Rubi: Are you alone?
I left that message on Read and pocketed the phone, turning my attention to the burner.
A message from an unsaved number greeted me.
Unknown:I have your location
That was it. I scrutinised the number. Had I seen it before? No clue. Numbers did weird shit to my brain. Legit couldn’t look at them for too long without getting fucking vertigo.
I ditched that phone too and searched for some common sense. Only Cam and Saint had this burner number, but the message was too grammatically correct to be either of them. Too formal.
Alexei?
Yup. That worked.
What didn’t work? How the fuck he knew where I was. But I didn’t much care. I had my reasons for being here, and the only soul I owed an explanation to had already heard them.
“It’s your call, brother. I trust you.”
I finished my smoke and collected the butt in Saint’s honour. Then I considered my options, and more faces rotated through my head.Crowfaces. Some dead. Some in the wind. Some that manifested as the real reason I’d left the sanctuary of the compound to ride out alone.
It’s your call, brother.
It was. I just had to find them first.
Or wait for them.
I lounged against the gate, smoking some more, three cigarettes deep when I heard the rattle of approaching bikes.
Three. I knew before I looked up and watched a Fat Boy, a V-Rod, and a beat-up Dyna—needs a new piston—ease to a stop on the other side of the road.
The men at the front quickly rolled off their hogs. The other was slower to move, but I didn’t let my gaze linger on him too long. Like every other encounter with a fella I knew to be about ten feet tall and seven shades of hot, it wasn’t the time. Goddamn, it wasneverthe time for the weird feeling expanding in my chest as the burly dude dismounted the weary Dyna and pushed his helmet back.
Sandy blond hair.
Scruffy jaw.
A neck tat that put paid to any intent I had of looking away anytime soon.
Orla had neck ink too, at the base of her throat. Daggers on her collarbones. I’d spent a lifetime nursing a soul-deep fantasy of kissing her there, a fantasy I’d finally sated. But as I stared at this dude and his inked neck, that feeling—thatcraving—came rushing back, squeezing my heart in a vice of fucking pain.
Calm your tits. It’s not like you’ve never seen him before.
No. But my gut and my pulse didn’t get the memo, leaving me reeling as I pushed off the gatepost, tracking the men who approached me, scanning them for weapons and aggression.
Didn’t find any. And with Crows, that was usually enough. They were obvious motherfuckers. Predictable to a man.Butif everything Rocco had told me was true, these men weren’t ordinary Crows, and my guard remained on point as the first two reached me and took their helmets off.
“Ranger.” I tipped my head, greeting a face I knew well.
“McGovern.” The lanky northerner returned the gesture, offering me a smoke from his fresh pack. “Fucking social call, is it?”
“Depends. How’s tricks for you these days?”
Ranger clicked a lighter beneath the cigarette I’d claimed, regarding me with a gaze three shades darker than any O’Brian I’d ever met. “You trying to be funny?”
“Me? Never.”
“You’re looking for Rocco?”
