Mystery Man

  “Tack,” I whispered.

  He looked down at me. “Stay here, hang tight. I’ll be back.”

  He’d be back?

  What did he mean, he’d be back?

  Then he was gone.

  Oh God. Shit. What did I do? Someone shot up my living room!

  My purse was in the living room. My phone was in my purse. Shit.

  Why hadn’t I put a phone in the kitchen? Why? Why, why, why? First thing whatever morning it would be when it was safe again to be in my fucking house I was putting a phone in every room.

  The kitchen door opened and Tack was there, his arm extended to me. “Gwen.”

  I was still pressed against the back wall and my panicked eyes went to him.

  “What?” I snapped.

  “Come here,” he said.

  Was he crazy? Here was the living room! And ten seconds ago that room exploded!

  “What?” I snapped again.

  “Now!” he clipped back and I moved. Rushing to him, he grabbed my hand, dragged me through the nightmare that was my living room, out the front door and straight to his bike. He threw a leg over then I climbed up behind him, wrapping my arms around him and holding on tight. The engine roared, he backed it out, turning into the street and then we shot away.

  * * * * *

  Tack drove behind Ride where the garages were. I’d never been there but saw that also back there was a rectangular, one-story building. He rode right up to the door and stopped. I hopped off, he followed, grabbed my hand and a biker had the door held open for us as Tack took us into the building. It looked like a bar and bikers were all hanging around though they were hanging around alert and their eyes all came to Tack and me.

  “Callouts, brothers,” Tack growled but that was all he said, he kept dragging me through the bar and around it to a back hall as men moved toward the front door.

  Tack pulled me down the hall. It was filled with doors and he took me to the last one. He pushed it open and pulled me in. It was a bedroom and it needed to be cleaned, badly.

  A biker followed us in and Tack looked at him and then he looked at me.

  “You done with Hawk?” he asked what I thought was insanely.

  “What?” I asked back.

  “Babe, gotta know, you done with Hawk?”

  “Um… yes,” I answered.

  He stared at me and then asked, “You sure about that?”

  “Yes! What are you –?”

  I didn’t finish my question. The minute he got my answer he turned to the biker.

  “Hawk shows, any of his boys, you aim to maim and you get her outta here. Yeah?”

  Oh my God!

  “Tack!” I shouted and he swung to me.

  Then both his hands came to either side of my head and he pulled me up to his face.

  “You may be done with Hawk but Hawk doesn’t finish with a woman until he finishes with that woman. You just bought yourself a situation, I don’t know why but I’m gonna know. And since I was there and nearly got filled with bullets right alongside you, peaches, now this is our situation. Do you get me?”

  I was really, really afraid I did and by getting him that meant, for me, I’d jumped out of the frying pan smack into the freaking fire.

  “Tack,” was all I could say.

  “You get me,” he muttered, let me go and walked out of the room, slamming the door and I heard it lock.

  I stared at the door.

  Oh boy.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Not on My Watch

  My body jolted and my eyes opened.

  I was asleep on the unmade bed in what I was assuming was the Chaos Compound.

  Night had fallen. I had been locked in awhile but luckily my biker rations included a delicious pastrami on rye with melted Swiss cheese, curly fries and a thick chocolate shake chased by a diet pop.

  I was worried about my Dad and Meredith who would be worried about me and I was freaked way the hell out at the same time I was bored out of my skull. However, I never guessed when I chanced lying down on the unmade bed that I’d fall asleep.

  Guess I fell asleep.

  I tried to sense what made me wake and I couldn’t. I listened and looked into the dark room that was lit pretty well by lights coming in through the window.

  I stared at the door and listened harder.

  That’s when I heard it. A muted thump like a body falling to the floor. A big body hitting the floor. Maybe a big biker body falling to the floor.

  Holy crap.

  I scurried off the bed and blindly searched the room for weapons. There I was in another situation where I needed a crowbar.

