Guns & Dusty Roads: The Iron Brotherhood Series (8 page)

Next to her, Cross rolled over to look up at her, stretching his big, well muscled arms lazily above his head as he opened his eyes.  “Morning, sunshine,” he greeted her, a sneaky little grin dancing around the edges of his features.  “How are you feeling, after last night’s fun?”

Kara glared down at him, but groaned as the memories slowly drifted up, like bubbles of gas rising in a swamp.  “No, no,” she murmured, grabbing the pillow off of the bed and sticking it between her knees so that she could bury her face in it.

She had totally gone off the rails last night.  Getting drunk while undercover, risking her entire position, letting these criminals buy her drinks.  She shouldn’t have gone along with any of it.

And then she’d ended up back here!  In bed, with Cross on top of her, his hands ripping off her clothing, taking advantage of her in such a crude and animalistic manner, stripping her for his pleasure…

Kara didn’t even let herself consider her own part in that bit of frenzied activity.  She hadn’t wanted the man, she told herself.  It was nothing but a moment of weakness, happening only as a way to momentarily relieve the stress of the job!  It was nothing more!

Of course, when she lifted her head an inch from the pillow to glance over at Cross’s body lying next to her, it all came rushing back.  As he shifted, Kara saw the man’s six-pack abs rippling across his chest, and she almost gave in right there.

Even now, with a headache making it tough for her to keep any coherent thoughts in her head, Kara felt tempted to crawl on top of the man next to her, to finish what they had started the night before.  It would be so easy.  She could chalk the whole thing up to residual drunkenness, a momentary misstep.

Trying to clear this oddly alluring, tempting idea from her head, Kara rolled sideways, putting her bare feet down on the cold wooden boards of the floor.  “We should get going, get up,” she said, not letting herself turn to look at Cross.

She felt him shift on the bed beside her, pulling himself into a sitting position.  “Trust me, we’re in no rush,” he replied, his voice husky.  Was that from sleep, or other urges?  “After last night, everyone else is going to be taking their time getting up as well.  We probably won’t hit the road until at least noon.”

Kara rolled her eyes at this, although the temptation to return to bed was growing stronger.  If there was no advantage to getting up now, maybe she could sleep a bit longer for once.

But there was still the parallel temptation of the man lying in the bed beside where she’d slept.  If he made a move, he might manage to slip through Kara’s armor - and she wouldn’t let that happen.

As if reading her mind, Cross let out a groan as he stretched, and then slowly lifted himself up onto his feet.  “Tell you what, you just relax for a few,” he said, reaching down to pick up a pair of boxers from the floor.  “I’ll go for a little walk around.”

Yes, that would work.  With the man gone, Kara could let herself doze a little longer.  She tried - and failed - to prevent herself from sneaking a look at the man’s ass as he bent over to pull on those tight boxers.

God, he had a great ass. 

Cross turned around, and Kara hastily pulled her eyes up from his crotch.  She didn’t think she did so quite fast enough, however, as his lips twitched upward once again.  “Seriously, relax,” he told her, walking over to put one hand on the doorknob.  “After seeing you having some fun last night, the other guys here will be much friendlier to you.  They really aren’t a bad bunch, once you get to know them.”

And then, before Kara could respond, Cross had turned the knob and stepped out of the bedroom.  The door clicked slightly as it closed behind him.

After a second, Kara gave up, letting herself fall backward onto the bed.  The sheets immediately pulled her back in, and she quickly found the warmest patch in the bed, curling up in the residual heat.  The pillow underneath her head smelled endearingly like Cross, and although Kara didn’t want to think about how she knew the man’s scent so intimately, it was incredibly comforting.  It didn’t take long before her eyes drifted shut once again.

When Kara next opened her eyes, it was because her nostrils were twitching, sending insistent signals up to her brain.

There was a new scent in the air - one that Kara immediately recognized.

“Coffee?” she asked aloud as she sat up, pulling the waves of covers off of where they had been covering her head, blocking out those sunbeams coming in the window.

