Elite Metal-ARE-epub (30 page)

“Besides, Bolt,” Platinum continued as he stretched out his long legs, crossing them at the ankles. “I kinda like watching you get your ass handed to you. Highly entertaining.”

“Don’t get used to it. Once Ant spills the beans about how he’s winning, I will no longer be in the ass-handed territory. ‘Fess up, Ant. What’s the trick?”

“There is no trick. I hung out with a lot of gamers these last two years. IT folks may not be the sportiest of people, but their hand-eye coordination is off the charts. It was either up my skills or owe them my firstborn. Come on. Let’s play again. Or are you a pussy?”

“Pussy,” Platinum chimed in.

With a snarl and an obscene gesture, Bolt warned, “Don’t start with the smack talk, Ant. Our cabins aren’t that far apart.”

Ant downed the rest of his beer in two big swallows and signaled the waitress for another round. “I’ll even tie my hands behind my back, if it makes you feel better.”

“Like I need any favors from you. Bet’s on. And we switch darts.”

“Fine by me.” Ant fought back a smug grin as he took a seat on the beat-up wooden bar chair. Bolt was never gonna believe he lost fair and square, and the more he fought, the more money he’d be willing to lose.

Around them Bone Daddy’s, the biker bar located out in the middle of BFE, otherwise known as Deep Ellum, Texas, was abuzz with energy. The go-to destination for hardcore motorcycle enthusiasts all over the Southwest, it was like the Sturgis rally three hundred sixty-five days a year. The dance floor was full, a crowd at the bar stood two people deep and the wait for a pool table held steady at a good thirty minutes. Yep, the bar owners would be sleeping well that night when the till count was done for the evening.

Despite the packed house, the patrons gave a wide berth to the corner of the room where Ant, Bolt, and Platinum played darts, going so far as to double up on tables to give them space. A phenomenon that made Ant chuckle.

The first thing the Elite Metal team had done once they had been caught up to speed on why they had been kidnapped was hit the local watering hole. Who wouldn’t need a drink after hearing that not only was your cover blown, but the terrorist fuckface that had killed your comrades and forced you underground in the first place was alive and looking for blood? Not only had that drink been sorely needed, but it also established their presence as the newest and baddest motorcycle club in town.

The locals had been pretty quick to pick up on the vibe that they weren’t a typical MC. Sure, they looked the part with their tats, boots, and leathers. But there was definitely a certain something about the group that set them apart from the others, aside from their muscular physiques and lack of ponytails. Even the drunkest and most oblivious man could sense that the EM crew were too watchful, too aware of who, what, and where was going on in the vicinity. They had an aura about them that screamed they best not be fucked with, and it was an image Adamantium loved to perpetuate.

The tough guy persona he projected was not something he came by naturally. As the fourth of six boys, and the lone techno-nerd in a family of cattle ranchers, his wiry build put him on the bottom of the pig pile many times. It wasn’t until he joined the Marines and gained fifty pounds of muscle that his brothers stopped picking on him.

He would never forget the look on his eldest brother’s face when Zach tried to play the finger circle game with him. Not only had Adamantium not looked directly at the circle, he had poked the center and slugged Zach twice in the arm before his brother blinked. Zach claimed he couldn’t throw a rope for a week. Man, the memory of that moment never failed to put a smile on Ant’s face.

The back of his throat burned as if he had swallowed acid and his vision grew blurry as the joy of remembrance turned bittersweet. He missed them. All of them. He missed the four a.m. wake-up calls for breakfast so they’d make it on time to the school that was located way out of town proper. He missed the constant bickering and laughter of his brothers. He missed the caramel apples at Martinez’s orchard during the harvest festival and his mom’s pot roast on Sunday dinner.

With each day that passed, the longing to return home lessened, but sometimes all it took was for one of the crew to call him Adam, the same name as his baby brother, instead of by his full codename, and the homesickness returned. Most of the time he preferred it when they called him Ant.

Perhaps that was why he took so readily to his new assignment with Elite Metal and the hot Texas environment. Deep Ellum reminded him a lot of his hometown of Mission, Washington, and the frat-boy atmosphere of the crew was much like hanging with his brothers during calving season. Only these men weren’t his brothers.

