Chaos Bound (14 page)

“Jeff wouldn’t do that,” she spat out.

Leo laughed. “Well now he’s dead, so you’ll never know. But I’ll give you one piece of advice. Never trust a biker.” With the gun still at her temple, he yanked her hair, forcing her head back. “And as for touching you, I can do whatever the hell it takes to bring you back. Viper likes his women bruised and broken. I may not be able shove my dick in that sweet pussy, but there’s other places it can go.”

“You’re not gonna shoot her,” Holt closed the distance between them. “So there’s no point holding that gun to her head. Aim it at me. I’m the one you can kill. Viper’ll probably give you a reward for getting rid of me.”

Leo’s hand tightened on Naiya’s hair, and then he pointed his gun at Holt. “Your funeral, Sinner.”

“Her funeral.” Holt aimed his gun at Naiya’s chest. “What are you gonna do now? I kill her. You kill me. You go back to Viper empty handed, and you’ll be taking my place in the dungeon.”

Damn Holt was good with the mind games. Or was this for real?

“You’re not gonna kill her. You want her, too.” Leo’s heart drummed in his chest so hard she could feel it through her body. He was scared. But then, so was she.

“I needed her to get the fuck outta that dungeon.” Holt’s gaze flicked to Naiya and back to Leo. “Then I decided to stick it to Viper by using his bitch and sending her back to him full of my cum. But this is better. I’ll put so many holes in her, he won’t know which one’s for his dick.”

A shudder ran through Naiya’s body at his brutal words, his harsh tone and his cold, hard stare. She saw nothing of the man who had promised to protect her, but instead, a Sinner intent on revenge. She’d suspected he might be using her, but she never thought he would take it this far.

Leo must have seen Holt’s resolve, too. In one swift move, he shoved Naiya to the side and fired. “You don’t fucking touch her.”

His shot went straight through the space where Holt had been standing only moments before. Too late, Leo realized his mistake. Out in the open, he had nowhere to go when Holt returned fire from the cover of the bush. A shot cracked the silence, and Leo dropped to his knees, firing blindly into the trees. Holt fired again and again until Leo crumpled and fell to the ground.

Shocked, Naiya couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. She’d spent the last few years analyzing dead bodies, watching autopsies, and staring at pictures that would make ordinary people cringe. She’d hung out at the Black Jacks’ clubhouse and various biker hangouts. And yet, she’d never seen anyone actually shot before. Bile rose in her throat. How had she thought of Holt as anything other than the violent, ruthless outlaw he was? How had she let her guard down?

She pushed herself to her feet and took one step back, then another. Holt seemed oblivious to her presence, his gaze focused on the unmoving man in the dirt. Taking a deep breath, Naiya turned and ran.

A bullet thudded into the tree beside her head. She froze mid-step and slowly turned around, blood rushing through her ears so fast she could barely hear her own rasping breaths.

“You’re not going anywhere.” Holt’s voice was flat, savage, dark like the gun aimed at her heart.

Naiya swallowed hard. “I know you want your revenge on Viper. But please don’t use me.”

“Get on the bike.” Holt gestured to Leo’s Harley Davidson, partially hidden in the trees.

“Let me go,” she said softly, pleading. “I won’t tell anyone about Leo or the guard at the Black Jack clubhouse. I’ll leave the state. You’ll never see me again.”

“On. The. Bike.” He enunciated each word, his voice increasing in pitch.

“Holt. Please.” Naiya heard a rustle in the bushes behind her. Holt’s gaze snapped over her shoulder, and he continued his steady pace.

“Jesus Christ, Naiya. Get on the fucking bike.” He walked toward her, holding his gun level with her chest. There was no point running. She had no chance against a bullet. But she wasn’t getting on the damn bike either. No way was she making this easy for him, even if her knees shook and she had to fight back the wave of nausea that gripped her stomach. She shivered and his expression darkened.

“You think I’m gonna hurt you?”

She wrapped her arms around her body, hugged herself tight. “I think you’re going to do what it takes to bring down Viper, regardless of who gets in the way.”

“Damn right I am.” He lunged for her, slid his hand around her nape, yanked her into his chest … And fired.

*   *   *

Holt tightened his grip on Naiya, as the Black Jack who had been watching them from the bushes went down. Fucker made more noise than a bunch of bikers at a patch-in party. Hell, when Jagger had given him his cut, the Sinners cheered so loudly he thought the roof would fall in.

