Page 83 of Hunter

The Mallory I knew was a feisty little thing when she wanted to be. Other times, she mewled like a kitten beneath me, submissive and begging me to take her. She had a mouth that surprised me at every turn, and a smile that made me want to keep her locked up. And the way she strutted around after that golden little boy, always on her toes, always putting him first …

They were the best things to ever happen to me. Probably forever would be.

And I had just used her to vent my frustrations.

Regret hit me faster than I thought it would. I was mentally beating on myself for being a dick to the only woman who could possibly handle me. I had told her I was in it for the long run and that I would protect her, but I had no doubt hurt her when I had left her there.

It was probably best that I had left when I did. Who knew what other stupid shit I would have spouted at her. I had barely been civil to Mint when I had asked him to keep an eye on her. Lamb would get Pipe, the other prospect, to mind the gate. Then I had been out of anybody’s range as fast as possible.

I had brushed off any club slut who thought she could make a pass and didn’t give a flying fuck when they had whined. Normally, I would have put them in their place; let them know they weren’t and would never be my old lady, that it was Mallory’s spot now, but I hadn’t.

I had bypassed my room and headed farther down the hallway until I was where I needed to be. I had read the engraving on the door, pulled out the only key, and unlocked it before stepping inside, standing in the middle of Noble’s room.

One side of the wall was covered in papers and string, and everything that I had hoped would connect the dots for me to find out why my brother had been murdered and who the girl was that he had been so desperate to make happy on his last day alive.

It was all a lie.

Now, most of it lay in strips of paper, shredded and torn across the ground, in a field of my grief. This had been what had kept me focused these past few years, and now it was the only evidence of the goose chase Wolf had led me on.

I looked down at the mess and at the wrecked wall, and then I sat down on the bed. I dropped my heavy head into my hands, my mind raging with an oncoming headache, and sighed.

“I’m such an idiot.” I hated the feeling of self-loathing. At the same time, I deserved it.

When I opened my eyes to peer down at the litter on the floor, I saw the shine of a metal key peering out from beneath it.

I reached down and lifted it with care from beneath the graveyard of my work. The firebird etched into the key stood out like a beacon against the black plastic. It was like a homing device.

Before I knew it, I had slipped unnoticed through the back door of the compound, out across the yard, and over to the old shed at the back end of the property.

I stood before it, the door seeming more like fear-forged steel than the thin wood it was. The key was like a heavy stone in my palm.

I swallowed a deep breath and did what I hadn’t in almost four years.

I opened the door and stepped inside.

Through the broken windows, the afternoon sun burned through the heavy dust. It danced in a thick fog, stirred from my entry, and an arc of floor had been uncovered from the layer that had settled over time.

And within the small space, it remained.

Until the time came that I could face it, it had remained untouched. Covered in a thick sheet, its shape crippled and unrecognizable.

It had been brought here when Noble had been lain to rest.

Many of the kids would ask about the shed at the bottom of the yard, but none of the adults would mention it. And the kids who did know, didn’t tell. Nobody went near it. Not until today.

With a numbing calm, I reached for a fistful of cloth, squeezing the key one more time before I pulled.

A hail of dust showered over me and clogged my lungs. I coughed up a storm, beating my hand against my chest until the dust settled, its thick layer now banished and forced out the door by the draft. I waved the last particles out of my face and looked down, the thick sheet now in a pile by my boots.

There she was.

Laid in a tangle of cobwebs and dust, in the corner of an old shed of a biker’s compound, was her.

Painful images flashed through my mind. Not of the accident, not of the grief, but the joy. Noble’s face when he had first ridden her. His howls as he had sailed the wind on her back. The sweetness he had paid to her while he kept her buffed and tuned, and the viciousness of anyone who had harmed her.

No biker quite had a first love like Noble and Ruby’s. Although it was silly as shit to name your bike, it had also been very Noble.

Ruby was a classic Harley with a ruby red body and the same orange and yellow firebird painted across the frame, wheels, and the exhaust. She was a one-of-a-kind. Or, she had been.

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