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“Thank you,” she said. “Years of practice.”

Lock didn’t say anything. He stood with his arms folded and looked back down the road the way we’d all come in.

“They’ll come for this,” he said.

“They’ll come for her,” I said. I looked at Preacher. “It was Vega who shot her boss. Left-handed, of course.”

Preacher’s face went hard. He knew exactly what that meant. Then he decided, the way he always does.

“Guns go to the clubhouse. Get a prospect out here with the truck. The plane stays where it is, and we put somebody on it. Anybody comes looking, I want to know who.”

Mya looked from Preacher to me and back. “Aren’t you going to call the sheriff?”

Every man there turned and looked at her.

“You want us to?” Preacher asked.

She opened her mouth and shut it again. “No,” she said. “My name’s on everything that plane’s ever carried.”

“Then you come inside our walls, where we can keep you alive. Vega’s going to want you back. You’re the only person alive who saw him kill a man.”

Her face went a shade whiter. She nodded.

“She’s with me,” I said.

It came out short, like somebody had just handed me a flat tire to fix.

Preacher looked at me for a beat longer than he needed to. Havoc looked at Deacon. Deacon looked at the sky with a smile.

But nobody argued.

The prospect came out with the club truck, and the brothers started carrying crates out of the plane. Mya stood there with her own jacket around her shoulders and watched every one go past. I didn’t know what she was thinking, but if I had to guess, I’d have said she was thinking that she’d just had one of the worst days of her life.

I put her on the back of my bike myself. I buckled my helmet on her head and took her good arm and set her hand flat on my stomach.

“Hold on tight with that one. Keep the other one in your lap and I’ll go easy.”

“Okay.” She settled in nervously behind me. “You know, you could try smiling once in a while by the way. It won’t kill you.”

“It might.”

I kicked the stand up and pulled out onto the road.

She held on tight all the way into town. Her thighs fit along the outside of mine. Her breasts pressed into my back every time she shifted, and every pothole I couldn’t miss made her breath catch against my neck. By the time we hit the town line I was hard as hell and cussing myself out under my breath.

She was hurt and scared to death. She’d held on to me because I was all she had.

It was the longest eight miles I’ve ever ridden.

The prospect on the gate swung it open. I rode through, parked by the clubhouse door and helped her off.

The main room went quiet when she walked in behind me. The pool game stopped.

Mya lifted a hand and gave the whole room a little wave.

“Hi,” she said.

A room full of tough bikers and half of them actually waved back.