Rough Ride

  That was when Snapper turned his head, just his head, his body didn’t move from facing me.

  “Chaos buy exclusive from Zip’s?” he asked.

  “You came by coupla days ago, warned me about her,” Zip said and that was when I looked to him just in time to catch him jerking his bald head my way. “I heard you and agreed to give you the heads up, she showed. Now I see her, and if she wants it, I’m sellin’ this girlie a gun.”

  Okay, I couldn’t handle the explanation of why Snapper was there and that was the fact that it was apparent he’d made the rounds of gun shops in order to stop me from doing something he thought might be foolhardy.

  And since I couldn’t handle that, I had to focus on something else.

  “Thank you,” I said to Zip.

  “I can impose my own waiting period and I’m doin’ that,” Zip said to me. “You can’t have a gun until your ass is in my range and I’m feelin’ good you can handle yourself with it.”

  “Works for me,” I replied.

  “Rosie,” Snapper said low.

  I looked to him. “I’m getting a gun, Snap.”

  He turned again to Zip.

  “You wanna lose Chaos business?” he threatened.

  Zip didn’t blink. “What I want is a world where this shit,” he jabbed a finger my way, “doesn’t walk in my doors. That miracle happens, I’ll close those doors. That miracle ain’t gonna happen. So you boys take your business elsewhere,” he shrugged, “that’d suck balls. But this girlie feels safer with a firearm in her purse, I’ll get over it.”

  Sadly, I wasn’t the first beat-to-hell woman who’d walked through his doors looking for protection.

  Or a means to get revenge.

  Surprisingly, Zip was the kind of man who cared about it.

  “That’s sweet,” I noted.

  “Shee-it,” he muttered. “I ain’t sweet.”

  “But it was sweet, what you just said,” I disagreed.

  “See,” he started, “I wanna arm you so whatever motherfucker did that shit to your face…and your throat…you got the means to drill holes in him. That ain’t sweet.”

  Okay, maybe it wasn’t sweet.

  “It was eight mothereffers who did this,” I shared.

  His eyes got big.

  Then they got mad.

  Then they got mean.

  After that, they snapped to Snapper.

  “This the girl Bounty worked over?” he asked.

  “You heard,” Snap remarked.

  “All over the street,” Zip declared. “Always been useless assholes. Now I’m more glad you Chaos boys carved those dipshits up.”

  “She’s got Chaos protection,” Snapper stated.

  “Yeah, I get that, you’re here,” Zip returned.

  “So she doesn’t need a gun,” Snapper concluded.

  “She yours?” Zip asked.

  “Yes,” Snapper said.

  “No,” I said at the same time.

  Zip looked between Snap and me, an expression of resignation slid over his features, and he mumbled, “Christ, not another one of these.”

  I didn’t know what that meant but I quickly carried on in hopes of ensuring a sale for ole Zip, “I have a mom. We’re close. She could become a Bounty target if they can’t get to me. So she probably needs a gun too. And lessons.”

  This was a lie, considering Mom already had a gun. She actually had four. They were Dad’s. She also knew how to use them. She wasn’t a fan of firearms, as such. It wasn’t like it was a hobby. She was just a fan of the second amendment, because she’d been my father’s woman for nearly forty years and he was a big fan of firearms as well as, obviously, the second amendment.

  Maybe I should have just asked for one of Dad’s.

  Then again, if I’d asked, it would make her worried about my state of mind.

  So I hadn’t asked.

  The fact that she could, indeed, be on Bounty radar was something I needed to chat with her about.

  It was clear I didn’t know Beck and his brothers as well as I thought I did.

  Now I knew anything was possible.

  It was also clear I should have probably gone out shooting with my dad one of the times he’d mentioned it. But this was part of my mom not being a fan, as such. She said Dad could teach me to shoot when I was old enough and when I was old enough I got more interested in shopping, movies, and boys with bikes (not in that order) and I forgot to ask my dad to teach me to shoot.