  I didn’t have time to find a weapon. There was a gunshot blast and I saw it because it blew off the lock on the door.

  Shit!

  I made a run for it, jumping on the bed and dashing over it toward the window (which I’d earlier noted was barred but it was my only hope). I was caught jumping off the other side of the bed with an arm around my belly. I made an “oomph” noise then I was turned and tossed over a shoulder.

  This was when I decided to struggle and scream. I kicked and twisted and shouted my head off and in the hall my abductor bent fast. I landed hard on my feet then found myself shoved harder into the wall.

  “Shut it, Gwen, and cool it or I’ll bind you and gag you. I’m not kidding.”

  As I listened to the familiar deep voice, I stared into the shadowed face of Hawk.

  Then I shut it and cooled it. Then I found myself back over his shoulder.

  Once we made it to the bar, shadowy commandos flanked him. I also saw shadowy biker bodies littering the floor. The lights were out, no power at all, not even on the beer signs.

  We made it out the door and Hawk and his troop jogged to SUVs.

  Yes, even with me over his shoulder, Hawk jogged to an SUV.

  Okay, maybe he wasn’t one step down from a superhero. Maybe he was a superhero.

  Then Hawk opened the door of the passenger side of one and I was tossed in. Hawk rounded the hood as he holstered his weapon and I watched his other hand do hand motions as the commandos disbursed. He folded in beside me, started up the SUV, reversed like a speed demon so I quickly belted in and then we shot out of Ride’s premises and onto Broadway.

  I took a deep breath and then started, “Hawk –”

  “Do not speak,” he growled and I felt my breath catch.

  He didn’t sound pissed. He sounded pissed.

  He dug into a pocket of his cargos and pulled his cell out. He flipped it open, hit some buttons and put it to his ear.

  A couple of beats and then, “Bax?”

  Oh shit. Dad.

  “She’s fine. I’ve got her.”

  Shit!

  Hawk stopped at a light. “Don’t know but she was in a safe place. Probably just freaked.”

  “Can I talk to him?” I asked, my hand extended for the phone.

  His head turned to me and I saw his face in the streetlights.

  Then I pressed my lips together and dropped my hand.

  Okay, so, I couldn’t talk to my Dad.

  And also, I was in trouble.

  Good to know… or not!

  “Yeah, let me talk with her, see if she’s had food, get her shit together. Yeah?” Pause. “Right. Later.”

  He flipped his phone shut and threw it on the console with just enough strength to make it clatter angrily.

  I sucked in breath. Then I gave him a few moments to calm down. Then I tried again.

  “Hawk –”

  “Swear to God, Gwen,” he replied on another growl and didn’t finish but that was enough. I clamped my mouth shut. He clearly needed a few more moments.

  He drove and I knew where he was driving. To his lair.

  I stayed silent the entire way. I also stayed silent when he stopped outside the big rolling door to his big garage. I also stayed silent and stayed put when he got out, went in a door to the side of the big rolling door and then the big rolling door slid
up. Further, I stayed silent when he climbed back in and drove into the garage, parked, grabbed his phone and got out.

  I got out too.

  He went to the box on the cable and closed the door. I waited. Then he went to the inside door, pushed it open and strode in. I sucked in a calming breath while I heard him beep in the numbers on the security panel and then followed.

  I moved and stopped under the platform. He moved around and turned on lights. The one by the chair in the corner. Two standing lamps in the seating area. He hit a switch and lights I hadn’t noticed that hung on long cables from the ceiling lit the kitchen.

  I leaned against an iron column that held up the platform.

  “Can you explain to me why you’re so angry?” I asked quietly and I thought it was a good question. I mean I didn’t lock myself in the Chaos Compound. I didn’t do a drive-by on my house. I just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and unfortunately that place was my own house.

  “First,” he replied, walking slowly to me and I knew it was not a good sign that he started by counting, “you just forced war.”

  I blinked. Then I asked, “War?”

  “War, me and my boys against the Chaos MC.”

