“From who?” Luke said.
The kitchen door banged open and they all jumped. Dillon came striding in from behind the bar, looking angry.
“What the actual fuck is going on?” Dillon said. “I come to start my shift and I see that Curtis is holding some guy hostage in Gabi’s room and the door is smashed in. What the hell happened in there? Where’s Gabi?”
Aidan moved to one side so Dillon could see her sitting there. He took in her shaking, the marks around her throat, her tears.
“Aw, hell no.” Dillon turned to leave the kitchen. “I’ll kill him myself.”
“Take a number,” Luke said tightly.
“Nobody’s doing anything to that asshole!” Aidan roared. “Not until Gabriela tells us exactly what is going on here.”
“Something’s going on?” Dillon said.
“Damn right something’s going on,” Aidan confirmed. “And Gabriela knows good and well what it is.”
They all stared down at her, three huge, hard men who were not fucking around even a little bit. The tension in the room was so thick and high, it was almost a wall blocking out the whole rest of the world.
“I won’t talk to the cops,” she said to them. “I’ll only talk to King.”
“Fuck, darlin’.” Aidan shut his eyes, just for a second. “What kind of trouble are you in?”
“Bad,” she said softly.
They stared at her, then Aidan sighed.
“OK. I’ll call King.”
**
King’s cell phone buzzed on the table next to the bed and he rolled over with a groan. Naomi murmured in her sleep and he quickly grabbed the phone, not wanting to wake her up.
“Yeah?” he grunted, struggling to his feet.
“King? It’s Aidan.”
King paused. Now that was a surprise – he’d figured it was one of his team members. All ten of them were out on a variety of assignments in three different states, and it was rare that he didn’t get at least one middle-of-the-night call from one of them, asking for guidance or backup.
“What’s happened?” King said, closing the bedroom door behind him.
“We have trouble at Curves.”
“OK.”
“Gabi’s up to her eyeballs in some kind of shit and she won’t talk to anyone but you. No cops, she says.”
“Gabi?” King was stunned. What the hell kind of mess could that quiet, hardworking woman be immersed in? “Is she alright?”
“Yeah, barely. Can you come?”
“Yeah. Twenty minutes.”
Aidan sighed and King could feel his relief even over the line. “Thanks, man.”
“Sure. No problem.” He disconnected, gazed down at the phone for a few seconds. What the hell?
“Everything OK?” Naomi said behind him.
He turned around, stared at her hungrily. She was wearing his t-shirt and nothing else, her short blonde hair tousled around her gorgeous face. They’d spent the whole day and most of the night wrapped around each other, making love over and over again. It was just never enough with her; the need to be close to her never went away.
Naomi Abbott smiled up at him. “Matt?”
“Yeah, honey. Everything’s OK. I need to go out, though.”
She regarded him with warm brown eyes. “One of your team needs help?”
“No – I’m going to Curves.”
Worry flashed across her face. “Is it Janine? Has she had some kind of relapse? Is she off her meds?”
“No, nothing like that. I don’t really know what’s going on, so I need to go and see.” He walked over to her now, pulled her in to his arms. She snuggled against him and he groaned. “Fuck. I want to stay here and make you come some more.”
She laughed. “My eleven orgasms today weren’t enough for you?”
“Were they enough for you?”
“Nope. Not nearly.” She grinned up at him. “You can do better than that, Kingston.”
“Let me try again tomorrow?” he breathed, running his large hands over her hips. “I’ve got the day off…”
“Hmmm.” She considered that. “Yeah, OK. I’m not going to the Heart Center until two o’clock, so you have a few hours to prove yourself.”
“Challenge accepted.” He lowered his head now, took her mouth. Her whole small, curvy body just melded to his massive frame and he kissed her until she was shaky on her feet. He gently lifted Naomi, still kissing her, carried her back in to the bedroom. She made a small sound as he set her down on the bed; it was a moan of desire mingled with near-exhaustion. Yeah, he’d tired her out – and in the best possible way.
