a heavy sigh.
He eyes me. “Glad you could finally fucking show up.”
There’s no answer to that and he’s not really pissed. If he’d been the one with Stone last weekend, if a brother had vanished right beneath his damn nose, someone would have had to drag him home, too.
The door opens and the veep comes in. Thorne’s got almost thirty years on everyone else in the room, but it’s not just age sitting on his face today. Haggard and worn, he looks like the rest of us have probably felt since Stone went missing and Red took that final ride.
The difference is, I’ll be getting my friend back. Red won’t ever be making that return trip to Thorne’s side.
“This it?” Thorne asks and claims the stool next to me, bringing with him the scent of cold winter air and Marlboros—a scent that takes me straight back to a woodpile behind my mother’s house, with my father sitting on a tree stump with a cigarette dangling from his fingers, wearing a grin on a face that looks just like mine.
Jesus. I rub my eyes, try to focus.
“This is it,” the prez says, then looks to Blowback. “So where are we at?”
Where we are is nowhere new. Most of the intel Blowback has on the Iron Blood is essentially what we already knew—but he lays it out again, to make sure we’re all on the same page before we move forward.
In the past week, he and Zoomie picked up a hell of a lot of details—the members’ road names and real names, the location of their clubhouse, which MCs they’re friendly with—but none of it’s what we’re looking for: the Iron Blood’s connection to the Cage.
If there is a connection. We’re making a lot of assumptions right now. But my gut says it all fits.
Quiet falls when Blowback winds up. We’re all riding the razor edge of exhaustion and frustration, and for a long moment we just look at each other’s grim faces, as if hoping to see some solution dawn bright in someone else’s eyes.
But the only solution I’m beginning to see isn’t bright. It’s like a rotten virus worming into my head.
It’s been squirming there all week. And it looks a lot like Strawman.
“Can we grab one of the Iron Blood?” The veep breaks the silence. “Make them talk?”
Blowback shakes his head. “If we did, we’d lose them. When the cartel running the Cage gets wind of a club fucking up, they cut all ties. That’s what they did with the Devil’s Hangmen.”
After Zoomie was taken. The Devil’s Hangmen were a pain in our ass before that, forming a new local chapter and taking over the Eighty-Eight’s old territory in the next county over. Then they fucked up by grabbing Zoomie and not delivering her to the Cage—and the whole deal between their club and the cartel went sour when the Hellfire Riders quietly made the cartel’s delivery man disappear.
The Devil’s Hangmen folded their local chapter and crawled back to Las Vegas. Blowback’s source inside their club says the Hangmen have been blacklisted. The cartel won’t do business with them again.
But there’s always another club that can take their place. With the kind of money a cartel throws around, finding assholes to do business with is never a problem.
The prez says, “We can’t risk shaking loose the Iron Blood’s connection to the Cage, not when it’s the only connection we have—and not with Stone dangling out there.” He eyes Blowback. “Can you pose as a prospect, get into their ranks?”
“With more time,” the warlord says. “But we don’t have enough.”
Because if Stone’s in the Cage, then every fight is a fight to the death. Every fight might be his last. So we need a way in, and we need it fast.
My chest suddenly weighs a goddamn ton. I don’t know how it’s so heavy when everything inside it feels so fucking empty.
“I’ve got a way in,” I say.
They all look to me.
“The Notorious Few,” I tell them. “They’ve already got ties to the Iron Blood. Their VP is working out a business arrangement with them. So I’ll join up with the Few and find out more.”
Zoomie narrows her eyes. “You said the Iron Blood saw you in Cactus Gulch. You don’t have a forgettable face. They won’t be suspicious if you suddenly show up in another club?”
“They won’t know I’m the same person they saw wearing a Hellfire Riders’ kutte. There are four members of the Notorious Few who look just like I do.” I’ve never been glad of this before. For the first time, I am. “The Iron Blood won’t know the difference.”
“Jesus,” she says, her flinty gaze raking over my face. “What the hell do they put in the water where you’re from?”
“Their own special brand of Kool-Aid.” Which probably isn’t news to everyone here. Blowback’s looking to the prez. I don’t know how much the warlord knows about my family, but part of his job is knowing who and what might ever threaten the club and its members. So I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s aware of exactly who the Notorious Few are.
And I don’t know how much he told the prez, but the way the boss is staring at me, I’m thinking Blowback must have mentioned some of it.
“I’d be wearing another kutte,” I tell the prez, just so it’s clear exactly what’ll be required if I do this. “Going in and asking nicely won’t cut it. They’ll want me to fall in line before they give me anything.”
“Then you think they will?”
“Yes.”
His eyes are like steel. “And when you come back—will we have trouble then?”
They’re not going to let me go again. If I try to leave, it’ll come down to blood. Mine, Stone’s, theirs.
But I’ll deal with that when the time comes. For now I just say, “They’ll be pissed. But they won’t have much choice.”