  “What?” I asked. “Why?”

  “Babe,” he stated and stopped a few feet away from me. “You were locked in Tack’s room at the Compound. That’s a declaration. My boys and I had to infiltrate it to get you out. This will not go over well.”

  “Um… I think you may be misinterpreting things. See, Tack was there when someone shot up my living room and I think he was trying to protect me.”

  It must be said, though not to Hawk, that I thought this and I did it hopefully so I wouldn’t have a nervous breakdown. I thought other things too, things akin to what Hawk was saying but I didn’t let them have too much of my headspace considering they’d give me a nervous breakdown. I’d never had one but I was pretty sure nervous breakdowns were things to be avoided.

  “Even Kane Allen, he decides to play a Good Samaritan, is gonna drop the victim of a drive-by at the police station. Not claim her as his and ride out to hunt down the perpetrators unless he’s,” he leaned forward, “claiming her as his.”

  Uh-oh.

  “Okay, I can see that as bad but he’s doing it. I made no such declaration.”

  “Then you wanna tell me why Tack was there during the drive-by?”

  “He was at my house when I got home this morning.”

  “So?”

  “He wanted to talk.”

  “So?”

  “So, he promised not to say anything to freak me out so I agreed to talk.”

  “All right, Sweet Pea, let’s go back to why you weren’t somewhere else this morning, for instance,” he took a threatening step forward, “here.”

  Uh-oh.

  “Hawk –”

  I stopped talking when he took another threatening step forward and seeing as his legs were so long, this meant he was close. Too close. Really scary close.

  “Yesterday,” he said in a terrifying, quiet voice and got closer so I slid away from the column and took a step back. “I left here,” he kept coming at me so I kept stepping back, “and when I left here,” I kept moving, he kept coming, “you were sweet and cute.”

  I hit bookshelves and was forced to stop. Hawk didn’t stop. He pinned me in, his head tipping down to look at me but he didn’t touch me. He pinned me in with the sheer force of his badassness.

  “Then,” he went on, “yesterday afternoon, I get this fuckin’ note with a fuckin’ check. The note, I don’t get. The check, babe, the check is a smack in the fuckin’ face.”

  Hmm. Maybe I didn’t think that out very well.

  “So I check the device on your car and see you’ve holed up with a cop,” he continued.

  “You have a device on my car?” I whispered and his scary, angry face turned scarier and angrier so I shut my mouth.

  “I come home,” he stayed with his subject, “and I got a message from Gayle. So I get the note because I get that you heard her message and then you listened to some bullshit that your friend fed you and you didn’t pick up the phone or get your ass to my place so you could talk to me. You went off half-cocked and, doin’ it, pissed me way, the fuck, off.”

  All right, so we were on this subject then we had to talk about this subject.

  “I know about Your Days,” I whispered.

  “Yeah? You do?”

  “Yeah,” I kept whispering, “I do. And I know I’m filler.”

  “No,” he returned. “You know a bunch of cops with shit for brains and nothin’ better to do with their time called you that. And somethin’ else, babe, that shit is totally made up. It’s complete bullshit. Gayle calls herself Thursday because she’s got another man who doesn’t do it for her and he goes out and gets shitfaced on Thursdays and doesn’t come home until the bars close so I feel like her, I visit her. I don’t have a schedule. The only woman I’ve investigated with any thoroughness and the only one I watch is you.”

  “But you said when you make a woman yours, you do your –”

  “No, Gwen, forget about what you thought you read into what I said. I’m tellin’ you now, straight out, how it is. And I’m not gonna feed you shit about there not bein’ others, there are others. And I think you get that I’m not a man inclined to waste my time doin’ precisely what I’m doin’ right fuckin’ now, explaining myself.”

  Oh shit. Now I was getting mad.

  “I see,” I stated quietly. “We’re right back where we started.”

  “No, if we were back where we started, somewhere in the last couple of days I’d have had a piece of your sweet ass.”

  My mouth dropped open.

