He gave himself a mental shake. Memories of Evie were a distraction he couldn’t afford. Especially now, at the culmination of their hunt.
“Fuck.” Jagger lowered his weapon. “Too many witnesses. We’ll have to wait until he’s outside.”
“We don’t have time.” Zane pointed to the sea of headlights coming down the mountain pass. “Black Jacks. Same number of bikes we saw at the bar in Columbus last night. We need to get in and out before they arrive.”
“You and I’ll go in, grab him, and pull him outside,” Jagger said. “Gunner can deal with the civilians. T-Rex and the brothers can keep the Jacks distracted if they get here before we’re done. Keep your face clear of the camera.”
Jagger pulled a ball cap from inside his cut and tugged it low over his face. Zane followed suit, although with his dark hair just brushing his shoulders and his skin deeply tanned, he was more readily identifiable than his clean-cut friends. Sure, the cops would know from the cuts they wore that Axle had been offed by the Sinners—the Sinner patch, a skull with wings and stars, was emblazoned across the back of every cut. But if the authorities couldn’t make a positive ID, they’d be less inclined to come banging on the Sinner clubhouse door, especially now that the Sinners had a friend inside the Conundrum sheriff’s office.
Jagger pushed open the glass door and Zane followed him inside, skirting the rows of shiny new motorcycles dominating the shop floor and staying out of the direct line of the camera.
“Nobody move.” Zane raised his gun to Axle’s back and then caught the gaze of the redhead behind the counter.
In that moment, his thoughts crystallized and shattered.
All but one.
Evie.
Except for a new softness in her face, and a rounding of her curves, she looked exactly as she had the night he left Stanton. From her long, thick, red-gold hair, to her perfectly proportioned oval face, and the full sensuous lips he had dreamed about kissing night after night. Her delicate nose turned up slightly at the end, accentuating her softly angled cheekbones, and her lush body was meant to fill a man’s palms. Her eyes, now wide with fear and confusion, sparkled with the same emerald green. Her beauty hit him like a fist to the gut, stealing his breath and rendering him incapable of speech.
And unable to pull the trigger.
Unfortunately, Jagger appeared to be having the same reaction. Evie had been his friend, too. The three school friends had bonded over broken families, childhood disasters, and teenage woes until the night Jagger held a good-bye party and Zane ran away.
“Evie.” Jagger spoke first, recovering fast as yappers always did, using the nickname he and Zane had given her when they first met on the school playground.
She frowned, little creases forming between her brows. “My name is Evangeline.”
Jagger touched his cap as if to remove it, and Zane hissed a warning. “Camera.”
Her gaze snapped to him and Zane pulled his hat lower as nine years’ worth of longing turned into nine years of pain. After fleeing their hometown of Stanton, Montana, wanted for a murder he didn’t commit, he had gone back for Evie—albeit three years later—only to find her with a child and another man: Mark, the two-bit loser who had panted after her in high school. As he watched her with her new family in the school playground, where he’d first fallen in love, bit by bit and day by day, his heart hardened, and he promised himself he would never think of her again.
A promise he had yet to keep.
“It’s me.” Jagger turned his back to the camera at the till and lifted the visor of his cap.
A tumult of emotions crossed Evie’s face, from shock to disbelief, and then her hand flew to her mouth.
“Oh my God. I thought you died in service. I heard about the grenade and the shrapnel—”
“Takes more than a little shrapnel in the heart to kill me.” He glanced over at Zane, no doubt puzzled by the fact Zane hadn’t spoken up. But Zane simply wasn’t ready for this. He didn’t deal well with change or surprises. His life had been utterly out of control until he joined the Sinners. Now, control held him together. Control over his world. Control over his life. Control over his emotions. And right now, those emotions were threatening to overwhelm him and distract him from the task at hand.
Zane raised his gun, only to discover that Axle had taken advantage of the distraction to sneak through a sliding metal door at the back of the store.
“Fuck. He’s getting away.” Zane ran, slamming the door aside as he shouted a warning to T-Rex out back. He chased Axle through a large workshop filled with half-painted motorcycle fairings and gas tanks on stands, partially dismantled bikes, and empty bike lifts. The shop smelled of grease, paint, turpentine and the distinctive scent of fear.
