Benny stood on the stairs to the clubhouse, watchin’ us like someone sendin’ their sailor off to sea.
It made somethin’ in my gut twist and ache.
Longin’, I thought.
King came out around the back’a the clubhouse with a backpack on and another in his hand that he tossed to me as soon as he got close. “In case we need to light it up tonight.”
I unzipped the bag to see Firestarter sticks, flash torches, and good old-fashioned rags with bottles’a liquor.
Kodiak snorted from behind me, scarin’ me shitless so I nearly dropped the bag.
“Jesus, Ko, make a noise once in a while, would ya?” I groused. “Fuckin’ silent as the dead.”
His answerin’ smile was small and dark. He didn’t say a word as he pulled his bike outta line and swung a leg over it, not even glancin’ over his shoulder as he peeled outta the lot.
“Fucker,” I grumbled as we all scrambled to get after him.
Everythin’ fell away as soon as the purr of my Harley vibrated beneath me and the road opened up outside’a Entrance on the windin’ ribbon’a the Sea to Sky Highway.
This was peace.
Sun blurrin’ into one golden smear behind the dusky silhouette’a the mountains, gemstone colours streakin’ across the sky like a child’s finger paintin’. The purity’a this kindabeauty stole my breath, but I didn’t need it as I streaked across the road just like those colours, only I was flyin’ the green and black’a my club. Curtains rode beside me in formation, and it felt like home, like comfort, like brotherhood to have him at my side and King at my back with Kodiak leadin’ us.
Whenever I felt small and alone, that kid who just lost his sister and the only family he’d ever known, I came to this place in my mind or rode out with any’a the brothers who’d keep me company.
Becausethis––this place, this club, this version’a myself––would always be my haven.
And I’d die fightin’ to protect it, smilin’ ’til the last.
So when we finally took the exit off’a Furry Creek headin’ into the wild, the only thing I felt was excitement that we might crush an enemy ’fore they could hurt us. That I might stomp out the light’a someone who had taken the peace from a woman I cared about.
We parked the bikes one click out from the farm and continued on foot, stickin’ to the high grass at the side’a the road even though dusk was settlin’ a dark cloak over the landscape. By the time the black rectangle punctuated with yellow boxes’a light appeared before us, stars were startin’ to dot the night’s sky.
Still, two men were outside the house near a barn, the lit end of a cigarette like a firefly, and the low murmur’a their voices indistinguishable from where we hid, crouched in the dark. Kodiak turned to face us, usin’ hand gestures to order us to spread out.
I crept around the left side’a the property, behind the two smokers, behind the barn and back up the side’a the house. Gravel crunched almost imperceptibly under the careful tread’a my boots, mostly drowned out by the buzz and click of crickets in the grass. Through the lit window, I could see a dingy kitchenwith an older, heavyset woman sittin’ at a peelin’ Formica table scrubbin’ potatoes with muddied hands.
And across from her, a flash’a blue caught my eye.
My heart crashed into my ribcage and lost power.
A second later, Blue herself appeared in the square frame.
Fuck, the sight’a her moved through me like a blade.
My imagination hadn’t done justice to her beauty, the thick thighs and heart-shaped face, the glint’a metal in her upper lip and nose matchin’ the way the light shone in those azure-blue eyes. She was wearin’ somethin’ that covered her from wrists to ankles to throat and she was still the sexiest woman I’d ever seen.
But my mind only had a moment to catalogue the joy’a seein’ her ’fore I noted the blue’a the bruise tattooed on the skin’a her cheek as she turned her head to speak to the other woman.
She was here in the den’a the enemy, and she washurt.
Rage possessed me, a demon wearin’ my face.
My gun was in my hand in a heartbeat.
My feet takin’ me to the back door in the next.
She must’a heard me comin’ ’cause she was there lookin’ at me through the closed screen door a beat after that.
