The Devil's Silver (The Road Devils MC Book 2)

by Marysol James

  “The answer to both questions is ‘pretty goddamn bad’.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Viking and Silver took her to Zack. Viking said that her eye isn’t focusing right, so he’s worried about a head injury of some kind.”

  “The fucker beat her up?”

  “Her head and face got the worst of it.” Scars sighed; this was going to be a long fucking night. He reminded himself to call Zoe in the next few minutes and fill her in. “She’s black and blue, man.”

  Ice nodded, then coldly snapped back to the matter at hand, the only one that he could actually do anything about.

  “We need the suits for the clean-up?”

  “Hell, yeah. Carpet knives too.”

  “Shit.” Ice unzipped one of the bags and pulled out two white disposable cleaning suits, the kind worn in labs and quarantine centers. “Here, Cain.”

  The other blond man took the suit. “Hell of a time for us to be without the twins, huh?”

  “You know it,” Ice said taking off his cut and stepping into the XXL suit. “Should I call for some extra hands, Innis? Cowboy’s pretty good at cleaning.”

  “I dunno. I’m not the expert and to be honest, every fucking dead body looks like a big job to me.”

  “So let’s go check it out,” Cain said pulling on his suit and grabbing a plastic bag. “You got the clothes that Silver and Jo were wearing when shit went sideways?”

  “Yeah. In the bathroom on the floor.” Scars gestured to the closed bathroom door. “Jo cleaned up so there’s a dirty towel too.”

  “And Silver’s stuff? His cut?”

  “He had a change of clothes here, so his clothes and cut are there as well.”

  “I’ll burn everything and get the cut cleaned at Meg’s tomorrow. She’ll be wondering what the hell’s going on, but a few hundred slipped into the cut pocket will keep her happy and quiet. It always did before.” Cain headed to the bathroom, pulling on surgical gloves as he went. “Meet you in the bedroom in five, Ice.”

  “Yep.” Ice looked around the living room, spotted some blood drops and streaks on the floor, saw the broken plate and half-eaten slice of pizza next to the sofa. “The action moved out here, huh?”

  “According to Jo, it started out here,” Scars told him. “Her dickhead ex smashed the front door in when she opened it up thinking that he was the pizza guy. The door hit her in the head and knocked her to the floor. Then he got all handy with his fists in the bedroom. You’ll be torching the bedsheets and mattress for sure, and maybe the whole damn bed too, if the bullet through his head made as big a mess as I think it did. Your call, man.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Ice muttered. “Jo getting hurt is all on me, isn’t it? Because I didn’t bring her home?”

  “No.”Wolf’s voice came from behind them and they turned. “That part ain’t on anyone but the fucker whose brain is blown out all over the bedroom. But what I do want to know from you is how the actual hell none of your contacts knew that Brian Fielding was still in Denver and watchin’ Jo’s place.” His gray eyes missed nothing as he stared at his hulking head of security. From his side and despite not being afraid of anything at all anymore, Ice still almost started to squirm under his President’s stone-cold glare. “You and your people had one fuckin’ job and that was to neutralize the threat. You told me over and over that said threat must have packed up and left town, and tonight shows us that that turned out to be dead wrong.” He paused and his tone turned dangerously soft and silky, the ominous undercurrent of threat coming through clearly. “How’d you get it so wrong, Johansson?”

  I – I –” Ice swallowed hard, his usual Arctic cool deserting him rapidly. “I don’t know.”

  “But you’ll find out.”

  “Yeah. I’ll find out.”

  “Tomorrow you find out.” The menace and message were both unmistakable: you find out or don’t ever bother to show your face to me again. “Tonight, you deal with the house.”

  Ice nodded. He knew damn good and well that he’d be up all night cleaning the bedroom, the hallway, the living room and the bathroom, then disposing of any and all evidence that Brian had ever been here – and then tomorrow he’d be up until he found out where the hell his intel had gone so completely wrong. Wolf wasn’t going to stand for another ‘I don’t know’ from him, and Ice was fully aware that he wouldn’t be back near Road Devils property until he had the answer that his President demanded.

