by A. J. Downey
“Thank you,” she murmured quietly and I had to smile to myself. As caustic as Mali could be when she was scared or on uncertain ground, she was ever, unfailingly, polite. That said more about her than she realized. Now, did I imagine for one minute she would be so polite when it came to the guys and how bossy they could be? Nope. In fact, I figured this was going to be a somewhat rocky homecoming. Not just because Mali was… well… Mali, but also because I’d kept her a secret all of these years.
The guys didn’t know, and I don’t know why I’d kept it that way. Maybe because I was afraid I really would never find her. Probably because I didn’t want them to see me as a failure, not about this… I couldn’t stand to fail when it came to this, to her.
“Kyle, why are you staring?” she demanded, shoving some collard greens into her mouth and chewing thoughtfully, staring at me right back.
“Guess it’s finally sort of sinking in that this is real, that I finally found you.”
“Well I’m not a mirage and this sure as fuck isn’t a dream. A nightmare, maybe, but certainly not a dream.” She looked down at her food and speared another bite with maybe a little more force than was absolutely necessary. I watched her for a minute and deliberated on asking the question on the tip of my tongue.
If there was one thing the MC life had taught me, and hell – even life on the internet – it was that you didn’t ask questions that you weren’t absolutely sure you wanted the answer to. I bit the bullet and asked for this one anyway, though; just without phrasing it like a question.
“Sounds like you maybe aren’t all that happy I found you.”
She dropped her fork with a clatter and gave me a look that could peel paint. I couldn’t help but smile, reading her loud and clear. I ducked my head over my own food, pleased that yes, she was indeed happy to see me, she just was having a tough time, like me, with processing all that entailed.
“Don’t be a dumbass,” she grated quietly under her breath and picked up her silverware.
“I’ll try not to be,” I answered and she startled again like she hadn’t realized she’d just said that out loud.
“Good, we don’t have time for it.”
I smiled again and told her, “You ain’t gotta worry about a thing, now. I’ve got this, I promise.”
She snorted and shook her head like she didn’t believe me but didn’t contradict me much beyond that. It was a role reversal, for sure. All growing up she’d had all the street-smarts while I’d been the book-smart one. I just think that she, like me, was still struggling to reconcile the adult in front of her versus how we’d each been when we’d last seen each other.
I knew one thing for sure, I would give anything to be back under our tree, gazing at her sun-dappled hair, laughing about the movie we’d just seen rather than trying to stitch together the ragged ends of our childhood with who we were as people now.
7
Amalia…
Dinner was good, but I was definitely feeling it and ready for a nap. Still, Kyle seemed determined to make it to wherever we were going before we stopped for any kind of real rest. I was fighting a food coma for a good portion of the ride but finally, after what seemed like forever, we were well inside the Kentucky state border and headed through hill country; the familiar smell of the state’s famous bluegrass more than just a memory. I missed that smell, bright, green, and growing. I wished it wasn’t so damn dark, I would have liked to see it.
The turns he took once he was off the freeway and onto country highways told me that we were close to our destination. Everything felt deliberate, and like he knew where he was going. I was comfortable with the ride and with his capability steering and controlling the beastly Harley-Davidson so I no longer felt the need to hold onto him for dear life. I sat back slightly, hands on top of my thighs, just trying desperately to find a comfortable position to sit in. My lower back was tense and screaming from the long hours of unfamiliar riding and I knew my body; if I thought it was bad now, I just had to wait until tomorrow morning.
All I wanted was a hot shower, some pain killers, and a decent bed by the time Kyle took the final turn off the paved road and through a rusting livestock gate to head up a dirt track. I grabbed onto him, wrapping my arms around his hard waist as he crept over the loose dirt and gravel up over a rise onto a plateau. I blinked at the side of the rusting corrugated building. A long and tall, barn or garage – I couldn’t tell in the dark that well. It had power, a shop light with a fluorescent bulb shining a harsh blue light down over a man-sized door and flooding the dirt lot next to it with cold illumination.
