Soul Ties (Club Ties #4) (4 page)

While he stitched, she averted her gaze. Harris started talking about the rival gang coming into the bar and demanding drinks. Seeing shit was about to go south, Harris called for backup. A minute later gunfire opened up. Harris had hit the deck behind the bar but he’d heard Bones take his bullet.

“Screamed like a little girl.”

“No doubt you would too,” Sarah muttered.

Connall’s face wore a ghost of a smile. “That’s true. Getting shot is no picnic. Now pass me that gauze, Harris.”

He tossed it and Connall fielded it with ease, as if he played catch in the operating room all the damn time.

“Will he be all right?” she asked, finding her voice hoarse.

“Yeah, if the infection doesn’t get him.”

She glared.

“I’ll write him a prescription. No heavy lifting, a bit of rest. He should be on the road within a couple weeks.” Connall unrolled the gauze and created a thick rectangle, which he pressed over Bones’ ruined side. Then he taped another to the back where the bullet had gone out.

Connall got to his feet.

“You’re going to stay until he wakes up, right? You aren’t leaving him here?”

“You insult me, woman. Hell no, I won’t leave him here. Harris will drive him to the club, and I’m driving you.”

She stared. “On your…bike?”

“Yeah, that’s all I’ve got. Don’t get too excited. I’m not giving you my helmet. I’ve got an extra.”

Irritation rippled through her. She didn’t want his stupid helmet anyway. The Hell’s Sons’ tradition of giving their old lady a helmet was equivalent to being asked to go together, if they were fifteen again.

Connall wasn’t the type. She couldn’t even picture this man as an adolescent. He’d surely been born wearing tight jeans, black leather, and that dark, brooding expression.

Gently, she placed Bones’ head on the pillow of bar towels and stood. She didn’t realize how stiff she was from kneeling until she unfolded her legs. Pacing back and forth a few times helped a bit, and she went into the bar area. It had cleared out. Not a single customer sat drinking. Whatever had gone down here couldn’t be over—the rivals would come back for more.

And they weren’t Raiders. She was trying to wrap her head around who had a beef with the Sons.

“Ready?” Connall was suddenly behind her, a hand on her spine. His big fingers and wide palm seemed to span her whole back, but she was imagining the sensation. He was a normal man. No bigger than Jamison.

Or O’Dovey.

She stiffened and he pulled away. When he led her outside, she stopped walking and turned to him. “Will Bones be okay?”

“Yeah, your boyfriend will be fine.” God, he sounded grouchy.

“He’s not my boyfriend. And you have a terrible bedside manner.”

“That wasn’t a hospital bed. It was a hard, dirty floor and he shouldn’t have even taken that hit. It was meant for me.”

Shock tore through her. “You?”

“Yeah.” Tall and chiseled with muscle, he stared down at her. She sensed he had an underlying pain but had no idea how she knew it. He sure as hell wasn’t giving anything away with his dark glare.

“Why would someone come after you? You’ve been in town for what? Three minutes?”

“Ten days, but I taunted the fucker who shot Bones.” He took off walking toward his bike, long legs eating up the parking lot.

She skipped behind him. “Taunted how?”

He threw her a look that said he wasn’t talking. Maybe if she were wearing a cut and a patch, he might. Women were on a need-to-know basis. Or maybe it wasn’t her gender at all. He seemed like a private person.

When it was clear he refused to answer her, she fumbled for the keys she’d hastily shoved in her jeans pocket. “Will Harris follow us?”

“Yeah, he was just closing up. Ready?”

“I have the club car and a trunk full of groceries. I can’t ride with you.”

“Damn. All right, just drive and I’ll follow you.”

She got in the car and looked all around before pulling out. She didn’t want anyone but one of the Hell’s Sons tailing her. But who was Connall, anyway? Nobody knew this guy, and so what if his charter prez had called Jamison to settle things? They’d accepted a new club member on word alone. For all they knew, he was bringing heat to their club.

Her paranoia was reaching a crescendo. She wasn’t cut out for this type of intrigue. She cleaned and cooked and comforted the boys when they needed her. She shouldn’t be walking in on gunshot wounds and men setting their own broken noses, for fuck’s sake.