  He could not be believed!

  “I don’t believe you!” I yelled.

  “It’s not true?” he asked.

  “No, see, the last couple of days my sister’s shit has leaked into my life. Did I do anything wrong? No! I don’t live in your world. I knew Dog. I knew he was good for Ginger. I figured he’d sort her out. I didn’t know what would happen when I went to Ride! How the hell would I know? I didn’t open the door to the guy who broke in! I didn’t guide the firebombers to my parents’ house and hurl a flaming bottle through the window! I went home today, that’s it. I just went home and got caught in a hail of gunfire! But after that was over, I just did what I was told. I’d never been shot at before. Tack seemed to know what he was doing so I figured it would be good to be with someone who knew what they were doing. I didn’t know he was going to lock me in his Compound and start a war! I’ve just been doing the best I can do in a seriously bad situation. No! In multiple seriously bad situations!”

  “Gwen –”

  “And I don’t need you to be a jerk on top of it.”

  “Gwen –”

  I threw my hands out to the sides. “My living room was shot up today. With me in it!” I screeched.

  His hands came to my jaws. “Baby, calm down.”

  “You calm down! You can walk through walls and silently down bikers. I don’t have those abilities, Hawk. I was in another situation where I needed a crowbar! That sucks! And after that, I need cookie dough. Or at the very least really good Chinese food, from Twin Dragon or, better yet, Imperial.”

  His thumbs swept my jaws and he said quietly, “All right, baby, I’ll get you Imperial.”

  I shook my head but unfortunately didn’t shake his hands free. “No, the other night, I liked you. Tonight, I don’t,” I announced. “I mean, thank you for saving me from biker prison but now I want to go home…” It was then I realized I didn’t have a home, my parents’ didn’t have a home and therefore I was fucked so I finished lamely, “Or… wherever.”

  “You are where you’re gonna be until whatever the fuck is happening is over, babe,” Hawk declared.

  “Hello?” I called. “Let me remind you that you live in Badass World and I do not. You can’t tell me where to be.”

  “I sur
e as fuck can, Gwen,” he replied.

  “No, you can’t,” I returned, his hands slid to my neck and his fingers curled deep.

  “Listen to me, Gwendolyn,” he growled and I missed that somewhere he got un-pissed but I wasn’t missing that he was now re-pissed and him saying my full name only underlined it. “As far as intel we got goes, Ginger was nowhere in the vicinity today when you had your drive-by. So that means one of two things. Those shots were meant to take out Tack or they were meant to take you out.”

  “No one wants me dead,” I returned.

  “No, but they want Ginger to suffer and she’s your sister and they might not know you’re not tight and, last, they’re gettin’ desperate so, like I said, they could have been meant to take you out.”

  Holy fucking shit!

  I closed my eyes and muttered, “Why does this keep getting worse?”

  I opened my eyes when Hawk answered, “Because your sister is a piece of trash.” I was going to let him have that this time but I didn’t get the chance to tell him that because he went on. “Now, we don’t know but we need to assume you’re a target, which means your parents may be targets which means protection. You’re safe here so you’re gonna stay here. I’ll do what I can for them. And I’ll do what I can to bring peace with Tack because I need him as an ally with this shit and I don’t need more to deal with and that includes you giving me lip.”

  “You’re going to do what you can for my parents?” I asked and he stared down at me, his fingers flexing into my neck.

  “Sweet Pea, look at me.”

  “I am looking at you.” And I was!

  “No, really, look at me.”

  I was really looking at him!

  He kept talking. “Gayle’s never been here, she’s never gonna be here and her place got shot up in a drive-by, she asked my advice, I’d tell her to talk to the police. Now, do you get where I’m comin’ from here?”

  “Not really,” I told him and his fingers flexed again so I asked, “You said you investigated me and watched me and not them, why?”

  He looked over my head and muttered, “Jesus.”

  “Now you aren’t looking at me,” I observed and his eyes cut back down to me.