Page 70 of Hidden

Nico’s lot had started carrying themselves like they owned more than their side of the line, and every week the boundary between posturing and open provocation felt thinner. The rally had been one thing. The girls disappearing had been another. The chatter about product movements, missing women, and routes being tested all painted the same picture. The Riders weren’t just shifting more drugs. They were expanding theirreach and counting on the rest of us to be too distracted, too cautious, or too fucking tired to stop them.

Dante had no intention of proving them right.

Neither did I.

Officially, that was why I was here.

Unofficially… well.

My gaze flicked through the trees toward the dark stretch of land where the Riders’ territory began in earnest, and my jaw tightened before I could stop it.

Somewhere beyond the woods and roads and patches of broken fencing sat that house, that room, that locked balcony door, and no matter how hard I tried to keep my head on the job, the image kept sliding back in. Her standing there in the half-light, pale and tense, tears in her eyes and fear written all over her face so plainly that I still didn’t know how I had ever convinced myself I was looking at rejection.

I had pounded my fist against that glass like a fucking idiot.

And she had still been more worried about me than herself.

“Don’t put the second one too high,” I said, hearing my own voice come out rougher than intended. “If they come through on foot, we need faces. Not just movement.”

Hacksaw glanced over his shoulder at me, one eyebrow raised. “Funny,” he said. “Dante said exactly the same thing when he went over the placements.”

“Then clearly it’s a brilliant idea.”

“Or you’re both getting twitchy in your old age.”

“I’m thirty-seven, you cheeky bastard.”

“You act fifty when you’re nursing a hangover.”

“Get the camera up.”

He smirked faintly and turned back to the tree, but I caught the look all the same. Not suspicion. Not quite. Just observation.

Hacksaw, like Dante, had always been one of those annoying fuckers who noticed more than he let on. The difference was thatDante tended to wear his concern in silence and scowls, while Hacksaw preferred to bury his beneath sarcasm.

For a while, that had suited me just fine.

Especially after the Rachel mess.

What a fucking shit show that had been. And it was something that had been lingering between me and Hacksaw ever since that night. Ever since those damned pub cameras had caught way more than they were supposed to.

One stupid, weak kiss between me and Rachel. It hadn’t meant anything. She didn’t belong to me, and I didn’t want her to be mine, either.

It was something we had both tried to avoid facing, until Hacksaw had done exactly what a Devils brother was supposed to do, and forced us to drag the truth into the light.

At the time, I’d been too wrapped up in everything that followed—the fallout, the war, the fight with Dante, the bullet that tore through me and the punctured lung that damn near took me out—to spend much time picking apart whether Hacksaw and I were good. Life had simply moved on in the ugly, relentless way it always did.

“Hey, can I ask you a question?” he said suddenly.

“Sure.”

“Did you go through with the tattoo?”

“What tattoo?”

“Hair buddies must not grab ass,” Hacksaw said dryly, as though he had plucked the thought straight from my head.

A burst of laughter came from deep inside me. “Damn straight I did. Dante watched the entire thing. And he chose an absolute butcher of a tattoo artist. He almost tore my ass to shreds. Do you want to see it?”