Page 8 of Grave Games

That was a helluva lot of pressure, so the one thing we couldn’t tolerate was insubordination within our ranks. If our president didn’t clamp down on every rulebreaker, it’d be a matter of the inmates running the asylum before you could blink.

Tomahawk knew this. Goddamn it, we all did. But apparently Tom just couldn’t keep his grubby mitts to himself.

There were several buildings within the chain link-fenced compound. Aside from Ride Or Die Choppers, we’d bought up the surrounding buildings that all shared a massive parking lot that included a straggly island of trees and overgrown brush in its center. Several decades back, the area had been a thriving shopping area just off of Route 66, and a precursor to the outlet malls that would pop up decades later. The Clubhouse had once been a bank built in the ‘70s, with thick cinderblock walls, excellent surveillance, and a basement of vaults that I seriously loved, because that was our version of a SCIF—a sensitive compartmented information facility. Basically no one could hear shit when we went behind those closed doors, and that was just the way I liked it.

There was also a low-slung, two-story motor court that had taken advantage of Route 66’s fame by being called Get Your Kicks Motor Court. However, by the turn of the new century, the neighborhood had gone to seed, and the locals referred to the dilapidated motel as Turn Your Tricks. That was how Tyr had come across the place years before he’d broken away from his uncle. Hades had been running a ragtag stable of hookers out of that motor court and Tyr had more or less been Hades’s pimp. It had been a position that was meant to show Tyr just how low he was on the totem pole, while Hades’s son Marvel got to make all the prime runs and have his pick of jobs. But Tyr pulled a fast one on them all by quietly buying up the properties, kicking Hades’s working girls out and turning the motor court into the Barracks, a no-nonsense source of temporary housing that could shelter up to two hundred brothers in times of either celebration or war. It had its own kitchens, a state-of-the-art computer room, a laundry room, and even a small gym.

In short, the perfect place to weather a long siege.

Across the large parking lot and next door to Ride Or Die Choppers was the covered garage, large enough to accommodate most of the vehicles belonging to the club’s hierarchy. Then there was the machine shop in the back, where the insanely talented gearheads and grease monkeys hung out so they could work their magic in relative peace. Last but not least was the squat cinderblock structure that appeared half-buried in the snow. That building was where Tyr lived with a complex dog run out back. Knowing how Tyr adored his two scary-looking, long-haired German shepherds more than most people, they were no doubt inside and sprawled all over Tyr’s bed or couches.

My destination was Ride Or Die Choppers, Tyr’s personal project. Unsurprisingly, the parking area in front of the huge metal structure was almost empty this time of night. I parked as close as I could to the front, then made a dash for the door, grimly pleased I could run into the warmth while that asshole Tomahawk had to be freezing his balls off. Maybe a dose of consequences would teach that dipshit to think before he acted. Fucker had the audacity to claim frostbite, when not five miles away a woman who actually did have frostbite didn’t so much as whimper about it.

Who knew strength like that could be so insanely sexy? I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Or her.

“Romeo.” Tyr Colgrave, the president of our chapter of the Gravediggers, stuck his head out of his office, the overhead fluorescent lights hitting his dark blonde head. “Saw you come up on the CCTV. I’ve got Ash back here. Let’s talk.”

Shit.

Did Ash actually run back home to Daddy to tattle on me? Seriously?

Fuck my life.

With nothing left to do but get it over with, I walked past the gleaming, clean lines of the showroom. Several of the custom-made bikes Ride Or Die Choppers was famous for sat on raised platforms, spotlighted like the works of art they were. Ride Or Die was the flagship of Tyr’s vision for where he wanted to take his fledgling club, so all anyone had to do to understand our club was look around. The showroom was professional, straddling the two realms of the biker and civilian worlds by putting the Gravedigger name on a commercially available product. If the Hell’s Angels could make that leap into the mainstream without losing their 1%er edge, then so could we.

But despite the sleek professional look of the showroom, only an idiot would believe it made Tyr—and those of us who’d left our old MC to start this new Gravediggers chapter—civilian-world soft. From the time he was born, Tyr was all about the Gravediggers and the biker life. He didn’t know anything else, didn’t care about anything else, didn’t pretend to be anything else.

That suited me right down to the ground.

“So.” I stopped just inside the doorway and glared at Ash. He was a big motherfucker, I’d give him that, built like a bear, with more than a little crazy going on in his dark eyes. If I’d seen him in the puffy parka and ski mask that was now discarded next to where he sprawled on a low-slung sofa, I’d probably freak out, too. “How’re you doin’, Ash? Want me to call your ol’ lady Mabel so she can hold your hand? Maybe make you some chicken soup?”

“Shut up, asshole. That bitch broke my nose.” Looking woebegone with a spectacular pair of black eyes, Ashtray had an ice pack bundled up in a bloody kitchen towel in one beefy hand. “That wasn’t part of the plan.”

Plan?“Holy shit, you mean that tiny little waitress didn’t follow the script? Why, that’s just rude of her. Maybe you should write your congressman to complain.”

“Fuck you,” Ash bellowed, then groaned and gingerly put the icepack in place over his nose. “Goddamn bitch got me good. You didn’t tell me she was an MMA fighter, asshole.”

“I didn’t tell you that because she’s not, dude. She’s just a waitress with sharp elbows. It’s not my fault you didn’t think to keep your face out of their way when you lost your mind and tackled her.”

“But it is your fault that you called Ashtray to help you out on something that was supposed to be a one-man job.” Tyr sat behind his cluttered desk, looking like he seriously didn’t have time for this. “You’ve been working the waitress angle for a month now, Romeo. You should’ve landed that fish by now.”

“Yeah, why’d you need me tonight?” Ashtray seconded, sounding so damn victimized I considered seeing how much more breakage his nose could take. “You’re the club’s official lady killer. Shit, your road name’s fuckin’Romeo. But, hey, come to find out you’re not all that, are you? That sharp-elbowed bitch wants nothing to do with you, so obviously you’ve lost your touch. Maybe Tyr needs to send in a real man like me to take care of her.”

“You stay the hell away from her.” The words were out before I could stop them.

Tyr’s eyes narrowed. “You got a problem, Romeo? This bitch getting under your skin?”

“The only problem I have is this bull in a china shop threatening to bust up everything I’ve got going just when I’ve finally made some progress with the waitress.” In more ways than one, and I wasn’t about to let that progress vanish now.

“What progress?” Tyr demanded, scowling. “I’ve got two runs in the past month alone that got hijacked, leaving one brother breathing through a tube and two others so fucked up they’ll be riding the bench for the next few weeks. I’m on a time-clock here, which means you’re on a time-clock too. Just move in for the kill and get me what I need.”

“She’s gun-shy as hell, Tyr, like she thinks the world’s full of predators and she’s the only prey. That’s why I called Ashtray in tonight,” I added, glancing at the idiot sprawled on the couch. “Winning the trust of this particular mark wasn’t working the old-fashioned way. I had to get creative.”

“And what’d that get us?”

“It got me a broken nose,” Ash offered helpfully.

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