by Sybil Bartel
I never should’ve told her I was sorry, but Dios mio. What the fuck do you say to someone who’d lived through what she had? No matter what bullshit came out of her mouth, your own father wanting you dead was fucking fucked. I couldn’t wait to get my sights on that piece of shit Stephens.
“Say it,” she demanded.
Keeping my voice low and quiet, I forced a calm I didn’t fucking have. “Say what, chica?” I didn’t give a shit what she’d said. She was chica to me, and that’s what I’d fucking call her.
“Weaving in and out of traffic, white knuckling the handlebars, just fucking say it.”
I slowed, marginally. “You swear like a pissed-off marine.”
“You think I’m fucked-up,” she accused.
“I think a lot of things.” Like why the hell she wouldn’t want that asshole dead, father or not.
“What’s the matter? Too afraid to say what you’re thinking?” Every word was a double-edged dare.
I took the exit for US-1 South. “Despite what you think, there’s only one thing I’m afraid of, and speaking my mind isn’t it.” I slowed for a light, and that’s when I saw them. Two guys on Harleys wearing cuts were five cars back, looking like they were tailing us. “Mierda,” I muttered before I could stop myself.
“What?”
“Nothing.” I got in the turn lane. “I’m pulling in to this gas station. I want you to keep your helmet on, but give me your cell phone once I stop.” Following traffic, I glanced in the review mirror as the bikers changed lanes to follow us, and sure enough, their cuts had the LCMC initials and logo.
Kendall gave an ironic half laugh, half snort like this was a fucking game. “That didn’t take long.”
“Could be a coincidence.” It wasn’t a fucking coincidence. I just couldn’t figure out how’d they found us unless one of them had tracked her phone.
“Yeah, because you see LCs all the time.”
I didn’t fucking answer. I turned the corner and coasted into the gas station, scanning every vehicle in sight. I didn’t pull around back because I wanted to be in front of a pump. Hoping the assholes wouldn’t be stupid enough to open fire next to a gas pump, I cut the engine. They pulled into a spot in front of the convenience store but kept their bikes idling. “Give me your phone, chica.” I flipped my visor up, but I didn’t take my helmet off.
She pulled it out of the backpack and handed it over.
Her movements calm, her hands not shaking, she didn’t show any outward signs of distress, but she’d gone quiet.
I scrolled to her contacts and sent a quick text to Candle to answer his phone, then I memorized his number. Pulling the SIM card out of her phone, I shut it down, slipped the SIM card into my pocket, then gave her back the phone. Tipping my helmet up just enough to put my cell to my ear, I called Candle.
He answered on the first ring. “What’s up?”
“There’re LCs as far south as Homestead. You’re not containing this.” I casually glanced at the bikers but they studiously ignored me.
Candle grunted like he was lifting something heavy. “I’m working on it.”
Fucking pendejo. “Work harder.”
A dull thud sounded in the background. “Get off the fucking road.”
“I’m not on the road.” Right now.
“Jesus fuck, just get her somewhere safe until I handle this.”
Nothing he did would handle who she was. “You’re in over your head.”
“What the fuck do you know about it?” The distinctive sound of a shovel hitting dirt punctuated his words.
“Everything.” My cell buzzed with an incoming text.
Pause. Then, “Christ. She fucking told you?”
I glanced at the text from Tyler.
I have a contact that says every LC was issued a BOLO for you and Kendall Reed. Five LCs already showed up at L&A. Christensen was there. They have plate numbers for the company SUVs and her Jetta. Rumor has it they have a cop on payroll.
I put the phone back to my ear. “Handle your end. I’m working on a plan.” Another call came in.
“No, you’re fucking not,” Candle barked. “Don’t do a goddamn—”
I ended the call and took the incoming one from an unidentified number. “Luna.”
“You have a problem,” Neil Christensen stated.
I had more than a problem. “You at my office?” The bikers were talking to each other as they stole glances our way.