Actually, that wasn’t entirely true. The members of the Maguire clan were his brothers by blood. The EM men were brothers by spilt blood, and the bond between them was just as fierce. He’d kill and be killed for these men. And now they were his only family.

He’d never admit it to anyone, but that first night after the ghost squad hauled his ass back into action, he slept like a baby. For the first time in two years he didn’t have to look over his shoulder or pretend to be someone he wasn’t. With his real home lost to him forever, the EM crew were the next best thing, sorry as that might sound.

“Damn, Ant.” Cobalt’s grumble broke through his maudlin thoughts. The feathered end of the third dart bobbed where it struck outside of the blue circle. “What did you do to these things?”

He cleared his throat and took a sip of beer. “I told you. I’m that good. Stand back and watch the master.”

After collecting the trio of darts, Ant took his place at the throw line. Pausing between tosses only as long as it took to palm the next dart, he sank each one dead in the center of the target.

“Fuck me.” Cobalt shook his dark-haired head then withdrew his cellphone from his back pocket. After punching in a few keystrokes, he held the phone to his ear. “Hey, Sterling,” he said a few seconds later. “What’s your ETA? Cool. We’re in the back near the dartboards. When it’s free, we’ll hold it for a game. Did you know Ant really sucks at darts? We can probably take him for a cool hundred, maybe more. You know how he doesn’t give up. See ya soon.” He ended the call. “We split the take fifty-fifty.”

Damn, he missed these guys, he thought with a chuckle. “There’s no one’s money I like taking more than Hollywood’s money.”

“What about my take?” Platinum asked.

“You get to watch, Mr. ‘I’m Here Under Duress.’ ” Bolt paused to take a swig from his bottle. “Sterling’s going to be ripe for a challenge, too. Apparently, Poppy held him up to bitch about the last mission. By the way, that cartoon you drew of her popping out of that tank wearing a bikini was awesome.”

“Glad to provide some entertainment.” He smiled and threw another dart at the board.

Bolt glanced to his left then let loose with a low whistle. “Hello, beautiful.”

“Blonde or brunette?” Ant asked without bothering to turn around.

“Bottle blonde. But I’m cool with that. Damn.” He sighed. “Why do the sad ones get me hot?”

“Because you have a hero complex.” Curiosity got the better of him and he turned to check out the object of Bolt’s admiration. “Which one?”

“Pink dress. Ten o’clock. Sitting next to the poser and looking like she wished she were anywhere but here.”

The crowd shifted, giving Ant an unimpeded view of the table next to the small stage where the mediocre cover band was crushing Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me
.
”He recognized the owner of the local racetrack, who was talking to a man who was dressed as if he were attending a polo match and not sitting in a beer joint with straw on the floor. But it was the woman under his arm who made Ant’s heart stop and his hands go lax as time ground to a halt.

Beth Bradshaw.

No. It couldn’t be.

He squinted and looked beyond the carefully highlighted hair and thick eyeliner. In his mind, he scrubbed the pretty girl’s face of makeup and dressed her in a blue button-down blouse in place of the cleavage-bearing halter top that made her breasts look like ripe grapefruit waiting to be plucked.

Mr. Ivy League whispered something in her ear, and she forced a tight smile on her glossy lips. A smile Ant recognized from frat parties past.

Holy shit. It was Beth. What was his Beth doing in a dive like this?

Wait. No. She wasn’t
his
Beth. She was Jason’s Beth and always had been. A fact that had been the deciding reason for him joining the Marines all those years ago.

“Uh, Ant?” Cobalt nudged him in the back. “Does that hurt?”

The roar in his ears mellowed as he blinked to clear his head. “What?”

Bolt pointed to the floor near his feet. Two darts lay on the ground with the third sticking out of the top of his Doc Marten.

“Uh, no.” He bent to retrieve the darts. With the way he felt at that moment, a three-inch wide bowie knife could have been imbedded in his foot and he wouldn’t have felt it.

“Damn, man. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Something like that,” he mumbled. “I’ll be right back.”

He strode toward the bar, glancing back over his shoulder to keep an eye on Beth along the way.

Bolt was wrong when he said the pretty blonde looked sad. She looked downright miserable. Years of study had made him an expert in all of Beth Bradshaw’s expressions, and if he knew her like he thought he did, she was putting up a front while inside all she probably wanted to do was hide in the corner wrapped in a fluffy blanket and hugging a huge bucket of popcorn.