Motorcycles were parked in a line off to one side, and the rusting, weed-choked hulks of cars were lined up at a right angle to the building and bikes, in front of thick woods traveling further up a hillside.
What the fuck is this place? I wondered inside my head as he pulled up to the line of bikes out front and tapped my knee to get off. I swung my leg over the bike with a deep groan as muscles protested loudly at their mistreatment. I stood aside as he backed his bike into the line of them and cut the engine. Immediately, I could hear the cricket- and frog-song and the question I was going to ask died on my lips. I closed my eyes and let the music of the country night wash over me, tilting my head to listen.
A nameless tension I hadn’t known I’d carried loosened and slid away and I only opened my eyes when I heard the rattle and click of buckles against the side of the bike’s glossy painted skin. Kyle shouldered the pack that he’d liberated from one of his saddlebags and I realized a rectangle of warmer yellow light had opened up beside me.
I turned and eyed the tall, broad-shouldered man standing in the doorway as Kyle grabbed the rest of his shit that he wanted to bring in.
The dude in the door was a fine example of the male half of our species. Aside from the height and those shoulders, which by the way, those arms! He had long blond hair in a loose ponytail over his cut. The white tee shirt he had on under the vest was struggling to keep up with his physique, which again, I could totally appreciate. His light, silvery blue eyes traveled over me just as surely as I was checking him out but whatever he thought, he was good at hiding it.
I turned back to Kyle and held out a hand to take some of what he was pulling out of the bike but he waved me off saying, “I’ve got it.”
I let him go first, past the Nordic god in the doorway and went to slip past him myself muttering, “There is such a thing called ‘personal space’ there, Thor.”
He chuckled, a deep, almost dark, sound that rang sinister to my ears and said in a low smoker’s voice, “It’s Trigger, not Thor, and I’m kind of up against a wall here.”
It wasn’t precisely a wall, but he was backed up flush against some kind of a work bench along the outer wall that was snug up by the door that he was leaning on to keep it open for us. Between his sheer size and the fact that I was nearly double my width with the heavy ass messenger bag strapped to my back, it made for awkward passing through no actual fault of his own. I felt myself blush with embarrassment but wasn’t about to lose face any more than I already had with some sort of lengthy apology.
Still, I gave him a quiet, “My bad,” so I could feel like less of a dick. When I got past him and into the large space, my discomfort, unfortunately, only grew.
There were quite a few pairs of eyes on me, and I fucking hated being the center of attention. I didn’t even realize I’d stopped short, the mountain of a man at my back until Kyle held out his hand to me and waved me forward.
I took enough steps across the cracked and unfinished concrete floor to let the big man behind me move into the room and close the door behind us, keeping the night-time bugs attracted to the light outside. He, thankfully, stepped around and in front of me to join the rest of the men present.
“So you’re her, huh?” A Mexican guy, old enough to be sporting some gray in his beard and long ponytail was the one to speak. His big arms crossed over his chest almost awkwardly due to their size. Veins travele
d under his skin, like a roadmap, his tattoos stretched and indiscernible from this distance.
“Lexi,” I introduced automatically, using my cover name I’d been living under for the last seventeen years. “Lexi Duran.”
“That’s not who you are.” My gaze snapped to a man bouncing in his old-school Adidas sneakers. He had brown hair and icy blue eyes, a teardrop tattooed at the corner of one of them. How cliché. I raised an eyebrow and planted my feet, expecting trouble when he lurched towards me. He walked around me and I twisted to keep him in front of me, in my sight, at all times.
“Reaver…” Kyle said and I gave my best bitch grin.
“Somehow I doubt that’s who you are, either…” I said and the man, Reaver, grinned.
“You’d be wrong.”
“Yeah?”
He kept going around me and it was quick, too. Trying to dizzy me, or disorient me if I had to guess. I didn’t like where this was going, so I hit the button on the seatbelt catch on my messenger bag and let it drop.