“Ja.”
“LCs still there?” One of the bikers took out a phone, but neither made a move to get off their bikes.
“No. What is going on?” he demanded.
“What did you tell the LCs?” Neil knew the LCs president, Stone Hawkins. With any luck, whatever he’d fed the assholes that’d showed up, they bought.
“I said you were on a security detail for my company. Stop wasting my time and answer the question.”
I glanced at the bikers again, hoping like hell they were either smart enough not to make a play at a gas station where there were security cameras, or that they didn’t know who we were.
Fuck, I was out of time.
I looked at the one-way mirrored visor of Kendall’s helmet, inhaled and broke my promise. “I have River Stephens’s daughter.”
“Explain,” Neil commanded.
I couldn’t see her behind her visor, but she didn’t move, not an inch. “Her identity was recently compromised by an LC.” I didn’t hold back. “He’s dead now, but not before he let the rest of his club know about her. There’s a two-million-dollar bond on her head, and the LCMC is looking for her so they can cash in. Candle Scott says he’s working to contain it on his end by discrediting the rumor about her identity, but I have a different idea.”
“Which is?”
I didn’t want to fucking ask this because I didn’t want to involve him, but it was my only shot. “Do you still have those crates?” Neil would know what I was talking about. We’d lifted one hundred and twenty crates of contraband guns from a dead Russian mafia arms dealer a while back. I’d wanted to hand them over to the Feds at the time, but Neil had taken them. The guns were worth way more street value than two million, and I was betting Kendall’s life that River Stephens would want them.
Neil didn’t answer my question. Instead, he asked one. “Who is the woman? Does she have the River Ranch branding?”
“Kendall Reed, and yes.” It was all over the news that Stephens branded his followers with a fucking cattle prod. Besides her identity, I wasn’t telling him anything he wouldn’t already know.
Neil paused a moment. “That is the woman who belongs to Scott.”
I ground my teeth with irrational anger at his statement. “Negative.” One of the bikers backed out of the spot and then turned his bike around.
“You think she belongs to you now.”
It wasn’t a question, so I didn’t answer, but it didn’t matter, he asked another.
“What is your plan?”
The second biker turned his bike around. “Exchange.” I said as little as possible in front of her because I was still working on the logistics of how this would go down, and I needed to get off the phone and get the fuck out of here.
“How are you going to facilitate that?” Neil hit on the hole in my plan immediately. “You will not make it through the gate without an invitation.”
And Stephens was notoriously distrustful of outsiders. “I’m working on it.” I wasn’t above using Candle if I had to.
Neil’s exhale of a single breath was his version of a long, irritated sigh. “Take the Cobalt. Stay in open waters but head toward my marina slip. I will call you within three hours when I have the crates. There is a sat phone on the boat.” He hung up.
The bikers still not making a move, I risked a few seconds to call Tyler. “Report,” I demanded.
“Already landed and I’m at Scott’s. No one’s here.”
Because he was dumping the bodies. “Change in plans.” I didn’t want her c
ar down in Miami. “Leave the Jetta. I’ll text you a number of a chop shop. Call them and tell them the location, then have Roark bring you back.”
“Copy that.”
I started to hang up.
“Boss?”
“Yeah?”
Tyler hesitated.
I didn’t have time for this. “Spit it out.”
“You good?”
“Fine.” The less he knew the better.
“Because if you need something….”
“All set. Head home.” I hung up, put my helmet back on and started the bike.
Petulant as hell, her voice came through the speakers in the helmet. “I’m sweating like a pig.”
Cristo. “Is that Kendall-speak for I’m thirsty? Because its gonna have to wait.” There was no way in hell we were walking past those LCs.
“Is ‘I have River Stephens’s daughter’ speak for I just broke my promise to Kendall?”
Fuck. “I already made the mistake of apologizing to you once today.” I wasn’t stupid enough to try it again.
“That wasn’t for something you did.”