Cross had returned, Kara saw - this time, holding a steaming mug in either hand!  He carefully set one of the two cups down on the bedside table next to Kara, and then settled down at the foot of the bed, holding the other on his lap.  “Figured that you FBI types basically live off of the stuff,” he said, as Kara thankfully grabbed for the mug.

She took a deep drink before answering.  “It helps me forgive you for last night, at least,” she said, in between pulls.

Another man might have argued against that comment.  Cross, however, just grinned, as if he was proud of the implication!  “Oh, and Gimli says hello,” he replied instead, smirking.

Gimli?  Oh yes, the short and stocky biker.  Why did he-

The memory of coming back from the bathroom after puking rose up and replayed itself.  “Oh, no,” Kara muttered, closing her eyes.

“He’s got the nickname for you all picked out,” Cross continued, mixing sips of his own coffee in with this comment.  From the man’s grin, he was definitely enjoying every moment of this, savoring the schadenfreude.

He waited until Kara looked up.  “What is it?” she asked, bracing herself for the worst.

“Legs.”

“Legs?” she repeated.

Cross nodded.  “First, you do have a hell of a pair,” he said, his eyes dipping down to where the limbs in question were hidden beneath the blankets.  “But more importantly, they’re a lot more fun when open than shut - a bit like you, before and after you’ve had a few drinks!”

Kara dropped her head back down with a groan.  “That’s terrible!” she complained, her voice muffled.

“I dunno, it seems to fit pretty well.”

For a few more seconds, Kara just kept her head buried.  She let herself wallow in misery a little longer, just feeling sorry for herself, letting herself believe that this whole unfortunate situation of events was not her fault.  It was just part of going undercover, of selling the ruse, she repeated to herself.  She tried not to think about how hollow those words sounded, even to her.

And then, after a minute had passed, she lifted her head back up, finished off the coffee in her mug in one last, long pull, and then rolled her legs out of bed.  “Let’s go,” she announced, striding over to her bag.  “Time to get up, get dressed, put some pants on.  We’re going out, tackling this case.”

Once again, Kara expected an argument from the man, but he just nodded, as though he had expected this reaction.  “As you heard last night, the Hellraisers consider the gun running to be at the heart of their other operations, so they keep the details locked down, even to us,” he said as Kara went through her clothes.

“You guys aren’t all buddies, getting drunk together?” she shot back at him as she pulled a clean pair of jeans and a new bra out of her supply bag.

Cross shook his head.  “Not likely.  More like lifelong enemies who have agreed to an uneasy truce,” he countered.  “So we hear bits and pieces of what they’re up to, but nothing concrete, no details.”

“So what are we going to do?  It sounds like we’re at a dead end.”

“It’s not a dead end, not yet,” he replied.  “For an operation as big as what the Hellraisers are running, they have to have other contacts - and a secret like theirs can’t be kept for long.  ‘Three men can keep a secret if two of them are dead,’ you know.”

The expression made Kara’s eyebrows rise.  “Benjamin Franklin?” she asked in astonishment.  “Not what I’d expect a man like you to quote.”

“Oh, I’m a man of hidden depths,” Cross told her, his grin firmly back in place.  “You would have seen another last night, if you’d had a stronger stomach.”

Now fully dressed, Kara felt much better, much more able to tackle the day ahead.  “Never going to happen,” she told the man as she pulled on her biker’s boots.

Cross didn’t say anything; he merely rose up, grabbing both of the mugs, so that he could follow Kara out of the bedroom.  But, unspoken, one last thought hung in the air, dominating the silence.

Both of them knew that Kara’s statement was untrue.  Even now, when they were both sober, the pull was still there.  They didn’t acknowledge it, but Kara knew better than to assume it would just go away.

Get through the case, she told herself as they left the bedroom.  Make it to the end, get the evidence necessary to close this case, and then I can move on. 

She didn’t have to ignore her attraction to Cross forever - just long enough for her to finish up and get away, someplace that he wouldn’t even be on her mind any longer.