“Fuck.” The boss spits the curse. He doesn’t like this. But he probably doesn’t see much choice, either.
Zoomie’s wearing a frown. “Before you take off your kutte—are we sure this isn’t just about the girl? We’re assuming Stone vanished the same way those other fighters did. We’re assuming we’re up against something big. But what if it’s something small? We run the danger of overlooking him if we’re searching for the Cage when we should be searching for this girl and whoever she wanted protection from.”
“It could be,” I agree. “But that doesn’t feel right. If we’re speaking of assumptions, her needing protection was also an assumption Stone made. But the only thing Stone and I knew for sure was that she was scared off her ass. And if she was hoping he’d protect her, she wouldn’t have drugged him.”
The security feed from the Ponderosa showed that. Cherry slipped a roofie into Stone’s glass—did it right in front of us. He chugged it down just before they left. After that, it must have been simple to get him out of the Ponderosa’s back lot. No noise, no fight. A van could swing by and just load him right up.
“If she saw him fight, she had to know Stone could turn her into pulp,” Thorne says. “So to drug someone like him, to risk pissing him off—that’d scare anyone. That says to me she was scared of something worse than what our boy could to do her.”
“Something like a goddamn cartel,” the prez agrees and looks to me again. “When you heading out?”
If I had a choice, never. But Stone can’t afford for me to put this off. “Tomorrow.”
Blowback says, “I’m heading out tomorrow, too. I’ll keep circling the Iron Blood, dig up what I can from our contacts, maybe find a way to see these cage matches.”
“Send me anything you find,” I tell him. “I’ll do the same.”
The warlord nods.
“I want Zoomie to head out with you,” the prez says to Blowback. “No one operates alone right now. You eat together, sleep together, piss together—and take one of the prospects along as another pair of eyes.” He looks to me. “Who you taking?”
“No one.” When his jaw tightens, I tell him, “The Notorious Few will help, but not unless I say I’m all the way in and I intend to stay that way. If I’ve got another Rider hovering around, it says I’m not.”
“What’s the difference? You’re going because of Stone.”
“They’ll allow my loyalty to a friend but not to another club. Because a club is family. And if they think I’ve got one foot out the door or if I’m relying on anyone but them, I’ve got nothing. But if I’m wearing their kutte, they’ll have my back.”
The prez still doesn’t like it but he nods. “I want to hear from you every twenty-four hours. You miss two days, we’re going in.”
I nod. “I’ve got Stone’s phone. I’ll use it for updates.”
“You’ve got his phone?” Zoomie’s brows shoot high. “Is that how you’ve been keeping this shit quiet? What are we telling Anna? His family?”
“Nothing yet.” It rips me up to think of them hurting, worrying. “We’ll get him back and they won’t even know he was gone.”
Her lips flatten. “So we’ll keep lying to her?”
“Yes,” the prez cuts in and his tone tells her not to argue. “
For now.”
“The fewer who know the better,” Blowback adds. “We don’t want the Iron Blood or the cartel wrapping this up tighter than they already have. Right now, they probably know we’re asking questions, but because we weren’t asking the right questions, they knew we weren’t anywhere close to the truth. That’ll change if too many brothers know—because even if we tell them to keep their mouths shut, they’ll try to help and start asking their buddies about the Iron Blood. Before long it’ll get to another MC, maybe one who’s got a brother missing. Then they’ll charge in and it’ll all go to shit.”
Zoomie’s flinty eyes are sparking as she says, “Yeah, I got all that. But we need to make sure none of what’s really going on with Stone goes past that door. Anna hears too much at the bar.”
The prez frowns. “What’s that mean?”
“Just what I said. Some of the brothers can’t keep their mouths shut and they’ll jaw off about club business right in front of her. Most of the time, it’s about shit that doesn’t matter. But this? It’ll hurt her twice. Once because Stone’s her brother and he’s in trouble, and the second time because she had to overhear what happened to him from some assholes instead of hearing it from her friends.” Zoomie gives me a look that says she’ll lay an equal measure of pain on me if that happens.
She won’t need to. I’ll lay it on myself.
Hell, I’m laying it on myself now. There’s nothing I enjoy about lying to Anna. Not even the messages we send to each other. Christ. Every goddamn hour I hope to see a new text from her on Stone’s phone. Seeing her talk to me so easily…it’s like being handed a piece of something I’ve wanted for almost a decade. But she’s not talking to me. And knowing that, knowing how I’m deceiving her with every word is a rotted ache spreading inside my gut.
Frowning, the prez looks to Thorne. “Maybe you ought to have a word.”
The veep appears almost amused. “A word with Anna or with the brothers?”
“The brothers, since she’s apparently better keeping her mouth shut than some of them are.” He eyes Zoomie. “Though maybe some Riders are a little too tight-lipped.”