Luckily for both men, Kat was a fantastic shot and she’d flicked her wrist at the same moment the gun had fired, grazing Solomon’s forehead.
“You got some nerve, kid,” a member sneered as Billy looked Kat in the eyes.
Kat stared into his brown eyes, wondering why he of all people had stepped forward and held off Solomon’s execution. It wasn’t that Kat wasn’t grateful for the kid. She was.
Taking a life was something she’d never thought she’d have to do, but being the president of the Free Guns meant that sometimes she needed to bloody her hands a bit for the good of the club. She’d seen Jamison do it and Kat knew that if she wanted to fill his shoes, she’d have to do it too. So she’d put aside her own budding feelings about the ruggedly handsome biker Solomon Parker, and done her duty.
... or would have, if it weren't for the kid.
“What is it, Billy?” Kat turned toward the kid and gave him her undivided attention.
“Don’t say a fucking word,” Solomon growled from his place on the forest floor, and was met with a swift kick in the side.
Kat turned to the member who had kicked Solomon–the same one who’d kicked him before. Voice deadly calm, Kat stared at the young man. “Do it again, Ryan, and you’re going to lose something.”
Ryan took a step away from Solomon. Kat smiled internally, reveling in the authority she’d just wielded. It was yet another sign of her place in the club, her position. She had it, no one wanted it, so she wielded it any way she wanted.
“Answer my question, Billy, or I put one right between his eyes,” Kat warned as she touched her gun meaningfully. She wouldn’t do it though; Solomon Parker had already faced death once today, she wasn’t going to put him through it again. Kat might have been willing to be a murderer two seconds ago, but times changed, and one adapted.
“He didn’t do it,” Billy whispered, his hands shaking so badly it pained Kat to watch.
Peering closely at the kid, who looked like he was barely out of high school and far too pure to be working at a biker bar, Kat took her time. There was something about the kid that didn’t sit right with her, something that gave her pause.
Kat watched Billy’s chest expand as he sucked in a breath, noted the shaking hand he used to push back his black hair as he exhaled, “I did it. I killed Jamison.”
***
The clearing grew deadly silent, as every member turned and looked at the young bartender. Billy didn’t flinch away from everyone’s gaze or take a step back; he stood his ground and stared at Kat defiantly.
“You,” Kat drew out the word as she crossed her arms and cocked her hip in disbelief, “killed Jamison St. John?”
Kat eyed the kid up and down, trying to see the murderer beneath the scrawny arms and legs, those innocent eyes. The kid didn’t have the mark of a killer, didn’t give off any strange vibe. In fact, the only vibe Kat got from him was a protective one.
Billy nodded his head vigorously as his eyes darted to the still-kneeling Solomon Parker, “Yes, I—”
“Shut your mouth!” Solomon barked angrily at the kid, surprising everyone. Kat turned her head to look at the dark-haired rider, taking careful note of his features. The man looked pissed, like he was about to clean up a child’s mess.
Turning his head to Kat, Solomon growled, “He didn’t do anything. Idiot’s just trying to protect me.”
Kat carefully shifted her gaze from one man to the other, and slowly realization dawned on her. They both had rainwater eyes and midnight-black hair, but whereas Solomon was ripped and corded with muscle, Billy was scrawny with youth. She didn’t know why she hadn’t seen it before, but under the bright light of the moon, the similarities couldn’t be missed.
A collective gasp escaped from the club members as Kat said the words clearly and loudly. “You’re Solomon’s brother.”
Goodness. Things are getting confusing, Kat thought as she rubbed her head. The Free Guns began to murmur and whisper, theories flying across the clearing. It was hard to know what to believe with a relative that no one knew thrown into the mix. But on top on everything, it was late, emotions were running high, and Kat didn’t want to make a mistake she would regret the rest of her life. She’d been a millisecond away from one already tonight.
Taking her hand away from her eyes, Kat looked out at the sea of bikers clumped in small groups. Kat could see the dissension in the group and knew that it needed to stop. The Free Guns needed to stay together and stay strong, and Kat needed to remind them of that.
“Everybody be quiet!” Kat shouted over the voices, pitching her voice high so she could be heard.
Heads whipped in her direction with lips curled in anger and distaste. “I suggest all of you go home. It’s late, emotions are high, and no one wants to do anything they might regret in the morning.”
Mindy broke from her group and walked toward Kat, arms spread wide in anger. “Solomon did it, Kat! The monster killed my husband! Now put him–”
Kat’s voice was deadly low, her eyes so hard that they stopped Mindy’s tirade immediately. “I suggest you go home.”
There were a few more tense moments before members finally began to get on their bikes and leave the grove. Kat turned to the men surrounding Solomon and called them by name. “Joseph, Dominic, and John, stay.”
Once the other bikers were gone, Kat turned to the few men still left. “Dominic, take Billy. John, take Solomon. Joseph, you’re riding in front. I got the back.” The orders were issued with speed and certainty. Not a single man protested as they followed her orders, nor did a single one question her authority. It was at that moment that Kat realized she hadn’t needed to kill Solomon to become a leader. She just needed to overcome a challenge. And now that she’d done so, she knew she was the president. In practice if not yet in name.
