Outlaw Souls MC Box Set: Books 1-6

by Hope Stone

  “You know why we’re here,” Trainer said.

  It wasn’t a question, but Mad Dog answered anyway.

  “I suppose you have a bone to pick with me,” He walked back and forth as he talked, looking unconcerned, even though he didn’t come closer. “Are you the new fearless leader now? I hear your boy survived, but now’s a good time to take control from him. I’d actually admire that.”

  I couldn’t believe that this psycho was having a conversation with Trainer right now. We were here to fight, and everyone knew it.

  “We remain loyal to Ryder,” Trainer’s voice was firm. “The question is, who will replace you?”

  Mad Dog opened his mouth to reply, but before another word could be uttered, a shot rang out, cutting through the still night. Moves, our enforcer, did his job, firing just once and sending the bullet straight into Mad Dog’s temple.

  He was dead before he hit the ground.

  Chaos ensued. As expected, the Las Balas members attacked, some shouting out in surprise or anger, while others closed the distance between us without a word. The fight was brutal and wild, with years of pent-up anger and resentment between the two groups making things so much worse. I called on my street fighting experience, focusing on my desire to avenge Ryder as I pummeled those who came at me, careful to avoid their weapons. I could hear the occasional shot going off, but none were near me. I just hoped that no one else I cared about was hit.

  “Come on, Blade,” Pin called out from my left. He and Hawk were already together. Three of us were supposed to go into the bar to see if the weapons were stashed there. I fought my way through the crowd, stopping only once to pull a man off of Chalupa, who had been knocked to the ground. I made quick work of knocking the guy unconscious with three jabs to the temple before continuing on.

  Once we worked our way through the battle, it was easy to get inside the bar. No one was guarding it. They were all in the fight. Just before we went inside, Luca’s SUV rolled into the parking lot. His bodyguards got out first, followed by him. Backup had arrived.

  Hawk pushed open the door of the bar, leading the way with his gun raised in the air, but no one came running out at us. In fact, there were only two people inside. One of them was a man behind the bar, looking scared, and he ran out the door as soon as he saw us. The other was Jason, and he was hurt.

  “Don’t,” I cried out as Hawk pointed his gun at Jason, who was sitting hunched over at a table with his hand pressed against his bleeding shoulder, right next to his collarbone.

  I didn’t think Hawk would shoot an injured man, but I couldn’t take the chance. I hurried forward and knelt next to him. He didn’t seem to recognize me at first, and fear was clear in his eyes, but after a moment, I could see him putting the pieces together.

  “Blade?” he asked, his voice weak.

  “What happened to you?” I asked, gesturing at his shoulder. I could feel Hawk’s eyes on me, but I couldn’t explain who Jason was right now.

  “Shot, not sure by who,” he said, his breathing heavy. “Hurts like a son of a bitch.”

  “I’ll bet it does,” I agreed. I looked over at Hawk. Pin had disappeared somewhere. I assumed to check the back room or basement. “I need to get him out of here.”

  “What? No way. Forget him. We need to find the weapons or get back out there into the fight.”

  “I can’t. He’s…” I almost said family, which wasn’t true at all. But he was Kat’s family, and damn it, I cared about her even if she refused to feel the same. I sighed. “He’s important. I need to keep him safe.”

  Pin came back into the room. “Nothing here that I could find. There are no weapons.”

  “Damn it, I knew that might happen, but it puts a kink in our plan,” Hawk rammed his fist into the wall angrily.

  “Let’s get back outside,” Pin suggested. “We’ll subdue a member and make them talk when the fighting is done.”

  “I’m leaving with Jason,” I cut in stubbornly.

  “Who the fuck is this guy?” Pin asked, eying Jason suspiciously.

  “A prospect,” I explained, “and a friend.”

  Jason looked at me curiously but didn’t contradict that last part.

  “We need to get out there. And find the weapons.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. I just couldn’t let Jason stay in here bleeding. I knew that Outlaw Souls would be fine. With Luca’s help, we outnumbered Las Balas. They didn’t need me. Jason did.