“I’m sorry.” Apparently, I was stupid where this woman was concerned.
Shockingly, she didn’t bite my head off. “No explanation?”
I undid the kickstand. “No.”
“Because?”
A delivery truck pulled into the gas station. “Because the second you start explaining your actions, you not only lose respect, but control of the situation.” I watched the truck inch toward the convenience store.
“Who did you tell?”
The truck pulled in front of the bikers, giving me all the advantage I needed. “Neil Christensen.”
“The Viking?”
“Yeah, hold on. We’re gonna outrun these fucks.”
Her arms tightened around my waist. “I forgive you. But not for my Jetta. You fucking owe me for that.”
I gunned the engine, spun the bike, and peeled out of the gas station.
I’D NEVER RIDDEN SO FAST on a bike.
André pulled out of the gas station the second a delivery truck blocked the LCs in. The bike swung in a tight arc, then André opened it up. Gunning the engine as he ripped through the gears, he wove through traffic and blew through a residential neighborhood at almost seventy miles per hour.
My heart in my throat, adrenaline pumping through my veins, I wanted to tell him to go faster.
As if reading my mind, he hit a northbound entrance ramp for 95 and shot to the fast lane. “Next exit, chica. You good?”
“Fine, but you’re going the wrong way to Key Largo.”
He glanced to his right, then cut across two lanes. “I’m losing those LCs first.” At the last minute, he took the exit and used the shoulder to fly past the line of cars.
I had a new respect for rice rockets as André accelerated around a turn. Or maybe it was just his driving skills. Either way, I bit back a smile as I hugged his back and held on while André drove like we were dodging obstacles in a video game.
“Did we lose them?” I didn’t even care anymore. After the initial fear of seeing the LCs at the gas station, I’d stopped panicking. While André had made his phone calls, I’d tried to figure out if I was resigned, in denial, or dangerously trusting his promise to keep me safe.
“Almost. They’re too far back to catch us once I make this next turn. I’ll lose them on the side streets.”
He cut across to the left-turn lane, but at the last minute gunned it through the intersection and swung a hard right. Horns honked, the bike went almost parallel to the pavement on the turn, but no one hit us. “We’re good,” he reassured.
I stupidly hadn’t been worried. “Okay.”
We fell into silence and ten minutes later he’d driven a zigzag pattern and gotten us back on US 1 South. When he slowed to the speed of traffic, the adrenaline wore off and my mood tanked as the midday Florida sun beat down mercilessly. Without the manufactured breeze from speed, I was sweating three days worth of Jack and Cokes and getting high on my own fumes. It was a toss-up what I wanted more, a shower, my head thrown at my father’s feet, or a single hour with the man in front of me without my past between us.
My hands wrapped around his hard stomach muscles, my thighs cradling every inch of his body heat, it didn’t escape my notice that I was finally spreading my legs for him, but I was fucking clothed.
Fuck my life.
Except now I didn’t want to.
I’d been clinging to the notion that I was at peace with death. But holding on to a sexy bodyguard who effortlessly glided the bike around another car made me want more. He made me want more. Firm, gentle, but utterly in control, André handled the machine like a man handles a lover, and I knew he’d be a goddamn rock star in bed.
It wasn’t in the way he carried himself. It wasn’t the half smile he wore like he knew the secret to life. It wasn’t even that he was an ex-military badass alpha. It was his eyes. Deep, dark, soulful, they showed a man who’d seen every sick, deprived, and fucked-up condition life could throw at you, but instead of it breaking him, he still valued life.
I didn’t value shit.
Not even myself.
For the past eight years, I’d thought life was shit and people were worse. I didn’t believe in love. I didn’t believe in fucking soul mates and happily ever afters. But one look at André and you knew he did. He bought the whole damn fairy tale. And I still, irrationally, wanted a taste of him.
“What are you thinking, chica?”
