Dark Curves (Dangerous Curves Book 6) (4 page)

Warren locked the door behind him, lifted his collar against the biting wind. Pinned his eyes to the boot prints in the ground and followed. He was on the hunt for Shay Alcott, and the woman was going to be in trouble when he caught up with her.

Big
trouble.

**

Warren stared down at the dead mountain lion. He was frozen in horror, and not just at the presence of the animal. No, he was also horrified at the blood surrounding it. Fuck, it was
a lot
of blood, and
no way
it all belonged to the lion.

He squatted down, saw the blood around the creature’s mouth, saw some flesh trapped in its teeth. Suddenly, all his red-hot anger at Shay changed to frantic worry.

He felt guilt, too. After all, if he hadn’t been holding her prisoner then she’d never have been out here in the first place, never have taken flight in to the unknown wilderness. If anything had happened to this woman, it was on his head. All of it.

He stood up and in the glare of the flashlight, he saw stumbling footprints that went a few feet away, saw the place that a body had fallen. There were no more footprints after this point – there were just drag marks and a blood trail.

Yeah, she was hurt. She was hurt
bad
.

The pain in his head totally forgotten, his chest tight with fear, Warren followed the marks, followed the trail. They went up the mountain, and he could only imagine how hard she must have fought to keep going. She was an ass-kicking, lion-killing warrior and right this minute, he was rooting hard for her to have not lost one ounce of that spirit.

It was pitch-black now, and he shone his flashlight ahead a few feet, trying to get a sense of where Shay might have headed next. That was when he saw the entrance to a cave. The drag marks and blood went in to it, and he damn near cheered at the fact that she was sheltered, at least.

He approached quietly, since he hadn’t forgotten for one second that the woman was armed. With his luck, she’d be a sniper-for-hire in her down-time, or something. He got to the cave, pressed himself against the rock, listening. Nothing.

Chancing it, he quickly stuck his head around the entrance, shot a quick glance in. There was a faint light a little ways away, and he heaved a relieved breath that she wasn’t in the dark. He went in slowly, cautiously, hating how loud the loose rocks sounded crunching under his feet. If she heard him, though, she didn’t say a word. Maybe she was just sitting there with her finger on the trigger, quietly getting him in her sights.

When he got closer to the light, he saw that it was coming from a small tunnel off the main cave. He went in, still hoping to God that he didn’t get shot, but kind of feeling like he
deserved
to get shot, at the same time. Then he saw her, and the fear that he’d managed to keep mostly at bay roared to life, and went straight in to overdrive.

She was slumped against the cave wall, her legs straight out in front of her. Her right leg had a bandage wrapped around the calf, and the white gauze was soaked with blood. Her beautiful green eyes were closed and she was deathly pale.

“Oh, God,” he said, his feet feeling like they were welded to the ground. “Shay.”

She didn’t respond; didn’t even move. That was when he thought that she might actually be dead, and he moved towards her swiftly. He fell to his knees next to her, ripping off his gloves. He cupped her soft cheek in his large palm, and exhaled hard when he felt that she was warm, saw her chest rising and falling.

“Shay? Can you hear me, honey?”

Still nothing, and he turned his attention to her leg. His hands shook a bit as he gently unwrapped the bandage, and he winced at the wound that he uncovered.

Oh, hell, yeah, she’d been bitten. Deep. She needed stitches, no question. Worse than that, though, the wound was already inflamed, the area around it burning to the touch, the edges ragged and tipped with white and yellow. Definitely infected.

He touched her hands now, grimaced at how hot and swollen they were.
Fuck
, that meant that the infection was moving up her body, moving fast. He touched her face again, but it wasn’t too hot. Not yet, anyway.

He had to get her out of here
now
. He had to get her to a bed, shoot her up with drugs, close that injury up, get her core body temperature down, and he had to do it fast. And maybe – just
maybe
, and with a measure of blind, stupid luck – it’d all be enough to save her leg
and
her life.

Chapter Four

“So, Shay’s safe then?” Jack said to Ace. “For real?”

“Yep,” Ace said. “Scared, no doubt about that, but not hurt in any way. I didn’t allow it.”

