Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 77505 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 388(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77505 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 388(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
“What woman?” Raff asked, brows pinching as he pulled another blanket off the stack sitting beside him. With all the blood loss, he wasn’t able to get warm enough anymore.
Sway hadn’t seen her either.
If it wasn’t for the guy dead with a plug in his heart, I would think I’d fucking imagined her.
But she’d been there, dammit.
Why was the real question.
“The one who shot the guy who was gonna off Colter,” Sway said, bringing a cup of coffee over to Raff.
“How’d I miss that?”
“You were busy getting stabbed,” I explained.
“I heard the shot… but I figured it was one of us with how the other guys ran off.”
“No, there was a woman who must have been watching. And she saw the guy behind me, she took him out.”
“Bitter ex?” Slash suggested.
“With that good of an aim from that far away?” I asked. “Maybe. But… I dunno. I’m not sold on that.”
“No one saw a car?”
“No,” I said. “But we were trying to get the hell out of there.”
“Did you remember anything else about her?”
“Pretty. Gorgeous. Long dark hair, pulled back. Full lips. Cleft chin. Eyes… dark. Can’t tell you if they were brown or blue, but definitely on the dark side.”
“Build?”
I shrugged at that.
“On the taller side. Five-eight, maybe. Fit, but not thin. She had hips and tits. All black outfit. Leather jacket.”
“Leather jacket,” Sway repeated. “Wasn’t it warm that night?”
It had been.
“You know chicks, though,” Sway said, shrugging. “They tend to run colder than us.”
“What is it?” Slash asked, watching me, as we heard a couple of bikes rumble up toward the club.
Which also had me stiffening.
“The jacket wasn’t something a woman would have bought herself.”
“Why?”
“It wasn’t a woman’s jacket,” I recalled, thinking of the closure. “The zipper was on the right.”
“What?” Slash asked.
“Women’s zippers and buttons are on the left side,” I explained. “Men’s are on the right. Hers were on the right. And the jacket looked old. Worn. Well-loved. And too big for her.”
“Boyfriend, maybe,” Sway suggested.
There was no logical reason for the way my stomach twisted. So I went ahead and ignored that shit.
“Maybe,” I agreed.
“Connected to the club somehow?” Raff said.
The door opened, then and in walked Rook, Judge, and Coach.
“Tell me you got something,” Slash said.
Because he was looking for vengeance.
Not for the sideways deal, but because one of Roach’s men thought they could try to kill me.
Negotiations and fights, that was shit that could be forgiven.
Attempted murder?
Not so much.
They’d have to pay for it.
But we needed to know more about them first.
It wasn’t like we fully vetted every organization that bought guns from us. It wasn’t necessary. So we just knew the basics about these guys. Bikers. President named Roach. A general area. That was it.
“Not as much as you probably want,” Rook said with a sigh.
He looked sleepless—eyes red-rimmed, lids swollen, and purple smudges underneath. The jumpy nature of his movements said he had a shit ton of caffeine in his system.
I didn’t have much hope for what he had to say if he’d been without sleep.
“Whatever you have now is more than we have.”
“Roach’s real name is Rodney Harris.”
“Rodney,” Syn snorted as he came into the common area.
“Says someone named Syn,” Sway shot back.
“Fair. Is my brother here yet?”
“He looked like he was on his way, but Mike’s beater pulled up,” Rook explained.
Saint wasn’t living fully at the club yet, thanks to being on parole and needing to be around for random checks. Sure, Mike Ellers—with his four ex-wives, alimony, and child support—was easy to bribe. But we tried not to push shit too far with his easygoing nature.
“You can fill him in later,” Slash said. “Rodney Harris…”
“Has a criminal record,” Rook continued. “His juvenile record is sealed, but if it’s anything like his adult record, he’s been a problem his whole life.”
“Prison?” Slash asked.
“One short stint for solicitation. Mostly jail, though. For a revolving door of things: more solicitation, possession, pandering…”
“Pandering?” Syn asked.
“Nice way of saying pimping,” Slash explained. “Why didn’t he go away for any bids?”
“Fucking luck,” Rook said. “Charges got reduced, witnesses didn’t cooperate or disappeared, sat rotting in county for how long he would have gone away to prison. He just kept slipping through the system. And he’s never triggered the three-strikes because the felonies were mostly non-violent. But make no mistake, he’s violent.”
“How do you know?”
“The girls he used to pimp,” Rook explained. “Anytime they got pulled in on a solicitation or drug charge, they were roughed up. The mugshots are… ugly,” Rook said.
The man saw a lot of fucked-up shit.
So if he said it was ugly, that was really saying something.
“Maybe she could be one of his former girls?” Slash proposed, looking at me.
“I dunno. Anything is possible.”
“I dunno,” Rook said. “The description you gave me doesn’t match any of the girls I came across. I mean, it’s entirely possible that she just never got called in.”