  “So go,” Wolf grated out, pointing with his chin to the bedroom. “Get started. You got lots to do.”

  And once again – as always and forever – Wolf was absolutely right.

  **

  Jo lay on the bed in the clinic, watching Zack hook up her IV. She was drowsy and comfortable, her pain managed and almost non-existent thanks to whatever drugs Zack had given her earlier.

  He checked something with the tube, then looked down at her with a reassuring smile. His long blond hair reminded her of Mac and his facial scars reminder her of Scars; she guessed that he’d suffered something awful in Iraq, but she had no intention of asking. Not ever.

  “Doing OK?” he asked her, his dark eyes warm. “Any pain?”

  “None,” she said, her voice a bit dreamy. Maybe she was stoned and if so, she was totally cool with that. “I feel good.”

  “You should do.” He took off his gloves and threw them away. “I gave you more than enough painkillers to make you sleep. Just relax and let your body give over when it wants to.”

  “Hmmmm, OK.” She stretched a bit, noticing that her shoulder had stopped shrieking in agony. “Thank you.”

  “Sure.”

  She looked around the room now, taking it in properly for the first time. She’d been so exhausted and afraid and out of it when she and Silver and Viking had first arrived, she’d barely noticed anything. The clinic was closed, she knew that much: the hours of operation were posted on the door and it clearly said that it was open for business between seven and seven every day except Sunday. So Zack had shown up after hours after a phone call from Viking, and he’d promptly cleaned her up and given her a fresh nightgown, x-rayed her, done a CT scan, pumped her with drugs and popped her into a comfy bed. The place was private and well-equipped and professional, and she gazed up at Zack blearily, feeling like she was floating on a soft cloud.

  She opened her mouth to ask him where Silver and Viking had gone, because although she knew that she’d been told that less than ten minutes before, she couldn’t remember right this second. Instead she said:

  “It was me, you know.”

  “What was you?” Zack asked.

  “It was me who killed him.”

  Zack was very still. “No. Jo, that’s not right. Silver killed him.”

  “No.” She blinked hard, tried to keep her one good eye open against the steadily-rising waves of exhaustion. “Silver told me that he’d take the blame, but it was me. I shot him.”

  He stared at her fixedly. Sure, people said all kinds of crazy things when they were drugged, he knew that – but this didn’t sound off-the-wall or wrong. This sounded… truthful.

  “OK,” he said calmly. “You shot him.”

  “Yes.”

  “But Silver wants to say that he did.”

  “Mmmm-hmmmm. But he didn’t.”

  “Jolene!” Silver’s horrified voice came from the doorway. “What are you doing?”

  She turned her head slowly, every movement feeling like she was being held back by strong hands. Silver and Viking were standing there and both looked stunned, though probably for completely different reasons.

  “I’m telling Zack that I killed him,” she explained, as if she were talking to a particularly slow toddler. “Me, not you.”

  “Why?” Silver came to the bed and took her hand; he looked angry and regretful. “Why would you tell him that?”


  She stared up at him, clearly surprised at the question. “Because of what Viking said.”

  “What did I say, doll?” Viking asked quietly from the doorway.

  “You said that Zack has worked with The Road Devils many times and that you trust him,” she slurred. “You said that he takes care of you and never ever asks what happened to bring you to his doorstep.” She sighed, her good eye closing again. “I thought that all of that applied to me too.”

  “It does,” Zack said. “Of course it does.”

  She forced her eyes open. “You promise?”

  “I promise, Jo. Your secret is safe with me.”

  She lowered her voice. “Know what else, Doctor Zack?”

  “No.”

  “My headache is gone.” She giggled. “Totally gone. Finally.”

