Page 5

I put the cue down on the felt. Smoke would give me shit for that later.

Chelsea. At our gate. At nine o’clock on a Wednesday night. Whatever had put her at our gate at this hour, it was bad.

Havoc heard. Havoc heard everything, especially the things that were none of his business. He leaned on his cue with his eyebrows halfway up his forehead.

“The bakery,” he said. “Sweet Thing Bakery.” He took his time with it. “Heard Deacon’s partial to sweet things.” He laughed.

Smoke kept his eyes on his beer. “Twice a week for four years. Man’s partial, all right.”

At the end of the bar, Lock made a sound that was definitely a laugh.

“Bring her in,” I told the prospect, and hung up before anybody else could get a word in.

“Want me to put some music on?” Havoc called after me. “Light a candle?”

I gave him the finger without turning around.

Four years I’d been going into that bakery. Two rolls, some small talk, back on the bike before I said what I actually wanted to say. First I blamed the bread. Then the coffee. Somewhere around year two I quit lying and started telling myself it was a bad idea instead, which had the benefit of being true.

She was Harry Laine’s daughter. Half the old folk in Salvation had her on their prayer list for staying in a dying town, and the other half wanted her married off to a dentist or someone equally nice. I was a forty-year-old outlaw biker who kept the club’s money clean enough to spend. Every version of that story ended badly for her.

So I bought rolls. I left my change in her tip jar, and I rode away twice a week feeling like a fucking teenager.

The prospect held the door, and Chelsea Laine walked into my clubhouse.

She stopped two steps in. The music, the smoke, Lock at the bar built like a load-bearing wall, Havoc leaning on his cue. She took all of it in with her shoulders back and her hands jammed in her jacket pockets, and I watched her decide to stay anyway.

Her hair was coming down. Red, wild, half of it escaped from a clip that had lost the fight hours ago. Flour on her jeans. She was pale under the freckles except for two spots of color high on her cheeks, and when her eyes found mine across the room they held on hard.

Scared. Pissed off. Here anyway.

“Chelsea.” I kept my voice low. “You okay?”

“I’m fine.” She was lying, and we both heard it. “I’m sorry. I know I can’t just show up here… but…” She trailed off.

“You can. What’s happened?”

Her gaze went past me, to Havoc, to Lock, to the bar. “Can we talk somewhere else? Somewhere private?”

My head was already running through it. Some asshole hassling her at the shop. A break-in. A boyfriend I’d never heard about, one with heavy hands. Under all of it sat one cold, clear thought. If a man had put that look on her face, he was going to be sorry he’d met me.

“Yeah,” I said. “Come on.”

Havoc opened his mouth. I looked at him. He shut it again and went back to racking balls, grinning and shaking his head.

The office at the end of the back hallway was where I did the books. A desk, two chairs, and a filing cabinet with a boot-shaped dent in the side that nobody would own up to. I shut the door and the music dropped to a thud through the wall.

“You want coffee?”

“God, yes.”

The pot had been on since about four. I poured her a mug anyway and watched her take a sip. Her whole face rearranged itself.

“That’s a crime,” she said.

“We’re not exactly legit, if that helps.”

It got me half a smile. Just the corner of her mouth, gone again fast, but I felt it at the base of my spine.