Climbing on her sleek and shiny crimson bike, Kat nodded to the men as she tugged on her matching red helmet. “Let’s head to the bar.”
CHAPTER FIVE
It was a little past two in the morning and the bar was all but dead. No patrons turned their way as Kat and her men pulled Solomon and Billy into the back room and locked the door. It was a biker bar; the men had seen plenty worse.
Kat nodded toward the round table and chairs in the middle of the room. “Put ‘em in the chairs.”
The back room of the bar was cramped, smelly, and cold, but it served its purpose. This was where they had their private meetings, where only the higher-ups were allowed. Kat couldn’t remember when she’d first been invited to the back room, but she knew that when the members had started looking to Jamison and her for answers, she’d transformed from member to leader.
And now president, Kat reminded herself as all eyes turned to her. Pulling out a chair for herself, Kat propped her legs up on the table and leaned back, trying to assess the situation rationally through eyes clouded by sleep.
Taking a deep breath around a wide yawn, Kat said, “I want you both to explain what’s going on.”
Billy looked about ready to pee himself, while Solomon had a sardonic smirk on his face. It was crazy to see them look so similar, but act so differently. While Billy was wet behind the ears and tried to play it off with bravado, Solomon was a hardened criminal, a man who’d earned his scars through blood, sweat, and tears. It was the difference between a boy and a man.
“I-I killed Jamison,” Billy stammered as sweat and tears streaked his face.
Kat swung her head to look at the kid at the same moment Solomon backhanded Billy and sent him flying from the chair onto the floor. Everyone was quiet, stunned as they looked at Solomon’s calm face and Billy’s shocked, wide eyes staring up at him.
“Y-you hit me,” Billy whispered, shocked and hurt.
Solomon turned to Kat, ignoring the kid and the three hulking Free Guns in the room with them. “Call off your dogs, Kit-Kat, and let’s talk.”
Tense seconds stretched into minutes as Kat regarded Solomon through half-lowered lids. I know it’s not
a good idea, but… Where Solomon was concerned, rationality flew out the window.
“Out. All of you.”
Four heads turned toward her, and as many jaws dropped.
“But Kat…”
“You heard the lady,” Solomon snickered, giving Kat a burning look.
“Kat, don’t let him–”
“How many of you think Solomon or Billy did it?” Kat interrupted, as she took her feet off the table and planted them firmly on the floor.
Looking every member in the eye, Kat raised a questioning eyebrow. “Seriously, who thinks these guys murdered Jamison?”
John, Dominic, and Joseph all looked at each other, then at Kat, and finally at Solomon and Billy. Solomon lounged in a chair, completely at ease, while Billy remained on the floor, a hand covering his swollen cheek. A few more seconds of awkward deliberation and the men shook their heads.
John stroked the back of his neck and regarded Kat. “I don’t think they did it.”A murmur of agreement came from the other two men.
Thought so. Kat had known early on that Solomon wasn’t the killer, but he’d been willing to take the blame, surrender his life because it would have made them all sleep better. For her part, Kat had been willing to put down an innocent man, a man whom her most trusted guys didn’t even think it was guilty.
Pushing away from her chair, Kat turned her back on the group and steeled her voice. “When I asked if anyone thought Solomon Parker was innocent, I got silence,” she stretched out the word, forced it through her teeth. “Fucking silence.”
In a whirl of black leather, Kat spun around and slammed her fists into the table, tears shining in the corners of her eyes. Every man flinched except for Solomon, who didn’t twitch a muscle.
“I’d been ready to kill a man tonight, stain my soul with his blood–” she paused and looked at Solomon, things she couldn’t say shining in her eyes. “Leave. Get the fuck out.”
Her most trusted men—no, —she’d—almost sold her soul to the Devil. And for what? It all seemed meaningless now. A man’s life for a motorcycle club. How the hell did than even itself out?
Scuffling shoes and the click of a lock were the only indications that the men had gone, and the silence meant they’d taken Billy with them. Kat held her body stiff as she heard Solomon’s chair scrape against the wood floor. When he touched her, she flinched.
It wasn’t a harsh touch, he didn’t grab her. His fingers were soft on her arm. But Kat would have liked it if he’d been rough, if he'd gotten angry, if he screamed and hit her. She would have been able to call it even, or at least she would have felt a little less bad about almost taking his life. But that wasn’t how Solomon Parker worked.
Another gentle caress on her arm made her flinch even harder. “Don’t touch me!” Kat lashed out as tears streamed from her eyes.
Strong arms closed around her like a steel embrace, and Kat raged on. “Don’t touch me!”
She screamed the words, anger and despair making her voice hoarse. She thrashed in his arms as he held her, kicked and clawed in an attempt to get away. She couldn’t handle him being gentle; treating her like porcelain when she’d nearly killed him. It was too much.