  Hawk and Pin didn’t say anything. They just left me in the bar.

  “I’m going to get you out of here,” I told Jason.

  “Why?”

  “For Kat. She’s just getting over losing her mom. I won’t let her lose you, too.”

  Surprise flickered through the pain clouding his eyes. “She told you about our mom?”

  “Yes, now come on.”

  I took hold of his good arm and pulled until he was on his feet. Then, I pulled Jason’s arm over my shoulder and helped him walk out of there. I was taking him home.

  Kat

  I hadn’t seen Blade in days. I knew that it shouldn’t bother me, given the nature of our relationship, but I couldn’t help frowning as I looked over at his empty workstation. He’d called Brie this morning to tell her that he wouldn’t be in today and to reschedule his appointments. She said he didn’t elaborate on why he was taking the day off, and she assumed that he was sick.

  I had a feeling that something else was going on.

  I had tried to get a hold of him yesterday, Sunday afternoon, to see if I could come over for a booty call, but his only reply to my text was to say that he was unavailable. It was stupid to feel rejected—the guy had a life outside of our casual sex—but I didn’t like it one bit. I worried that he was getting bored with our arrangement.

  Then, I chastised myself for such an insecure overreaction. One polite decline didn’t mean anything. But now, seeing that he wasn’t at work, I couldn’t shake the feeling of foreboding that hung over me. Somehow, I knew that something was wrong.

  I had just finished up with a client, an eighteen-year-old girl that wanted a butterfly on her ankle, and Piper was waiting for a customer that she’d been working with for the last few days to come in so that she could put the finishing touches on his full sleeve. I was chomping away on my gum, wishing that I had a damn cigarette on me.

  “So, you’re tense,” Piper remarked, sipping from her Styrofoam cup of coffee. Piper was a caffeine junkie, so she usually had one in the morning and brought one back from lunch with her. I liked to tease her about it, but I didn’t have much room to talk since I guzzled sweet energy drinks to keep myself going. “Where’s Blade today?”

  “How should I know?” I shrugged.

  “Cut that shit out,” she said impatiently. “It’s me, Kat. I know you.”

  “I still don’t know where he is.”

  “So, that’s what’s bothering you. Have you called him?”

  “I’m not his wife,” I said. “Not even his girlfriend. He doesn’t owe me an explanation.”

  “No, he doesn’t. But I bet he’d give you one.”

  I picked up on something in her slightly clipped tone. Disapproval?

  “You have a problem with Blade now?”

  “Of course not. But I think that it’s about time you decided what you want.”

  “I have what I want. Great sex, no commitment, and plenty of freedom.”

  “He had that freedom too, you know. He could go out and find someone that’s not too hung up on daddy’s approval to see that she’s blowing it with a guy that might be her perfect match.”

  “Ouch,” I grimaced.

  “The truth hurts,” Piper said unapologetically.

  “And I’m not trying to get my dad’s approval. I just…” I trailed off.

  Why was I so loyal to Las Balas? Because Mad Dog had called me family? It was a nice sentiment, but it would have been even nicer to be treated like family by my dad. The problem was that Las Balas came fir
st, always. Maybe I thought that aligning myself with them would put me in that category for my dad.

  That was pathetic. And to think that I had been silently judging Jason for letting Las Balas control his life. I was doing that same thing without even having the option to join the club. They were old fashioned in their no-girls-allowed stance. In reality, I had almost nothing to do with the club, and the more time I spent with Blade, the more skeptical I was of Outlaw Souls being troublemakers. Still, I’d taken a stand, and it wasn’t easy to backtrack at this point.

  “You can do whatever you want,” Piper said, “but I think you need to realize that you can only keep Blade at arm’s length for so long before you lose your grip on him altogether. Because I can tell you right now, he has real feelings for you.”

  I wanted to argue, but the words wouldn’t come.

  The bell above the door rang, and Piper stood. Her customer was here.

  “Take my advice or don’t. It’s up to you. I just don’t want to see you lonely anymore.”

