Blood Revealed (Brimstone Lords MC Book 6)

by Sarah Zolton Arthur

  A minute later, she slides an icy Coke in a bright red plastic cup across the bar top with one hand while discreetly pointing to a man sitting at a booth all alone.

  She leans into my space. “He’s been on the phone with his wife for the past half hour—even had the woman put the baby on so his ‘baby girl can hear his voice.’” She uses air quotes, which means she got that info firsthand. “Safest bet,” she finishes and I am grateful for the heads-up. Though I didn’t know I was being so transparent.

  “Thank you,” I whisper back before sipping on my soda. I’m about halfway finished with my drink when he hangs up his call and walks to the counter to pay his bill.

  I shove the money for my drink toward the waitress, grab my things, and scramble to follow the man outside without being seen by him. He heads to a large rig with a white trailer and a red cab parked under one of the parking lamps.

  He starts up the engine and the lights go on, which means he’s heading out tonight. That’s a good sign. While he situates himself, I walk up to his door and knock. It’s now or never.

  The first thing I notice is the smile on his face when he rolls down the window. A mouth full of clean, white teeth. That’s another thing to list in the pro column. Good oral hygiene—not that murderers and rapists can’t murder and rape with white smiles and fresh minty breath.

  No, Hannah… quit talking yourself out of this. You’re just scared. Things will be fine. If only I believed that as much as my head wants me to.

  “What can I do you for, little lady?” he asks. Do you for? Do murderers say do you for? They can’t; it’s too sweet. Okay, another good sign.

  He looks maybe thirty or so. His eyes appear kind but have squinting lines at the corners of each. A job hazard for truckers. Even wearing sunglasses, the sun can be bright shining through the windshield.

  He’s wearing a red hat, showing his love of or loyalty to the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., that mostly covers his head, with tufts of wavy, golden blond hair sticking out from underneath. Clean T-shirt, jeans, and work boots. All those I noticed when he was walking.

  Since el maestro is probably looking for me as I stand here deciding on whether or not to take a chance, I do it.

  Sucking in a calming breath to keep my voice from trembling, I ask him, “Where you headed?”

  “Going northeast. Heading for St. Louis. Need a ride?”

  “If you wouldn’t mind,” I answer.

  “Climb on up.”

  2.

  Blood, a.k.a. Raif

  Seven years ago…

  “Check out over there.” I use my chin to point in the direction I want the brothers to look. There’s a hot chick, one of the hottest I’ve seen in recent times, talking to a trucker. She’s not dressed like a prostitute. Instead, she’s wearing skinny jeans, flip-flops, and a pink T-shirt tied at the hip, which means she’s a runaway. Long, lightish brown hair swishes across her back as she jogs to the passenger side of the truck. Tiny waist, rounded ass, and legs for days. Something about this scene doesn’t sit well with me.

  She can’t be older than my little sister, Liv, and I’d blow a gasket if my sister tried thumbing for a ride. This chick is either naive or desperate, neither of which is acceptable when you’re young, hot, and thumbing for a ride. My gut says trouble’s gonna find this girl and my gut ain’t been wrong yet.

  Chaos and Boss, my two best friends and brothers, look in her direction. Brothers of the cut, not by blood. Though I hardly remember a day without Chaos by my side. We grew up together, prospected for the Lords together. His eyes harden when he sees her—the only thing hard on his face. The man looks like that fucking quintessential golden surfer boy. I’ve teased him enough about it over the years. But he’s like me, my little sister was like his little sister. The three of us always hung out, and when my dad pulled me away for club business, Chaos looked after Liv on his own. I was born to be a Brimstone Lord. It was my dad’s club until a fat fuck with a chip on his shoulder cut him down in his prime. Rival club.

  That was the night my fate was sealed. With Chaos by my side, we took out the fat fuck and several of his men then headed south, leaving behind my sister and the club in Chicago to hit up one of our more southern chapters in Kentucky.