He pulled back a bit, ran his fingers over her cheek. “Bedtime for you.”
“I’ll be lonely without you,” she said. “Hurry back?”
“You know it.” He gave her one more kiss on the tip of her nose, tucked her in. “Now, get some more rest. You’re going to need the energy tomorrow, I promise you.”
She giggled and he stood up. “I’ll grab my clothes and get dressed in the living room.”
“Be careful.”
He stopped at the real anxiety that he heard in those two words. “Hey, you OK?”
“Yes.”
He knelt down beside her, his gray eyes completely taking her in now. “Yeah? You need to call Mirrie to talk?”
“Oh, no.” Naomi shook her head. “Not this time. I’m alright. Really.”
“You telling me the truth?”
“Yes. I promise.”
King nodded, more relaxed. She was just over fourteen months sober now and was always honest about needing some support if she was struggling. He knew that his job was a source of stress for Naomi and when she felt out-of-control, she turned to Mirrie, her sponsor, for help. Mirrie was nothing short of miraculous and King adored her for what she did for the woman that he loved.
“OK,” he said. “Go back to sleep.”
“I will. I love you.”
“I love you too, baby.”
Out in the large living room, King dressed rapidly, shrugged on his jean jacket. He was totally focused on what was going on at Curves now, his professional persona sliding in to place smoothly and easily. Years of running his special-ops group King’s Men made it as natural as breathing.
He went out to his SUV and headed out in to the silent city. He took a deep breath, enjoying these moments of peace; he had the feeling that whatever was coming, it was going to be the very antithesis of peaceful.
At the time, King had no idea just how right he was about that.
Chapter Five
When King walked in to Curves, Jax nodded at him, his hair tousled and his eyes still glazed from sleep.
“Aidan called you too, huh?” King said.
“Yep. Let’s go, man.”
Without a word, King followed him down the hall to the crash rooms. He paused at the door of Number Two, took in the scene: the smashed door, a man sitting in a chair with a glowering Curtis standing over him, Gabi sitting on the bed in jeans and an oversized shirt, wrapped in a blanket and shivering, Aidan next to her, looking furious and worried. King walked over to her, lifted her chin to see the marks on her neck.
“Alright?” he said quietly.
“Yes.” She shook harder. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“Tell me what’s going on, Gabi.”
She sighed. “OK.”
“Get him out of here for now,” Jax ordered Curtis. “We’ll talk to him separately.”
“Sure thing.” Curtis hauled the kid to his feet. “Move it, dickhead. Next door.”
Warren Kane went without a word, looking shocked. He still didn’t understand how this simple plan had gone so fucking wrong: all he’d been asked to do was stand outside a door. He hadn’t asked his cousin Donovan – oh, wait… I have to remember
to call him Joker now, not his civilian name – why the MC wanted the woman. He hadn’t even thought to ask since he knew he didn’t want to know. Now he wondered if these very pissed-off men were going to believe that he was truly clueless.
“OK, Gabi.” King crossed his massive arms. “Talk. Leave nothing out, you hear me?”
“I know.” She dropped her eyes and fiddled with the edge of the blanket, trying to think how to start. In the end, she just jumped in with both feet. “Two nights ago I kind of witnessed a murder.”
Whatever the hell the men had been expecting, that wasn’t it. Aidan and Jax stared at her, totally stunned. Even the normally-unflappable King looked taken aback for a few seconds.
“Where?” King said.
“At my other job. At Parker’s Garage.”
“Wait a second,” Aidan said, the light starting to dawn. “That night you came here all panicked, saying you’d lost your house keys and you needed to stay at Curves? You were coming from witnessing a murder?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Goddammit, Gabriela.” Aidan ran his hand over his face. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me right away?”
