I settled for a smoke and took a perch on a nearby dead tree, relaxing some now my brothers were with me. My hammer found its way to my belt and I took some deep, cleansing breaths, trying not to think about Teddy abandoned in the office. He was going to leave, I knew it. Would he come back? Who the fuck knew. At this point, I couldn’t worry about it. I needed to make my family safe.
Rubi returned with Saint, wheeling Saint’s bike. “Tyres slashed,” he said when he caught my eye. “By some twat with a butter knife. Could just be kids.”
Nash jerked his head up, gaze fierce again. “Why would kids cut Cam’s brakes?”
“Maybe they didn’t. Maybe they cut some brakes on a random bike they found hidden in a bush, then slashed some tyres for the hell of it.”
“What kind of kids do you know who’d do that?”
“None. I’m just saying it doesn’t have to be the worst scenario in the world here.”
I sent Rubi a flat look. He was my oldest friend and I often relied on him to balance the negative side of my brain, but sometimes this prick would say black was white just for the damn hell of it. “Let’s assume the worst, eh? That way we won’t be disappointed.”
Nash gave a grim nod and went back to his work, by now already patching the tyre on Saint’s bike.
Saint said nothing. Didn’t even look at me. Just scowled at the earth and trees around us as if he’d been dumped in the woods by his mother all over again.
Rubi sighed and came to sit beside me. He pulled a blunt from a battered cigarette box and lit up, offering it to me when he’d taken a couple of deep drags.
I waved it away. Weed was good when I couldn’t fucking sleep, but I needed my wits about me today, even if they felt so sharp they were tearing me apart.
We hunkered down until we got word the boys on the road were safe. Their bikes had checked out and they’d banked the stolen product, including the payday we’d picked up in return.
They were heading home.
Nash called a prospect in with a van to pick up my bike. When it was safely loaded, I swung my leg over Rubi’s bike. It was smaller than mine, a fact that irritated me for no reason at all.Since when are you a size queen?
Maybe since I’d seen Teddy’s fat dick slapping against his gorgeous abs. I didn’t bottom often. It was rare I felt chill enough to do it with a stranger, and I sure as hell wasn’t doing it with one of my friends, but my night with Teddy—not his fucking name—had got me feeling some type of way. Like he’d dangled me out of a high-rise window and swung me around until my head was irrevocably upside down.
Stop thinking about him. You have shit to do.
I gunned Rubi’s bike, noting that he had thrown a leg over the back of Nash’s battle-scarred V-Rod, not giving a single toss about cuddling up to his brother for the ride home, while Saint had roared away, impatient as ever to be somewhere else, despite the fact that we were all heading to the same place. We had to. If someone was brave enough to crawl out of the woodwork and try to kill us both, we had to stick together. Safety in numbers and all that jazz.
We caught up with Saint and hit the road back to the clubhouse, me at the front, flanked by Nash and an outrider, while Saint played tail gunner at the back. There weren’t many of us, but we drew attention. An unmarked police car appeared as soon as we hit the A road and trailed us all the way home.
Like a good president, I saw my boys through the gate, then doubled back to intercept the old bill before they could leave and pretend they hadn’t crawled up my arse.
I waved.
They cringed and drove away. Any other day I might’ve laughed—the clubhouse had been here fifty years and we’d never been busted with so much as an out-of-date fire extinguisher—but I had precious little good humour left in me. Some fucker was trying to kill me. Worse than that, they’d tried to kill Saint, and that fucked with my head more.
Were they trying to kill him? It makes more sense that they disabled his bike to stop him from protecting you.
True. But still. Saint was my brother—and the rest. If he’d been hurt today...
Fuck, I felt sick. I shivered and steered Rubi’s bike into the compound, noting with a sinking sensation that the Jaguar SUV Teddy had rolled up in had gone.Of course he left. You’ve been gone hours. You thought he’d wait for you and take you out for dinner?
A snort escaped me as I parked and yanked my helmet over my head, Embry already all up in my business.
He raised a brow. “Delayed reaction?”
“To what?”
“To the attempt on your life.”
I snorted again. “It was a warning, not a bullet in my skull.”
“This time.”