  “What do ya wanna do?” Boss asks. I’m tough. Chaos’s tough. But this guy has no idea what’s about to hit him if Boss gets involved. The man’s built like a bull moose. A Viking reincarnate. We were sent down here by the club’s new president, Duke Elis; Duke’s brother, Rex, led the club until about a year ago when he was cut down in his prime. Fucking Horde. The only good Horde is a dead Horde. But Duke’s good people and needs us to make sure we still got friends now that the club’s gone a different direction.

  What do I want to do? Hundred-million-dollar question. We need to head back toward home and make any necessary stops along the way, but I can’t shake the feeling that if we don’t intervene somehow, that chick’s gonna end up on a flyer hanging on the bulletin board in Walmart.

  “Let’s follow, but hang back enough so he doesn’t get spooked and do something foolish, hey?”

  “Then let’s mount up,” says Boss at the same time Chaos pats me on the back. We mount and watch but don’t fire up because nobody’s going to ignore the sound of a Harley. So three Harleys? We’re getting looks.

  We let the truck roll out, turning right toward the interstate before we start our bikes. This distance shouldn’t alert him to our presence.

  Boss, Chaos, and I keep three to four car lengths back and follow the rig heading northeast. We ride a few hundred miles before exiting the interstate when we cross the border into Missouri.

  Tons of bikers in Missouri—hell, the Lords even have a chapter here, which means a group of bikers getting off the interstate behind him wouldn’t raise any eyebrows.

  Still three to four car lengths behind, we slow down as the rig turns into a gas station. This means we pull into the gas station to fill up and grab coffees.

  The kid behind the counter gets a pep to his voice when I walk up to pay for my shit. He couldn’t be more than seventeen—his mousy, oily brown hair, and pimples help me pinpoint that.

  “You’re a Lord?” he asks, even though the huge patch taking up the whole back of my cut has been visible this whole time I’ve been walking around in here.

  “Yup,” I answer back to the kid while keeping my eyes fixed on the rig as I slide three twenties over the counter to pay him.

  My brothers, already having paid, stand to my left sipping on their coffees.

  “How do you become a Lord?” the kid asks. Knew this was coming and maybe I’m wrong about him, but he doesn’t look tough enough to survive the Lords’ world. The life would chew him up and spit him out. Still, I’m not one to rain on someone else’s parade.

  “First up, gotta have a bike,” I tell him to both Boss’s and Chaos’s unsubtle snickering.

  “Know that,” the kid says back.

  “Contact the Lords chapter and be prepared to eat a lot of—shit! I yell that last and take off running because that fucking trucker pulled out of the gas station, turning back on the highway.

  He’s pulled a little farther than four car lengths ahead, but we keep him in sight. After another forty-five minutes, my gut gets that pitching feeling again. This dude is seriously up to no good. When he turns, he turns onto an old road trucks don’t go down. Even if he needs to rest, there are stops for that.

  We hang back in the treeline to wait. The truck eases over to the shoulder of the road and he cuts the engine. The cab begins to shake and those weigh as much as a car, then there’s a scared-shitless scream and I don’t stop to think, leaping off my bike to bolt over to the truck, ready to kill that fucker—Boss and Chaos at my back.

  She’s fighting for her life inside that cab. Taking her here, there’s no way he only has rape on his mind. It’s the perfect, out-of-the-way place to commit a rape and murder—and be able to dump the body without fear of it being found for months
or even years, if ever.

  I wrench the door open, startling the fuck. He twists to look at us and the girl uses his lack of attention to jam her knee into his gut. The brothers open the door on the other side.

  She and I lock eyes and I see the fear, desperation, and cautious thankfulness pass through hers in a heartbeat.

  Boss rips the fucker out of the truck by his shirt collar, pulling him across the girl. I reach my hand out to her and she takes it without hesitation. She falls into my arms and I set her straight.

  “Stay,” I order. She nods, allowing me to get in on the fun of ending the fucker. I don’t relish taking a life, but some people forfeit their right to live among the populous.

  We beat him until he passes out and continue beating him until his chest rises and lowers for the last time.

  “Go. Get her out of here,” Chaos orders me.

