Outlaw's Vow: Grizzlies MC Romance (Outlaw Love)

by Snow, Nicole

  “It's Greg, our rodeo boy. You know how he spends a lot of time out camping in Modoch?”

  Of course. I didn't understand what the hell he was getting at with our best guy, unless...oh god.

  My stomach dropped about a thousand feet. Had he screwed off too much? Did my cousin want to fire him?

  Surely, he wouldn't be that crazy. It wasn't like Greg lit the field on fire or something. We'd be sunk without his cattle experience.

  I couldn't take the suspense. I had to take him down from disaster.

  I shot Norm a cold look and pursed my lips. “Don't tell me – you want him out? What's he done?”

  Norman cocked his head. “Nah, it's nothing like that. The kid's doing a wonderful job when he's actually punching the clock.”

  “Then?”

  “It's what he's seen up there that I'm interested in. The kid's been seeing lots of crap flying at night. Foreign guys prowling around, burying shit in the forests. Those parks are arid and sparse, let me tell you, but they make damned good hiding places because they're so isolated. If he hadn't been up there, I wouldn't have known how to make heads or tails of anything.”

  “Huh?” Confusion fogged my brain. “I don't get it. What's that got to do with our farm?”

  Norman shot me a stern glance, tight lipped as ever. “Walk with me.”

  I had no choice but to follow him. He acted like he was sitting on the biggest secret in the world, and something about that turned my stomach into knots.

  We got in the truck – the same clunker still chugging away after Roman's repair that fateful summer so long ago – and drove down the narrow path leading to our property's edge. We hardly ever came out here.

  The fields were no good for growing or grazing past a certain point. This was dead land, and we'd never had the time or resources to till it up and revive it.

  “There!” He hit the brake, and the truck jerked to a stop next to a dusty field full of brittle weeds. Norman rolled down the window and stuck his hand out, pointing furiously at the ground, right where it formed a ditch between the rusted barbed wire and the no man's land beyond.

  I strain in my seat to sit up, scanning the ground. When I saw it, I felt like I'd taken a turn down Weird Street.

  Something resembling a trap door laid in the ground, covered only by a thin layer of sandy Redding dust.

  “What the hell?” I popped the door and clambered out, crossing the road, approaching the strange compartment I'd never seen before.

  It shouldn't have been there. It shouldn't have been real.

  Norm couldn't reach me before I crouched on the ground and ripped it open. I had to jerk hard, tugging with both hands, until the pressure holding it shut gave.

  The cavern below was surprisingly deep. Dark, too. My eyes needed a few seconds to adjust, peering through the cobwebs and dust.

  I didn't see anything obviously dangerous. It should've been a relief, but it wasn't. I reached in, feeling around. The pit was deep, about the right dimensions for a grave, and my arm burned before my fingers brushed the ground.

  I slid forward, digging my toes into the earth for support. Deeper, deeper...both hands touched something, got a hold, and pulled. I jerked myself up with a small box, and the rattle inside it said it wasn't empty.

  “Shit! Be careful!” Norm must've said it about five times. “You're gonna fall in.”

  I ignored him.

  About a minute later, the contents were sprawled out in a small circle around me.

  Old, wrinkled pages torn from an atlas. A sturdy hunting knife. A simple flip phone from the early 2000s, and it looked worn enough to really be that old too. A small booklet was taped to the map. I pulled it off and thumbed through it, seeing a few basic phrases in English and Spanish.

  All of them were things like hands up, down on the ground, don't move, don't make me shoot. If I had to guess, I'd say it came from the Mexican military, judging by the big blocky text and sharp looking crests on the front and back.

  Of course, there was no good reason for legitimate soldiers to be out here in northern California. Everything here was too fresh to be a time capsule, and too weird to be anything official. The only thing that made sense turned my blood to ice.

  Cartel. Nothing else made sense.

  “Sally, Christ! Be careful with that junk.” Norman panted. “Greg already showed me everything this morning. There's no guns or grenades in there, but hell, it'd be nice if you gave me a chance to tell you.”