By the time they reached the club, her muscles ached from being wound so tightly. One wrong word and Connall would face her snapping point. However, he didn’t speak when he came to help her carry groceries. How strange to perform such a domestic task after coming from the bloody havoc in the Gearhead.

She was too aware of him behind her. And when he reached past her to set a gallon of milk on the counter, she couldn’t stop the thrill of interest at the chunky silver rings he wore.

They went outside for another load of bags in time to see Harris driving the black van through the gates.

“I’ll go check on Bones,” Connall muttered.

Good. She needed a little breathing room. Whenever the doctor was near, she wanted to throw herself at him and taste his hard lips, lick his neck, and press her aching breasts to his chest. He roused a deep need in her body, but she wasn’t interested. Not even in a gorgeous badass doctor who wore knuckle rings.

As she hauled more bags inside and dumped them on the nearest table, she caught a raised voice—Connall telling off Bones for being in the wrong place.

What the…

Dammit, was she the only one with sense around here? Striding to the door between kitchen and the big room where everyone congregated, she settled her hands on her hips. “He’s just been shot. You can’t ease up?”

Connall shut his mouth with a snap. “Not your business.”

Bones limped past her with Harris’s support. He shot her a wink and Connall made a noise that sounded like a growl.

She spun away from the irritating man and hurried to her refuge—the kitchen. She put away all the groceries then laid out the ingredients for Ace’s birthday cake.

While she mixed the batter and then the frosting, she couldn’t shake her worry for Bones or even Connall. Twenty scenarios ran through her mind, beginning with Connall being a rival hunted by his own and leaning more toward him going into the bar for whiskey and coming out with a broken nose.

Either way, a rival club was after him but she was still unsure who the bad guys even were.

When Connall was seated at the big table alongside his brothers, a feeling of peace stole over him. No matter what was to come, everything would be okay because they were all in it together.

Jamison looked up at him from the head of the table. “What happened?”

“It’s the Falcons.”

Silence crashed over the room. After a long beat, Jamison templed his fingers. “You’re sure.”

He nodded. The Falcons were bad news—one percenters through and through. That meant they were dirty murderers and everything they did was illegal, not just something here and there like the Hell’s Sons.

“What the fuck are Falcons doing in Heller’s Gap?”

“Getting their bottom rocker?” This was from Harris. Several biker clans claimed territory rights to both Tennessee and Alabama. The Tennessee charters wore rounded patches—or rockers—on their backs with their territory conquests. In this case, Heller’s Gap.

“Fuck, this is bad, man.” Ace banged a fist on the table and his dog, a huge beast, whined at his feet. Resting a hand on the dog’s head, Ace looked from man to man. “We’ve got one-percenters in our town, and first thing they do is walk into our bar and shoot one of our club members?”

“Blood spilled means they’re going to fight us for every last fucking city block,” another guy interjected.

Connall stared at the wood grain on the surface of the highly-polished table. Was Sarah the person who rubbed all that oil into the wood?

“I caused the fight,” Connall said quietly.

Jamison’s expression was grim. “You’d better tell us.”

“They were lined up in front of the diner on Thirteenth Street. Maybe ten bikes total. I recognized their bikes and gave them the finger. They came right after me. So I picked out the group leader by his placement in the formation and I ran him off the road.”

Harris gave a low chuckle, but Jamison shook his head. “Playing with fire.”

Connall raised a shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. “I knew they weren’t in Heller’s Gap for any reason that was good. I let them know we wouldn’t just sit here and let them corrupt our town.”

For a man who’d moved four times in as many years, he’d been as unattached to his surroundings as a person possibly could be. But here…he had a burning sensation of belonging. This table was made for him to sit at. His new brothers were made to be best friends.

And Sarah…

He clamped that thought like a Hemostat on an artery.

“They followed me back to the bar. I took a bottle of Grey Goose in the nose.” He pointed to his schnoz, which felt enormous with swelling, but in three weeks would be mostly normal again.

“And they shot Bones,” Jamison prompted.

“Not exactly. They started crap with him and Harris. Then they asked about a duffle bag.”

“Son of a bitch.” Jamison’s simple words resounded through the space. Nobody spoke.

