by Brook Wilder
But it was my sister’s memory that had kept me going. I couldn’t just forget about her death, nor pretend everything was okay, because it wasn’t. It was far from okay in more ways than one.
Seth never understood that and never would.
So, I stared into those eyes I knew so unbelievably well once upon a time, those eyes that had held my future and lied. “No. I didn’t want to come back.”
The warmth in his eyes died and he turned away, his shoulders tense under his t-shirt. “Get in. Let’s get you back.”
Chapter 8
Seth
I splashed the water directly on my face, watching the dirt and blood mix together in the sink. My right shoulder ached from taking the butt of a gun right to the bone, and the cut above my eye seemed to not want to stop bleeding.
But I was alive, which was more than the other guy could say.
Shutting off the water, I took the towel and pressed it to my eye, staring at my reflection in the mirror. I didn’t enjoy killing anyone, but when they came at you with that steely glint in their eye, it was either you or him. The Azteca had put up a good fight, but when I drove that knife in his chest, I hadn’t felt anything but sympathy for him.
For this damn war.
I winced as I pulled the towel away from the cut, nothing the fresh, gummy scab. Good. I had shit to do.
Walking out of the bathroom, I made a quick stop in the small room the council all used to sleep in at the clubhouse when the need arose, rooting around my drawer for a clean set of clothes. While I wanted a real shower and a few hours sleep, I had no choice but to forgo that for now. The last two weeks had been hell on the club, the hit and run assaults becoming the norm for us. Both clubhouses, Jesters’ and Bitches’, had doubled down on security as a result.
Some members had even taken to sleeping on the floor inside the clubhouse, not wanting to be killed in their beds. I had taken to the road, cutting down Aztecas who showed threat and warning the others who hadn’t.
And I hadn’t seen hide or hair of Salamanca, or any results from our truce. I had tried to seek him out, tried to get in touch with him, but it was like the man had dropped off the face of the earth. I needed an answer, we needed to stop this before the feds got too deep into our shit.
I felt like I had been duped.
Rex and the rest of the council members sat in the war room when I walked in, looking just as bad as I felt. “Well, good of you to join us, Chuckler.”
“Shut the fuck up, Ironsides,” I said, dropping into a seat next to him. “Unlike you, I care about how I smell.”
“But not how you look,” Machine Gun drawled. “I mean, you didn’t change that ugly mug of yours.”
I flipped him off, glad we could still joke around after what we had been through today.
“Alright,” Rex stated, silencing us all. “We have to discuss our involvement with the ATF.”
Surprised, I sat up a bit straighter. I had brought Rex the plan I proposed to Alisha, both of us agreeing there was no way they would give us all immunity in exchange for the Aztecas. The matter had been dropped that night and I hadn’t reached out to her since.
Hell, I hadn’t had time to. I was too busy keeping my ass alive.
Rex looked over at me. “Alisha Poole.”
“Yeah so?” I asked. The other guys’ eyes widened.
“I need for you to feed her some information about the Aztecas, good information. We want to show we are willing to work with the feds.”
“What the hell?” Ironsides asked, looking at the Jester president. “We are gonna work with those assholes?”
“Yeah, we are,” Rex said, staring him down. “I prefer not to go to prison and if this is how we can stay out of it, then we got to do it.”
“Why do we have to work with them?” Machine Gun asked. “Can’t we just stay the hell away from them?”
“Because you know that won’t work,” he answered. “We are gonna control what we tell them, keeping some of it to ourselves until the time is right. Chuckler, you will be in charge of this. No one else other than Alisha will be told this information, got it?”
“Got it,” I said, the thought of seeing Alisha again causing me to worry. I had been so pissed at her the last time I’d seen her, pissed that she outright lied to my face about wanting to come back here. I could see it in her eyes that she had wanted to come back.
To me.
And now, I was about to prove it. I knew I should let her be, let her do her job, but there was no way I could do that.
***
An hour later, I sat in the diner, fiddling with a napkin when Alisha walked through the door. She was dressed down today, in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt that showed off her toned arms, her hair down around her shoulders in large curls.
She looked nothing like the ATF agent about to bust my balls.
“Hey,” I said as she slid into the booth.
“Hey yourself,” she answered. “Who did you get in a fight with?”
“Azteca,” I answered, the pull on my shoulder reminding me I was gonna hurt in the morning.
Her smile dimmed and she looked wary. “I heard there was some skirmishes. What brought those on?”
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “But it’s bad, Alisha.” While I had won mine, we had lost three Jester members over the last two weeks. With already thinning ranks, it was the last thing we needed.