“I – I didn’t want to involve anyone else. And anyway, I was pretty sure they had no idea I was there… I was hoping to get a few days’ breathing space and then decide what to do.”
“OK, OK,” King said. “We’ll get to that later. Right now, I need to know who was killed.”
“A man named Miguel.”
Now King looked seriously alarmed. “Miguel Santos?”
“I don’t know. I never heard a last name.” She looked at the men, saw they had gone oddly pale and quiet. “Who’s Miguel Santos?”
King answered her question with a question. “You saw who killed him?”
“No, I didn’t see anything. I was in the kitchen and trying to get out the back door, but I heard everything.” She shuddered. “The beating and the gunshot.”
“You heard who did this? You know their names?”
“Yeah. Trigger and Ace. I think – I think they’ve got something to do with the Fallen Angels.”
“Oh, fuck,” Jax whispered. “Gabi…”
“What?” She was suddenly more frightened than she’d been since this whole thing had started. “You know who these guys are, don’t you?”
“Yeah.” Jax cleared his throat. “The President and VP of the motorcycle club.”
“Oh,” she said in a small voice. “Shit.”
“Yeah, no kidding,” King said. “Christ, Gabi. When you get yourself in trouble, you go for broke, huh?”
She bit her lip, trying hard not to cry. “They sent those three guys to get me?”
“Oh, for damn sure, darlin’,” Aidan said, his anger palpable. “And that’d be the last anyone would see of you, I promise you.”
She blanched.
“Back off, Carter,” Jax said quietly. “Now’s not the time.”
“Yeah, OK.” He touched Gabi’s arm. “I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re right,” she said in a constricted voice. “I’ve been stupid. I just – I just wanted a couple of days to get myself together. Lay low and hide out. I really didn’t think I was in real danger and most of all, not at Curves.” She looked at King. “I’d made up my mind to talk to you tomorrow, anyway. Tell you everything and ask for your help.”
“Why didn’t you talk to me today?” King said.
“Because I knew Naomi was coming back this morning and I figured you’d be – busy.”
“Fuck, Gabi.” King shook his head. “Nothing’s more important than keeping you alive, you get me? Nothing.”
She nodded, staring at her hands.
“OK.” King sighed. “What would you have asked me to help you with? Did you have some specific ideas?”
“Yes. I wanted to ask if you knew these guys and if you did, I thought maybe you could… negotiate with them.”
“What?’ Jax said, shocked again.
“Yeah. I thought that maybe – maybe King could use what I witnessed as a bargaining chip, kind of. If Miguel was a bad guy that the world was better off without, then maybe King could negotiate my silence for my safety.” She was squirming now; hearing it said out loud made her realize how ridiculous it was. “But if he was an innocent victim who was caught in a mess, I’d have wanted King to help me with reporting it to the police and to keep me safe while I did.”
“Really?’ Jax said.
“Yeah. I know – I guess it was dumb.”
“No,” King said, looking at her very hard. “No, actually, if we were dealing with any other MC President, that’s exactly what I’d be doing right now.”
“What?” Jax said. “Negotiating?”
“Yep. If this was Wolf Connor from the Road Devils? Damn right I’d be at his clubhouse right this second talking to him. The man’s dangerous and lethal and scary-as-fuck, but he’s totally reasonable and smart. He’d see the sense of everyone coming out of this in one piece.” He sighed. “But Trigger MacGee is brutal and dumb as a box of rocks and he’s not the kind who sees any value in getting a part of what he wants. It’s all or nothing with him. He doesn’t negotiate – he annihilates.”
“Oh,” Gabi said softly. “So I’m totally screwed, huh?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.” King smiled grimly. “We have a few moves.”
“We do?”
“There are always moves, hon. You just need to know how to play them out.”
She took a deep breath. “So… who was Miguel Santos, then?”