  Jo smiled at their stupefied expressions, a wide and sunny smile that was equal parts completely gorgeous and wildly confusing, considering everything. Then without another word and no warning, she dropped off to sleep, just fell into the sweet oblivion and escape of slumber.

  The men looked at her bruised face and saw that she was out cold at last, then looked at each other. After a full minute of tension, Viking broke the heavy silence:

  “So how’d it all go down, Silver? And I mean for real, not what you told us back at the house.”

  “Shit,” Silver said in an agitated tone, running his hand through his hair. “I didn’t want anyone to know about this.”

  Viking and Zack stood there, said nothing.

  “OK, look.” Silver shook his head, stuck his hands in his jeans pockets. “When I got to the bedroom, he was on top of her. He’d been smacking her around already, that was glaringly obvious, and he was just about to start again. I grabbed him, got him on the floor and started to beat the shit out of him.”

  “Totally understandable,” Viking said dryly. “How bad did it get?”

  “I was going to kill him there and then. I went into that bedroom with that exact intention.” Silver held their eyes, daring them to judge him, but there was zero judgement looking back at him. “He wasn’t walking out of that house, I knew that even as I stood outside in the yard.”

  “OK, so,” Viking said. “You were working on beating his face into the dust and then…”

  “And then I looked up,” Silver said slowly. “Jolene had his gun – I guess it had been up on the bed, but I didn’t see it – and she was pointing it at his head and he was blubbering and crying for me to help him. She told me to get away from Brian and when I asked her why, she said because she was going to finish this. She said that he deserved to die but it wasn’t going to be on my conscience, and when I begged her to think about this more, she said that she’d thought about it for long enough.”

  “Damn,” Zack said quietly. “It was a done deal for her.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, it was. And even as I tried to talk her down, I knew that. It was this weird and surreal moment where I was standing between them and hovering over him, like I was almost physically protecting him from her, but not because I wanted him to live. It was because I know what it means to take a human life – even a fucking worthless, piece-of-shit one – and I wanted to spare her that, even if she was sure that she wanted to do it.” He looked down at Jolene again, happy that she was peaceful now, because there were some dark days ahead. “It’s just such a burden taking a life, no matter the circumstances. You know?”

  The men nodded. Yes, they did know; they knew very well.

  “So.” Silver exhaled. “I told her that we both wanted him dead, so that’s what was going to happen. I offered to do it, to do it with her in the other room, to take the weight of it all on me and spare her even the sight. And she –” His voice broke off, remembering her exact words. He was never going to forget them, he knew that. “She said that the weight was hers to carry, that the witness was hers to bear. Hers and nobody else’s. And she told me to step aside, to leave the room.” He smiled, a tiny sad smile. “She even said please.”

  “So you did.”

  “So I did.”

  Nothing more needed to be said: although all three hadn’t been present in the house, all three of them knew what had happened while Silver stood outside that bedroom.

  They all knew how the gunshot had sounded, and how Jo had looked covered in blood splatter, and how pieces of Brian had flown in every direction, including up, and how the room had smelled faintly of burnt powder.

  What Viking and Zack didn’t know, couldn’t ever know, was how white and resolute Jo’s face had been as she’d handed Silver the gun and said, “There. That’s done.” They didn’t know how Silver had tenderly carried Jo down to the bathroom, stripped her of her bloody pj’s and his own clothes, then moved them both in the shower. They didn’t know how Jo had sounded when she’d sobbed like a lost little thing in Silver’s arms, how broken she’d looked covered in soap and shampoo bubbles as he’d scrubbed her clean of Brian’s filth. They didn’t hear the quiet conversation that had passed between Silver and Jo as he’d dried her off so carefully, when he’d explained over and over why he was going to take responsibility for shooting Brian. They didn’t know how long it had taken for Jo to reluctantly agree to the lie.

  Some things can be known even when you’re not there, and some things don’t need to be known by anyone except the people who were there. Brian’s death at Jo’s hands was both of those things: it was knowable and unknowable.