  “Sorry, Norm.” I looked up. “What's the deal? You're acting like you want to leave this crap in the ground, on our property.”

  My cousin shook his head, his salt and pepper hair bobbing in the summer breeze. “You're damned right I do. This stuff could've been hiding underneath our noses for months. We don't know if or when the owners are coming back. What do you think they'll do if they realize we've been screwing around with their stuff?”

  Damn. My heart beat five times faster when his words sunk in.

  Jesus, if this was what it looked like, the cartel on the prowl, then our farm wasn't safe anymore. I'd read enough brutal stories to know what happened to anyone who got in their way, or just ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Whoever buried this crap out here wanted to keep it a secret. I didn't know much about the criminal underworld, but I understood men who killed and smuggled for a living would do anything to stay in the shadows.

  They wouldn't hesitate to hurt me, Norm, or – God forbid – my Caleb. I thought about shadows descending on his crib late one night, all while a dark hand smothered me, pulled me away from my son, an ice cold knife pressed to my throat.

  Jesus, no. I can't let it happen. I won't.

  Swallowing the lump in my throat, I boxed up everything, and then pushed the crap back into the spider hole. I flipped the door shut, listening to the loud bang as it hit the frame.

  Norm threw his hands up. “Dammit, Sally, you've gotta be more careful than that! Just looking at that stuff might tip somebody off. We've been poking our noses where we shouldn't, and if those bastards find out...”

  He didn't need to say it, and he knew it. We'd both imaged about a dozen brutal possibilities by now.

  “I'm just following your example, cousin. You said yourself you'd looked in there before I did. Maybe you should take your own advice before you decide to get up my ass.”

  He opened his mouth, and then promptly closed it. He hated being wrong, especially when it was the family's black sheep who pointed it out.

  If I'd learned anything about growing up here since Uncle Ralph took me in, it was Norm's twenty years on me hadn't really made him any wiser. Of course, his mistakes were little ones. He'd hit the bottle and gotten a couple DUIs after Jenny died, a tragic end to a barren, strained marriage.

  I was the reckless bitch who'd screwed up big time and gotten myself knocked up by an outlaw. That was far worse, and everybody except my dearly departed Uncle made me feel it every fucking day.

  “Fair enough,” he said at last, deciding to let it go. “Still, we need to be very careful here. This is serious business, Sally. This could get us killed.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Uh, yeah, you're repeating yourself, Farmer Obvious. Should we both go to the police, or do you want me to make the run by myself? I'm not letting anybody here get their head cut off. I'm dealing with it.”

  We'd almost reached his truck when I said it. Then Norman froze, glaring at me like I'd just said the stupidest thing imaginable.

  “What? Don't give me that look – not unless you've got some awesome plan from your years of dealing with Mexican drug lords.”

  My sarcasm tightened his face. “Look, it's not that easy. Going to the police is just as bad as taking that shit out of the ground and pouring concrete in the hole. What do you think they'll do out here exactly, Sally? Assign us a national guard platoon to guard the ranch?”

  “Of course not! But they'd at least look into it, wouldn't they? Maybe send a few g
uys on patrol at night to catch anybody prowling around?” I paused and shook my head. “Am I just speaking a different language?”

  Norm's lips twitched in a bitter smile. “Yeah, Sally. You're speaking Pollyanna. I don't think you realize we're dealing with stone cold criminals here. You've seen the news. These guys chop entire family's heads off just because they looked at one of their goons the wrong way. Greg says –“

  “Greg says a lot of shit,” I snapped. “He's not an expert anymore than you, Norm. Jesus, I've hung around more dyed in the wool outlaws than any of you. Remember who Uncle Ralph always sent to see the Grizzlies when one of these old rigs needed a repair?”

  I slapped the truck on the side before climbing in. Norm slowly joined me, hauling himself up into the driver's seat. Turning his head to face me, he gave me the dark look I'd seen a thousand times. Oh yeah, the Grizzlies. You mean the biker bastards who knocked you up.

