What it meant was that Chaser didn’t even blink.
“Let’s go,” he muttered.
He stalked back to his bike, pulling Lara along with him. She told him where they were going so he could text the address to Greeley, and then she swung into place behind him. Chaser jerked his chin at Uptown, then gave Pony the signal to stay at his post. He waited for Pony to make his way back down the driveway to disappear into the shadows, and only then did he take off. Uptown did, too, falling into formation beside him as they started down the street.
Chaser gunned it when he hit the end of the block. He let the speed and the night beat at him, making him angrier by the mile—but not at the woman who clung to him, her hair whipping around them both and smelling like his soap. Lara was a good thing in every way. He had no doubt about that.
No, the real recipient of his black temper was slumped on a ratty-ass couch in a double-wide parked out in a shitty little hollow two towns away. She jumped up when he kicked the door down, yelling out what he assumed was the name of her man. If that was the right term for someone fucked up enough to shack up with her in the first place.
“He’s not gonna help you,” Chaser told her with soft menace. “Nobody is.”
Getting a clue from somewhere—maybe the fact that Chaser sounded like the angel of death on a very bad day, or maybe the fact that Greeley walked by her with nothing but a deadly glare on his way to check out the rest of the trailer—she stopped with the screeching. Not that it changed anything. Chaser just looked at her, making no particular attempt to hide his disgust, while the telltale thumps and bellows and the odd laugh from Tick and Uptown outside told the story of what was happening to the man she’d called Chew.
Destiny looked like shit, no surprise. Sixteen years ago she’d been a hot piece of ass screwing her way through the club and dancing a little at Petit Joe’s, though she’d never been as dependable a dancer as she was a fuck. She’d been a little bit acrobatic while she was taking cock, and especially when she was working more than one, which always made her a crowd-pleaser. Chaser had enjoyed her performances at parties enough that he’d taken her on one of his road trips for Luther, so he could spread a little goodwill among the different charters he visited by letting them try her out, too. When she’d told him she was pregnant he’d offered his condolences—and hadn’t laughed in her face the way Sugar, a brother currently doing time, had done as he sat right next to Chaser when she’d delivered the news—but he’d been sure she’d tried this same game on every biker between Amarillo and Charlotte.
It turned out she hadn’t. And Chaser had been shocked when he really was the father, but by then he didn’t care either way because there was Kaylee.
After six years of searching for her and his little girl, he’d never thought he’d see this woman again. He’d never thought she’d be dumb enough to let that happen. And yet this wasn’t as satisfying as it might have been, because the sad truth was, if he hadn’t known who he was walking in on tonight he might not have recognized her.
Destiny had let the drugs get their claws in her, deep. She had a desperate air that announced how she spent her spare time, even if Chaser hadn’t been able to read her sunken cheeks and too-glittery eyes. She was much too skinny in an unhealthy way, her once silky and full blond hair was lank and stringy, and she was jittery as fuck.
Great. This was exactly who he wanted putting shit in Kaylee’s head.
Chaser let the silence drag out between them, because he could see it agitated her even more. He didn’t go after her. He let her keep the ratty old couch between them in this dank little sewer of a trailer, half-sunk in the mud. He even shoved his piece back in the waistband of his jeans while he waited, because it was clear he could handle Destiny with one hand tied behind his back, no gun needed.
Greeley emerged from the back and shook his head, indicating there was no one else in the trailer. Then he planted himself on the far side of the room, trapping Destiny with a brother at each potential exit. She looked back and forth between them, looking more agitated by the second. But Chaser still didn’t say anything.
Uptown came in a few minutes later with a huge, shit-eating grin on his face that always heralded a little mayhem. He was pushing a big, round asshole in front of him. Not gently. The motherfucker wore a beard halfway down his chest and had a shiny bald head, but that just made him any old douche. It was the Black Dogs cut that marked him little better than roadkill walking.
