by Brook Wilder
“Because,” I answered, standing. “There are no tears on your cheeks which means you aren’t crying over your lost virginity. The way you have your fist clenched means you are hiding something, something you don’t want me to see.” Her eyes widened and I forced out a chuckle. “Or I just got damn lucky with my assumptions and your facial expressions are giving it away.”
Sabrina looked away and I pushed the hurt that had suddenly risen in my chest. Dammit. I didn’t want her to be like the others. I wanted her to be different. “Just tell me what the fuck is going on.”
She unfurled her hand, holding it out to me. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I didn’t trust you or the rest of the club at first, and I couldn’t very well hand it over.”
I eyed the small rectangle in her hand. “What is it?”
“It’s a SIM card,” she explained, holding up her phone with her other hand. “For phones. My father gave it to me the night he disappeared and told me to keep it safe for him.”
Well, hell. “And you’ve had it all this time?”
She nodded. “I was doing what he asked.”
I didn’t know what was on that SIM card, but something told me it was very important to the cartel. “What else?”
Again, Sabrina looked away, guilt written all over her face. “There’s nothing else.”
I crossed the room quickly and grabbed her upper arms, forcing her to look at me. “There is something else. I can’t help you if you don’t tell me all of it, princess.”
I thought she was going to deny it again. I thought she wasn’t going to tell me anything else, but when the tears glimmered in her eyes, my heart lurched sideways in my chest.
“They messaged me with a location. They want the card within seventy-two hours or they will kill him.”
Shit. I let go of her, conflicted between pulling her against me and railing at her for what she had kept from me. I wasn’t pissed about her not telling me. I could understand why.
I was pissed that if she hadn’t, she would have put herself in some serious danger, and I would have been left holding the bag, wondering what the hell I had done wrong to deserve another heartache.
Just when I started to trust someone again, they left me.
It fucking hurt. “We have to tell Chains and Widow Maker.”
Sabrina wrapped her arms around her waist, looking young and vulnerable. “I’m sorry, Harrison. I really am. I didn’t want to do this.”
“Yeah,” I said, raking my hand through my hair. “I am, too.”
She made a sound, but I was grabbing a shirt from the closet and throwing it on, my motions jerky from barely contained anger. “Get dressed,” I growled as I strode to the door. “I’ll be back.”
When I was outside of the room, I felt like beating my head against the wall. This was not what I had anticipated this morning to look like. Waking up to the rain would have meant another couple of lazy hours in bed, learning every inch of Sabrina’s luscious body.
But now, it meant I had to be Crankshaft again. It meant this brief moment in my miserable life hadn’t been real.
It had been a distraction.
Forcing myself to put one foot in front of the other, I walked to the main room, not bothering to look for the two club presidents just yet. Hell, it wasn’t even seven in the morning yet.
But it was never too early to drink.
***
Three hours later, Chains walked through the door, shaking off his coat. “Damn, it’s raining cats and dogs out there. I hope whatever you got was worth me getting my ass wet.”
I leaned against the bar, ignoring a sad looking Sabrina seated in the chair across the room. I had finally said two words to her when I learned Chains was on his way, but not much else.
Being this close to her, in the same room, threatened to sour the whiskey in my gut. “Where’s Widow Maker?”
“I’m right here,” Widow Maker said, shaking out her umbrella. “I agree, it better be good, or I am going to be royally pissed I left my bed.”
“It is,” I growled, nodding to Sabrina. “Show them.”
Sabrina unfolded her legs from the chair she had been curled up in and stood, walking over to Widow Maker. “I have something I didn’t tell you about when I first met you, something my father gave me.”
“What?” Widow Maker asked, her gaze narrowing. “We asked you if you knew anything else.”
“I know,” Sabrina answered, hanging her head. “And I am sorry for hiding it from you, but my father entrusted me with it, and I couldn’t… I didn’t trust you.”
I swallowed the acrid taste in my throat at her words. “Show them.”
She didn’t bother to look at me, pulling out the SIM card from her pocket. “I opened it but I don’t understand what I am looking at.”
Chains looked over at his wife, who glared at Sabrina. “Well, let’s take a look and see what we can figure out, shall we?”
“I can’t believe this,” Widow Maker muttered, shaking her head. “I stood up for you.”
Sabrina flinched and I wanted to come to her rescue, but couldn’t form the words on my tongue. I hated this. I hated this feeling of being torn between the club and her.
It was the same feeling I had right before Val left me, wondering if she was going to be pleased I had joined the Jesters.
A lot of good that had done for me.