  “Come on, sweetheart. I’ll get you safe.”

  Most women either want to fuck us or are scared shitless of men like us. The jury’s still out as to which she’ll end up being, but she follows me to my bike and climbs on the back like she’s done it a thousand times before.

  In my rearview I see the flames and black smoke of his burning body to get rid of the evidence.

  I have us back on the interstate, heading back south, when the phone vibrates in my back pocket and I pull off to the gravel to answer it. “Talk to me,” I yell into the line as the cars whip past us.

  “Where you headin’?” Boss asks.

  “There’s a town about ten miles from here. The first you see for hotels. We’ll pull off there to get some shuteye before we head home.”

  “On it,” he says, hanging up. I ease us back onto the road. The girl, I don’t even know her name yet, she clings to me, holding on for dear life.

  Clicking on my blinker, I take the exit and follow the signs that point us to the hotel. I’m wiped and the sign reads Vacancy when we turn into the parking lot. I stop us in front of the office, climb off my bike, and hold my hand out to her. “Come on, sweetheart.”

  She takes my hand without question.

  “You want your own room?” I ask, and to my surprise, she vehemently shakes her head no. “You want to say with me?”

  “Yes… please.”

  That’s pretty much the extent of the words she’s spoken since we rescued her. I slap the bell on the desk and we wait for the proprietor to come out of the back office.

  “One room. Closest food joint?” I ask.

  As the old man slides me the paper to fill out, he points toward the outside. “Take a left out of the lot. It’s about a mile down the road. McDonald’s. Open twenty-four hours.”

  “Much obliged.”

  I set the pen down after filling out the form and slide them both to him. He slides the key back to me.

  “You want food first?” I ask. She shakes her head no. “Okay, baby. We’ll check out the room first.”

  She smiles the first smile I’ve seen from her and swear to Christ, my breath catches. It’s the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen. Damn. Holding her hand, we walk to the room and she drops mine so I can unlock it. There’s a rush of stale, warm air to greet us when it swings open. And there’s only one bed. She looks at the bed, then at me. The fear only shows for a brief second. I think she knows she’s safe with me.

  “It okay I turn on the air?” I ask.

  “Please,” she says back as she steps inside to check out the rest of the place.

  “I’m Bloodhound, but my brothers all shorten it to ‘Blood.’”

  “Hannah,” she answers. “Hannah Brown.”

  I know she understands the biker life now when she doesn’t even bother to ask me something ridiculous like, “Bloodhound? What? Your parents not love you?” She knows it’s my ride name.

  “How’d you end up in that fucker’s truck?”

  “He’d been talking to his wife on the phone, talking baby talk to his baby and shit. He seemed like a safe bet.”

  “Can’t trust so easily. It could get you killed, sweetheart. What if we hadn’t followed you?”

  “I had to get out of Houston last night and he seemed like the best option. I’m sorry I didn’t have time to vet my ride choices.”

  “Why’d you have to get out of Houston last night?”

  Her back goes rigid and I swear there’s real fear in her eyes. “I really don’t want to talk about it right now. If you say I have to, then we’ll part ways right now.”

  What kind of hell forced a woman her age to flee her home at night, no less? I want to ask but down to my gut know she’s not fucking around. I ask, she bolts, which means I bite back my need to know for the time being. “No more rash decisions, baby. Rest tonight. We’ll look on things with fresh eyes after we wake, yeah?”

  “Please promise me I can trust you. I want to trust you, but the men in my life make it hard to do that.”

  Fuck me. No wonder I haven’t seen her break down yet. “You’re safe with me and my brothers. We don’t hurt women. Never touched one without her beggin’ first.”

  She snickers, but hey. I gotta be real. I’m a man and she’s gorgeous. I’d hit that in a second if she gave the okay, which she doesn’t, understandably, considering everything. Instead, she folds down the top blanket on the bed then sits on the edge to slip off her shoes.

  Hannah pulls the sheet back and slips under, rolling to her side, facing the door. I take off my cut to drape over the chair and then sit to pull off my boots. “You want me to sleep on the floor?” It’s gross, but this woman’s been through enough. The choice is hers.

