Steel Cobras MC Complete Box Set: Books 1-6

by Evie Monroe

  Cullen was leaning back in his chair, his boots up on the table. “You’ve made your point clear, Jet,” he said, looking at his phone. “All right. Zain is late again, no surprise, but let’s start anyway. Nix, tell them what happened at The Wall earlier today.”

  We all looked at Nix. The Wall was our place. The Fury didn’t dare come there.

  “Someone fired at Zain as he was walking in,” Nix said. “Grazed his forehead. I was there. Saw it happen. It was definitely Fury.”

  Jet clenched his fists and pounded on the table. “Why the fuck are we wasting our time like this again? It shouldn’t be this goddamn hard to find their clubhouse. Just send some of the prospects over to North Aveline Bay and eventually we’ll find it.”

  I nudged him. “Easy.” I looked at Cullen. “You talk to Slade since they wasted our clubhouse?”

  Cullen shook his head. Slade was the Fury president, and a mysterious, evil motherfucker. Word was, he was criminally insane, ruthless, and got a sick enjoyment out of killing people. But he didn’t often make his presence known. None of us had ever seen him in the flesh. He had his men do his bidding. I got the feeling that even his own men were scared shitless of him. “Naw, man. I can’t figure that asshole out.”

  Hart, our club Secretary and resident computer geek, looked up from his laptop. “I think that’s what he intends, man. To keep us all scratching our heads. There isn’t even a fucking picture of him online, anywhere. He’s like, fucking Houdini.”

  Just then, the door creaked open and Zain, our Road Captain, walked in. He threw his helmet down and sat on the bench next to me.

  We all stared at him silently. Cullen knew not to get on him for being late, though he always was, because it was clear the fucker’d had a bad day. He had a mother of a bandage on his forehead, and it was soaked with blood.

  “Dude,” I said to him. “I thought the bullet just grazed you.”

  He touched it and brought his fingertips in front of his eyes. “Fuck.”

  “Give it here,” I said to him, standing up. I peeled back the tape and looked at the contusion. “Not just a scratch. You need stitches.” I went to my pile of stuff and grabbed my medical kit. “You let this go and you’ll have a permanent hole in your melon.”

  Jet asked, “Fury did that to you?”

  Zain nodded. “I was leaving The Wall. They must’ve been across the street in that used car lot. Nix was there. He could tell you.”

  “He was just filling us in,” Cullen said. “You know who it was?”

  Zain had a little more intel about the Fury than the rest of us. He’d almost been one himself, until he had a change of heart. He knew those guys pretty well and could tell us what they were up to. But this time, he was just as confused as the rest of us. He shook his head. “It was dark. Didn’t even see them. No clue what they were doing in that part of town, either.”

  I went to the sink and washed my hands, then grabbed the needle and suture. I motioned to Zain with my chin. “Sit.” As he did, I said, “You were almost Fury. Have you ever seen Slade?”

  He nodded, “He spends a lot of his time in the clubhouse. Big dude. Definitely jacked but getting up there in age. He’s kind of a legend to them. Those pussies practically worship him. He’s a mean son of a bitch. The stories I’ve heard…” He whistled. “If they are true, then he deserves the adoration.”

  Hart said, “There’s practically nothing about him online.”

  I peeled the rest of the bandage off, got some disinfectant, and dabbed it on Zain’s wound. Definitely ten, maybe twelve stitches were in order here. Who knew that when I started doing my residency at Stanford in plastic and reconstructive surgery four years ago with intent to make people more beautiful, I’d be spending most of my time sewing up the injuries of some of the ugliest sons of bitches on the planet? “What stories are you talking about, Zain?” I said, interested.

  “You know. Shit like killing his own men with his bare hands for going against him. Gutting a guy with a pool stick. That kind of shit.”

  I let out a laugh. Sounded like a bunch of urban legend shit, where the more it was talked about, the crazier it got. “Riiight.”

  “Hey, I don’t know if Slade ordered the hit at The Wall or what. Probably just some Fury, wanting to fuck with us,” Nix said, as I threaded the needle and started to sew up the gash.

  Zain didn’t flinch as the needle dug into his skin. He said, “Well, it’s time we fuck ’em right back. We talk about what we’re going to do?”

