ONE
SILAS
It wasa little before five when I stepped out from an open bay at Torque & Talon Autobody Shop, wiping my hands on an oil-stained rag.
My guts in fuckin’ knots as I let my attention travel over the gravel drive that led onto the property.
I squinted against the sunlight pouring from above. A thick, stagnant heat saturated the summer air and slicked my skin in sweat.
Or maybe it was just the irritation boiling inside me that made me feel like I was getting burned alive.
Trevan was already out there, leaning against the white exterior wall and sipping from a bottle of beer.
His own anxiety rolled from his burly frame as he eyed me from the side.
“You think this is a good idea?” he finally asked, hard voice cutting through the tension, verbalizing the same damned thing I’d been asking myself all day.
A heavy sigh pilfered from between my lips as I looked in his direction.
Dude was pure beast.
Dark brown hair and even darker eyes. A mountain of muscle that was covered in ink and oozing the type of ferocity required of my second in command.
He was also my oldest friend. With me from childhood. I trusted him more than anyone else.
I scoffed at my own expense. “Afraid it might be one of the biggest mistakes I’ve ever made.”
Inviting more danger onto our property than we were already facing.
We’d packed our shit and left Moonlit Ridge to get my sister farther away from the bullshit I’d gotten us mixed in there, and we’d come here to Crimson Creek, a small town in Southern Oregon.
But it seemed no matter where I went, peril loved to hunt me down.
He took another swig of his beer, dark eyes narrowed back at me. “Then why are you making it?”
He was the only one with balls big enough to question me. More than that? He was the only one who’d earned the right to do it.
“He was intrinsic in saving my sister. I owe him the favor.”
Trevan chuckled a disbelieving sound. “Thought that favor was leaving him alive? Not that the bastard won’t end up dead, anyway.”
Air heaved from my lungs, and I sank back against the wall next to him as I dove frustrated fingers through my hair. “Have to believe there is some kind of good in him since he came to me and offered the information.”
“Or did he know he was a dead man otherwise?”
Uncertainty bound up my insides.
I considered myself a damned good judge of character. You didn’t live long with a life like mine if you weren’t.
But there was something about Dereck Webber that I couldn’t put my finger on.
Instinct told me he couldn’t fully be trusted.
“Don’t know. But the one thing I do know is that his sister is innocent of the whole thing.”
Trevan’s brows raised like he was questioning that, too. “You sure about that?”
“As far as I know, she doesn’t know a thing.”
