Page 57 of Cruel Savior

"It sounds crazy. The loyalty of the brotherhood is everything. But this stinks and stinks bad. And I'm not going to ignore the possibility just because I don't want it to be true."

"That's fair," Axel said, my anger projecting right back at me in his eyes. "But a traitor?" He scrubbed his hands over his face. "I don't even know where to begin."

"I do," Mandy said quietly.

I looked down at her, assessing. I'd known in advance she could be more trouble than she was worth. And yet, my gut had told me this was what Axel needed. That making him see the truth and getting beyond the past would make the club stronger. I was going to be pissed if they proved me wrong.

In the meantime, she was still in danger and we had a killer to catch.

"I guess you would," I finally responded. My words hit her hard, as I'd known they would, but both meandAxel needed to remember to keep our guards up. She had secrets. And until this matter was settled, and Axel made his choice, he would use her for what he could while keeping her mostly at arm’s length. "What do you need from me?"

It was obvious Axel wanted to say something based on the glare I received. But he had his face in the mask again thanks to Mandy, which was for the best.

"Tel and I could work on it together. He's good at digging up information and I'm good at putting it together."

I clamped my lips to keep my smirk at bay. She had confidence, I'd give her that. Apparently, you could kick her, but that wouldn't keep her down. She was all about the job. The trick would be keeping all of that focused in the right direction.

"Excuse me, Mr. Monroe. We've got a few questions we need you to answer."

I gave Axel one last look and turned to the police officer standing behind me. I had no intention of telling him shit, but I would make it look like I did. Cooperation always looked good and kept certain people off the club's back when it really came in handy.

"Oka—"

"Hey! Over here!" someone yelled from the interior of the casino. "We've got another body!"

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Mandy

By the timewe made it back to Axel's cabin, we were both dead on our feet. My head throbbed, and he looked ashen.

"Are you sure you don't need to go to the hospital? You don't look well at all."

He shot me one of those "whatever" looks he favored so much and continued inside. "I'll be fine. Thanks to you, I kept that damn mask on for hours. I'm so oxygenated now, I'm going to be farting goddamned fairy dust for a week."

I tried not to laugh. I really did. Despite the joke, he looked annoyed as hell. But the image he'd just painted in my mind couldn't be contained. I didn't know what fairy dust looked like so my mind conjured a giant cartoon troll farting glitter instead.

Laughter bubbled at first, which I kept mostly contained, but the more I thought about glitter coming out of his ass, the more my control slipped until I dropped down on the sofa holding my stomach with tears coming out of my eyes.

“So happy to see you find that so funny.”

“Can you blame me? If you’re going to put an image like that in my head, there’s gonna be laughter.”

For a split second, I thought he was going to laugh too. His lips definitely twitched. But it disappeared almost as quickly as it appeared.

"Are you sureyoudon't need the doctor again?"

That question sobered me up. After meeting their on-call doctor, I immediately understood why JD had been recruiting that paramedic during the fire. That man had been a douche with a capital D. "I don't want him touching me again."

Axel looked at me with alarm. "What the fuck does that mean? Did I miss something inappropriate? I'm going to kill that fucker."

I shook my head. "No. No. Nothing like that. Keep your shorts on. Just call it intuition or whatever, but that guy gave me the creeps. I don't think he's a good guy."

"He's a doctor making under the table house calls for an outlaw motorcycle club. He's not."

"Then why use him?"

"I refer you to my previous statement. But if that's not enough, look around, sweetheart. We live out in the sticks where our choices are limited. They don't grow doctors on trees out here. Sometimes we have to go with what we can get. Although I get it. If he wasn't damned good at his job, and even better at keeping secrets, we would have given him the boot a long time ago. He rubs everyone wrong."

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