  “No. We were just getting to that,” Cullen said.

  As usual, Jet was first to open his mouth. Before he could, his brother said, “Yeah, Jet. We all know where you stand. Blow ‘em back to hell as soon as possible. Got it.”

  Jet shrugged and nodded. “Only solution, in my book.”

  “Yeah. We all want the Fury to pay. But how do we do it?” Hart said.

  “I don’t know. Find their clubhouse first. Send ‘em a bomb like they did us. But a big one, this time. Wipe them off the face of the fuckin’ planet.”

  We all looked at Jet, and I silently willed him to shut the fuck up. Sometimes he got so hotheaded and wrapped up with his kill-‘em-all shit that he couldn’t stop. He was such a pretty-boy that most of his life, he’d been allowed to go on talking, whether or not he actually made sense. I said, “We have enough ammo. Enough guns. Right?”

  Cullen nodded. We’d done an inventory a month ago, when we thought we’d sneak up on the Fury. “We have a lot. I don’t know if it’s enough,” he said.

  “Right,” Nix said. “We don’t know what they have. They have us beat on manpower, that’s for damned sure.”

  Zain nodded, and I missed the perfect line of my stitch. I flicked him in the side of the head to get him to stop moving. “But we’ve got to get more intel on them. We don’t want a repeat of last month.”

  We all sucked in a breath as we looked at each other. Cullen nodded. Last month, we’d all been so sure we’d find them at a party, and we’d expected, bam! We’d strike first, and the war would finally get started. We were wrong. They’d fooled us. We couldn’t afford to let that happen again.

  “The only solution is that we wait for Slade to make contact again,” Cullen said.

  “With another bomb?” Jet countered.

  “Or until we get some solid evidence of where they’re going to be and what they’re planning. Until then, we can’t go off half-cocked. We’d get ourselves all killed,” Cullen said, looking at Jet. “I know it’s frustrating. Frustrating as hell for me, too. I want nothing more than to send them out of Aveline Bay for good. But we need a strategy and we can’t have that without reliable information.”

  Jet frowned, hung his head, and nodded. I finished tying the suture and cut the ends. “Good as new. Bet you won’t even have a scar,” I said, admiring my handiwork.

  Zain felt it and shrugged. These guys really didn’t give a shit about scars. He shook my hand. “Thanks, man.”

  When Cullen called the end of church, I looked at Jet. He was staring at the wall, like he sometimes did, intent, looking like he was going to blow. I saw where Cullen was coming from, and it made sense, but Jet had a point, too. We were beyond antsy, at this point. We just wanted to get this over with.

  I nudged him, and he nodded and got up. He knew what that meant. Saturdays were for beer and pool at The Wall. It’d been that way since I’d become a Cobra, three years ago.

  Cullen saw us and slapped us both on the backs. “Hey. Guys. If you’re going to The Wall, you might want to lay low. Especially after what happened to Zain. Last thing I want is the same thing happening to you two.”

  I nodded and thanked him. Cullen was a damn good president; he cared for us like we were his own brothers. But Jet always had a chip on his shoulder.

  When we got out to our bikes, he strapped his helmet on and straddled his bike. “This is fucking bullshit,” he muttered to me.

  “Hey. Relax. You’re not the only one who’s sick
of dealing with these assholes. We’ll get it done.”

  He nodded. “I guess. I just wish I knew when. Can’t even walk around town without thinking I’ve got a target on my back.”

  “What you need, I think, is some pussy,” I told him, straddling my bike. “So, let’s go.”

  “Hell, yes,” he said, giving me a grin.

  It was barely ten o’clock. Time to blow off steam, forget about our trouble with the Fury for a little bit, and have some fun.

  Chapter Two

  Caitlyn

  “Hold on,” I told Martie over the phone as I pushed open the car door and walked across the motorcycle-packed gravel lot, toward a secret lair tucked away in the foothills of North Aveline Bay. “Let me just check to make sure the coast is clear.”

  Holding the phone to my ear, I choked my way into the Hell’s Fury clubhouse, searching out his face among all the cigarette smoke, jeans, leather, and testosterone.