CHAPTER 10

A couple hours later, Special Agent Kara Sybil was following closely behind Cross as he exited smoothly off the highway, tilting his big bike beneath his frame as he snaked around the curving off-ramp. 

They didn’t go far from the highway - there was a truck stop just off to the side from the exit, and Cross turned into its parking lot, pulling up in front of the attached diner.  “This is where he usually hangs out - hopefully, we’ll catch him here,” he called out to Kara as she pulled her own hog into the parking space beside him, parking their choppers close to each other so as not to take up multiple parking spots.

Kara just nodded in response as she cut her engine, reaching down beneath her seat to turn off the flow of gasoline to the engine.  Unlike a car, where one could simply remove the key, a motorcycle had a few different steps necessary to shut it down.  But for Kara, these actions were ingrained into her muscle memory, and she performed them all but automatically every time she threw her leg over the vehicle.

Coming downstairs from the bedroom, back at the Iron Brotherhood’s house, had been another exercise in embarrassment.  Despite Cross’s comment about how most of the club members were likely still nursing hangovers of their own, Kara still received a raucous cheer from the men in the kitchen as she entered. 

“Here’s the woman of the hour!” one of the bikers called out, raising up a glass of something thick and red, with a stick of celery sticking out.  “Legs, the best thing to happen to Cross in as long as we can remember!”

“To Legs!” cheered the others in the kitchen, raising up their own glasses in a mock toast.

Kara knew better than to try and argue against the nickname.  Doing so would only further cement it as hers - or worse, she’d end up with something even worse.  She didn’t doubt the dirty imaginations of these men for a second, and she felt certain that their depravity could find something even worse to call her if she fought back too much.

So instead, she just put on a rueful, embarrassed grin.  It didn’t take much acting, to be honest.  “Yeah, yeah,” she said, trying to act as if the nickname was nothing.  “Is there anything to eat in here?”

There certainly was - one of the men was standing over the hot stove, and it took him no time at all to whip up a heaping plate of food, which he insisted on pushing into her hands.  “Best cure for a hangover - a good, filling breakfast,” he insisted.  “And when Picnic - that’s me, by the way - gives you a plate of food, you damn well better enjoy it!”

The plate was heaping with food - scrambled eggs, a couple slices of toast, and bacon and sausages still sizzling from their time on the grill.  Picnic’s food certainly looked appealing, and Kara dug in as Cross led her out to the dining room, where they found spots at the end of the central table.  All the chairs from the meeting the previous evening had been pushed back up to the table proper.

“So what’s the plan?” Kara asked Cross, the words somewhat muffled by the food in her mouth.  Picnic was a hell of a hometown cook, she mentally noted, scooping up some fluffy eggs.  Everything was delicious in that way that only unhealthy, heart-clogging food can manage.

“We’re going out looking for a man known as Under,” Cross replied, reaching out and sneaking one of the sausages off of Kara’s plate.  She lashed out at his fingers with her fork, but he was quicker, and he chuckled as he took a bite of the piece of meat.

“Under?” Kara repeated.  “That’s his nickname?”

“Short for ‘under the table,’ yeah.  He’s known for getting his hands on a lot of illegal stuff - and not just the usual things like guns or drugs.  One time, I heard that he got a dude a real panda cub.”

It sounded preposterous, but Kara could see how a man like Under could be useful.  “So where do we find him?”

“That’s the tougher part.  The guy’s totally off the grid - hates cell phones, goes through disposables like they’re candy.  But he’s got some hangouts where he usually spends his time in between clients.  We’ll go hit those up, and hopefully get lucky,” Cross said.

Gimli, walking by, cackled as he overheard the last couple of words.  “Get lucky again, after last night?” he joked, jumping into the conversation.  “Cross, you’re gonna give this woman friction burns!”

Cross opened his mouth, but Kara was faster.  “You know, Gimli, I didn’t see anyone hanging off of your arm last night,” she pointed out, raising her eyebrows.