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Cali appeared behind her. “What now?”
“Help me open the window. I know a way out.” She’d practiced this escape a few times now, never really expecting she’d need it. It had always taken her too long to open the window, but her cut hand made it impossible to do by herself.
“Move over.” Cali lifted the old-fashioned heavy sash and grunted. It had once been painted shut and wasn’t easy to open. He got the window up on the third try. Luckily the sash weights still worked so they could crawl onto a tiny metal fire escape landing. “Now we go up.”
Cali took her bag and motioned for her to climb up the rickety stairs first. They made it to the roof just as a bullet hit the metal water tank near them. She ran toward the eastern edge of the roof and pointed at the building next door. A foot of space separated the two roofs. “Now we jump.”
Without waiting for his reply, she jumped. Once she landed on the black surface, she turned back to face him. He tossed her the bag and jumped. His landing was wobbly, and he sank into a roll. But he recovered quickly, took the bag out of her arms, and followed her across the gravelly surface toward the next building. “This jump is a bit harder.”
“How hard?”
She stopped at the edge of the roof and looked down. The next roof was two feet away and three feet down. “This hard.”
A bullet sounded somewhere behind them, and Cali tossed her bag across the distance. It landed on the next roof with a loudthumpjust as he said, “Jump!”
* * *
“Hawk?” Thor took his laptop back and closed it. Then he stamped out his smoke in the nearby ashtray. “Why is Nine, that Black Jacks fucker, showing his ugly mug at our clubhouse? Why isn’t he in Salem where he belongs?”
“Black Jacks are in Ravensburg?” Eagle strode through the door and headed for his seat across from Hawk. “Is that what this meeting is about?”
Five more brothers—Drac, Twitch, Fate, Cheery, and Volt—came in behind Eagle and took their assigned seats. They all wore their cuts over dirty jeans, and none of them were going to win any beauty awards this morning.
Drac, with his bald, tattooed head, hadn’t bothered to put on a shirt or shoes. Twitch had shoved his long brown hair into a messy man bun and his Harley T-shirt hadn’t been washed in months. Fate’s long blond hair and beard, along with his ice blue eyes, reminded Hawk of those Viking shows they all watched together. Volt, who was both very tall and very thin, had braided his long black hair with silver beads to match his small silver hoop earrings.
Cheery wore a new T-shirt with the tag hanging off the neck seam, and his bald head was covered in tiny bits of white tissue, as if he’d just shaved his head a few minutes ago. Hawk counted seven brothers, including himself, around the table. The other four, including their president Acid, were on the road.
“Whew!” Thor waved his hand in front of his face. “Where did you all sleep last night? A slit trench?”
“Screw you.” Eagle sat his ass down carefully. Considering the greenish tinge to his face, Hawk kicked the black plastic trash can closer to their Sergeant-at-Arms. Eagle responded with a middle finger.
Cheery stood at the end of the table, shifting from one foot to the other. Hawk had forgotten this was Cheery’s first church as a fully patched member and nodded to the empty chair next to Twitch. He had to give Cheery credit, though, for not choosing a chair on his own and for not appearing as if he’d spent the night completely shit-faced. “Sit there for now, Cheery. We’ll reassign your seat when everyone returns.”
“Thanks, Hawk.” Cheery sat and clasped his fingers together on the desk. “Is it true? Are there Black Jacks in town?”
“Last night Nine showed up at the clubhouse, looking for me.” Hawk opened Thor’s laptop and turned it toward the table so everyone could see Nine’s security camera image. “And J.R. saw him smoking behind Rebel’s Refuge, maybe waiting for someone.”
“Sonofabitch,” Twitch muttered. “He’s even uglier than I remembered.”
Drac, the club’s treasurer, adjusted his glasses. “Are you sure it’s him?”
“It’s Nine,” Fate said. “I’d recognize that scar anywhere.”
All the men around the table laughed because most of them remembered the night Fate gave Nine that scar.
Volt, as usual, didn’t say anything. He just nodded and bummed a cigarette off of Thor. The recalcitrant brother rarely spoke if Acid, their president, wasn’t present.
“Hawk?” Eagle clasped his hands behind his neck. “Do you believe Nine was waiting for you behind the bar?”
“It’s possible.” He shut the laptop and pushed it back toward Thor. “I think it’s more likely he was waiting for Izzy.”
“Who the hell is Izzy?” Twitch looked around the room, hands out, as if shocked there was a woman in their world he hadn’t met—or tapped—yet.
“Izzy is the new bartender working with Tish.” Hawk pushed the stack of papers Cali had printed out over to Eagle. While he’d been sleeping with her, he’d kept their relationship a secret from the club. He’d had nothing to hide, but he’d not wanted to share any details of the time together. His brothers were like middle school boys. They sought out gossip about naked women with the precision of a heat-seeking missile. “Izzy is Isolde O’Cleary. She’s the only child of Ian O’Cleary. Owner and CEO of OCL Enterprises.”
Eagle put on his glasses and read through the pages. “What’s a rich princess like Isolde doing in a backwater Virginia mountain town?”
“She’s on the run.” All the men returned their attention to him. “I have no idea why she’s on the run, but I suspect her father is using the Black Jacks MC to search for her.”