The door at the far end of the workshop thudded closed and Zane’s feet pounded on the concrete floor.
“T-Rex!” He yanked the door open and almost tripped over the body on the ground.
Damn.
“You okay, brother?” He knelt beside T-Rex and felt for a pulse. T-Rex groaned and Zane whipped out his phone just as Jagger opened the door behind him.
Jagger caught sight of T-Rex and let loose a volley of curses. “How bad?”
“No bullet or knife wounds,” Zane replied. “I think he just took a hard knock to the head. I’ll call Shooter and tell him to bring a cage to take him to the clubhouse. Doc Hegel will look after him.”
Their new prospect, Shooter, a wannabe Sinner, who had almost finished his pledge year, had already proved to be one of the MC’s best drivers and marksmen, albeit a bit of a speed demon with an overly happy trigger finger. As a prospect, he handled all the driving. A full patch brother only rode in an enclosed vehicle if he had a family, and since Zane had just been voted “least likely to ever settle down” there was little chance he’d ever be “caged.”
“Where’s Axle?” Jagger asked.
“Forest.” Zane texted Shooter, and then gestured to the trees behind the shop. “We’ll need flashlights. If he makes it to the road, he might hitch a lift and get away.”
“This is my damn fault.” Jagger scraped a hand through his hair. “But … Evie. Can you believe it? After all these years?”
No, Zane couldn’t believe it. Nor could he accept it. Evie was part of a past he had locked away, a pain he couldn’t handle. Part of him wished tonight had never happened. And yet …
Evie.
His heart squeezed in his chest, an unfamiliar feeling for a man whose heart had stopped beating the day he discovered love was a one-way street.
With T-Rex under the care of the junior patch, and Gunner and the rest of the brothers tasked with calming the employees and sending them home, Jagger and Zane took over the search, crashing their way through the underbrush, their guns primed and ready on the slim chance that Axle hadn’t already made it to the road.
“Why didn’t you let her know it was you?” Jagger asked, his voice barely audible over the cracking branches underfoot.
“It’s complicated.” After meeting on the elementary school playground all those years ago, Jagger, Zane, and Evie had stuck together, leaning on each other for support and comfort, sharing good times and bad, but mostly playing video games after school on Jagger’s couch. As they grew into adolescence, Evie’s once-friendly touch became sweet torture for Zane. But he never even hinted about his feelings. The bond he had with Jagger and Evie was too precious, their friendship too important, to throw away on a teenage fantasy. Even after fantasy had become real, he’d kept it from Jagger, afraid if he spoke the words out loud, the memory would disappear.
“Why do I get the feeling, there’s something you’re not telling me?” Jagger raised his voice and gestured to a bush in front of them.
“There’s a lot I don’t tell you. Get over it.” He carefully made his way around the bush, his finger on the trigger of the gun.
“I got over your reserved nature when we were ten and met Evie and our entire playground conversation, which unt
il then had consisted of grunts and one-word answers, evolved into naming the guys we were going to beat up after school because they’d hurt or scared her in some way.”
“Those were good days.” Zane signaled that he was in position, and shone his flashlight on the bush. Twigs cracked and leaves rustled in the warm summer breeze. He aimed his gun. And then a fox shot between his legs and took off into the night.
“Fuck.” Zane’s adrenaline surged and he slid his finger off the trigger. “Can’t you tell the difference between a man and a fox?”
“It’s dark. I heard a noise.”
“I almost shot off your damn head.” Zane tucked his weapon away. “We’re not gonna find him in the dark. Not without more men. I say we regroup at the shop and keep a watch on the road.”
“Agreed.” Jagger lowered his weapon. “But his bike is forfeit. We’ll get it repainted, and give it to Hacker. I promised I’d help him out with a bike after we patched him into the club. He’s still riding that ancient Electra Glide his dad left him. They do painting here. I’ll get Evie to give us a deal.”
