Cutter 3 (3 page)

“You don’t have a choice, Grace!”
Cutter moved closer to me. “What the hell would I have done if we were going to
meet someone dangerous? Someone who wouldn’t hesitate to kill you just to get
to me! None of this is up to you, I’m a big boy and I make my own choices.”

I looked down at the ground. I hated
feeling this way. “I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t have followed you. I was just
so worried. I didn’t… I don’t know what I would do if anything happened to
you.”

“You don’t have to be sorry, Grace.”
He shrugged. “The truth is that I’m not used to having someone worry about me
like this, it’s always just been me and my brothers. But if you want to be with
me, and I think you do, then you need to accept that most of the shit that goes
on with me you
have
no say in. And it might annoy you
that I’m so overbearing but that’s the way you have to be in my life, it’s the
only way to keep people safe.”

A guy slammed on his breaks in the
middle of the road and honked his horn loudly. “GET OUT OF THE MIDDLE OF THE
DAMN ROAD!” He inched his car a little closer to us.

“I know,” I told him. “This is all
just so new to me.”

“This kind of thing can’t happen
again. You need to control yourself.”

The guy swung his door open now.
“HELLO! I SAID MOVE IT! YOU’RE HOLDING UP TRAFFIC HERE!” He was halfway out of
his car, looking at us like we had lost our minds.

I felt like he was always telling me
that the things I was doing couldn’t happen, that I needed to control myself. I
thought that I was but apparently I was doing a pretty shitty job.

“Promise me,” Cutter told me. “Promise
me you’ll listen to me from now on when I tell you to stay some place, it’s not
your job to save me or to keep me out of danger.”

“It’s not your job to do that for me,
either!”

He shook his head, annoyed. “It’s
different.”

“It’s not.”

“Promise me, Grace.”

“HEY!” The guy screamed, getting out
of the car fully. “TAKE YOUR BITCH AND GET HER OUT OF THE DAMN ROAD! SOME OF US
ARE TRYING TO GET THE FUCK HOME!”

Cutter rolled his head around and dug
into his jacket, emerging a second later with a different gun than the one I
saw him put in his waistband back in his room. “What the fuck did you say to
me?” Cutter walked toward him, holding the gun in the air and waving it back
and forth like it was a toy.

The man shrank back. “Nothing, I
didn’t say anything.”

“Good,” Cutter snapped. “Then get back
in the fucking car and wait patiently.” He pointed at the door with his pistol.
“Didn’t your parents teach you any manners?”

The guy walked backward to his car and
opened the door, slowly climbing in. He looked like he was on the verge of
tears. If Cutter noticed he didn’t show it, turning his attention back toward
me instead.

“I need you to promise me, Grace.”

I looked up into his perfect dark
eyes. “I promise, Cutter.”

I leaned into him and stood on my
tippy toes. I always forgot how much taller he was than me until I was this
close to him, trying desperately to cover his lips with mine.

Cutter moved closer to me and then
pulled back suddenly. “Ugh, fuck.” He pulled his gun out of his pocket and let
a round off on the guy’s tire that had gotten out of the car seconds before,
flattening it within seconds. “Put down the fucking phone,” Cutter called out.

The man hit the end button right away,
possibly hanging up on the 911
operator
, if the call
had managed to go through. He shook his head, startled, and then threw his cell
phone out his car window in a panic.

Cutter laughed and put his arm around
me, like it was a show.

Blaze jumped out of the car and looked
at the scene before him. “Ugh, really, Cutter? You couldn’t have controlled
yourself for just a few more minutes?” He shook his head at the huge line of
traffic forming behind the man now and his smashed cell phone in the middle of
the street. “You just had to keep the girl, didn’t you?”

Cutter looked at me and smirked. “I
think you’re growing on him.”

Blaze looked like he wanted to
strangle me.

Definitely.

Chapter Three

CUTTER

“I never thought I would see the day,”
Blaze said as we climbed out of the car and headed across the gravel parking
lot toward the front door of the warehouse where we held our committee
meetings.

“The day that what?” I glanced at the
screen of my phone, no new texts. Ace was supposed to text me as soon as he got
Grace back to the bar safely. She had tried to assure me that she would let me
know herself but I wasn’t taking any chances. Clearly, she couldn’t be
completely trusted to do exactly what I told her to do yet.

“The day that my best friend got all
soft and mushy on me,” Blaze said, putting extra emphases on the words soft and
mushy. “Oh, Grace,” he mimicked, “what are you doing here? How could you follow
me? I love you so much.”

“Don’t start.” I rolled my eyes and
shoved my phone into my pocket. “It’s not like that.” Even though it kind of
was. Hell, I never thought I’d find a girl who could keep my attention for
longer than a night. It was pretty crazy to anyone who knew me, especially
someone like Blaze who’d known me my whole life.

“Oh, it’s definitely like that.” He
kicked a piece of rock and it went flying across the parking lot. “Don’t get me
wrong, I’m not hating on you for it, I’m actually really happy for you… I just
never thought I’d see the day.”