  I'd never admitted anything. I never would. FATHER UNKNOWN was listed on Caleb's birth certificate, and I'd hold to it for the rest of my life.

  Especially when it looked like Roman wasn't coming around anytime soon.

  Truthfully, it was nobody's fucking business except my own. But that didn't mean Norm and everybody else couldn't put two and two together. Or maybe just one naïve, virgin farm girl plus one vicious biker thug who'd always fuck anything with curves.

  I knew the solution to that equation – two big messes. Two ruined lives, maybe three once Caleb grew up and started asking questions. I lived every sick struggle that came after the equals sign.

  “And that's the whole point here, Sally,” Norm said softly, after all. “Your connections, I mean. You can help out here. Greg just feeds me information from all his travels and the guys he talks to. But he doesn't have an in like you do.”

  “Connection? In? What the hell are you talking about?”

  His fingers reached up and twisted the key. The truck snorted to life, and slowly we headed back to our work area, away from the borderlands and their dirty little secret.

  Norm wouldn't answer. Somewhere about a mile or two down the road, it hit me. Oh, no.

  No, no, no, no.

  No.

  “You're talking about the MC, aren't you? Jesus, if you think I've got some special connection there, some people I'd call my friends, you're out of your fucking mind.” I had to kill this plan now.

  It wasn't happening.

  “Sally, I'm not saying you do. All I know is, you've been around them before. They know you. And they're also at war with the cartel. Don't you listen to the radio?”

  I wasn't going to answer him. Not until he stopped treating me like a total idiot, or a damned tool he could throw around anywhere he pleased.

  “You ever heard the phrase, 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend?'” Norman asked.

  “Jesus, Norm. Have you ever been off this farm?” I had to stop before I bit my tongue in rage. “Are you listening to your own plan right now? I mean, really fucking listening? We've got prowlers hiding crap on our land who belong to a terrorist gang – and your solution is to invite another one here?”

  “Come on, you know it's not like that,” he insisted, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. “The club's cleaned up their act from the rumors I hear. They're really helping people in the town now. Yeah, this cartel fight's part of that. They're selfish sons of bitches – they always were – but I think anybody wearing their patch is a whole lot less likely to shovel us into a shallow grave if we see something we shouldn't. They don't go for civilians. You stack 'em side by side with the cartel and tell me who's the lesser evil.”

  Does it matter when you still wind up with evil? Pushing the thoughts away, I stopped and stared at my cousin.

  “Come on. They're not that bad, girl. The drugs and whoring's all over from what I've heard.”

  “Oh, I'm supposed to know that? I don't really read the papers, and I'm not best buddies with Greg either.”

  He snorted. We drove on for awhile in silence. Of course, I wracked my brain the entire time, trying to find a better solution.

  The sanest one was running into the house, packing my things, and taking Caleb away, then heading as far north as we could possibly get.

  We could handle the Washington rain and winters far easier than the danger here in Redding. If only we had the cash.

  Money was always the wall. So was my background – or lack thereof. Farming alone didn't offer a great big world of opportunities. And besides, who'd hire a single mother without blood relations obliging them to?

  I bit my lip. God damn it.

  Much as my cousin was playing with fire, toying with quite possibly the worst idea in the world, there really wasn't a better alternative.

  “Look, why don't we take the day to hash this out? I'm sure this isn't the night they'll be coming back to check up on the stuff they left in that hole,” he said, pulling up near our main storage shed.

  “No need. We can't waste any time. I'll do it.” I looked at him. “Just give me a day or two to call the clubhouse before I head over there. I'm supposed to give them advanced warning before I show up.”

  I hadn't called Blackjack last time before I'd marched in and confronted Roman. I wouldn't tell my cousin that two days was the minimum I needed to walk in without screaming, without losing my mind after he'd slammed the door in my face.

  “What the hell?” Norm stretched back in his seat, looking stunned. “What brought you around so fast?”

  “Caleb,” I said. “He's all that really matters here, more than the farm.”

  We shared a heavy look. His eyes were dark, understanding, sympathetic. For the first time that day, maybe my cousin wasn't such an enormous asshole after all.