  “No. It’s okay as long as you stick to your side.”

  “I can do that.” I slip in under the sheet, too, rolling onto my side so I face her back.

  Once we’re both settled, she whispers, “Thank you.” And with that one word, I know I’m gone. What the hell just happened?

  When my eyes pop open again, I’m not alone on my side of the bed. I was the good boy I promised I’d be, but she didn’t stick to the rules she laid out. Her head rests on my chest with one arm draped over my stomach and one bent leg slung over my thigh. The smell of her shampoo and probably just her, fresh and flowers fills my nose. She has so much hair; it’s long and silky and spread over me and the pillow. Fuck. I want to fuck her, but I don’t even move. She needs to see there are men she can trust.

  I lie like that, every breath excruciating, for another fifteen minutes or so before she opens her eyes slowly and smiles at me again. It takes a minute more for her to realize her compromising position.

  “Shit,” she mutters, pushing herself up using the hand at my stomach. My first instinct is to keep her right there, but I let her up. She makes the rules right now. “I’m so sorry,” she says sheepishly, her eyes cast down instead of looking at me and I honestly think this is the first time this girl ever cast her eyes down. She doesn’t strike me as the type.

  “None of that,” I say. “We sleep how we’re comfortable. You found your comfortable, that’s all.”

  “Still…” She rolls back over to her side and she feels too far away. If Boss or Chaos heard the stupid thoughts running through my head, they’d never let me live it down. I roll back over on my side to face her.

  “You hungry?” I ask because she didn’t want food last night and I’m starved.

  “You wanted food last night—oh, shoot. I’m sorry. I was just so… so… rattled by that man I didn’t want to leave the room.”

  “Understandable. Though, if I’m being honest, you didn’t appear rattled to me.” I heard her crying a bit, but she doesn’t need to know that. I don’t want to embarrass her.

  “That’s kind of you to say, but I thought I was going to die in that cab, and I know how to fight, but he was bigger than me and I’ve seen more shit in my life than any one person should ever see.”

  Fuck. I want to ask. But should I? Fuck it. “You want to talk about it?”

  “No. Just—you’re in a club,” she says, t
hen pauses before finishing. “You know the life.”

  “I’ve unfortunately had my fair share of dealing with the life, yeah.”

  “Then you understand.”

  “Just so you know, the Lords, we’re not into that shit. A lot’s gone down I can’t get into with you, but know we’ve been cleaning up the club for the last year.”

  “Cleaning up the club? That can’t be easy.”

  “Sure as hell ain’t. But we do what we gotta do. None of us wants that life. Brothers at our backs, sure. The drugs and bad dealings, we’re done with.”

  “That’s—That’s amazing. I want to believe you, but it’s hard.”

  “I hurt you in any way?”

  “No.”

  “Then believe me. We’d never hurt you.”

  “Well, Escalante didn’t hurt—”

  “Escalante?”

  “Never mind,” she says and I see her eyes shut down. Dammit. I shouldn’t have asked that. Though she brought him up.

  “Let’s splash some water on our faces and I’ll call the brothers. We can check out, get some grub, and head home.”

  “Where’s home?” she asks.

  “Thornbriar, Kentucky. It’s nice. Quiet. Picturesque.”

  She cocks her head, looking at me quizzically and chuckles. “Picturesque? That’s not a typical biker word.”

  “I’m not your typical biker.”

  “I’m beginning to see that. Blood, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  She shifts to sit on the edge of the unmade bed, this time draping her legs over the side in order to slip back on her shoes. I force myself to stand, knowing I’m sleeping for a week when I get home, and walk around the bed back over to that chair to slide my boots back on.

  While I do that, she walks over to the bathroom to splash water on her face. She opens the bag she carried with her and pulls out a toothbrush. Mine’s in the saddle bag on my bike. After brushing her teeth, she produces a comb from the bag to brush out her hair.

  “Ready,” she says, stepping from the bathroom. And goddamn, a woman doesn’t have the right to look that good, especially after the night she had.