My heart skipped at the sound of his voice. It was the only thing about him that wasn’t smooth. Rough, like the sound of your fingernail scratching across raw wood, it didn’t have the same easy glide as his smile. It erupted from his chest and scraped across my skin. Deep, abrasive, his voice filled a void in my life with nothing more than precious breath meeting vocal cords.
“Chica?” His hand landed on my leg.
Heat, hotter than any sun, crawled up my thigh and settled between my legs. I shoved words out. “I want a fucking Jack and Coke and a gallon of chocolate ice cream to stick my head in.” The thought of Jack made me nauseous, but alcohol was the only thing that’d quell this ache in my core that increased with every fucking mile.
His stomach muscles jumped under my hands as his husky chuckle filled my ears.
I fought from moaning. “How much longer?”
“Few minutes.”
Minutes? There was nothing on either side of us but mangroves and water as far as the eye could see. “Awesome.” Sarcasm wasn’t my best friend, it was my lover.
He ignored my quip. “What kinda car you want, chica?”
“You’re not buying me one.” The thought of taking his money, for anything, made my stomach turn. “Just make sure the Jetta is a total loss when the insurance finds it so I get a payout.” I had money, thanks to the US government and a reward for information about River Ranch three years ago. But I hadn’t touched that money. Not a cent.
André downshifted. “Considered it handled.”
I’d searched for the right word to describe André since I’d first met him. None had ever fit, because too many fit. There was never any particular one I could pinpoint and make stick. Not like Candle. Candle was earth. Dark and dirty between your hands, he rubbed across your skin and left marks as his scent soaked into you like a memory. You smelled him after every rain and you felt him every time you fell. He’d cradle you if you needed to lie down in the woods, but he’d never lift you up to touch the stars.
André wasn’t earth, but I hadn’t known what he was, not until this very second.
André Luna was scrupulous.
His goodness wrapped around you like the comfort of rightness. He was vigilant and thorough, and he made every decision seem like the right one. He held your dignity when you lost it, and he gave you direction out of the dark rain of life. He wasn’t the ground under your feet. He was the right decision at your side.
And he scared me mo
re than the day I was ripped from the compound.
“We’re here.” He squeezed my thigh, then pulled into a thicket of seagrapes barely parted wide enough for a vehicle to pass.
Thirty yards down a sandy lane, the road curved south and ran along the water. Slowing the bike to no more than a crawl, he avoided the potholes and divots as glimpses of candy-blue water peeked through the bright green leaves of the seagrapes.
Growing up in the Everglades, I never saw beauty like this. My life was swamp brown and moss green. The only thing punctuating the monotony of the color palette were mosquitoes the size of my hand and the incessant buzz of cicadas.
One second we were on a road to nowhere, and the next we were in front of a house on thick concrete stilts. Past the poured foundation and winding walkway to a dock, there was carefully corralled gravel. It chased the landscape away from the house like its sole job was to be a buffer between man and chaos.
It was picture-perfect beautiful, but I couldn’t drag my eyes off the unmolested stones that made up the gravel yard. I knew how hard it was to keep the Floridian flora and fauna at bay. One of my jobs on the compound was weeding the walkways between the buildings. It was a joke of an exercise meant to strip my fingers of layers of skin and my spirit of self-worth. The men would march past in their boots, sometimes missing your fingers, sometimes not, but you never complained. Their purpose was always greater than yours.
Except now I had a two-million-dollar purpose. A purpose I’d been clinging to for three fucking years in the hopes that it would bankrupt River Ranch, take down my asshole father, and make my life worth more than pulling weeds. This had been my sole motivation for three years. But then I’d pulled my dress off, and shown a dark-eyed stranger who I was, and now the thought of a cult compound getting the best of me ate at my stomach.
André parked the motorcycle.
I pulled my helmet off and stood on rubbery legs. Looking up at the house—austere, white, modern, hard edges—it was exactly something André’s giant friend, the Viking, would own.