His calm rainwater eyes met hers, and in her own chaos she found a safe place. Though it shouldn’t have been safe. Solomon Parker wasn’t a safe man, he was dangerous and seductive.
“Get angry at me!” Kat pleaded, her anger calming down. “Rage at me! Hit me! Just don’t–don’t try to protect me. Please.”
I can’t. Kat hated herself. She’d been hiding it, sugarcoating it, calling it by a different name, but she’d been the one with the gun, the one with her finger on the trigger. What had made her think that it was life or death? No one had held a gun to her head and made her choose. It had all been her decisions, her own actions, and she knew that she alone would have to face the consequences.
“I’m so sorry,” Kat sobbed, finally lowering her defenses and doing something she hadn’t done in years: apologize.
Through bleary eyes, she watched Solomon. Watched him smile gently at her. “Shh. It’s okay, Kit-Kat.”
The sun was beginning to come up, rays shining through slits in the roof. But Kat knew she wouldn’t care. She was drained, exhausted.
“I’m so sorry,” She whispered again, ashamed as the world began to tilt, taking on a grayish hue.
Kat couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept, the last time she’d eaten. It had been a grueling day followed by a traumatic night–and that was just for her. She could only imagine what Solomon had gone through, what she’d put him through.
He wasn’t a murderer, and neither was she. And yet they’d played their roles because neither of them had thought there was a way out.
“I forgive you, Kit-Kat,” Solomon whispered against her hair, the words half-smothered.
She didn’t deserve it, Kat knew. But it helped her release the pain in her head and in her heart. Darkness surrounded her, pulling her in, pulling her deep. In the moment before exhaustion claimed her, Kat knew that she’d been an idiot, knew that Solomon’s life couldn’t be measured by her, knew that only God had that power.
CHAPTER SIX
Jamison’s funeral was quiet but crowded. Every biker in the Free Guns was there, along with a few other members of neighboring Clubs who’d known Jamison. Mindy was a nervous wreck, crying and screaming, sobbing on the nearest shoulder, which at this moment happened to be Kat’s.
Patting Mindy’s back, Kat was at a loss, so she decided to say nothing. It turns out Jamison hadn’t been murdered. No, he’d just been stupid, hiding his drinking from Mindy. And none of the Free Guns had tried to stop him because he was their leader. Jamison’s death had come as a shock to Mindy, but not to anyone else.
Kat had learned the truth two days ago, the morning after the incident with Billy and Solomon’s near-execution in the grove. Solomon had carried her home from the bar and tucked her into her bed. She’d been comfortably wrapped in his arms when her phone rang: Mindy was at the police station, and she’d wanted Kat to come down for moral support. “I’ll be right back,” Kat had said to Solomon as she tugged on some clothes. “Don’t leave.”
Mindy had discovered that her husband had never stopped drinking. The police had told her and Mindy that Jamison had died because he’d been drinking and driving and not looking where he was going. No one had tampered with his bike. There wasn’t some big conspiracy behind the incident, it had all been an accident.
From the police station, Kat had returned home mentally and physically exhausted, only to find an empty house, a new lock on the door Solomon had broken, and a note saying he’d be back soon.
All this had happened two days ago. Kat couldn’t blame Solomon for running away; she’d nearly killed him because of…an accident, because people had needed to blame someone for an accident.
Kat mentally sighed at the lives that had been destroyed by Jamison’s recklessness. Worst of all, Kat knew that a little part of everyone blamed themselves for Jamison’s untimely demise. Kat could see it in every drawn face, in the silent tears sliding down reddened cheeks, in the white knuckles and clenched fists of almost every Free Gun.
Casting her eye around the funeral, Kat knew what they all were thinking, what she herself was thinking: Why didn’t I stop him? Kat had been asking herself this question as she’d ridden with Mindy to the funeral and climbed the hill to the gravesite. They’d all seen it, the destruction the booze was causing him. They should’ve stopped him long before it got to the point where he’d gotten on his bike and ridden drunk.
Kat shook her head and drew back her dark thoughts. Her mother had been an alcoholic, and for the longest time, and by the tender age of ten, Kat was blaming herself mercilessly for her mother’s death by alcohol poisoning: I should have been a better daughter. I should have tried to help, tried to take the bottle away from her.
It took a long time for Kat to realize that her mother’s death was not her fault, an
d, as hard as it was to admit now. Neither was Jamison’s. People made their own choices, walked their own paths. People are born alone and they die alone. It was just the way of the world.
Kat knew there were things she could have done, small things to help, but at the end of the day, Jamison had made his choice and walked his own path.
“Thank you for coming,” The pastor ended as Jamison’s closed casket was lowered into the grave, the sound of metal grating against metal making Kat wince.
Arms wrapped around Mindy. Kat stood watching as flowers and other mementos were thrown into the open grave. A black pot on a neighboring hill caught her eye, and Kat looked up to see Solomon Parker. The man stood about a hundred feet away, dressed in conservative black, his hair pulled back and his shoulder resting on the trunk of a tree. Sunglasses covered his eyes and made him look mysterious, dangerous.
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