  And if Wolf, Scars, Ice and Cain had done their jobs properly, it was going to have never happened. Not officially.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Jo swam towards consciousness slowly, resisting it a bit because this dream world was so soft and warm, so safe and quiet. But a part of her knew that there was something important waiting for her in the world of awareness and even though it was dark and awful, it couldn’t be avoided forever. It wasn’t going anywhere and it would wait.

  It was waiting.

  “Jolene. Hey, baby.”

  She groaned at the slight pain in her head but forced her eyes open at that wonderful, rough voice calling her baby. She was sure that she’d never get used to it, certainly never take it for granted.

  And there he was, in all of his silver-blond gorgeous glory, sitting next her bed and looking all ‘I’ve been up all night’ sexy. Not many men could look hot with messed-up hair and dark circles under their eyes and a wrinkled t-shirt, but damned if Silver Bennett didn’t look smoldering and dangerous. Meanwhile she, on the other hand, undoubtedly looked like six kinds of hell. Maybe seven.

  “Hi,” she managed then coughed a bit as it occurred to her that her throat felt like sandpaper. “Water?”

  “Right here.”

  He held the glass while she drank through the straw, coughed again, then drank some more.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Better. ”

  “Besides a dry throat, how are you?”

  “Ummm.” She seriously considered the question, wriggling fingers and toes and stretching limbs, checking where things hurt and throbbed. “My face feels like someone walked over it, my shoulder feels like someone tried to pull it out of the socket dragging me around the house. And my damn headache is back.”

  He stared at her, not responding to her attempted levity. “You want some more painkillers? Zack’s just down the hall, but he left you some pills just in case.”

  “I’m still at the clinic?” she asked, panicking for some reason. “Is it open? Is it day time?”

  “Yep, yep and yep. It’s fine, Jolene, so just take a breath. The clinic has a private section far away from the waiting room and general consultation areas, so that’s where you are.” He grinned and added, “And yes, it’s day time, but not the day after the night that you remember.”

  “Huh?” She blinked at him, wondering if she was still stoned. “Again, please.”

 
“We got here at about nine o’clock on Wednesday night,” he informed her as he handed her two extra-strength paracetamol. “And now it’s…” He glanced at the clock behind him. “Just past eight o’clock on Friday morning.”

  She gulped down the painkillers with water. “So I’ve been asleep for – what? Thirty-six hours?”

  “Almost, baby. You needed it.” He stroked her hair, watched her eyes as he said, “I don’t know how much you remember, but you went through hell.”

  She held his silver gaze. “I remember everything. I remember exactly what he did to me, and God knows I remember exactly what I did to him.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, not even sure what he was apologizing for. Everything, probably. “I wish that you’d been spared all of it.”

  “I don’t,” she said, so fiercely that it took him aback. “I’m glad that he’s dead, and I’m glad that you didn’t do it. You have enough on your soul and you don’t need any more – especially not my sins.”

  Silver was silent for a few seconds, rubbing her small hand with his thumb. Then he said:

  “You know that I wanted it to be me to do it, right? I’ve pulled triggers before, baby, I’ve taken the lives of scumbag losers before. I can handle the fall-out to my soul, I know that, and I’d be happy to take it for you to have that piece of garbage out of your life forever. And I’m still happy to have everyone think that it was me who shot his fucking head off. The guys would never, ever hold it against me.”

  “Would they hold it against me?”

  “What?” Silver started. “No. Of course not.”

  “So then why can’t you let me be honest with them? Tell them that I wanted to kill him, and I told you to leave the room while I did what I wanted?”

  “Well. Because –” He stopped as the penny finally dropped that, in all reality, there wasn’t a single damn reason why she couldn’t tell the guys any and all of that. Hell, they’d probably throw the woman a parade. “Uh, well. I guess there’s no reason why not.”

  “Right.”

  “Right. OK.” He hesitated. “I mean – OK. I suppose.”