“This little bitch threw his fat ass out the bedroom window,” Uptown said as he let the screen door slap shut behind him and his prisoner. “It was like a whale beaching itself, man. I didn’t know whether to laugh or take a few pictures for the Science Channel.”
Uptown shoved the douchebag into a chair and stood there next to it, looking so lazy and unconcerned that Chaser knew he was hoping the big guy would read him wrong and try to go at him.
“You can’t kill him yet,” he told Uptown, making no attempt to hide his amusement. “You know you can’t.”
“I gotta live in hope, brother,” Uptown replied, still grinning. “It’s all we have.”
The big man, Chaser noticed, stayed put.
Chaser returned his attention to Destiny, who looked pale and defiant as she jittered around near the back of that ugly-ass couch. Uptown let out a sharp whistle, and that was when Butler came in with Lara, leaving Tick outside to make sure there were no surprises.
And, suddenly, Chaser fucking hated this.
He didn’t want Lara breathing the same air as Destiny. They were barely the same species, as far as he was concerned. That his pretty, prissy little teacher was standing in the middle of this dump, risking the possibility she’d get the taint of it all over her, made him want to put a few more holes in the wall.
“See?” he said to Lara when she came up beside him, though he kept his derisive gaze on Destiny. “She’s alive and well. Whatever the hell that means to someone like her this far in the hole.”
Destiny sacked up enough to shoot him the bird. And if Lara had any reaction to the fact that this zombie-looking creature had obviously once been all over him enough to provide him with a baby, she hid it well. Because lord knew, he had a whole hell of a lot of unpleasant reactions to that fact himself, and he didn’t see any of them on Lara’s face.
“Do it if you’re gonna do it,” Destiny threw at him, her voice shrill and harsh at once. “Just shoot me, asshole. I don’t even give a fuck.”
“I told you what would happen if I ever saw your face again,” he growled back at her. “You can’t say you weren’t warned.”
“We all know how you solve your problems, Chaser,” Destiny seethed at him. “I’m surprised the bayous around this nasty little town aren’t clogged with all the dead bodies you leave behind you. Like a bad smell.”
He let out a laugh. “You’re not a problem. Not for me. As far as I can tell, you’re barely a person anymore.”
“Plus, gators,” Greeley added from across the room. “No clogging.”
Destiny bared her teeth at him, which wasn’t exactly a great look for her, since she’d obviously followed the general addict approach to dental hygiene over the years. Meaning, none. Then she turned that same snarl back toward Chaser.
“Who are you to look down your nose at me, asshole? You’re still right here in the same place you were sixteen years ago, doing the same old shit with the same old people. How are we any different?”
“I don’t let junk own my ass. Off the top of my head.”
“Not junk, no.” Destiny’s eyes glittered. “But your stupid fucking club owns you all the same. The only difference between you and me is that I know the monkey on my back. I admit it’s there.”
For a minute Chaser didn’t know if the sudden insane tension was coming from inside him or from all corners of the room, where his brothers were as unimpressed with Destiny as he was. If that growling sound was to be believed. And he moved before he knew he meant to, his hand finding
his piece.
But then Lara was there beside him. She didn’t tell him to stop. She only moved slightly, so she was in his line of vision if he glanced that way.
That was all she had to do. She looked squeaky clean now, scrubbed to shine. Nothing like the hot and dirty woman who’d come all over him in the clubhouse earlier, who he knew—he knew—was only his. She didn’t act that way around other men. He knew that for a fact because he’d watched her kiss that douchebag sheriff. All of that fire of hers, all of that heat, was a gift. For him.
And somehow, that was all it took. The memory of what had happened between them again and again this week, all wrapped up in that sweet-looking package, reminding him that he could choose which part of himself to let out at a given time, too. It reminded him that everything that happened here tonight was about Kaylee, not him. And certainly not Destiny.
More than that, he realized that if he’d gone ahead and shot the bitch on sight the way he’d always promised he would, he would have missed that cunning, malicious gleam in Destiny’s gaze as she waited for him to do just that.