“Yeah?” King growled. “Why’d you do that?”

Startled, Ace looked over at the other man. It was bizarre for King to be here, since Ace’s only contact with King’s Men had been through Jack. He was totally unsettled to even be in the same room as Matt Kingston, and he was trying hard to stay cool.

The last time they’d breathed the same air, King had killed Trigger MacGee with Ace’s gun, then used that to blackmail Ace in to turning informant. No matter what the hell Ace and the Fallen Angels got up to, King was the real deal and a serious badass, and Ace didn’t allow himself to forget that for even one second. Underestimating King was a grave error, and anyone who did that paid dearly.

Ace was already paying. He had no desire to have the price go up.

“Uh,” Ace said. “Well, why would I let her get hurt? Makes no sense.”

“Why would you care if it makes sense or not?” King pressed. “Don’t you get off on that? Hurting people?”

“No.”

“You’re lying to me, man.” King’s gray eyes were flint in his rugged face. “You like it.”

“I’m not, and I don’t,” Ace protested. Hell, disagreeing with King was undoubtedly a boneheaded move, but goddamn it. Ace
didn’t
like seeing people get hurt – not if they didn’t deserve it, and Shay
definitely
didn’t deserve it. “I do it when I have to. When I don’t have to, I avoid it like the plague. I’ve always done things that way, whenever possible. Trigger made it damn hard, most of the time, since he was fond of creating situations where I had no option
but
to shoot my way out… but if given a choice in the matter, I don’t want to see anyone hurt or dead. Especially civilians who have no part in any of what’s going on. That ain’t right, man.”

King glanced over at Jack, raised his eyebrows. Jack was a former FBI profiler, and he read people’s expressions, body language, and tone so quickly, so easily, that it looked like mind-reading. The man was nothing less than a lie-detector with legs, and King trusted him implicitly.

Jack caught his unspoken question, nodded slightly.

“He’s telling the truth,” Jack said. “Believe it or not.”

“Huh.” King regarded Ace. “Who’d have thought it.”

Ace didn’t know if King was referring to him not hurting innocent people for the hell of it, or to his ability to utter the truth once in a while, but he didn’t ask. Pushing and taunting King was the equivalent of poking a sleeping bear… and Ace saw no pay-off in doing
that
. He stayed silent, knowing that King’s presence here was about more than just hanging out in the corner and glaring daggers of death at him.

“So, how about I cut to the chase, yeah?” King said abruptly, in his usual, no-bullshit way.

Ace nodded, tensed up at what was coming. No way it was good news.

“I want to end this,” King said. “
All
of this.”

“All of – what?” Ace asked, hesitant. “You mean me feeding you intel about Kirk Jensen?”

“No.” King’s voice could crush asphalt, Ace was sure. “I mean, I want to end
Kirk Jensen
.”

Stunned, Ace just stared and blinked stupidly. Yeah, he looked like a moron and he knew it… but he was genuinely caught out.

“But,” Ace finally managed to say cautiously. “Aren’t we doing that already? Like, shutting down his operations, and putting his people in jail, and generally making his life a living hell?”

“Sure we are. And look what he’s doing in retaliation. All’s that’s happening is he’s taking it out on people who can be used as pawns in his messed-up game. He's not gonna stop behaving that way, and we all know it. In fact, I’ll bet that he gets
worse
as the heat’s turned up even higher.”

Ace thought of Shay, and her terror and tears, and he had no choice but to agree with King.

“The only way to end this whole mess is to end him,” King said. “Once and for all.”

“You mean – jail?” Ace knew good and well
that
wasn’t what King meant, but he had to ask, for some reason. “Making sure he goes down at long last?”

“No. I mean a bullet between his fucking eyes.”

“Oh.” Ace stared some more. “And… and you want me to do it?”

“Well, that’s what we need to discuss.”

“It is?”

“Yep.”

“OK.”

Jack sat straighter, totally alert. Whatever King had planned, whatever the hell was going on in that steel vault of a mind of his, he was actually about to share. Jack held his breath and hoped that whatever it was, it was going to get everyone out in one piece.

