Rain Shadow
Book 2 of 5
The Barringer Brothers Series
Tess Oliver
Rain Shadow Book 2
Copyright© 2014 by Tess Oliver
Cover Design by: Avanti Graphics
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
All Rights are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Tess Oliver
Chapter 1
Luke
It wasn’t just the smooth curves of her body, or the way she smiled as she got caught up in a thought, or those rare moments of vulnerability that made me want to sweep her into my arms whenever she was near. It was the fear that I could lose her at any minute. With even the slightest turn of events, I could lose her.
Angel’s slim hips swayed in perfect rhythm with her laugh as she walked toward me. She strolled casually across the yard knowing full well that every movement had me mesmerized. In many ways she still seemed like a mirage, like she had on the day she’d found me in the desert. Only now, everything about her affected me physically and mentally, reminding me that she was all too real. But the man she approached was a phantom. There was nothing genuine about me except that I was fucking crazy about her. And she was the only thing still holding me together.
Angel stopped in front of the porch steps and gazed down at me with her teal blue eyes. “You look bored. Apple?” she held out her hand. I shook my head. She lifted the fruit to her mouth and took a bite. Then she turned around and sat on the step below me. She leaned back between my thighs and rested her head back against my chest. I wrapped my arms around her. There was no way to be close to Angel without touching her. It was impossible.
“My grandfather wanted to see you,” she said. “But I told him that you were mine for another hour.” The sweet, crisp fragrance of apple filled the air as she took another bite. Her grandfather, Dreygon Sharpe, had been so preoccupied with his scheming, he’d hardly given any thought to the man he had imprisoned in his compound. The irony of it all was that he’d grown used to me. He almost seemed to like me, and as his admiration grew, his distrust of me waned. For now, it seemed, the president of the notorious Bedlam Motorcycle Club, had no clue that he was housing the enemy. It was hard to know what he’d do if he found out that I was a Drug Enforcement Administration agent. Killing a federal agent might just finally bring the system down on him. Dreygon Sharpe never took missteps. It was what had kept him in power and out of jail. His minions always took the fall if the club got caught in illicit activities. At the agency, we always referred to him as Mr. Clean. He managed to keep his own hands greased enough that nothing would ever stick to him. The district attorney would get really close to having something solid on him and then Dreygon would slip out of his grasp. He was smart, cunning and, from what I could tell, completely insane.
Angel tossed the apple core into the bushes and relaxed back against me. I slipped my hands beneath the hem of her shirt. Her bare skin felt like silk under my fingers. Lying to her had been unbearable, but I’d had to come up with a false history. For her sake and for mine. She knew the sickening details of my capture and torture. I’d laid all of that out to her on that black night when my memory had returned with the visions of being chained to a wall and my ear attached to the trigger of a gun, a gun that would eventually blow apart my best friend’s head. I’d needed to say it out loud before it became wedged in my brain like a railroad stake. And she had listened. I poured out the horror of it all and she’d listened. Her beautiful face took in the ugly reality of what I’d been through without showing any judgment or revulsion. It had kept me from blowing off my own head. She had kept me from that.
For several weeks, self-loathing and denial had plagued me, and more than once I’d begged her for something to end my misery. The compound was plush with drugs of every nature, but every time I sank into a depression where suicide seemed the only option, Angel would bring me out of the darkness. Now, dreams of revenge had replaced the longing to end it all. I was going to make them pay. The Bent for Hell MC was going to pay for what they did, one way or another.
“What should we do to entertain ourselves?” Angel asked.
My hands moved up to her bra, and I felt for the clasp. “Well, Doc, I can think of a few things. And they all require that you disrobe.” I popped the bra open, and her perfect breasts sprang free. I cupped them with my hands and rubbed my thumbs across her nipples. She responded by pushing them harder against my fingers. My hunger for Angel was insatiable. I couldn’t get enough of her. Everything about her was so goddamned erotic that even when I was alone, all I had to do was think of her and I got hard. And it seemed she couldn’t get enough of me either.
She leaned her head back. Her thick, dark lashes shadowed her cheeks as her eyes drifted shut. “You should never stop touching me, Reno,” she said dreamily. Only Angel knew that my real name was Luke. I’d made up a fake name of Josh Frankfort, but it hadn’t mattered. Dreygon still called me Son, a name I loathed coming from him, and Gunner still lovingly referred to me as Stray. The others had adopted Reno.
My name was about the only real thing Angel knew about me. I’d conjured up a story about Dex and me being a couple of mechanics who’d ended up in the midst of a bar fight that went horribly wrong. Next thing we knew we’d been drugged and bound and thrown into a van by strangers. I’d told the same story to Dreygon but without Dex. For all he knew, I had been alone, and after I’d been beaten, my attackers had dumped me in the middle of nowhere to die.
“Evie,” Jericho’s voice broke the sensual silence that surrounded us.
I slid my hands out from under her shirt, and Angel moaned in disappointment.
“I swear that guy has fucking radar that goes off every time I touch you,” I said. To Angel, Jericho was a best friend, someone to talk to and confide in, one of the few people she could trust behind these walls. But it was plain to see that he loved her in an entirely different way. And I couldn’t blame him.
“What do you want, Richo?” Angel was as frustrated by the interruption.
“Dreygon wants Reno, right now.”
