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“You think that matters?” he asked. “It doesn’t. You taking the drive was enough to send my partners into a panic. They plan on killing me if I don’t take care of you, Tilly.” She could feel herself swallow and was sure that she looked as nervous as she felt. Almost like a cartoon character worried about what was going to come next.
“Take care of me?” she gulped.
“You really have no clue, do you?” he asked. “Do you think that I’d go through all this trouble hunting you down, only to let you go once we talked things out? How dumb can you be, Tilly?” he questioned.
“Well, I was hoping that we’d be able to come to some type of compromise that might not include you having to murder me or anything like that,” she breathed.
“Not only do my partners want me to kill you, but they also want that boyfriend of yours, and anyone else who might know about the hard drive, taken out too. You involved other people in this mess, so their blood is on your hands, not mine.” That wasn’t something that she could let happen. Owen and Mav were only trying to help her and getting them both killed wasn’t something that she’d allow to happen.
“They had nothing to do with this. They don’t even know about the hard drive,” she lied. “Please, just leave them out of this.”
Nate barked out his laugh and she knew that her pleas were falling on deaf ears. “You’ve always been a horrible liar, Tilly. Do you know the reason why I hired you?” he asked. She nodded and he sat down on the couch as if settling in for a story. “I hired you because you seemed completely inept to be able to do your job. It was something that my partners liked about you too.”
“Your partners?” she squeaked. He kept talking about his partners and knowing that they were watching her too made her even more nervous.
“You don’t really need to know about them, but they are the ones calling the shots,” he insisted.
“Then why not let them take the fall for all of this?” she asked.
“Because I’m too deep into this nightmare,” he shouted. “I hired you because you seemed to be able to keep your nose out of my business, but I was wrong. Instead, you turned out to be the thorn in my side who couldn’t keep her sticky fingers off my stuff.”
“What kind of trouble are you in, Nate?” she asked. The only thing he had divulged was that his trouble involved corporate espionage. Other than that, she had no clue as to what he was into with his mysterious partners.
“I’ll tell you this much, you showing up at that biker club really messed things up. You have no idea just how much. As soon as they saw you walking into that place, they panicked. In fact, they were the ones who got me into the bar to take back the hard drive. They wanted me to kill you there, but then changed their mind because it would draw attention to their place.” Did he really mean to say that his partners were a part of Owen’s club?
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying, Nate?” she asked. “Your partners are a part of Owen’s MC?” She had only met a handful of the guys and she just couldn’t pin any of them as the “Bad guys” in this whole story. They all seemed to want to help her and Owen, but then again, she could be reading everyone all wrong. She had once believed that Nate was on the up and up, and that was a completely wrong assessment of her ex-boss.
“Now you’re catching on,” he sassed. “You really aren’t that bright, are you, Tilly?” he asked. “I was wondering if you and that big oaf you’re with would ever figure it out. Honestly, I was hoping that you would so that my partners might just take care of you themselves, but you always seemed to find a way out. But now, they’re done waiting for you to figure it all out, so they came up with a plan to call your lover away and leave you all alone for me to take care of things.”
“The meeting down at the club—it was a setup?” she asked.
“Ding, ding, ding,” he shouted, “now she’s getting it.” She worried about Owen walking right into Nate’s trap, but there would be no way that she’d be able to help him in her current situation.
“If you let me go, I can help you,” she said. God, she even sounded desperate to her own ears. “We can go down to Owen’s club and convince your partners that I don’t know anything about what’s going on. We’ll tell them that I didn’t even look at the hard drive.”
“Sure, and they’ll just believe you because you’re so convincing,” he drawled. “And then what? They’ll just let you and your biker boyfriend walk?” he asked.
She tried to shrug through her bindings. “Yeah,” she said.
“You are so naive,” he taunted. “My partners won’t let you or your boyfriend leave that bar once we show up there. Then, they’ll come after me for fucking this all up. It’s not going to happen, Tilly,” he said. “I’m going to follow orders and finish this, once and for all.” He stood from the couch and left the room, leaving her alone. Tilly quickly looked around and realized that there was no way out of this mess and when Nate got back from whatever he was doing in the kitchen, her time would be up. There was no way out and now, she knew it.
Owen
Owen pulled into the parking lot at the bar and parked in the back. He looked over at Maverick and could tell that his older brother was thinking the same thing. “I have a bad feeling about all of this,” he said. “Mace wouldn’t call a meeting on a Tuesday night, out of the blue.”
“I know, but I really didn’t put much thought into his impromptu meeting until after you picked me up. We don’t have to go in there,” Mav said. He knew that, but if they didn’t walk into the bar, they might not ever end this nightmare.
“No, I think that we need to figure out what’s going on and the only way to do that might be going in there. I just need to know that you have my back,” Owen said.
“Always,” Maverick assured, “I’ll always have your back, man.” He pulled his gun from his shoulder holster and checked to see that it was loaded and ready. Owen reached across the dashboard and opened the glove compartment, pulling his own gun from it and checking the same.
They stepped out of the truck and walked to the back door of the bar to find Mace standing in the shadows. “You two want to tell me why you’re here on a Tuesday?” he asked.
“Well, we thought that you called a meeting, but you standing there, asking us that, proves that this is a setup,” Owen said.
“I didn’t call a meeting,” Mace agreed. “You want to tell me what’s going on?” The one thing their Prez hated most was being kept in the dark. They should have called him when they got the call to come in, but Owen hadn’t put it all together yet.
“Yeah, we both got a call about an hour ago to come in. Jagger said that you were calling an emergency meeting. I told you that this was a bad idea, man,” Maverick said.