  She knew me too well. For the rest of the day, I couldn’t get her words out of my mind. When I first found out that Blade was an Outlaw Soul, I had been sure that he must be a bad person to be a part of an organization like that. But as I continued to get to know him, I knew that I was wrong. He was a good man.

  But I couldn’t let my guard down with him again. I couldn’t let myself trust him.

  Look where that’s gotten you.

  We were stuck in a limbo where we fucked and fought over and over. It was exhausting, and mostly my fault. I knew that. Looking back over the last few weeks, I could see that I picked fights with Blade every time I started to feel too close to him, as if I was proving to him and myself that we were incompatible.

  God, I was an idiot.

  I wanted to be with Blade. Hell, I’d wanted him from the moment we met. When he got his patch, we’d only been together once, and I told myself that I wasn’t attached to him yet. There hadn’t been enough time.

  But I was wrong. I was starting to suspect that I’d fallen for him the first time he sent a flirty smirk in my direction.

  My heart rate tripled, and I felt like a curtain had been pulled back in my mind, revealing what had been hidden just out of sight for so long. I wanted to be with Blade. I wanted it more than I wanted to connect with my dad. Because now that Piper had suggested it, I realized that was exactly what I was doing. I was trying to chase an elusive relationship with my dad through the damn motorcycle club that always meant more to him than I did. It was never going to happen, but I could have something good with Blade if I hadn’t blown it already.

  I could hardly wait to get through the rest of the day after this revelation. I sent a text to Blade, simply asking if he was available to meet up this evening, but after almost an hour with no response, I felt my heart sink.

  Why didn’t he respond? What was he up to?

  That evening, I went to Piper’s house for our weekly poker game. I was distracted by my annoyingly silent cell phone, which made me a better player, to my surprise. I wasn’t too focused on the cards, making me a hell of a bluffer, and I wasn’t overthinking everything.

  I still hadn’t heard back from Blade.

  “You won’t believe what I heard,” Veronica was saying as she shuffled the cards. I was only half-listened to the conversation at this point. Tammy had been prattling on and on about her wedding plans for the last twenty minutes. I loved the woman, but it wasn’t the most interesting topic. Besides, I wasn’t in a good headspace to discuss her happily ever after.

  “Oh, are we gossiping?” Piper asked as she walked in with a fresh beer for me and a glass of wine for herself.

  “Most definitely,” Veronica winked. I took the beer from Piper’s outstretched hand and was in the middle of my first sip when Veronica continued, “Last night, someone shot the president of that motorcycle club. I think they’re called the Outlaws.”

  I nearly choked.

  “Outlaw Souls,” Piper corrected, shooting me a concerned look.

  I gulped, swallowing the beer in my mouth so that I could speak.

  “How do you know this?” I asked, the panic in my voice was clear, but I didn’t care. Blade calling into work the day after Ryder takes a bullet was too much of a coincidence. What if he was hurt too?

  I really hoped this had nothing to do with Las Balas, but I wasn’t naive. They were enemies, after all.

  “I’m good friends with one of the ER nurses over at La Playa Regional Hospital. She said he was brought in two nights ago with a bullet in his gut. Had to have surgery to get it out.”

  I needed to see Blade. I had to make sure that he was okay. I could tell that he cared about Ryder when he came in for a tattoo. This must be killing him. I also wanted to make sure that he knew I had his back, no matter what. I wasn’t a member of Las Balas, no matter how much I had been acting like it. I was his girl all along, even if I didn’t realize it.

  “I need to go,” I said, putting my cards down and standing.

  “Is something wrong?” Tammy asked. Veronica looked concerned, too, but Piper just gave me a small smile.

  “I have to go see Blade,” I told Piper. She’d explain the situation to the others. I didn’t want to waste time.

  I wasn’t sure where Blade would be tonight, but I decided to try his apartment first. If he wasn’t there, I’d go to the Outlaw Souls bar, the Blue Dog. I’d never been there before, but I knew where it was.