“Are you done?”

“I mean, I’m not saying that I was
worried, but some other people were starting to think that you might, you know,
swing the other way if you catch my drift.” He nudged me in the shoulder
suggestively.

“Yeah, right.” I laughed loudly and
shoved him across the parking lot. “Get the fuck out of here.” The idea was
laughable and he knew it, I got more pussy than half of the brothers combined.

Since Grace that all just seemed less
important, though.

Blaze regained his footing and brushed
me off. “Okay, okay, I’m done.”

“Good,” I told him. “We have more
important things to think about.”

“For sure,” he said.

Silence.

The sound of our feet on the stones
played back and forth.

More silence.

Blaze started humming softly. “Grace
and Cutter sitting in a tree…”

“Seriously?”

“First comes love, then comes
marriage…”

“Stop it.”

“Then comes baby in the baby
carriage…”

I swung the door to the warehouse open
and smacked him in the chest with it. “Tell you what, you stay out here and
keep up your little American Idol audition, I’m going to go inside with the
real men and handle some business.” I walked inside and slammed the door shut
behind me.

Blaze opened it two seconds later,
laughing. “No, no, wait, Cutter, please! I want to be a real man, too!” He caught
up with me and ran his hand over my hair, messing it up. “You’re so cute when
you’re mad. I bet Grace loves when you're mad cause you're just so darn cute,
doesn’t she?”

“Have I told you today how much I
can’t stand your annoying ass?”

Blaze grinned. “Love you, too,
brother.”

I shook my head as we neared my
father’s office but smiled in spite of myself. No matter what the fuck was
going on around me being around Blaze always mellowed me the fuck out. I
worried too damn much and somehow my best friend had a way of reminding me that
everything tended to work out the way I wanted it to eventually.

The second I opened the door I knew
something was wrong. My father’s whole composure was different, professional
and hard. He was on guard and the fact instantly put me on guard as well.

“Dad.” I reached to my side, resting
my hand on my gun off impulse.

“Son,” My father said with a tight
smile. “I was wondering when you would get here.” His eyes shot to the other
side of the room for the briefest of seconds.

I felt Blaze tense next to me.

I glimpsed to the other side of the
room and put my hand back down to my side, leaving my piece in my waistband. I
could tell without even talking to him that whoever was with my father was a
fed.

He had dirty pig written all over him.

“Cutter,” the man said, crossing the
room and holding his hand out to me. “I’m detective Lance Shepard, it’s a
pleasure to finally meet you.” There was a smile on his face but the look in
his eyes told me that he thought I was slime.

I glanced down at his hand without
touching it. “Nice to finally meet?”

He pulled his hand back and shot me a
phony smile. “I feel like I’ve been hearing about you for so long, it’s just
nice to finally put a face with a name, that’s all.” His eyes went over to
Blaze. “And you must be Blaze.” He stuck his hand out again. “Detective Lance
Shepard.”

What a piece of crap.

Blaze took his hand happily.

I rolled my eyes. He could be so
fucking polite sometimes. “He heard you the first time,” I growled. “What can
we do for you today, detective?” I smiled just as sweetly at him.

“Just wanted to introduce myself.” He
ran a hand through his light thinning hair and pushed his thick-framed glasses
back up on his nose. “I was in the area, checking out the neighborhood and
figured I would drop by.”

I scoffed. The warehouse was in the
middle of nowhere, not surrounded by very many other houses or buildings, I
honestly doubted that he just happened to be in the damn neighborhood.

“And why, exactly, would you need to
stop by?” These cops were all the same, thought if they stopped by and made
their presence known that everyone would fall over themselves with fear, not
wanting to do anything to tip them off.

Well, he had another thing coming.
What the fuck did he think this was, a damn movie? In my life if you got in the
way of anything I was trying to handle you were dead, no matter who you were.

“Mr. Shepard is the new lead on the
special drug task force looking out for our city.” My father walked around his
desk, his hands tucked casually into his pant pockets. “He thought it would be
appropriate to swing on by and make his presence known.”

“It’s detective Shepard, actually.” He
reminded my father.

“Right, detective.” My father nodded.

Was this tool for real?

“I thought Johnson was the head of
that division,” I pointed out.

The detective grinned, a sense of
satisfaction in his eyes. “Nope, Johnson has been reassigned. It’s just as
well.” He looked me up and down like a piece of junk he couldn’t wait to
destroy and lock away in a jail cell. “He wasn’t really cut out for the job, if
you know what I mean.”

I exchanged a look with my father.
Yeah, I did know since we had been paying Johnson off for over a year so he’d
look the other way about the excessive amounts of illegal shipments we’d get
going through the docks every week. Something told me this guy wasn’t going to
be as understanding.

“Well, it’s a pleasure.” Blaze held
his hand out again. “Always great to meet one of our finest up close and
personal. I look forward to seeing what you can create around here.”

Blaze sounded so genuine and real that
I almost even bought it. Almost. The detective glanced down at his hand,
unsure, but took it after a second anyways.