  The couches were awash in unshaven leather-and-denim clad men, and a lot of women, wearing as much hair product and as little clothing as possible.

  Ho-hum, just another Saturday night at the Hell’s Fury clubhouse.

  “Hey, Sweetheart,” one of the men said to me, reaching for me. He wrapped his hand around my waist, his fingers searching under my sweatshirt and over the band of my jeans, finding bare skin there.

  Whoa. Bad move, dude. Didn’t he realize I wasn’t dressed like any of these other chicks? Either he was drunk, or suicidal, or a little of both. He was young, probably a couple years younger than me, with the acne scars to show for it. I’d never seen him before.

  I decided to have a little fun.

  “Hi. You’re cute,” I said, meaning that in a lost-puppy kind of way. He looked barely out of puberty, the poor guy. I waved my hand in front of my face to part the haze of smoke between us. My eyes watered. “And what’s your name?”

  “Oh, my God,” Martie said to me over the phone. “Cait. You’re so bad. Quit tormenting them and just get out of there.”

  I smiled as the guy looked at me through his liquor-bleary eyes. “Joe,” he said, mesmerized.

  Aw, Joe. Poor, unfortunate Joe.

  “Joe, can you help me?” I asked him, licking my lips seductively.

  He zeroed right in on the gesture and started licking his own lips. Did he really think I was going to invite him to kiss me? Please. Men. So easy. So stupid. “Of course, baby. Anything you want.”

  I leaned in close. “Could you tell me where in this big ol’ clubhouse, Slade is?”

  I could feel his arm tense around my body. His eyes widened, and he let out a strangled gasp. I didn’t think I could’ve gotten more of a response if I’d have said Satan. “What do you want with him?”

  The clubhouse wasn’t really that big. It was just a couple of crappy rooms. I could’ve easily found Slade, if it weren’t for the heavy smoke and bodies packing the place. I didn’t need Joe’s help, that was for sure. But Fury guys were so predictable: horny, egotistical, and they all thought they were so badass. I fluttered my eyelashes. “Does that mean you haven’t seen him?”

  “Dude,” another guy came up to him from behind and smacked him upside the head. It was Wolf, one of the oldest members of the club. “Don’t fuck with her. That’s Slade’s daughter. She is severely off-limits, fucker. Stay away unless you want to leave here with one less body part.”

  Joe just stared at me, his mouth slightly opened. “Daughter?”

  Wolf looked at me and shook his head. “Quit playing with the new guys. What are you doing here, Cait?”

  “Looking for Daddy,” I said innocently. “Seen him?”

  Wolf pointed to the room in the back. I blew them both a kiss and walked away. On the line, Martie said, “Would you fucking quit wasting time and check? I need to get some liquor pumping through my veins before I go nuts.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I muttered to my best friend, maneuvering through the sea of black leather and smoke until I got to the doorway of the back room. I hesitated a little before I went inside, not knowing in what state . . . or in what mood . . . I’d find my daddy. On rare occasions, he could be the sweetest thing. Most of the time, though, he was the scariest. And he turned on a dime.

  I exhaled in relief when I saw him lying on the couch, passed out, his big boots hanging over the arm of the sofa, his head covered in a pillow. A snore emanated from somewhere under there. He looked like he was in for the night.

  Hallelujah.

  That meant my mother wouldn’t have to worry about him tonight. Meaning I wouldn’t have to worry about her. “Martie?” I said into the phone.

  “Yeah?”

  “Good news, girl. It’s our lucky night.”

  “Fuck yes!” she shouted into the phone. “Get your ass over here and pick me up. Lucas’ sitter has already been here a half hour.”

  “I’ll be there in ten.”

  I ran outside, cursing the beaten cowboy boots I’d decided to wear. They were pretty sexy, but too tight. I was starting to get a blister on my heel.

  I went into the lot and got into my old blue Honda Civic. I drove down to the apartments on the beach, where Martie lived. She was standing outside in a tiny-as-hell red halter dress that made her look like a prostitute, smoking a cigarette, her blonde hair blowing in the breeze. She ran to me in her five-inch heels and slid into the passenger seat.