“Come on,” Chains said, touching his wife’s shoulder. “Let’s go to the office.”
I fell in step behind them, trying not to stare at Sabrina’s ass. Hell, I didn’t want to feel like this toward her. Last night, when she had given me something very important to her, I felt like a fucking king. I hadn’t hidden or ignored the tender feelings toward her.
Maybe it had been time to have some of those feelings.
But now, I didn’t know how I felt. We had given her shelter, gone after her fucking dad for her, and gotten club members killed in the process.
I had let something come before the club, and now… maybe I regretted it.
We entered Chains’s office and he held out his hand. “Give it to me. I have a way to show it on the computer.”
Sabrina did as he asked, and we all watched him hook it up before a series of file folders appeared on the screen.
“What are they?” Widow Maker asked as she peered over his shoulder.
Chains clicked into one of them and let out a low whistle. “I know exactly what they are. This is a cryptocurrency wallet.”
“What, like bitcoin?” Widow Maker asked.
“Sort of.” Chains replied. “Where other people are using cryptocurrencies like cash, this wallet seems to be using the blockchain protocol behind bitcoin to encrypt the list of all the accounts the cartel uses to push money through. No wonder the accountant wanted it out of his hands.”
Sabrina’s face was drawn up in surprise. She had held the entire cartel’s money in her cell phone case and hadn’t even known it.
Shit.
“Wow,” Widow Maker stated after a moment, stepping back. “Do you know what we could do with this information? We literally have their entire fortune in our hot little hands.”
“Hell, yeah we do,” Chains replied, leaning back in his chair. “A few clicks here and there, and they have no access to their money. It will be enough to run them back to Mexico for a while.”
“There’s more,” I forced out. “They’ve contacted Sabrina. The card for her father.”
“Well, hell,” Chains answered, looking at her. “What did they say?”
“Just what Har- I mean Crankshaft said,” she answered.
The sound of my club name on her lips was foreign and I realized I much preferred her to call me by my given name.
“I have seventy-two hours to turn over the card in exchange for my father or he will be killed.”
“Did they give you a location?” Widow Maker asked.
Sabrina nodded. “It was on the message. I screenshotted it with my phone before I pull
ed the SIM card out.”
“Good,” Chains said, stroking his beard with his fingers. “I guess we will be going on another ride.”
I rolled my shoulders. “I’ll lead.” I had failed the first one and it was time for me to right my mistake.
If I hadn’t dropped the ball, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
Sabrina and I also wouldn’t have had sex, but that wasn’t something I was willing to think about right now.
“I want to go.”
We all looked at Sabrina.
“I don’t think so,” Widow Maker said, glaring at her. “You’ve already caused enough trouble by not telling us about this card in the first place. Besides, we have no interest in giving this over to the cartel.”
“What about my father?” she asked, surprise in her voice. “We are going to rescue him, right?”
“After we come up with a plan,” Chains added, giving me a look. “But Widow Maker’s right. We can’t just give them this card. This is way too valuable to give back.”
“A plan?” Sabrina asked, her eyes narrowing. “You’ll come up with a plan? My father will be dead before you come up with a plan if you do at all!”
“Listen here,” Widow Maker started, swinging around to face Sabrina, her eyes blazing. “Your father is the least of our worries right now. We tried to rescue him one time before and it cost us two club members plus Crankshaft nearly died. I’m sorry, but if we don’t make the seventy-two hour timeframe-”
“Then you will be content to let him die,” Sabrina finished for her, crossing her arms over her chest. “I thought you were out to help people, not ignore the fact that an innocent man is going to die!”
Widow Maker narrowed her eyes. “He’s no innocent. Remember it was your decision to stay with us. No one held a gun to your head.”
Sabrina’s gaze shifted to me and as much as I wanted to stand up for her, I couldn’t. Widow Maker was right. Having this SIM card in our possession would cripple the cartel. Her father was just another bystander who had gotten caught up with the wrong people.
In our world, he was expendable.
My answer must have been written on my face because she jutted her chin out, tears glimmering in her eyes. “I see.”
“We will do everything we can to go after him,” Chains offered. “I’m not promising anything, but I will do my damndest to bring him home. Give me twenty-four hours and I will have an answer for you.”
Widow Maker sat back, her face barely concealing the storm underneath. Sabrina gave Chains a sharp nod before walking out of the office.
Shit, she was tearing my heart in two. “I told you I will ride.”
“Yeah, I know you will,” Chains sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. “But if the cartel knows we have this card, they will be coming for us and I need all hands on deck.”