“I’m sorry,” she said after a moment. “I want to help, Seth. I really do.”
“Which is why I have you here today,” I interrupted. “Our president has decided to work with the ATF.”
Alisha’s eyes widened, a hopeful spark there. “Really?”
“There are some concessions. We only speak through you. He doesn’t trust anyone else not to screw us over. We control what we give you and not the other way around. You can ask all the questions you want, but I’m only gonna give you what has been approved.”
“Alright, what else?”
I leaned forward. “All of it will be about the Aztecas. We will not share any of our secrets.”
She frowned at that. “I hope this information is going to be worth my while.”
“I wouldn’t bullshit you on this,” I told her. “It’s gonna be worth your while, Alisha.” Rex had given me full choice on what I shared with her, knowing I knew better than to tell her everything.
Though if she got me into bed, I couldn’t guarantee anything.
Shit, now I was thinking about her naked. How different would her body look? How much had the years changed both of us? “You ready?”
Alisha pulled out her cell. “Can I type it out?”
“Yeah, “I answered as she flipped through the apps. “Just don’t film me. This is all anonymous, Alisha. I won’t testify. I won’t even admit to telling you anything.”
“Okay, that’s fine,” she breathed, her eyes shining with excitement. A spiral of white-hot heat shot through me as I thought about how she could repay me for my information.
Shit. “There are two warehouses. I texted you the addresses. They are where the Aztecas hold most of their supplies, including their guns. There will be four of them outside, four inside, but they change out guards every day on the nines. If you can hit them then, there will be very little resistance.”
Alisha finished typing the information, staring down at her phone. “Wow, this is great, Seth, really. We can take away their arsenal and potentially stop the hit and runs in the process. I’m sure that will help y’all out.”
That was exactly why Rex had told me to say this. We needed help stifling the Aztecas and if the ATF could get involved, they would snuff out the small pockets, leaving us open to handle the big ones. “That good?”
“It’s perfect,” she said, looking up. “I’ve already sent it on to my commander out here. We should be hitting them in the next forty-eight hours.”
“Good,” I said, leaning back on the bench carefully. I must have winced.
; Her brows knit together and she pushed her cell phone aside. “Are you alright, Seth? It wasn’t just the cut on your eye, was it?”
“I’m fine,” I forced out. “Just a bump here and there. Nothing serious.”
She didn’t look like she believed me. “If you need to go…”
“I want to have dinner with you,” I blurted out, cursing inwardly when her eyes widened. “As payment for the information.” I wasn’t ready to let her go. I wanted us to spend some time together that didn’t have anything to do with the club or the Aztecas. “Please.”
“Alright,” she flushed, tucking her cell back into her pocket. “You know I’m never one to turn down free food.”
I grinned as I passed her a menu. “If I remember correctly, you love a good patty melt.”
“And my fries dipped in a milkshake,” she added, giving me a small smile. “I haven’t done that in a long, long time.”
“Now’s the time,” I said, not bothering to look at the menu. I came here with the two rugrats often enough to know what I wanted to eat.
I much preferred Alisha’s company tonight. I didn’t know why, but something felt right having her sit across from me right now, like we were two old friends catching up. I wanted to forget we should be enemies, that we shouldn’t even be talking in the same vicinity, and maybe even remember some of the good times we had together.
Because we did have some good times. Hell, we had a lot of them. I was the person who taught her how to ride a motorcycle. She taught me how to make a proper spaghetti.
I was the one who took her virginity and she was the one who stole my heart. There were years of history between us.
History that couldn’t be repeated.
The waitress came over and I couldn’t help but grin when Alisha ordered the exact thing I had suggested, handing her menu over. “What?”
“Nothing. Tell me about Virginia.”
Alisha drew in a breath, playing with her straw wrapper. “Not much to tell. There’s a lot of green there, busy city, nothing like here.”
“Do you like it there?” I asked, interested as to what her life was like on the other side of the tracks.
She shrugged. “It’s okay. The job keeps me pretty busy and on the road a lot, so I haven’t really even had a chance to enjoy living there.”
I knew the feeling. Lately I had been lucky to see my own house for more than two days in a row. I had gotten used to sleeping against my saddlebags or crashing in the clubhouse. There were a ton of things I needed to do to the house but couldn’t find time to do so. Luckily, I had a cleaning lady, or it would be really bad.
“Well, well, well, what do we have here?”
I looked up to find Alisha’s partner smirking at us, his hand resting on his gun.