“Shhhh. I’m not shooting at you.” He brushed his lips over her ear when she tried to back away, but tight in his grip, she wasn’t going anywhere.

“Let me go.”

He slid his hand down to her waist, pulled her trembling body against him. “Gotta make sure there’s no more Jacks about.”

Naiya’s hands slid between them, and she leaned back and thudded his chest with her fist. “You were going to kill me. You were going to use me to get back at Viper.”

Holt scanned the forest around them. “Keep it down. No telling who else is around.”

“Good. I want them to find us. Viper might hurt me, but at least I’ll be alive.”

He looked down at her face, twisted with anger. For one fleeting second, he had considered the possibility of offing her to stick it to Viper. The bastard wanted her bad if he was sending his top brass out this far out to track her down, especially when the Jacks were in the middle of a war with the Sinners. But almost immediately the thought disappeared beneath the overwhelming urge to protect her. She was intimately tied to his quest for vengeance. But more than that, they were connected in a way he still didn’t understand. He couldn’t bear the thought of her in danger, or at the mercy of the Jacks. He would never allow it. They had rescued each other. Now, she belonged to him.

“I said I’d protect you. If I killed you, I’d be breaking my word.”

“Let me go.” She shoved hard, forcing him back a step. His pulse kicked up a notch. Although he hadn’t heard any bikes or any rustling in the trees, the Jacks would be coming soon and there was always a risk of the guy who owned the SUV returning with his boat and seeing them near the dead bodies.

“We don’t have time for this,” he snapped. “Look who he sent after you.” He gestured to Leo’s body on the ground. “His fucking VP. You’re not just another piece of tail to him, probably because you aren’t like the women in his club. Even if you leave the state, he’ll track you down. Your only chance of staying alive and living the life you want to live is to stick with me. I’m not going to hurt you. You’ll have to trust me on that.”

She pushed against him, glared when he didn’t let go. “I don’t trust you. Not anymore. I saw your face, Holt. For a moment there you thought about shooting me. I’ll take my chances on my own.”

Her body was warm against him, soft despite her agitation. He lowered his mouth to her neck and kissed the hollow at the base of her throat. “Part of you already trusts me ’cause you’re still in my arms.”

“You have a gun,” she snapped. “And you’re holding me so tight I’m going to have bruises.”

“Where would you go?” he challenged. “How would you hide? Who would protect you?”

“The Sinners.” She stared up at him, her eyes defiant. “If I tell them where you are, they’ll owe me. And if you are thinking of doing something to me, you should know I took a picture of you with Ally’s phone when you were sleeping. If something happens to me, she’ll send the pictures to the Sinners. They’ll know you’re alive, and they’ll hunt you down. We both know what happens to brothers who betray the club. Call it an insurance policy.”

“Jesus Christ.” He pushed her away, torn between anger and admiration. How had he misjudged her? She wasn’t the soft civilian she appeared to be; she’d been forged in a Black Jack hell, and although she professed to be done with that life, it wasn’t done with her.

“I’m beginning to think you don’t need protection,” he said, his voice gruff.

“I need Viper off my back, so it seems we have a mutual goal,” she said. “But I’m not up for being part of a kill-team, or being used as bait, or sacrificed to stick it to Viper. So how about you make a new plan to bring him down that doesn’t involve me?”

“You don’t want justice?” His forehead creased in a puzzled frown. “You don’t want revenge for what he did to you?”

“Like this?” Her voice cracked, broke, and he caught a glimpse of just how hard she was struggling to contain her emotion, her fear. “I can’t handle this. Guns. Shooting. Death. Crime. I just want to go back to my normal life and—”

“Hide.”

“There’s nothing wrong with hiding,” she said.

“There is if it means you’re not living.” He released her and stepped away. “You’re so focused on getting your life in order, you’re forgetting to live it. Donuts don’t need to be cut up. Motel beds don’t need to be made. You don’t always need a plan. People aren’t always going to act the way you expect them to act. Guns aren’t always bad, especially when they save your life. And sometimes crimes are committed for good reasons.”

“Are you trying to justify what you’re planning to do to the Sinners?”

Holt frowned, shifted his weight. “I don’t need to justify it. They betrayed me.”