“Small-time pimp and drug trafficker. Worked for Kirk Jensen as a contractor and pushed his product through certain Mexican-heavy neighborhoods.” King crossed his arms. “I’d heard that he was starting to skim off the top, though, and sell Kirk’s drugs as his own in the area. Fucking dumb, frankly, since Trigger and his boys keep an eye on the contractors. I figured he’d end up done and dusted sooner or later.”
“You did?” Gabi said.
“I sure did. My people told me that his days were numbered and turns out, they were right. He went missing two days ago and the word on the street is that the Fallen Angels are involved but of course, nobody’s talking. As usual. Besides, there’s no body, so as far as the cops are concerned, there’s no crime. For all anyone knows, Santos went to Vegas to do some gambling.”
Gabi looked at the floor in despair. “What do I do now, King?”
“You trust me, Gabi?”
“Yes.”
“OK, then.” King rubbed the back of his neck. “Me and my people will take point on all of this, treat it like a private client’s matter, but I’ve got to involve the police.”
She froze. “The police…”
“Yeah. Nothing official and nothing on-the-record, OK? But I work with a few cops all the time and I trust them implicitly. Things with Trigger can go to hell fast, believe me, so there may well come a time when we need police back-up.”
“But… if you tell the cops, then I’ll have to give a statement and give my name…”
“No. Not at first and not for a while. Like I said: there’s no body, so as of yet, there’s no crime. If you came forward now, all you’d be able to say is that you heard something – you never clapped eyes on anyone and any smart lawyer Trigger hired would get the whole thing thrown out in thirty seconds flat, anyway.”
Gabi bit her lip. “Yeah. OK.”
“But what about tonight?” Jax objected. “I mean, it was an attempted kidnapping, right? At the very least, it was an assault.”
“Yeah, but I want to talk to the kid in the next room before we make any more decisions about that. It may make more sense to wait and go after Trigger and Ace for murder than after some nobodies hired off-book for a botched snatch and grab.”
Jax nodded. “Makes sense.”
King turned back to Gabi. “So for now, you lay low. I’ll just tell my contacts inside the PD that I have a witness to what may or may not be the Santos murder and we’re handling it privately for the time being. If things change, then you’ll come forward and I’ll have some information gathered too.”
“They police will accept that?”
King shrugged. “They have before.”
“Really?”
“Uh-huh. In the past, King’s Men have dealt with things up to a point and the cops came in later, when a body turned up or other evidence came to light. That may happen here again. But for now, we need to keep you out of sight and safe.” He paused. “You want to come to one of my company safe houses?”
“No,” Aidan said suddenly. “She’s coming home with me.”
They all stared at him.
“I – what?” Gabi blinked. “With you?”
“Yeah.” Aidan was still furious and got even more so every time he remembered that prick dragging her insensible body to the car; his rage made him more forceful than usual. “You come to my place and you fucking stay there until King sorts this all out.”
“But – I have to work.”
“Nope. You stay put.”
She stared at him, starting to get angry now. “And how do I earn money if I’m hiding in your living room for weeks? How do I pay my bills?”
“I’ll pay them,” he said.
“No.”
“Darlin’ –”
“Don’t you ‘darlin’’ me, Aidan, I said no. I’ve paid my own way for as long as I’ve been able to work and no man pays my damn bills.”
“Well,” Jax jumped in. “I do believe you’re entitled to some vacation time.”
Now her dark eyes swung over to him and he almost flinched at the force of her anger. “I don’t get vacation time.”
“You do now.” He held her stare. “Paid.”
“What?”
“You’ve worked here for three years, yeah? Done a great job, kept everyone happy, never once talked about anything you’ve seen in the bar. I know you’re not full-time or anything, but maybe it’s time to offer you a few perks – like maybe one month’s paid vacation? Starting tonight?”
“Um…” Gabi was trying to think just what she wanted to object to first, but King spoke up before she could articulate a single thought. He had another concern to direct at Aidan.
Killer Curves (Dangerous Curves Book 3) Page 7