“Hey, Daryl.” He stopped one of the bartenders as he was filling up the ice bins. “Who’s the pretty boy in the corner?”

The burly man dropped the plastic bucket to the floor and glanced to where Ant indicated. His eyes widened for a split second before he shrugged. “Don’t know.”

Yeah, right. “Who is he?” he asked again with a firmness in his tone that hinted he knew the man was holding out.

Daryl sucked in a huge breath and scratched his belly. “Don’t rightly recollect at the moment.” He tapped his fingers on the bar top and smiled.

Ant made like he was reaching for his wallet, but then he let the darts in his other hand fly in rapid succession, each one landing within the slight spaces between the man’s thick fingers with a solid
thunk
. “Do I need to repeat myself?”

Daryl shook his head and snatched his hand back to safety behind the counter. “His name’s Chesterfield. Out of Austin. He’s been coming around the last two weeks, meeting with Naches. From what I hear, he’s a bookie looking to get some action at the track.”

“A bookie?” What the hell was Beth doing with a bookie?

He turned back around and saw Chesterfield stand and pull Beth to her feet. The band segued into an old Poison ballad and Moneybags drew her into a tight embrace on the dance floor. Her short dress barely covered the curve of her ass, drawing the lustful eyes of half the men and jealous glares of the women in the area.

Beth’s face was a blank mask as her partner shuffled them from side to side in a slow circle. On the second rotation, Ant’s eyes about fell out of his head when he saw the soon-to-be-dead-man’s hands up under her skirt and squeezing the globes of her fleshy ass in plain view of everyone.

“Ah, fuck no,” he growled and took a step forward, only to be pulled up short by Cobalt grabbing the back of his jacket.

“Hold up, cowboy. What’s crawled up your ass?”

Ant seethed like a bull seeing red as he struggled to regain his composure. While it would have been perfectly logical for his former identity to run over to the couple and dislocate every joint in the fucker’s hands, Adamantium was a nobody to her, and she was supposed to be a nobody to him.

“I don’t like seeing pretty girls getting mauled in public,” he said with a grumble.

“I hear ya, man, especially when it’s obvious she’s not into it. But we can’t go off decking assholes, even if they deserve it. Although…” The scar on his right cheek deepened as he started to chuckle, and the hair on Ant’s arms stood on end. Nothing good ever came when Cobalt laughed that way. “I bet we can find his ride. We know he sure as shit ain’t riding a chopper.”

Oooh, he liked the way the man thought. “I do admire a pinstripe job done with the tip of a blade.”

“True that. What say you, Doc? Willing to test your knife skills on something other than flesh?”

“Always,” Platinum replied. “But you know, Chrome would have our asses if he knew. Then Steele would get on our ass because Chrome was on his ass. In other words, ass fucking all around.”

“You planning on telling him?”

“Fuck no. I just wanted to make sure we were all clear on the consequences.” He glanced back at the couple and his smile widened. “You take the left side of the lot, I take the right?”

“Yep.” Bolt slapped Ant on the back. “Keep an eye on them. Don’t go busting heads while we’re gone.”

“I’ll try to restrain myself,” he growled.

Bolt held up his fist. “Oorah.”

“Oorah,” he murmured back and bumped the offered fist.

Ant’s skin crawled as the asshole continued to molest Beth in front of God and sundry. As much as he tried to look away, his gaze was glued to the hands squeezing her bottom and pulling her hips tight against his groin.

What the fuck was this craziness? This was not the Beth he knew. His Beth was sunshine and shy smiles. The girl he remembered would bake your favorite cookies for your birthday and help you with your math homework. In high school, she wore button-down blouses or sundresses that fell past her knees, not postage stamp–sized miniskirts. The Beth he knew would never allow a man to grope her in public, and she most certainly would not be associated with a bookie. She had better sense than that.

Didn’t she?

Okay. So maybe she didn’t have the best taste in men. She had married Jason after all, but that mistake hadn’t entirely been her fault. Jason had been his best friend, and at one time closer to him than blood. But that had been before the drinking and the money. The man Jason had become was in no way the same boy Ant had grown up with.