“The way I see it, Cuddy, is you’ve got two ways to be a part of this.” King’s voice was low, harsh. “You need to choose which way you want to go.”

Ace swallowed, hard. The last time that King had laid out two choices in front of him, one had involved him ending up dead, the other had been the offer to be King’s informant. Neither had been safe or appealing, but at least one had kept him alive.

Well. Alive so far. Alive for now.

“OK,” Ace repeated.

“See, Jensen’s going to die. That’s non-negotiable. I don’t care if you do it, or I take care of it personally… the man won’t live to see the spring. That’s my personal promise and it’s a guarantee. It’s done, you get me? It’s
done
.”

The silence was deafening.

“Now, what you need to decide is this,” King said. “What do you want
after
it’s done?”

Ace cocked his dark head. “I – what do you mean?”

“I mean, if we cut off the snake’s head at the exact right time, then we can take down the whole viper’s nest. If we kill Jensen in the right way, at the right moment, we can make sure that the right person rises up in his place.” King’s eyes glittered. “We can make sure that there’s nobody
but
the right person to rise.”

“Wait,” Ace said, totally disbelieving.”You’re saying that
I’d
be the right person? That you’d want
me
to take Kirk’s place?”

“You could,” King said implacably. “But then I’d make it my life’s mission to keep you under my thumb as my informant. I’d control your every movement and feeling and thought. Forever. You’d be my puppet, and you’d better
believe
that I’d pull your strings and make you dance. However trapped and manipulated you’ve been feeling these past few months… it’d be
nothing
compared to what I’d do to you if you stepped in to Jensen’s shoes. But you’d be alive, and you’d have the protection of King’s Men. You’d be an asset worth protecting, after all.”

Ace blinked again.

“Or.” King held Ace’s black eyes steadily. “There’s a second option.”

“What’s that?”

“You get out.”

Ace waited. “…Out? Of what?”

“Of it all.”

“You mean – out of the Fallen Angels? Out of… out of the life?”

“Uh-huh.”

Ace fought down the wild urge to laugh. “And do
what
, man? I’m pushing forty and I’ve never done or been
anything
but an MC member, or prospect, or tag-along. It ain’t like I’ve got any office experience, or any leadership skills outside of being VP and now Prez of the Angels. Shit, I barely got a high school education, and I was lucky to scrape by and get that. I ain’t even qualified to work at fucking MacDonald’s, you get me?”

“You could start again.” King paused, and for the first time, Jack saw that he was uncertain about what he was about to say. “You could start again with Liam.”

Ace froze. “Liam?”

“Yeah.” King’s face gentled, and both Ace and Jack were surprised at that. “You could be with him, Ace. Be with him openly.”

“I – I can’t.”

“If you were out of the MC life, you could. You broke things off with him because your MC brothers can’t accept a gay man in their space, and no way they’d accept a gay man in a leadership role. But if you were free of it all? Then you
could
, Ace. You
could
be free to live your life as you truly, deeply want. You could live honestly for the first time ever, and you could do it with the man that you love. Assuming you can win him back, I mean.”

His words stuck in his throat, so Ace just shook his head.

“Well.” The hard tone was back in King’s voice now. “Those are the choices I’m offering you, so you get to pick one.”

“Wait.” Ace was still shaking his head, but now it looked like he was trying to clear it. “My choices are that I take over when you take down Kirk, or I leave the only life I’ve ever known?”

“Yep,” King said. “Oh, and one more thing… if you decide to take over for Jensen, then I’ll kill him myself, since you won’t be able to be anywhere near him when it happens. No question marks over your head, no questioning your part in his death, you get me? But if you decide to walk away – with or without Liam – then
you’ll
be the one to take care of Jensen.”

Ace leapt to his feet. “I – what? Why?”

“That’s the price you need to pay to get out,” King said quietly, staying in his chair. “You kill him, and you make sure your brothers know that it was you that did it. That way, you shut every door and every window to that life. No way for you to sneak back in later.”

“But I’d be a dead man,” Ace protested. “I’d never get
out
the door after doing it.”

“Me and my people would have your back. We’d get you out, we’d get you away.”