  “I thought you’d never get here! Lucas was being a real snot tonight,” she said, fluffing her hair. “Do I have apple puffs in my hair? He kept pelting me with them. I couldn’t wait to get out of there.”

  I shook my head. “Chad would flip if he saw you in that outfit,” I said, eyeing her.

  “Chad’s five-hundred miles away and probably screwing his secretary,” she said, rolling down the window and flicking the cigarette out. As I sped out of the complex, she stuck her head out into the cool, misty air and shouted, “FREEDOM!”

  I laughed at her as I drove. It felt good, at least, for one night. It’d been a long time since Martie and I had been able to get out. She had an overprotective asshole of a boyfriend, Chad, who was always on her case, laying down all these laws for her but acting however he pleased. But Chad had gone away to some convention in San Diego for work, and my mother had told me that I should stop worrying about my dad and go out and have some fun for once.

  So here we were.

  Ready to dance our asses off.

  “Where should we go?” I asked, gnawing on my lip as we drove downtown.

  “Somewhere good. Rocky’s?” she suggested.

  I shook my head. I knew all the Fury hangouts, and I’d seen some of my dad’s men there. I couldn’t risk having my night out getting back to him. He wanted to keep me as the sweet, innocent girl in pigtails, as unrealistic as that was. I wasn’t allowed to go to bars, or consort with men. And if word got out that any man touched me, my dad would likely tear him limb from limb.

  I thought about Joe and winced, feeling a little guilty. He was harmless . . . definitely not my type. But he had touched me, and even that tiny bit of contact was probably enough to piss my daddy off.

  No one, I mean no one, messed with my daddy. His temper was off the charts. It was even worse, now that Hell’s Fury’s war with the other motorcycle club in town, the Steel Cobras, seemed to be escalating. These days, my father came back in either one of two moods: Pissed off, or royally pissed off. He’d take out his anger on my mom, unless I stepped in.

  My mother hated when I did that. But where my daddy could draw my mom’s blood as easily as he breathed, he always restrained himself when it came to me. At least, he restrained himself more than he did with her.

  So, I made sure I was there to stop him. Even if it meant not having any fun, ever.

  God, I was so due for some fun. I wanted to let loose, party, be a normal twenty-four-year-old and just go a little crazy.

  “What about The Wall?” I asked, turning onto Sunset to drive that way.

  Martie gave m
e a confused look. “Where’s that?”

  “It’s that little dive place. South End? On Sunset? Across from the diner and that shitty used car place?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “All the way over there?”

  Yes, it was all the way on the other side of town. I’d seen bikes out in the parking lot, but it had one definite plus to it: No Fury ever went there. I’d taken note of that during the times I’d passed it on my way home from working at the car rental place. That made it the perfect place to escape to for a little fun. “Come on. It’s always packed. I’ve seen a lot of cute guys outside, too.”

  “Hey. Hot guys? I’m in!” she said with a grin, reaching into the top of her skin-tight dress and adjusting her boobs so her cleavage popped.

  I had to laugh at that. It would be really nice to have some male attention. Most men wouldn’t touch me with a ten-foot pole. They all knew exactly who my daddy was and that made me toxic.

  But truth be told, I’d love to meet a real man, one who could stand up to my father and not be sent home, quaking in his boots with his tail between his legs.

  Fat chance.

  Not that it mattered. Even if I did find a guy that would stand up to my dad, my dad would tear him a new asshole. Didn’t matter how much of a badass the guy was; my father had the Fury. And no one beat Hell’s Fury.

  Unfortunately. Which meant my mom and I were stuck in Aveline Bay. Under his thumb. Forever.

  But not tonight.

  Tonight, I’d just settle for being around a group of people who didn’t know my name, for one night of harmless, innocent, Slade-free fun.

  I pulled into the bar’s small lot, and had trouble finding a parking spot. There were a lot of bikes outside, but none had the Fury mark on them. I was sure of that.

  My mother and I had talked about sneaking away in the dead of night, getting away from the Fury for good. But we knew that eventually, we’d be found, no matter where we went. My father would never let us go. We were his girls.

  I’d have to make the most of this night. My one night of freedom.

  When I finally pulled into a parking spot, Martie eyed the place doubtfully. “Sure this place isn’t called Hole in the Wall?”