Page 15 of Ryder

Jagger had the decency to look away for a brief moment, inadvertently telling me everything I didn’t want to know. “Ryder will be here in the morning. He’ll meet you outside as usual.”

“If he’s just being cautious, then I don’t need him to continue to follow me to and from work. I think it’s overkill, don’t you?”

He knew what I was doing, trying to trick him into revealing that they weren’t simply being vigilant. There was some sort of real danger and it could possibly involve Kena and me.

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what?” We were both standing near the door, a battle of wills ensuing the more hush-hush he remained.

“Just let him do this for you. It puts his mind at ease. Mine too, and no doubt your sister’s.”

“Had to play the sister card, didn’t you?”

“I do what I have to.” He winked, a small smile tilting his lips. His phone rang, killing anything else he would have said. “I gotta go. Call us if you need us.”

For a brief moment, I’d thought about texting Ryder and telling him I didn’t need him to babysit me any longer, but I had a feeling he’d either call to argue or show up on my doorstep to convince me otherwise. The energy required for such a confrontation was my sole deterrent.

Ryder

“Settle down,” Marek demanded, looking a little worse for wear. Although the stress of the Reapers most likely being responsible for threatening some of the women, and knowing our enemy was certainly planning some kind of retaliation for the absence of their president, Psych, the Knights Corruption leader looked to be in control. For the first time in what seemed like a very long time.

After everything he and his wife, Sully, had battled, there wasn’t anything he couldn’t push through, knowing damn well he had a great woman waiting for him at home. And although Sully had technically been kidnapped and forced to marry the man sitting at the head of the table, their love was one for the ages.

Not that I was all sappy or anything, but everyone knew those two were meant to be together.

Placing the gavel to his right, Marek leaned back in his chair and not so patiently waited for the chatter to cease. All of the men’s words soon faded as we focused on our leader.

“I’d bet my life it’s a fuckin’ Reaper who’s rattling our women, and for that alone he’ll pay with his life.”

We all nodded. Even though our club had gone legit, cutting off all ties with Los Zappas Cartel and the drug trade, we still dealt with whomever we deemed a threat. There wasn’t anything we wouldn’t do to protect our family, both at the club and at home.

“Has anyone been able to describe the guy?” Trigger asked, fidgeting in his chair like he was uncomfortable with the topic. He had every right to be twitchy; not only was he concerned about his brothers, but his niece, Adelaide, was involved with Stone. They even had a kid together, with another on the way.

“All they could tell us was that he was about six foot, had short dark hair and tats runnin’ up both arms,” Tripp offered, the nomad becoming quite the permanent fixture at the oblong wooden table. He’d come to stay with our club, giving up the open road for the time being. When Indulge first opened, Marek had asked him to stick around and see that everything fell into place. It just so happened that he met his woman, Reece, there, pulling out all stops to keep her safe, which unfortunately included dealing with her crazy ex-husband. And by dealing with . . . well, I supposed it was self-explanatory.

“That could be any of ’em,” Cutter replied, shaking his head in obvious disgust. Breck was sitting to the right of his ol’ man, pissed off right along with him. Hell, we all had the same anger bubbling up inside, threatening to explode given the right time and opportunity.

“Yeah it could be,” Stone said. “We’ll just have to take out every one of those fuckers. That’ll solve the problem,” he grunted, leaning forward and resting his forearms on the hard surface of the table.

“No one is gonna do a damn thing until I give the go-ahead,” Marek warned, looking to Stone first, then the rest of us. “Just like with everything else in the past, I know you all want revenge, and to put this threat to bed once and for all, but we have to be smart about this. More now than ever before. That sonofabitch Koritz is gonna be watchin’, waiting for us to fuck up. And now we have to also deal with that bastard Rabid.”

“Who knewthatguy would be a threat?” Jagger asked, scratching his jaw with one hand while drumming the fingers of his other on the edge of the table.

Marek leaned closer, his blue eyes darkening in seriousness and anger. “I underestimated him. It won’t happen again.” The rasp of his tone indicated he held the majority of his temper at bay.

A bout of silence ensued, all of us processing what could potentially take place in the upcoming days, weeks and even months. We simply had no idea what to expect, except the unexpected. If history was any sort of indication.

“Do we have eyes on Rabid?” I asked, looking around the room before finally resting my attention on Marek.

“Hawke.”

Without thinking, I blurted, “Is that the smartest choice?” I took a breath to continue to speak but Hawke cut me off by slamming his fist down and shooting me the dirtiest look. Hawke and I had our issues, mainly itching to always get a rise out of the other, but there was no bad blood between us.

I may’ve just changed that.

“What the fuck does that mean?” he shouted, rising halfway from his chair as if he was set to lunge over the table at me. His eyes were wild with ferocity and I feared if he didn’t get a grip soon, we’d be goin’ toe-to-toe in the next several seconds.

Tripp sat next to his younger brother. The nomad shot me a disbelieving look before placing his hand on Hawke’s shoulder, doing his best to try and calm him down before things escalated out of control.

---