  “Chaos covering her mother?” Zip asked Snapper, taking me out of my thoughts.

  “Just get the binder, Zip,” Snap ordered on a sigh.

  Zip shot a squinty-eyed look at Snap before he grumbled unintelligibly and moved away.

  “I’m not sure I want to look at whatever this binder is,” I decreed and Snap stopped watching Zip move and looked to me.

  “You definitely don’t wanna look at Zip’s binder,” he confirmed.

  I decided to change topics.

  “This house you all moved me into, is it one of yours?” I asked.

  “Yup,” he answered without delay, no beating around the bush for Snapper.

  “Did you evict someone for me?” I asked.

  “Yup,” he answered, again without delay.

  Holy crap.

  He actually had.

  “Like, in a day?” I queried, my voice higher, my eyebrows searching for my hairline.

  “Gave them two days,” he told me.

  “That’s…well, that’s crazy.”

  “Had another property open. Bigger, nicer, moved them into that. Same rent. So I didn’t evict them, exactly. And they had no complaints.”

  Bigger property, same rent as the smaller one.

  And for the time being, I was rent free.

  He was going to bleed money for me.

  Oh God.

  “Snap, you didn’t have to do that.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “I can stay with Mom until—”

  “Rosie, it’s done.”

  I closed my mouth.

  Zip showed with the binder.

  Snap’s leather creaked as he reached out, took it from Zip’s fingers, dropped it to the case and opened it at random.

  The second my eyes fell on what was inside, I took a step back.

  Left side, eight by ten, man on his back in the street, chest covered in blood that came from several holes, eyes open and staring unseeing, since he was very clearly dead.

  Gross and creepy.

  Right side, eight by ten, man on his side in a gutter, half his skull gone, blood everywhere, brain matter a blood-covered white-gray wodge of goo that wasn’t all contained in the place it should be, even more very clearly dead.

  Way creepier and off-the-charts gross.

  This was a curious thing for a gun shop owner to have.

  Unless he was a responsible gun shop owner who wished to impart the seriousness of owning a gun on people like me.

  “You got a weapon in your hand, you got the power to do that,” Snapper said, tapping a finger sharply on the right-side picture. “You good with that?”

  I tore my eyes away and looked to him to see him facing the binder with his gaze aimed over his leather-clad shoulder at me.

  Taking him in, for a second, I was thrown off kilter.

  When the whole thing started with me informing on Bounty to Chaos, and Snapper was assigned as my Chaos handler, we’d always met in person. I preferred it that way because I knew he’d never approach if he hadn’t checked to make sure he could. Telephone conversations could be overheard. Beck had my phone password, so if he got any suspicions and was sneaky about it, without me noticing, texts could be checked.

  I didn’t want a record. I didn’t want evidence easily available. I didn’t want to have to hide what I was doing in my everyday life. I wanted Chaos to handle all that for me by casing the area to make sure it was safe to approach.

  Okay, so now I realized I also wanted an excuse to see Snapper on a re
gular occasion. But also it had to do with feeling safe while I was informing on the criminal activities of a motorcycle club.

  For some reason, after a while of meeting face to face, Snap decided it would be better if he didn’t approach and he gave me a burner. I didn’t like it but I figured the Chaos men knew how to do this better to keep it safer for me.

  This turned out not to be the case.

  In the end, I didn’t know how Beck found out. During the tense ride we took before he delivered me to withstand Bounty justice, he didn’t share.

  But my guess was, since he had that burner, and it didn’t have password protection, that was how he’d found out, even though I kept it in my purse, which had been secured in the little staff room at Colombo’s.

  Snap didn’t text. He called. So I couldn’t imagine even after Beck found it, he’d know.

  Unless he did what I’d guessed he’d done. After they’d been taken down by the cops during one of their runs, Beck somehow started suspecting me, so he’d broken into the staff room, found the burner in my purse, called the only number stored in it, and Snap had answered.