“You’re gonna ask a bunch of civilians to paint a stolen bike?” Zane didn’t want any ties with Evie’s shop. He didn’t want a reason to come back. Hell, he didn’t even want a reason to remember this night.
“It’s not stolen. It’s ours.” Jagger laughed. “And it’s not like Axle’s gonna go to the cops and report it missing.”
They walked the rest of the distance to the shop in silence. What the hell was Evie doing here so far from home? Had she and Mark moved to Conundrum? If she’d been his girl, no fucking way would he have allowed her to work in such a deserted location at night. Or in a motorcycle shop which, no doubt, would attract some of the worst elements of society.
Kinda like him.
“You want to talk to her about the detailing?” Jagger pulled open the back door to the shop.
“I think we should stay the hell away from her,” Zane replied. “Let her lead her nice civilian life.” He followed Jagger inside. Did Evie work in the shop or in the store? Had she gone through with her plan to get a Fine Arts degree in college? If so, what the hell was she doing here? And why the fuck did he care?
“I figured that out when you didn’t say hello. And if there’s something you need to tell me, now would be a good time. Otherwise I’m gonna come back tomorrow, have a talk with her about the bike and catch up on her life. You should tag along. After all, you knew her as well as me.”
Better. Intimately. And he was pretty damn sure Jagger didn’t appreciate all the little things that made her Evie: from the soft lilt of her laughter, to her penchant for tight jeans, kick-ass cowboy boots and fringed leather jackets; her risk-taking wild streak that had made his heart pound, to the compassion, that had drawn him in when they were young.
Jagger probably hadn’t noticed that she cried over books and romantic movies, preferred nachos to cake, and never passed an elderly person without smiling and saying hello. His Evie had a big heart. But he’d figured that one out when, at eight years old, she held a wet paper towel over his eye after his father had beaten him one of many terrible nights.
Too bad she had no fucking loyalty and no damn faith.
“I’m pretty sure we won’t find Axle tonight, so I’ll be busy tracking tomorrow,” Zane said. “You go catch up with her. Just … don’t mention me.”
Jagger looked back over his shoulder. “For a man with a string of blood patches on his cut, you’re sounding like a pussy. It’s Evie, dammit. You’re acting like you’re afraid of her.”
“I’m not afraid of Evie.” But he was afraid of himself, and what he might do if he saw her again.
THREE
If you jump into a repair, without planning it through, you will break something. Guaranteed.
—SINNER’S TRIBE MOTORCYCLE REPAIR MANUAL
“Where are the biker hotties today?” Connie Vandenberg, store clerk and Evie’s best friend, tugged down the neck of her black Big Bill’s Custom Motorcycles T-shirt, exposing a few extra inches of her modest cleavage. Gene, one of Bill’s junior mechanics, a thin, lanky man with thick glasses and a perpetual frown, dropped the box of riding gloves he’d just brought out from the stockroom and stared. Which was entirely the point. Connie had hit a dry spell and since Gene was the only unattached man in the store, she’d decided he should be the one to assuage her thirst.
“We already spent an hour talking about your biker love last night when I was supposed to be asleep.” Evie stashed her purse in the secure drawer under the till and tucked her phone in her pocket.
“Sleep? Who could sleep after that tribute to testosterone walked in the door last night?”
“You’re forgetting they had guns and clearly intended to shoot Axle in the back.” Evie still couldn’t believe Jagger, one of her two best childhood friends, had become an outlaw biker. What had happened to the boy who had been so proud to join the army, and fight for what was right? And why the hell wasn’t he dead? Not that she wanted him to be dead, but she’d heard from old friends in Stanton that shrapnel from an RPG had lodged in his heart while he was on tour in Afghanistan and he died in a hospital in London. Why did no one know he was still alive?
“At least Axle had time to give you Vipe’s message. Your new boyfriend doesn’t seem the type who would cope well with being stood up, although if that was an issue he should think about joining the twenty-first century and buying a phone.” Connie tied her store apron around her narrow waist. She was pixie pretty, slim and petite with blond hair cropped short in the back and long in the front and wide bluish-gray eyes, she could have passed for a teenager if not for her loud, slightly obnoxious, firecracker personality.