“King’s Men would protect
me
?”

“As ironic and fucked up as it is, yes.” King’s smile had exactly zero mirth. “We’d keep you alive.”

“Christ,” Ace muttered. “I never thought I’d see the day that King’s Men would take up for the Fallen Angels President.”

“Join the club,” Jack said. He eyed King, watching the other man’s non-verbal cues, saw that King was determined that this was going to happen. As he’d said, it was
done
.

In many ways, what King was proposing was totally unlike him – and in others, it was so damn much like King, Jack was astonished. Jack knew that Matt Kingston was a good guy, at the end of the day, and he’d happily lay down his own life to save someone else’s. He loved hard, and he protected those he cared about, and he was honest to a fault.

But his sense of morality didn’t always line up with legality. He’d taken many,
many
lives, but he’d never done so glibly or easily – planning Trigger MacGee’s murder had been practical, and smart, and necessary, but Jack had never kidded himself about what it had really been. It had been illegal, no doubt about that. And what King was talking about here with Jensen was Murder 1, and no lawyer in the land would be able to argue anything different.

Did Kirk Jensen deserve to die? Oh, hell, yeah. Yeah, he did. He was a murderer, and a drug dealer, and a sex trafficker of women and kids, and he ran kidnapping rings that sold children. He was on countless cops’ ‘Most Wanted’ List – and he made sure that he never got caught. Never, ever. Every single time the cops or feds finally got close to him, one of his associates stepped up to take the fall. Jensen generously rewarded his patsies and their families, and he protected his fall-guys in jail as they served their sentences on his behalf. He was untouchable and he was smart, and Jack knew damn good and well that trying to stop Jensen by legal means had been tried, over and over again, and it had failed. Miserably. Over and over again, for years.

And more and more people got hurt badly and suffered terribly. Died horribly.

Maybe King was right, then. Maybe
this
was all that was left. The only way to end it, once and for all.

“Anyway.” King’s tone was ruthless, relentless. “You think it through, Cuddy, and you let me know which way you want to go.”

“When?” Ace’s voice was quiet, almost defeated. “How much time do I have?”

“How long will you be holding Shay?”

“Dunno. That’s Kirk’s call. But I can’t see it being more than two weeks. I know he’s making contact with Crusher the day after tomorrow.”

“So let’s agree that the babysitting of Shay Alcott will be your last official duty as President of the Fallen Angels. After that’s over, you either move up… or you move on.”

Ace nodded, tried to figure out what he was feeling. On the one hand, it was like a noose tightening around his neck, or a door slamming shut. Like he was suffocating and drowning; like his whole life was a never-ending cycle of violence, and hatred, and death. Taking the top post would just bring more of those things in to his world, and he knew that as sure as he knew his own name.

On the other hand, though, he felt… like he had a taste of freedom. Like he suddenly had possibilities. Like he had chances, for the first time in a long,
long
time. Like he could settle down someplace warm, and bright, and real. Someplace with sunlight.

He knew the cycle of darkness well; he knew it intimately. He lived it, he breathed it, he inhabited it on a cellular level. It was familiar now, so familiar that he was almost comfortable in it.

The
light
, though. The thought that he could
live
in the light… that was something he never thought he’d have, and so he’d never let himself want it. Never gave himself permission to wish for or dream about being free to start again – maybe even start again with Liam.

What King was offering him was a second chance to do something that he’d walked away from years before, and he’d regretted leaving ever since. King was offering him the chance to be honest about who he was, and to love who he wanted, without fear or shame. He’d have to be crazy to
not
take this chance, right?

But would he be safe? Would Liam? Would they have to spend their whole lives looking over their shoulders? Would Liam even
want
him, after everything he’d done, all the people he’d hurt? What if Liam didn’t want him – could Ace embark on a new life, living openly as a gay man, and find love with someone else? Did he even
want
to live his life that way if he couldn’t be with Liam? Maybe he’d be better off alone, pantomiming life as a straight man, running a criminal organization, getting drunk enough to fuck the club hellions – all the while cursing his decision to have not left with Liam all those years ago, back when Liam had begged him to.