Chaser calmed the fuck down. He thought about how he’d look at this situation if it wasn’t his kid or the woman he hated to think of as his baby mama in the mix. About the silent Black Dog in the chair behind him and the endless question mark over Digger’s head. About Lara’s presence in this town and her ties to the Brothers of Goliath that he’d mercilessly exploited.
“You’re not here for Kaylee,” he said shortly. “You’ve never given a shit about a damn thing except yourself, Destiny. So what are you doing?”
She bristled at that. “I wanted to see my kid.”
“Bullshit. Try again.”
“People change, Chaser. Not everyone is who they were ten years ago, that’s only you and your boys. People make mistakes, but they can turn their lives around—”
“People, yes. You? No.”
She was shaking, but it was temper, not any other emotion. He could see that same fury in her eyes. “You have no idea what I’ve been through.”
“You’re right. And guess what, Destiny? I don’t care what you’ve been through.”
It was only as he said that out loud that he realized it was true.
Chaser had spent years hating her. Years. And here she was again, desperate and sad and just one more junkie trying to work another scam. Like every other junkie everywhere. There was nothing here to hate. Nothing to focus on so intently that he had to put out kill orders and act like she’d betrayed him. What had there been between them to betray? He’d known who she was when she’d gotten pregnant. She hadn’t exactly hid it when she’d started getting messed up with drugs.
Maybe he’d spent all this time hating this woman because it was easier than hating himself for what had happened to his kid. Because he hadn’t been paying enough attention. Because he’d assumed that no one would dare cross him, especially not a club groupie. Because he hadn’t ever cared about this woman, and she’d used that inattention to take off with the only thing he did care about because she knew it would hurt him. His beautiful, funny, maddening Kaylee, who was worth a hundred of her mother and always would be.
It was his fault Destiny had been allowed access to Kaylee back then. It was his fault there’d been an opening for her to snatch his little girl up, and he’d paid for that. Year after endless year.
But that was all a long time ago.
“I don’t care what happens to you,” he told her then, amazed that he meant it. “I don’t even care that you’re banging Black Dogs, because of course you are. All that matters is that you’re Kaylee’s mother. As long as she gives a fuck about you, you can keep right on living out this shitty little life of yours. I won’t put you out of your misery. Not even if you beg.”
“I’m her mother, no matter how hard you try to turn her against me!” Destiny screeched at him. “You can’t change that.”
“You’re gonna let her down in a thousand ways,” Chaser said quietly, never shifting his hard gaze from her. “You can’t help yourself. I don’t have to turn her against you. All I have to do is wait.”
Destiny’s hands were in fists now, and there were tears making tracks down her cheeks, but Chaser didn’t believe she was really, truly emotional about this. Why would she be? She was likely just mad that he was thwarting her and whatever con she was running here. That she couldn’t pretend to be a mother now that it suited her. And that he wouldn’t make her a martyr.
“You better hold that mirror up to your own face, asshole,” she snarled at him. “How many happy, well-adjusted daughters of biker scumbags like you and all your buddies do you know?”
Greeley looked carved out of a dangerous stone across the room, and there were more noises of outrage from the others, but that didn’t matter. What mattered to Chaser was the woman who still stood beside him, looking completely unruffled by this entire mess. As if Destiny was no more provoking than her third-period history class. And what mattered even more than that was Kaylee, and the unfortunate ring of truth in the things this junkie bitch was throwing at him.
He didn’t like it. But that didn’t make it any less true. And ignoring things he didn’t like didn’t do a goddamned thing but make them worse. He’d learned that the hard way. At this bitch’s hands.
“I’m not going to kick you to the gators, Destiny,” he growled at her. “But you can’t stay here. I don’t want you in Louisiana, but I won’t make an issue out of it as long as you stay out of St. Germain Parish. You have fifteen minutes to get your shit and go. I don’t care where. You got a phone?”