“Oooooh, we gonna fight?” he asked, his smile charming but with an edge of madness.
“If you’d like,” I answered and felt my adrenaline spike, my heart throbbed painfully in my chest as fear swirled through me and my blood rushed, pummeling through my veins.
“Mali, don’t,” Kyle said and I shook my head and kept Reaver in my sight.
“I’m not doing anything, Kyle – tell your new friend here to back off.” I felt my hands go up into my trained fighter’s stance and Reaver’s eyes lit up. His hand flashed out and I acted rather than reacted, swinging forward with my opposite hand even as he caught the wrist he was going for with his hand.
I clocked him but good, his head snapping to the side and I heard a couple of the guys cry “Oh!” One of them laughed and said, “Woo hoo!”
I almost heard Kyle facepalm and heard him say, “Fuck, Reaver. Just don’t hurt her.”
Reaver pulled me into him, right up against him, and ran his nose against the inside of my wrist, breathing me in like I was wearing some kind of perfume or something. I scowled and brought a knee up but he deflected. He shoved me back and I frowned again – he put space between us, and I didn’t get that.
I circled, putting my forgotten bag between us as a stumbling block for him and like magic, a knife appeared in his hand. I blinked, and the blade snapped open with a soft and terrifying little snick. I swallowed hard and stilled and his grin grew wide.
“There it is!” he crowed triumphantly and I shook my head. He lunged, keeping the knife back and I dodged, going for my gun. I pulled it free and aimed, thumbing back the hammer. Everyone went still.
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you? You never bring a knife to a gun fight.” I swallowed hard and his grin went rictus.
“I like her!” he declared and I glanced at Kyle. It was a mistake. Reaver lunged impossibly fast, he ripped the gun out of my hand and hooked a leg behind mine. We were both falling and there wasn’t shit I could do to stop it but he was a crafty son of a bitch. I hit hard, the wind almost, but not quite, knocked out of me. My head cushioned from the pavement by my messenger bag. Icy blue eyes were staring into mine and I could feel the pulse in my neck bouncing wildly against the tip of his knife blade.
“You need to make better choices, Amalia Rose,” he said, his breath fanning my lips. I tried not to hurl from fear even as his words snapped me back to the Queen of Swords I’d held in my hand just hours ago. I blinked and swallowed hard, thankful for the reminder and damn! He got up off of me and held a hand down to me, the knife just suddenly gone. I swallowed hard and took it and he heaved me to my feet.
Kyle looked equal parts embarrassed and pissed, the rest of the guys looked amused, and I felt flushed. I held out my hand for my gun but Reaver took it over to the Mexican, who was still looking me over, dark eyes stormy.
“Just what’ve you brought home with you, Data?” he asked, and even though he was staring at me he was clearly talking to Kyle.
“Dragon, Amalia… Mali, this is Dragon, our president.”
“Charmed,” I spat out and saw Kyle’s shoulders drop out of the corner of my eye. Reaver grinned from his place next to the man, Dragon, who was going over the big old revolver with a practiced eye.
“Yer daddy’s gun?” he asked.
“Mine now, but yeah, what was your first clue?”
“Way too big for a little girl like you,” a dude off to my right said.
“Ghost,” Trigger intoned.
“Guys, please – I get it if you want to be pissed at me, but Mali didn’t do anything,” Kyle said and the frustration in his voice had everyone turning in his direction.
“Sweetheart, can you give us a minute?” Dragon asked me and his tone was decidedly less irritated with me. I blinked and threw up my hands, turning.
“Rev, Reaver, go with her.”
“No thanks,” I snapped. “I’m fine.” But nothing about this was fine, I turned to Kyle – “You good with me leaving you alone with these fucking lunatics?”
He smiled at me and it was tired, “These ‘lunatics’ are my family now, my brothers, and they have been for a long time. Let them go with you and watch your back, please?”
I scoffed. “Seriously, Kyle?”
“Mali…” his voice was strained but tinged with pleading. I sighed.
