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“Thank God! A snowplow!” I held my hands in front of the vent, welcoming all of the warm air it saw fit to provide me. Maryanne shot me a hateful look and ran the tires off the edge of the road, thus causing us to fishtail. “Fuck, Annie! Please, be careful. I was not trying to piss you off. Icy roads scare the shit out of me.” The moment all four tires were back on the pavement, and in the correct lane, my body trembled, and my eyelids squeezed together. Leave it to me to have a delayed response.
“Iambeing as careful as Icanbe, Reggy.” She put emphasis on the words “am” and “can,” basically telling me to shut my mouth in not so many words. Her grip tightened around the steering wheel, and even though it was dark, I swore I could see her knuckles turning white from the stranglehold she had on the black leather cover.
“As you well know, I don’t particularly care for slick roads either, but I drove because I’ve driven on them more than you have. If you were driving just a minute ago, we’d be over the embankment and possibly dead.” Although her words seemed to be a little harsh, they were true. She had driven on these roads all of her life. She was local to the area.
I, alternatively, grew up two towns over. One would think that fifty miles would not make much of a difference in road conditions, but it did. Stonebridge had more winding roads and climbing mountains that kissed the clouds. Candiem, my hometown, on the other hand, was basically a straight shot in and out. In comparison, Stonebridge was more exciting any way you looked at it. Even the people seemed more fascinating here than the ones I grew up around back home.
Saying we were happy when we finally reached the bar was an understatement. Even if I wasn’t looking forward to the party, I was ecstatic we hadn’t wrecked on our way. As soon as Maryanne put the truck in park, my feet were popping out of the passenger’s side door and doing a happy dance in the snow the moment they hit the ground.
A flood of lights glittered on the snow surrounding my one-woman victory circle, and I froze in place. When the lights shut off, a shadow of broad shoulders was all my eyes could focus on. “Bird, is that you?”
I’d never been called that in my life, so the man clearly wasn’t talking to me. Regardless, my eyes strained to focus on a face I wasn’t able to make out, but I didn’t call back to him. Instead, I made a beeline around the back of the truck, planning to hold onto Maryanne for support once I reached her. She picked out these ridiculous boots that didn’t have the tiniest bit of tread to them, so if I was going down, she was, too.
Before I made it around the second taillight, a loud bang zipped through the air, and the tire I had just passed popped.
“What in the hell?” I asked, looking at Maryanne as her mouth dropped open. The next moments were exceedingly slow, or maybe they were fast. I really had no idea. Another boom thundered into the atmosphere, and the sound of something metallic ricocheting off my fender followed the first. It wasn’t until now that I realized what was happening. Someone was shooting at me, or at the very least, my truck. I had to get us out of here and quickly. My shoe stomped into the snow as I ran in the direction of Maryanne, having no idea where to go once I reached her. “How about we get the hell outta Dodge?”
She nodded frantically from behind the driver’s door where she was hiding.
My hand reached for hers, and as soon as I leaned forward, my feet flew above my head. My skull smacked against the ground with a nice crunching sound. Pain coursed from the point of impact and then slammed viciously into my eye sockets. Shortly after, a blanket of warmth spread across my body, and a small crowd formed around me, but the faces were blurry.
“Shit! Reggy!” Maryanne shouted in a hurried voice, rushing to my side. “Are you okay?”
I wanted to answer her—Ineededto answer her, but my lips refused to form words as if I had forgotten their existence.
“Come out of it, gorgeous. I got you. Don’t worry. I’ll keep you safe,” a deep masculine tone coerced, and I tried to fight to stay conscious for him. Warm, muscular arms scooped my body from the ground, and they tightened around me like a possessive blanket. The smell of leather and whiskey was unmistakable, but they strangely brought me comfort. My eyelids closed of their own accord as if this were the perfect time to take a nap—in the arms of a stranger. Alarms blared inside my mind, and dread blasted through each cell surging in my blood. Every part within me fought to stay awake, but it did not help. Everything went black.