I smirked. Fucking Blaze.

“I’m here, I’m here!” Shutter came
flying into the room like a mouse on speed wearing a pair of roller-skates. “I
have everything we need! It took a little bit of digging but I managed to get
it all in one place.”

Blaze dug the heel of his boot into
Shutter’s leg.

Shutter let out a howl then followed
Blaze’s eyes to the other side of the desk. “Oh,” he sounded confused. “I
didn’t know we had any company.” He shoved the piles of papers that were in his
hands behind his back, dropping a few to the floor.

“What have you got there, son?”

I could practically hear Blaze cursing
Cutter inside of his mind for being so stupid. And then cursing me for letting
him
hang
around the brotherhood in the first place.

“Just some shipment details.” I
stepped between Shutter and the detective, not wanting to give Shutter the chance
to say another word. “We’re expecting a few big orders in by the end of the
week.”

“Ah, a few shipments for your coffee
business, is it?”

“Not just coffee,” my father pointed
out. “Tea, cocoa, a few types of specialized chocolates. Anything you might
need to get you through those early mornings and late nights.”

I tried not to laugh. I’d heard the
speech too many times to count. And it was true, we did have a coffee and tea
business, our shipments just happened to be filled with various kinds of drugs
and other illegal substances as well. Hearing my father justify it the way he
did never failed to amuse me.

“Humph,” the detective muttered, not
buying any of our bullshit for a second. “You sure have done well for yourself
with your little coffee business, haven’t you?”

“Everyone always needs coffee.” I
shrugged.

“They sure do.” His eyes traveled to
Shutter’s arms again.

“Well, if there’s nothing else, you
should probably be on your way. We do have a business to run, after all.” Even
I could hear how icy my tone was but I didn’t care, no one was going to start
poking around in here without a warrant.

The detective looked at me for a
second before shaking his head. “Nope, nothing else.” He walked toward the door
and swung around just before he was about to exit. “You’ll be hearing from me
very soon, gentleman. I like to keep a close eye on the businesses in the
neighborhood,” he paused, “especially ones with associates like you, Cutter.”

He slammed the door too hard behind
him.

My fists felt like they were ready to
explode all over his face.

I made a move toward the door but
Blaze held me back. “No, no, you know he’s not an idiot, Cutter, if he came he
didn’t come alone. He’s probably just hoping you’ll lose it and chase after
him.”

I knew Blaze was right but it didn’t
calm me down any. I fucking hated those scumbags, why couldn’t they just leave
us alone to live the life we wanted? Most of them did worse shit on a
day-to-day basis, I couldn’t tell you the number of times a dirty hog had
knocked off one of my brothers coming home from a big money drop off or pick
up.

Not that most of them ended up living
to brag about it.

You messed with my brothers then you
messed with me.

And I’d never been a very forgiving
person.

“That guy isn’t going to make it
around here very long.”

“That was a threat if I’ve ever seen
one,” Blaze said, taking his hands off me and backing away from me. “And not on
the brotherhood, on you, Cutter. Seems like our new friend has it out for you.”

Shutter let out a gasp. “Are you
scared?”

“Oh, Jesus,” Blaze mumbled.

I stuck my chest out. “Of course, I’m
not scared. Don’t be ridiculous, I don’t get scared, I just handle it.” I
walked over to the window and peeked out, watching the nasty detective get in
his car. “Get me the douches address, guarantee after tonight he won't bother
us again.”

“He won't bother anyone again for that
matter.” Blaze smirked.

My father sat down at his desk. “No.
Now isn’t the time to go around killing cops. We need to stay focused on the
task at hand. We need to get Stone to The Misfits as soon as possible.”

Shutter started picking up all the
papers and throwing them onto my father’s desk. “I don’t know how we’re going
to get in there, it’s like a carefully guarded prison. Are we sure this is
worth it?” He glanced at me nervously. “I mean if this is what Cutter wants to
do, we should definitely do it.”

My father shook his head. “It’s good
business all around. Without Stone, Green Grove won’t be able to operate
correctly, him and his son are the only order that place has going for them.”
He drummed his fingers back and forth on his desk. “And his son is too young,
not ready for that kind of commitment, he’ll fold under the pressure within a
year, tops, and then their route will be ours to take over. Think of the financial
gain alone.”

“Oh, I heard about him.
Krusher
is his son's name, right?” Shutter sprung his body
up on top of my father’s desk. “All the girls at the bar are always talking
about how dreamy he is.”

We all stared at him.

“What?” he asked, looking genuinely
confused as to why we looked like we wanted to strangle him in the middle of
the warehouse office. “They do! He’s like the Justin
Bieber
of the biker world.”

I saw my father’s hand move under his
desk.

I stepped between him and Shutter. If I
didn’t get to take out a cop he definitely didn’t get to take out a brother
just because he was a little bit of an annoyance. “Shutter, why don’t you go
and set those papers up in the conference room. The rest of the committee
should be here soon.”