“Fuck you.”
“I’ll take that as a yes. You can call Kaylee all you want. But you don’t show up again without permission. I don’t want you seeing her alone. I want to counter the poison you put in her head. Tell me you understand me.”
She hated him. He could see that. And while that might have brought him some pleasure once, it did nothing for him now. It felt as grimy as everything else in this squalid little place. It made him as tainted as she was, because he wasn’t blameless here. Destiny hadn’t acted in a vacuum. He’d given her the opportunity.
That meant the price was his to pay. He got that. He didn’t like it, but he got it.
“I understand you,” Destiny hissed at him. “You fucking prick.”
“Fifteen minutes,” he replied, his tone unyielding. “Now it’s fourteen.”
It took her five. She threw a bunch of crap into a bag, muttering foul things under her breath. She didn’t so much as glance at her man in his chair. The trailer rocked a little when she slammed the door behind her, and they all stood there a minute, listening for the sound of the junky old car that had been sitting out in front.
The engine turned over once. Twice. When it finally got going, it wailed. And when the sound of her piece of crap car finally disappeared into the night, Tick whistled loud and long, letting them know she was really gone.
Uptown made a sympathetic noise to Chew, the big man still sitting in the chair, with little beads of sweat all over his bald head.
“Bummer about your old lady,” he murmured, sounding sweet yet with all that murder in his eyes. “She didn’t even try to save your ass.”
“Who’d want his ass?” Butler chimed in from his place at the door, where he leaned against the wall with one boot stacked over the other. “It’s as stank as the rest of this shithole.”
Chew’s eyes flicked from one Devil to the next, and Chaser knew he saw his death on every one of their faces. “That crazy bitch is a groupie. She’s been around forever. She’s not my old lady.”
“Then you following her into DKMC territory is even dumber than it looks,” Greeley replied quietly. “Which makes you just about the dumbest fuck ever to slither into St. Germain Parish, and let me tell you something, friend. That’s a highly disputed title.”
The big man shrugged. “She’s a decent fuck. Desperate and expendable. Knows her place.”
Uptown reached
over and slapped him. Hard. Right on the side of his bald head.
“Watch your mouth, asshole.” That his voice was so pleasant and casual made it seem to sting more. Chew only hissed, but his face got a little red. “The lady doesn’t want to hear about your pathetic excuse for a sex life.”
Chaser reached over and took hold of Lara’s hand then. He tugged her closer, liking the way she fit against him too goddamned much, and then he nodded at Greeley over her head.
“I’m going to get her out of here,” he muttered. “I’ll grab Roscoe on my way back.”
Greeley nodded. No one needed to discuss why Roscoe needed to be present at this scene. Chaser was sure they all knew how important it was. Even Butler and Tick, who, it turned out, had both been looking for a place to vent their concerns about Digger for a while. The sergeant at arms let his gaze move over Lara as if he was looking for something, but when he returned it to Chaser he only nodded again.
“No rush,” he said, turning his attention to the fat fuck in the chair and allowing an evil grin to take over his face. “I expect we’ll be here awhile. Our new buddy has all kinds of things to talk about with us. I can just feel it.”
Chaser smiled at that, and then he headed for the door, nodding at Butler as he passed. Outside, the storm that had been threatening all night had blown itself out into nothing, leaving the bayou its usual noisy chorus all around. The air was thick and ripe and still smelled like summer halfway into September. Above the tree line, a fat moon was beginning to rise.
And he needed to let Lara go.
But first, she climbed onto the back of his bike once more, fluid and easy. And Chaser poured himself into the ride. That tightness in his chest. The way she was inside him, in his head and in the battered old heart he’d thought was out of commission a long time ago. He lost himself in the feel of her tight, sweet body wrapped around him, her thighs cradling him and that hot cunt pressed against his ass. The smell of her skin and the faint press of her mouth against his back, like she was memorizing the shape of him with her lips.