“I thought she had told us everything,” Widow Maker said. “I thought we could trust her.”
I did, too.
“Keep an eye on her, will you?” Chains asked as he turned back to the computer. “I’ve seen that look before. I think she’s going to try to do something stupid and will end up getting herself killed over it.”
“I got it,” I said, walking out of the room before he could say anything else. I had the same queasy feeling in my stomach about Sabrina. She hadn’t liked what she heard in there and knowing how much she cared for her father, I would almost bet my bike she would try to do something to get him back.
I walked down to the room, finding the door closed and locked. She had locked me out of my own room.
Raising my fist, I paused before beating on the door, wondering what the hell I was doing. Sabrina didn’t owe me anything. She didn’t even owe me an explanation for anything she had done.
We had only fucked once. That didn’t constitute any sort of hold on either of us. I had made no promises and neither had she.
But that look she had given me in the office was enough to make me wonder if I should have done something more. Sabrina had been looking for me to stand behind her, to push Chains and Widow Maker to be on her side.
Yet I had pretty much agreed with them instead.
What an asshole.
I lowered my fist, walking away before I made a fool out of myself. She didn’t want to talk to me now.
Hell, I didn’t want to talk to me now.
One thing was for sure, I was going to do all I could to get her father back. I would give Chains the twenty-four hours he needed, but if he didn’t come through, I would be riding out on my own.
I owed Sabrina that. I had failed the first time to bring her father back, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to fail again.
She would have her father, even if it meant I never saw her again.
Chapter 15
Sabrina
I lay curled up on the bed I lost my virginity in, staring at the opposite wall, and tried to figure out how my life had just gone from bad to worse.
I couldn’t be anywhere near him right now, not after what he had done to me in that office. Even removing his shirt and replacing it with my own hadn’t erased his smell from my skin, or the feel of his touch on my body.
Or the fact that my heart was broken.
Tears burned my eyes and I blinked them back, not wanting to cry any longer. The club wouldn’t be going after my father. They had no reason. The SIM card was far more important than my father was; it was a goldmine for an enemy of the cartel.
I had just given away my last lifeline to my father and gotten nothing in return.
I should have never trusted these people. I should have gone with the chief of police when I had the chance and never gotten myself involved in this.
I wasn’t anything special. I was a college kid, not some mean biker with nothing to lose.
The rain pounded on the roof, matching my mood, and I wanted nothing more than to burrow under the comforter and forget I even existed for a while.
I’d expected Harrison to speak up.
Or at least I had hoped he would. He knew how important my father was to me, how I wanted him safe and back home. Everything I’d done up until now was for my father. Well. Almost everything.
But he had said nothing. He hadn’t even opened his mouth. The man who had shared a bed with me last night was nowhere to be found inside Crankshaft’s eyes.
It was like he didn’t even exist.
It was then that I realized I hadn’t changed Harrison at all. I hadn’t affected him in any way, shape, or form. I had no hold over him; he didn’t have any feelings for me.
I was such an idiot.
But even as I decided on my idiocy, my thoughts kept going back to him offering to lead the raid before they had changed their mind. That had to count for something.
Or maybe it didn’t. Maybe it was just a pride thing. An excuse to get in the action. Kill some people.
Either way, I doubted it would happen now. Harrison, no Crankshaft, was such a follower of this club that I imagined he wasn’t one to step outside the lines laid down by his president.
It didn’t matter. I was going after my father. Screw them and their precious clubs. I had screwed up and given them the SIM card, but I still had the location saved on my phone.
All I needed was a car to get there.
Sitting up, I pushed my hair out of my eyes, forcing myself to get over the ache in my chest. I was an adult. I could handle what happened last night knowing there was no future for us. The thought was laughable now, having a relationship with Harrison. We were complete opposites, and once I found my father, I would head back to college and resume my life.
The life I had planned out for years.
If that was the case, though, why did my heart ache at the thought of never seeing him again? Why did I want to hold him tightly to me and never let him go?
I didn’t want to leave him, yet I knew I had to. We weren’t meant to be together.
We weren’t meant to go on with this… whatever it was.
/> Still, I owed him an apology for not telling him about the card. I owed him a goodbye. After he fell asleep tonight, I would leave in search of my father.
I wasn’t going to tell Harrison or anyone else. Despite their refusal to help me now, they had at least attempted to rescue him.
Still, I didn’t know what they would do once they had him in their possession. It was clear the SIM card had given them immediate leverage over the cartel, and having my father as a hostage would only bolster that leverage.