“All right, fine…”
I went to the door we’d come in through, Reaver and the one they called Rev at my back. It was a decidedly uncomfortable sensation.
8
Data…
Mali threw open the door and it slammed into the workbench beside it, causing the whole damn side of the building to shudder. Dray scowled and Dragon smirked and I just hung my head.
“Always like that, brother?” Trig asked gently.
“I think she’s gotten a little more fire, maybe it’s the stress.”
“She tell you much?” Dray demanded and I shook my head.
“Not a lot, not yet.”
Trigger sighed and Ghost stared at the big man, asking the question, “Who we gotta kill?”
“Nobody, if I have anything to say about it,” I answered.
“Eh?” Dragon asked.
“I’m not bringing them here, not with all of you and your families. This one I can handle,” I said, wandering over to a chair and dropping into it. I looked around and my shoulders dropped again. “Thanks, you guys… this is going to be a long operation.”
“What do you have in mind?” Dray asked and I never expected to see him shift nervously.
“Whoever is after Mali, I have the feeling is some kind of criminal organization.”
“Yeah, that’s pretty much a given,” Trigger said.
“So, I do my thing. I figure out who, piddle around on the dark web, pick them apart and make the pigs do my dirty work for me.”
“I don’t even want to know how you plan on accomplishing that, do I?” Dray asked with a sardonic smile.
“You wouldn’t understand it even if I explained it to you,” I confessed.
“Did you just call me stupid?” he demanded, his brow crushing down into a frown.
“Compared to the lot of us he’s a goddamned genius, boy. He’s not being disrespectful, he’s just telling the fuckin’ truth,” Dragon grumbled and I put up my hands and nodded. He was right. I wasn’t trying to be an asshole, I just seriously doubted I could explain what I had planned in layman terms well enough to not generate more questions than answers.
“As long as he keeps Em and our boy out of it, we’re good,” he said shoving off the edge of the workbench he was leaning against.
“Where you going?” Dragon demanded.
“Home to my woman and my kid, since I’m too stupid to know what the fuck he’s talking about, anyway.”
“Dude, Dray, don’t be like that,” I said.
“Relax, homeboy. I didn’t mean that the way it came out. My boy isn’t sleeping through the night yet, and I’m fuckin’ tired.”
“We’ll talk another day about why you never told us about her.”
I shook my head and answered him now, “I couldn’t. Not being able to find her has been my biggest failure…”
He looked me up and down and nodded, “Can’t be good at everything, you know.” He smiled and turned around and walked out the door. I caught a glimpse of Mali whirling and looking through the portal, concern mixed with the anger on her face and I felt an echoing smile in my heart, even if it didn’t quite make it to my face.
“He’s going to make a good Pres someday,” I heard myself say but then I had to sigh. “Never thought I would ever hear myself say that.”
“Just needed a good woman was all.” Dragon said, but I could hear the shine of pride in his voice. I turned back, tearing my eyes from the battered metal door and the woman I knew lay beyond it to essentially face the music.
“Look, guys, I’m sorry… but there wasn’t anything any of you could do about it. I mean –“
Dragon waved me off, “Hell if you couldn’t find her, there wasn’t no way we were gonna. The problem is what do we fuckin’ do now?”
“Can’t neutralize the threat without a fuckin’ target,” Trigger stated. Ghost grunted in agreement.
“I need to go fish. Pick Mali’s brain, gather the information and find the proverbial man behind the curtain,” I said. “Then I should, in theory, be able to neutralize the threat before it gets inside a hundred miles from here.”
“It’d be nice,” Ghost said and I nodded, the worry plain in his eyes.
“Let me do this my way, we’ll stay here until it’s in the bag, I’ll keep you updated every step of the way.”
“You’re fuckin’ right you will,” Dragon grunted.
“How deep am I in with the rest of the guys?” I asked.
“Not as deep as you’d think,” Trig answered.
“Every man’s got his secrets,” Dragon agreed. “We just never figured yours was this big.”