  * * * *

  A few days later, I stopped in front of the MC's clubhouse gates. None of the prospects recognized me from a couple weeks ago, and I didn't recognize them.

  They mumbled something about having to check with a full patch member. Mentioning Blackjack's name gave me a shred of leeway. Probably the only reason they didn't tell me to fuck off.

  What the hell's going on? Why all the strange new faces? Was the club running through men like a bad retail job?

  I recognized a couple locals wearing the prospect cuts. None of them nodded or gave me the smallest wave. They were all too busy looking tough and manly. Guess they feared their dicks would shrink an inch or something if they said hello to a neighbor.

  There were definitely things I'd never grasp about the MC life.

  “You again? Shit, I didn't think you'd be back so soon!” The tough guy named Rabid shouted to me when he was only a few steps away behind the gate. “Let her the fuck in.”

  A couple seconds later, the high metal bars pulled open. I drove through the gap, parked, and got out, staring at the clubhouse with dread.

  Maybe I'd get lucky. Maybe Roman wouldn't be inside if they've sent him on a run or something.

  “Sally, right?” Rabid said, stepping up to me with another man at his side.

  “Good memory. You're Rabid. Can't forget a name like that.” We exchanged a smile, and then he pointed at the new man.

  “This is my brother, Beam. He's gonna take care of whatever you need inside. I'd handle it myself, but I'm about to head out on a run with our Veep.” He started walking toward the big garage where they kept their bikes, but then he turned around to add one more thing. “Give Goliath some hell in there. The poor bastard could use it. Knock some fucking sense into him.”

  Beam chuckled at my side, leading me toward the main door. My heart thudded at about a hundred miles per hour in my chest, running on a vile anger and anxiety hybrid fuel.

  The thought of coming face to face with Roman again turned my stomach. After what he did, growling in my face and pushing me away, he didn't deserve to see me, much less speak to me.

  We'd already said everything we needed to. He'd proven he wasn't worthy to see his son.

  I couldn't imagine ever introd
ucing my boy to his father. For some reason, the cold reality it would never happen hurt like hell too. As screwed up as my family had been, they've always been there for me.

  Uncle Ralph bailed me out when I was fifteen, right after mom overdosed on shitty sleeping pills. He finished raising me, turned me into a country girl, probably the only thing that saved me from following mom's filthy footsteps. Norm, as insufferable as he was, taught me a lot about hard work. And the extended family was always happy to pitch in, babysitting Caleb when I needed them to, or just making me feel like a human being at our holiday dinners.

  No, it wasn't perfect. I'd never been incredibly close to anyone. I probably never would be.

  That's the price when you're a black sheep, the girl who threw her youth away making a baby with a badass who wasn't fit to be a dad. But I'd be crazy to leave the only kin I had – reason number one hundred and one I couldn't seriously dream about fleeing to another state to escape the hell coming down.

  “Shit, baby,” Beam said when we got to the door, catching my attention. “I think you're about to be the best dressed lady we've had in this clubhouse for months.”

  His grin made me stand up straight. He looked me up and down, a slow hunger in his eyes like I hadn't seen since my long lost summer paradise with Roman.

  Holy shit. A man was giving me the kinda attention I hadn't had for eons. I couldn't decide whether to smile sweetly or slap him across the face.

  He was kind of cute, in his own weird way. Short spiky hair trimmed a little too close on the sides, almost like a rock star, or an overgrown skater kid. His lean, hard muscles weren't hard on the eyes either, even if they weren't as massive as Romans.

  He definitely had the biker bad boy vibe, the wild energy that makes a woman want to crawl on the back of a Harley anytime, even if it led straight to his bed.

  Hell, maybe especially if it led to his bed.

  But however sexy he looked, I wasn't buying it.

  I wouldn't make the same mistake again. Not with another Grizzlies MC boy. Not when the wounds Roman left on my heart were still bleeding, drowning in salt.

  Instead, I straightened my top, trying to make it a little less revealing in case anyone else inside wanted to throw their eyes on my cleavage.