“Or so you think.” She folded her arms, surveyed the scene. “You know them. They were your brothers. Your friends. Would they really abandon and betray you? All of them? Every single Sinner? Would you have abandoned them? How can you stand there and accuse me of being narrow-minded when you’re acting the same way? You’re so focused on looking back, you’re forgetting to look ahead. And it’s a long road to nowhere if you’ve got no one to share it with you.”

Fuck. He didn’t want to be having this conversation. Not here. Not now. And not with someone who clearly didn’t understand the ties of loyalty, honor, and brotherhood that bound bikers together, and how devastating the betrayal of the biker code could be.

“We gotta get out of here before more Jacks show up,” he said curtly, making it clear that conversation was over. “We’ll take Leo’s bike.”

Naiya looked around the parking lot. “I know we don’t have a lot of time, but this is a crime scene. We’ve left a lot of evidence. No point running from the Jacks if we just wind up with the police on our tail. At the very least, we need to get rid of our footprints, fingerprints, fibers, and any mud we may have tracked from the path. If we have to commit a crime to survive, we might as well do it in such a way that we don’t get caught.”

He would have laughed at the irony if he hadn’t been so pissed off. “So does this mean you’re planning to stick around?”

She tilted her head to the side.
Cute as fuck
. “Are you going to let me go?”

“No.”

“Then I guess I’m sticking around.”

TEN

TANK

Tank parked his bike outside Joey’s Fish’n Chips in the sleepy little town of Still Water. Gunner and Sparky pulled up beside him. Benson drove past on his way to the gas station to fill up the SUV.

“What the fuck are the Black Jacks doing out here?” Sparky adjusted the bandana over his thick, brown hair. Usually, he spent his days in the Sinner garage with Arianne but Jagger needed men on the road keeping tabs on the Jacks so Sparky had left the shop in Arianne’s capable hands to follow up on an unusual Jacks sighting with Tank and Gunner as his back up.

“Any local clubs in the area they might be trying to recruit?” Tank texted Benson, telling him to watch the bikes after he was done filling up the cage. As the only junior patch member of the group—both Gunner and Sparky were senior patch and executive members of the board that ran the MC—Tank was responsible for keeping Benson busy and out of trouble.

“Nah.” Gunner shook his head. “Most of the cabins out here are for rich city folk, and the local businesses are all about serving their needs.”

Tank had often dreamed about having a cabin. Fishing, hunting, off-roading, canoeing … There weren’t many outdoor activities he didn’t enjoy. As a kid, he’d always wanted to do the father-son things his friends always did with their fathers. But Tank’s dad didn’t have time for his kids. Except to beat them for being bad.

And then Tank met T-Rex, who loved the outdoors just like him, and all the shit he’d gone through with his dad didn’t matter.

They ordered lunch and spread out a map on the worn wooden table, dividing up the small roads in the area for a thorough search. The strong fishy scent of the restaurant reminded Tank of the weekend he and T-Rex had hiked into the mountains to fish. It had been a perfect day. Warm, sunny, the mountain lake clear and still. They took a rental boat into the middle of the lake, chilled out with a cooler filled with beer, and shared stories about their youth. They agreed the Sinners were the best thing that ever happened to them, and they would be Sinners until the day they died. It had been a perfect day, at least until T-Rex caught a forty-pound trout and fell out of the boat trying to bring it in. Despite losing the catch of the season, Tank had never laughed so hard.

After lunch, Gunner and Sparky headed out to check the side roads, leaving Tank and Benson in town to ask local business owners if they’d seen any Jacks. Tank left Benson to pay the bill while he checked a small grocery store with a stuffed deer head over the front door.

“Only bike I’ve seen here in the last few days is the one at the gas station across the street.” The owner pointed across the road in response to Tank’s question. “But they aren’t the bikers you’re looking for. Young couple. They were in here twenty minutes ago buying groceries. Looked like tourists. Not wearing any leather vests or stuff.”

Tank thanked him for his time and headed across the road to the gas station. He spotted the bike at once and whistled low. The top-of-the-line, 2015 “super premium” CVO Road Glide Ultra slathered in chrome and custom Radioactive Green paint with a luxury pillion seat and Harley-Davidson’s strongest motor, was one of the most expensive Harleys currently available. Only an MC president or VP would ride a bike like that, as much a show of power as it was of wealth.