“They said it was rumored the Hell’s Sons had stolen it. Is that true?”

“Yeah,” Jamison said after a while. “But it was our money.”

“Maybe they just want the duffle back because they need a place to put their gym socks,” someone quipped.

Laughter rippled down the table, and though the atmosphere lightened, Connall didn’t feel it inside. “Bones was just in the line of fire,” he said quietly.

Jamison pressed his hands flat to the surface. “Why the fuck is everything so complicated lately? We’ve got to handle this shit. Right. Fucking. Now. C’mon, Ace, Drake. We’re going to pay our friends the Falcons a visit. I don’t know what alliance they’re making with the Raiders, but it can’t happen.”

“The Raiders.” Connall had no idea what was going on now. At first he’d believed the Falcons had just risen to the flash of his middle finger. But how did a duffle or the Raiders fit into this puzzle?

Jamison met his gaze. “The Raiders stole a bag of money from the man who owed us. They hid it in a warehouse away from their club. We got it back, but the only way the Falcons would know about that is if they’ve been talking to the Raiders. We have to end this before it starts.”

“I’ve got some new ammo.” Ace, the Sergeant at Arms, stood and his dog jumped up too.

“Is this wise?” Connall hoped he was the voice of reason. This wasn’t the Hell’s Sons. What he was seeing alarmed him far more than anything he’d seen in all his years as a patched member. “You’re reacting, but we need to think smart.”

When Jamison eased a sidearm from beneath his waistband, there was little hope in stopping the fight. “Wise? Maybe not. But we can’t sit here while they join forces. Drake, get a meet with the Raiders’ prez. Everyone else, find someone sweet to fuck, because we ride in two hours.”

Connall wasn’t one to turn from a war. He’d seen his old charter through plenty of dangerous times. He might be squeaky clean in the OR, but his button-down shirt hid tattoos and battle scars.

He stood. “I’m in.”

Jamison didn’t hesitate to include him. “Grab your choice of sweet butt. We leave at dark.”

Connall gave a nod, but he had no desire for sweet butt. He wanted a Sweet
heart
.

»»•««

Sarah had seen very little of the doc in the three weeks since they’d met with the Raiders, so when the man strode into the clubhouse looking like sin in low-slung denim and a club T-shirt, she had a hard time catching her breath.

Without glancing at the chaos around him, he bee-lined to the bar and Ace. “Can I talk to you?” His voice was gruff.

Gathering two empty long-necks, Sarah tried to disappear into the background while keeping an eye on Connall. The guys and their old ladies were drinking, talking about child support owed and the next ride for charity. One club member had his face buried between a sweet butt’s thighs, and the partying had barely started.

The woman moaned, and Sarah dropped her gaze to the tongue moving over her pussy. White-hot need spiked in her core, though she saw this sort of thing every day. It was Connall’s presence that ignited her and filled her head with dirty thoughts.

He’d never look at her, though. She was just a club girl—a cook and maid. But deep down she wanted to hear what he was saying and why his arms were folded with so much menace.

Rumor was that the Falcons had ridden out of town, and the Raiders and Sons had a tenuous treaty to ensure the bastards stayed out. But maybe Connall knew something.

He and Ace spoke in low, hasty whispers. Connall pulled something from his back pocket.

A pill bottle.

Ace took it with a nod.

Sarah released a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. So this was why they’d accepted Connall into the club solely on the backing of his former president—the good doc could keep their prescription drug cabinet stocked, which supplemented their income.

In her mind, Connall’s reputation had just sunk lower than low. The club did what they did to support themselves, and she never judged. She benefitted from their business. But she didn’t like believing Connall was as corrupt as the rest of them.

He was smart—educated. He hadn’t come from the trailer park or been tossed around in the system as so many had been as kids. Why a man like him would want to hang around the Hell’s Sons was beyond her.

Straining to hear, she drifted forward and bumped one of the tables with her hip. A beer bottle tipped and hit the floor. Glass shattered.

“Good job, Sweetheart!” Tommy slapped her on the ass with a hoot of laughter. She squealed in surprise and glanced up to find Connall’s gaze on her. His expression was unreadable—severe even. Without a smile, his eyes were as dark and dead as ancient stars.