“What are you doing here, Jon?” Alisha asked, looking around.
“More importantly, what are you doing here with this trash?” Jon fired back, eliciting a growl from me. I wanted to bash his head in on the table so badly I could taste it.
“I’m conducting business,” Alisha said softly, though there was a lethal edge to her voice. “Now why don’t you leave us alone so I can do my job?”
“I didn’t know your job included dinner and movie,” Jon joked, his eyes coolly assessing me.
I gave him my best grin, wiling him to put a hand on me. No, I was begging him. I wanted to smash his smirk into his face with my fist.
“Just leave it alone, Jon,” Alisha said. “I’ll catch up with you later.”
“What about now?” Jon asked, his eyes on me. “Why don’t we take this fucker in and then we have dinner and catch up.”
That was it. Slowly, I stood up, towering over the ATF agent. “Why don’t you try?”
Alisha slid out of the booth and stepped between us, her hand on my chest. If I hadn’t wanted to smash her partner’s face in, I might have noted the way my heart sped up a notch with her innocent touch.
“Come on guys. There is no need for this. Jon, please leave.”
“You’re taking his side?” her partner asked incredulously. “Really? He’s a criminal, Alisha, not even fit to be sitting here with you.”
“He’s helping me with the investigation,” she said, her voice even. “And you are interfering.”
I shot her partner a look, just adding fuel to the fire. The first punch came out of nowhere and I pushed Alisha out of the way as Jon’s fist deflected off my shoulder before I launched at him, tackling him into the table across from the booth. People screamed as I pulled Jon off the table, grabbing his shirt and hauling him up off his feet. His eyes were wide when I brought him close to my face, wanting him to hear every word.
“I should hit you for throwing that punch, but I don’t want to be thrown in jail for some bogus charge, so I am going to throw you out of here.”
“Let me go!” he yelled as I kept my grip on his shirt, walking to the door the best I could. “I will have your ass for this!”
“You better leave my ass alone if you know what is good for you,” I growled, pushing open the door and throwing Jon outside onto the gravel. He landed with a thump and I stood in the doorway.
He got to his feet, wiping the white chalk from his clothes. “You are going to regret that, you fucking asshole.”
“Bring it,” I said. “Let’s see what you got.”
Alisha came into view, anger vibrating through her body. “Just leave, Jon, please. This isn’t solving anything.”
He looked like he was going to come back in, but at the last minute, turned, walking away.
I loosened a breath, really not wanting to go to jail today as I turned back to Alisha. “Shall we go back to our dinner?”
She bit her lower lip. “Maybe I should go after him.”
“No,” I bit out, forcing myself not to touch her in any way. “Let him blow off some steam.” It was clear to me that Alisha’s partner wanted more than just a working relationship with her, and I didn’t know how much she recognized that, but a man already obsessed with someone he didn’t have was like a ticking time bomb.
I just hoped I didn’t have to kill him in the long run.
Chapter 9
Alisha
I bit into my fry, feeling a bit more relaxed than I had an hour ago. After the confrontation with Jon, I had been on edge, afraid he would do something stupider than he already had and I would be forced to choose between my career and Seth.
I really didn’t want to have to make that decision. It was already bad enough that I had stood up for Seth in front of Jon in the first place. But Jon was in the wrong. Seth had done nothing to provoke that attack, keeping his wits about him until Jon had thrown the first punch.
What the hell had he been thinking?
“That’s some deep thought there.”
Seth watched me, his drink in his hand.
“What?”
He motioned with his hand. “When you do that brow-knitting there. That’s when you are thinking too hard.”
Of course, he would notice that. “I’m fine. I’m just thinking about my next steps in this investigation.”
Seth put his drink down. “Let’s not talk about that right now, alright? It’s not pleasant dinner conversation.”
“Alright,” I echoed, glad to be rid of the load for now. “What do you want to talk about?”
“I don’t know,” he answered. “Why don’t you ask me a question and I will consider answering it.”
Arching a brow, I settled back in the booth. “Consider answering it?”
A grin appeared on his handsome face and my heart turned over in my chest.
“Yeah, I’ll consider it.”
“Well then. What’s up with you and Mama Bear?”
Seth exploded into laughter. “That’s your first question?”
I nodded, really, really wanting to find out what had gone down between the two of them. After she and I had spoken, I thought about what other women had tried to get Seth’s attention, and why none of the
m had been successful. I would have thought he would like her, since she was strong and a take-no-prisoners kind of woman.
“Fine. There’s nothing between us. I help her out from time to time.”
“So, you never slept with her?”