  I was curious about this as well as curious about how Snap and Roscoe had known where to find me.

  This wasn’t what was on my mind at that time, standing in Zip’s Gun Emporium with Zip and Snap.

  What was on my mind was that it had ended up where Snap and I had a lot of phone conversations that had nothing to do with what was going down with Chaos and Bounty.

  We just talked, about everything.

  He knew about my mom and dad. He knew I liked my job but mostly the people I worked for. He knew my favorite pastime was shopping but I also liked going to movies and reading.

  I knew he got along with his folks, was still tight with his brother and sister, even if he’d found another family in Chaos. I knew he spent a lot of time reading, mostly thrillers (I even knew Steve Berry was his favorite author, he was a Cotton fiend). Having that knowledge, it wasn’t a big jump to the fact Snap was also a history buff. So if he wasn’t reading, doing Chaos stuff, out on a ride (a lot of the time solitary, even if he found the brotherhood, it was just his way), he watched documentaries.

  And we were both X-Files fans.

  But before we got into the marathon phone conversation drill, we’d met up and he was Snapper. The boy-next-door biker with the easy-to-be-with nature and even easier grin.

  He was Chaos so the badass was inherent.

  It just had never been apparent.

  Right then, the way he held my gaze steady, looking over his leather-clad shoulder, the Chaos patch on the back of his cut, his face set, making a point, the badass was out.

  And damn it…

  I liked it.

  “I would aim to maim,” I shared shakily, not feeling very happy about this new way Snap Kavanaugh could affect me.

  “Do you have even a little clue how good a marksman you gotta be to aim to maim and do that shit successfully in an uncertain or tense situation?” he asked.

  “Marksperson,” I muttered.

  He turned slowly to me, the badass still brimming from him, vibrating against me, and my determination not to get involved with another biker ever (and definitely imminently) took a hit.

  God, why did my dad have to be so awesome?

  Why couldn’t I be attracted to geeks, metrosexuals, or hipsters?

  “Rosalie, this shit is serious,” he stated, all steely.

  Snapper, easy-to-be-with was great.

  Snapper being steely in a gun shop was fantastic.

  Time to escape.

  “I think I need to go home,” I mumbled.

  “We’re goin’ for coffee,” Snap declared.

  “We’re not going for coffee,” I returned.

  “You in a gun shop lookin’ to get armed, time I give you space to regroup is done. We need to talk,” he told me.

  “We don’t have anything to talk about anymore.”

  Steely gone, gentle and sweet in its place, Snap said, “Rosie, there will never be a time when you and me don’t have shit to talk about.”

  Whoa, that was crazy-sweet.

  I decided to get mad instead of scared.

  Or excited.

  “I just got beat to hell by my boyfriend and his brothers,” I reminded him.

  “You got beat to hell six days ago by an asshole I always knew was an asshole but now you know is an asshole, though you already knew it, you just weren’t admitting it. And in those six days you’ve also figured out why you were with him but you still had all the time in the world to have a lotta phone conversations with me.”

  Direct hit.

  Damn.

  “Are we gonna do this in front of Zip?” I asked.

  “Just to say, if I got a choice, I’d rather you not do this in front of me,” Zip put in.

  “We’re gonna do it wherever we gotta do it so I can be assured you know where I’m at and I got you there with me.” Snapper ignored Zip to answer.

  “I knew I wouldn’t have a choice,” Zip mumbled.

  “I think I’d rather focus on the fact that Bounty isn’t done with me,” I shared.

  “Bounty is done with you,” he retorted.

  I wished that was true.

  “You know they’re not, Snap,” I whispered.

  “I know one more Chaos woman gets dragged into brother business, Denver is facing Armageddon,” Snap replied.