“His name is Viper, not Vipe.”
“Well, he’s not a relaxed, chilled out kinda guy,” Connie continued. “I thought he’d found out Bill was skimming off the weapons shipments he’s been running through the store and Axle was here to make sure it didn’t happen again. Permanent like.”
Evie flipped through the post, checking for sale flyers. Her custom paint business was doing so well, Bill had given her carte blanche to order new supplies. “Three dates doesn’t make Viper my boyfriend. And they were very chaste dates considering he’s the president of a biker gang. We went to a couple of bars, watched a game, went out for dinner, had a few goodnight-at-the-door kisses. I haven’t even had a chance to find out if he’s a badass in bed.”
“Ah yes.” Connie snorted a laugh. “The gentleman bad boy biker. I believe that’s called a contradiction in terms.”
“More like the biker who realized the dull civilian single mom wasn’t cut out for the excitement of biker life.” Evie had figured he wasn’t interested in her after their last date when he dropped her at home without even the usual goodnight kiss. Served her right for trying to spice up her love life with a badass biker. She knew better, but her wild streak had reared its head when Bill introduced them. Although Viper was much older than her, there was something about him—a confidence, an aura of power he projected the moment he walked into the shop, or maybe it was the darkness she sensed inside him—that reminded her of Zane. And even though she’d gotten over Zane and moved on with her life—as much as a person could do with a broken heart—she thought about him over the years, especially since she saw his face in miniature every day.
“Three dates plus how many times did he come here to the shop?” Connie didn’t wait for Evie’s answer. “First to do that deal with Bill. And then for detail work. Both legit. But after you painted his fender, why all the visits? Touch-ups on a perfect paint job? Discussions about his tank? A burning need to buy a pair of summer gloves? He came back for you. And Axle coming here to set up a third date proves it.”
Connie poked her in the ribs and Evie wiggled away. She hated being tickled. Her mother had always tried to tickle her when she was drunk, forgetting, in her alcohol-fueled delusions, that Evie wasn’t a child anymore. She’d never really had the chance to be a chi
ld. Her mother had been totally incapable of looking after herself, much less Evie, once she hit the bottle. With her father always out on patrol, Evie had taken on the role of cook, housekeeper, and 911-caller when her mother passed out or fell down the stairs. She had only ever felt free, truly free, during her stolen moments with Zane.
“I don’t know if I should go out with him again,” Evie said. “I have a nice, comfortable, normal life. I work. I chauffeur Ty and his friends to school and activities. Occasionally, I let you drag me out to a club or send me on a blind date where I meet comfortable, normal guys.”
“Ah…” Connie raised an eyebrow. “What about Roy the Rock Star? He wasn’t normal. Fucking you behind the drum kit during a rehearsal is hot, but not normal. Or what about Don the Dom? Kinky sex clubs don’t really rate on the normal scale. Sometimes you let your inner wild child out. Nothing wrong with that. Only problem was, Vipe didn’t give it to you the way you thought he would. He acted normal. Big disappointment. Give the guy another chance. He’s all kinda badness. He’s probably afraid he’ll scare you off.”
Maybe Connie was right. She couldn’t deny the delicious thrill of being wanted by someone who radiated such power. It was the same kind of feeling that had drawn her to Zane, dark and brooding, two grades above her in school, with a reputation that kept even the teachers away.
She’d watched him for the better part of a year, the ferocity with which he defended Jagger, his total unconcern with being popular on the playground, and the bruises on his face that came and went, until one day his pain drew her in. After she’d tended his wounds, he became her protector, giving her the sense of safety and security she didn’t get at home. And then he’d abandoned her. Just like her parents.
Connie sighed and leaned over the counter, elbows on Evie’s papers, her chin in her hands. “Of course, now that Viper has put us in danger and exposed us to the scourge of the biker world, who happen to be tall, ripped, and devastatingly gorgeous, I’m softening toward him. When do I get my introduction to your old friend?”
The Sinner’s Tribe Motorcycle Club, Books 1-3 Page 67