  I left Piper’s house and had just gotten into my car when my cell phone rang. I answered it immediately without even pausing to check the caller ID, hoping it would be Blade.

  “Hello?”

  “Kat.”

  “Lexie?”

  It was Jason’s girlfriend, and I could tell that she was crying. It was as though a fist had just reached into my chest and started squeezing my heart. There must be something wrong with Jason.

  “What’s happened?” I asked sharply, needing her to talk to me. I started up the car and headed in the direction of Jason’s apartment building.

  “It’s Jason. He’s been hurt.”

  “Is he in the hospital?”

  There was no way this was a coincidence. Ryder was shot, and now Jason was injured. What the hell was going on between Las Balas and Outlaw Souls?

  “No, he’s home with me. He said no to going to the hospital. They’d ask too many questions. It’s just that he looks so pale, and there’s so much blood.”

  I beat down my own frantic reaction to her words. Lexie was pregnant and clearly terrified. She needed me to be as calm as possible to help her through this.

  “I’m five minutes away,” I told her as I broke pretty much every speeding law that La Playa had. “Is he awake?”

  “Yes. He wants to see you.”

  “What kind of wound does he have?”

  “He says he…” her breath hitched, and I suspected that she was suppressing a sob. “He says he was shot.”

  “Fuck.”

  “I can’t do this anymore, Kat,” she said. “I can’t deal with this Las Bala shit anymore.”

  Uh-oh.

  I pulled up in front of their apartment building. “I’m here. Buzz me in.”

  I hung up the phone as she did. Their apartment was on the second floor, so I hit the stairs, not wanting to wait for the elevator.

  When I knocked on the apartment door, it was pulled open immediately.

  “Kat,” Lexie threw her thin body into mine, giving me a fierce hug. I patted her back and made soothing noises.

  “Where is he?”

  “Our bedroom,” she sniffled.

  Disengaging from Lexie, I stepped inside and headed to the hallway off the kitchen, where there were two bedrooms. I saw bloody rags in the sink and forced myself to look away.

  “Jason?” I called out as I knocked on the cracked door.

  “Come in,” he said.

  I found him lying on top of the blankets, shirtless. I could see streaks of
dark red where blood had been wiped away. There was a clean bandage on his shoulder, with just a hint of red in the center, where blood was starting to bleed through.

  “What the fuck happened?” I asked, trying not to sound like I was accusing him of anything.

  “It’s a long story,” he sighed and gestured to the empty spot on the bed next to him. I sat down.

  “I’ve got time.”

  He sighed. “I think that the first thing you should know is that Blade probably saved my life tonight.”

  “Blade,” I echoed, trying to make sure I heard him correctly.

  “Yeah. There was a big fight tonight between Las Balas and Outlaw Souls. Actually, it technically started a couple of days ago.”

  “When Ryder was shot?”

  “How did you know that?”

  “A friend of a friend,” I said vaguely. “It doesn’t matter. Just tell me what happened.”

  He did, beginning with Las Balas taking the crate of weapons that the Outlaw Souls dug up. Jason wasn’t there, but he knew what happened. The entire club was abuzz with the news that Mad Dog had tried to kill Ryder. Then, he filled me in on everything that happened tonight, the way that Blade had stood up to his Outlaw Souls brothers and gotten Jason out of there.

  I beat back tears that threatened to fill my eyes. Blade had done this for me. I was sure of it. He saved my brother because Jason was so important to me. I couldn’t stand to lose him after my mother’s passing, and Blade knew that. After losing his own brother, he probably understood it more than most.

  “He brought me here and patched up my shoulder. Luckily, the bullet went all the way through. So, he stitched me up, and we had a little chat.”

  “About?”

  Please don’t say you talked about me.

  “The missing crate of weapons that we stole.”

  Right, of course. I felt stupid for thinking they’d be discussing me. There were clearly more important things to deal with.

  “You know where they are?” I asked.

  “Yep, and now Blade does, too.”

  “I can’t believe you betrayed Las Balas.”