Chapter7
Stone
“Fuck this! Someone fucking shot at her!” I spat out, sprinting into action, jumping out of Sticks’ car. Sticks and I had trailed Reggy and her friend for a little over three weeks. Every innocent step she took into the light was another I added into the shadows of wickedness for her. This wasn’t my first or longest time spent tailing someone, but this was without question the hardest. She had become my obsession, and it wasn’t a healthy one. Every time I watched her lips smile, I hated that it wasn’t for me. I hated that she was more or less clueless about my fucking existence. I wanted her more than any man should want a woman, especially one he’d only met briefly. All of what I felt for her fueled my rage as I ripped my hunting knife out of its case. This dumb fucker was going to die.
My blade sank to the handle in the middle of the man’s back as I leaped toward him, knocking his piece out of his hands and into the depths of the snow, and his head flung backward. A shrill scream of horror pierced my ears, and my eyes connected with one of the coeds from almost a month ago—I guess she’d be on the negative side of the opinion when she saw a biker from now on. Her pink snow boots pounded against the ground as she turned and ran in the opposite direction.
The fingers of my left hand dug into his side, and I used it as leverage to force the knife further into his flesh. A deep crimson color quickly consumed the man’s white shirt. My pupils dilated as he grunted, and his body lunged forward. I lived for this shit. Killing people gave me a high like no other. Being able to literally watch someone’s life drain out of them before your eyes was fucking intoxicating.
I was a sick bastard. There was no denying it, so I never tried. Quite the opposite, really. I never hid who I was from anyone. Although some people picked and chose what parts of me they wanted to see. If they cherry-picked, only clinging to the parts they liked, ignoring the bad, that was not on me. It was their own damned fault when disappointment smacked them in their hypocritical faces.
“That the last of them?” I asked, my grip tightening around the blade’s handle, and I yanked it free from the guy’s lifeless carcass.
“For now,” Sticks answered, smacking the face of the man he’d murdered only a few moments ago before he climbed off his body. “They are the first of many, though. You know that as well as I do. We need to get her out of here.”
“Let them come. Hell, let their friends come. I do not give a shit who comes for her. They’re not going to take what is mine, and she ismineas far as their asses are concerned,” I possessively snarled, staking a claim I had no right to take—whether or not I had a right to desire her held no weight in my mind. Even if she did not belong to me, she sure as shit was not going to them. I had my entire club backing me in that decision.
“I hear ya, brother. Not trying to rush you along as you mark your territory or anything. I am only being a voice of reason here. We need to get this shit show on the road.”
“In what fucked up universe have you ever been a voice of reason, Charlie?” I coughed, my side heaving from silent laughter. It didn’t matter if I wanted him to be wrong because he was not. At this point, who the hell knew who sent these men we’d just executed? Most of the signs pointed to the Falbos. There were a lot of men here tonight. I had dealt with the largest number of them, and Sticks handled the ones I hadn’t. Neither of us recognized them, and that was bad. It indicated there might be another player in this mess. Someone we had no idea about, and that was right fucking dangerous. The finest way to stay alive when you were in the crime game was to always have the upper hand, which, until now, we did. However, if there was a dark horse out there galloping on my club’s business, it would have to be put down sooner rather than later.
“Fuck you, man. I have an excellent eye for details, hence my job being the club’s Sergeant at Arms, or did you forget that important fact,Graham?” He elongated my first name for emphasis.
Hearing him call me by anything other than my road name was odd, and had I not used his birth name first, I would have questioned him about giving our conversation such a formal note, considering our current situation. This one was on me, and I prayed no one heard either of us using names they could easily ID us with—especially the coed whom I was almost certain could pick me out of a lineup.
“Never do. You wouldn’t let me.” I laughed, pulling a rag from my pocket, and cleaning the blade’s surface in a hurried manner. Once all the blood was wiped off the knife, I dropped the fabric on top of the corpse’s chest.
“Who is going to clean this shit up?”
“Looks like something Mordy could handle,” I said, breathing out heavily. “Holler at a couple of prospects to help him out, will ya? He will need help identifying them. Find out who they were with,” I called out, running in the direction of where Reggy had fallen.