  “To move this along,” Zip said, and we both looked his way, “I can confirm that too. Streets are full of talk about Bounty bein’ pussy and takin’ their shit out on a girl. They’re also full of Chaos bein’ at the end of their tether, and we’ll just say things are feelin’ seriously uneasy.”

  “Zip, you wanna butt out?’’ Snap asked.

  “Boy, you’re havin’ this out with your woman in my store. I don’t butt outta shit in my store,” Zip returned. “And pay attention, I’m helpin’ you out.”

  “I’m going home,” I declared, starting to move past Snapper, but I didn’t get far because he caught me with his fingers wrapped around the crook of my elbow.

  I looked up at him.

  “Baby, let’s just get some coffee,” he said.

  He was right.

  I’d needed to regroup.

  He was also wrong.

  I wasn’t done regrouping.

  I needed a lot more time.

  And right then I had to set about getting it.

  “He had the burner,” I shared.

  Snapper’s beautiful lips thinned.

  “I wanted to meet,” I told him.

  “There was a reason I went that way,” he whispered. “You have coffee with me, I can explain.”

  I ignored that offer.

  “Did he call you?” I asked.

  “No,” he answered.

  Really?

  “He didn’t call?” I pushed.

  Snapper shook his head.

  “How did he know?” I asked.

  “You had a burner, honey,” he explained.

  Just that.

  I had a burner and there was no reason for me to have an extra phone.

  Unless I was betraying my boyfriend.

  Suddenly, this whole thing was worse.

  One and one equaled two, of course, but Beck hadn’t even ascertained definitively that two was the two they were seeking vengeance for.

  He suspected me, located the phone and found me guilty without asking me a question or conclusively establishing my culpability.

  It honestly didn’t matter that he was right.

  What mattered was that he didn’t even ask before he came to a verdict and sentenced me.

  Especially the sentence he’d given me.

  “How did you know where to find me?” I asked Snapper.

  “Bounty’s place to do their wet work is known.”

  Wet work.

  My ex-man and his brothers had a place they did wet work that was known.

  Did Chaos have a place they did wet work
?

  Probably.

  I nodded to Snap. “I need to go home.”

  “They’re not gonna get near you or your mom.”

  I nodded again.

  “Let you go now,” he gave in, probably reading me, and being Snap, giving that to me because he knew how much I needed it. “But we need to talk, Rosie.”

  I shook my head.

  “Honey—” he began.

  I searched for another excuse and fortunately found one.

  “I need to grieve my father.”

  At that, he blinked, ending his blink with his brows aimed high.

  “Sorry?” he asked.

  “I need to grieve my father,” I repeated.

  “He died three years ago, Rosie.”

  “Yes, and it’s come clear to me of late that I haven’t been dealing with that in a healthy way.”

  His fingers at my arm curled deeper at the same time he pulled me closer.

  “Everett,” I said softly, a warning.

  “Throttle was not your dad,” he told me, demonstrating he knew exactly what I was talking about.

  “I know.”

  “I’m not either.”

  Yes you are.

  And weirdly, that scared me more than anything.

  “Please, I need to go,” I begged.

  “You gotta know you’d never get that shit from me, from Chaos, no matter what you did,” he said. “But you wouldn’t have to do it ’cause that’s not our path.”

  “What is your path?”

  “It’s not that,” he stated.

  We’d finally made it.

  We’d made it right at the place I needed to be to get him to leave me be.

  And I jumped on it.

  I looked him direct in his snow-blue eyes.

  “Armageddon takes everyone out, Snapper.”

  His fingers convulsed on my arm right before I gently pulled it free.

  I looked to Zip, gave him a trembling smile and said, “Nice to meet you.”

  “Come back for a Taser,” was his reply.

  I nodded, thinking I didn’t want to be responsible for someone who was out to harm me losing their brain matter, but I probably would have no issue with amping them significantly.

  I then looked to Snap, who was watching me but didn’t make another move to detain me, and on unsteady legs, I walked out of the gun shop.

  Chapter Three