Her shoulders dropped. “Fine.” She waved Jericho on. He wasn’t happy about the dismissal. “My grandfather is like a spoiled child.” She pushed to her feet and I followed. Then she leaned her body against mine and peered up at me. She fingered the earlobe she had sewn together. “A bit Frankenstein looking but not too bad for a rookie surgeon.” She brushed her fingertips along the stubble on my chin. “I’ll wait for you in my cabin. Don’t be long.”
I smiled. “As if I have anything to say about that. Any idea what he wants from me?”
She shook her head. “Probably wants your opinion on something. He seems to rely on you more and more.”
I leaned down and kissed her lips. “Well, that’s what we wanted, ri
ght?” Our plan for me to appear loyal to the club and earn our eventual freedom had taken a strange turn. Only this time, Angel wasn’t in on it. I’d gone from clueless amnesia victim to undercover special agent, only my superiors had no idea that I’d accidentally infiltrated Dreygon Sharpe’s world.
A fucked-up chain of events had taken me from a highly organized undercover sting operation of one outlaw MC into a rival club’s secret world. I could only assume that there were agents conducting a discrete search for me. I’d most likely been written off as a casualty, but they wouldn’t stop looking until they found me, dead or alive. Since I’d been undercover, it would make the search more difficult. Knowing that I could be in danger, they wouldn’t risk putting out the word that one of their agents was missing. And for that I was thankful. Information like that would spread quickly in Dreygon’s circles.
As it was, I knew my time was limited. I would either have to figure a way out of here or die trying. I would have taken the chance already, but there was one huge thing holding me back— my heart. It wasn’t just my heart, it was my soul. Hell, it was my whole fucking being. I’d always been a dedicated DEA agent, but when it came to picking between the girl or the job, the agency didn’t have a chance.
Then there was an even more obvious complication. Dreygon Sharpe’s actions and motives were volatile. It was hard to know what he was thinking or what he would do next. Angel’s feelings toward her grandfather changed so drastically from situation to situation, it wasn’t easy to tell how she felt about him. But, in the end, I had to face the fact that he was her grandfather and, aside from her aunt, her only real family.
Dreygon was in his office, a bleak brick building with a metal door and low roof. It was always hot inside, like the interior of a fucking pizza oven. He’d made a pathetic attempt at cooling the place by propping a fan in one of the small windows high up in the wall.
Dreygon was standing over his table looking down at something. He glanced back as I walked inside. “There you are. Finally pried you away from my granddaughter. Need your opinion. Come look at this.” For a man in his sixties, he never looked weak or susceptible. His steel fists and wood plank posture always made him look intimidating. As a younger man, it was obvious, that he had been nothing short of menacing.
Gunner and Max, two of my least favorite people, flanked each side of the table. Gunner shot me his usual hard look of disapproval as I stepped inside.
I circled around Dreygon. A submachine gun lay on the table in front of him. The wrinkles around his eyes deepened as he gauged my reaction to the weapon. I quickly tamped down any show of emotion. It was an UMP40, a weapon of choice for the DEA.
My jaw tightened, but I forced a casual tone. It was hard to put on a glass exterior when my heart was slamming against my ribs. “Big gun.” There was never any way of knowing what Dreygon was up to. As unpredictable as his actions were, there was always a calculated reason behind them. The old man would know that this was a weapon law enforcement used, and it seemed his only motive for showing it to me would be to get a reaction.
“Ever use anything like this?” he asked. While there was nothing leading in his tone, I couldn’t help but think that my time here was coming to an end, a bloody end.
I shook my head. “Told you I learned to shoot handguns at a target range. I’ve never been near anything like that, and I’d like to keep it that way.”
“You disappoint me, Son. Thought you’d eye this thing like candy.” He shrugged. “I guess you don’t have the kind of mettle that goes with a weapon like this.”
He was goading me, but I kept my cool. “Don’t know if it has anything to do with my mettle. I’ve just never had a need to fire a million rounds of ammo.”
He laughed. It was never a pleasant sound. “A million? Shit, when they invent that gun then the human race will be over.”
“So, what are you planning to do with that thing?” I asked it with an edge of humor to convince him that none of this meant anything to me.
Gunner’s eyes widened as Dreygon lifted up the gun and gazed at it as if he was holding a fine sculpture. “Revolution. There are plenty of people out there who would pay top dollar for this weapon. Tired of putting bread on the tables of two-bit drug dealers. Going a more lucrative route this time. I’m a business man, and if I don’t make a living, no one in this compound eats.” He looked at me now, but it was impossible to read his thoughts. “Including you.”
“Hey, I’m all for good business and making money.” It was all the opinion I could muster for him. I turned to leave hoping he’d let me escape.
“Don’t you want to fire it a few rounds?” he called before I reached the door.
“Not really interested. I prefer a handgun.” Again, I tried to leave.
“Fucking my granddaughter is turning you into a pussy whipped marshmallow.” I cringed at his words. He was prodding me into something, but I wasn’t sure what. He knew damn well that bringing Angel up in the conversation would get to me and it had. I had to consciously relax my fingers. They badly wanted to curl into fists.
He watched me for a reaction.
I put on my poker face. “Yeah, I guess it has.”
He lowered the weapon but not without first pointing it at each of us. Max’s eyes bulged and Gunner held his breath. “I think you’ve had enough of Angel today. I need you for more important things than entertaining my granddaughter. Besides, it’s only going to make it that much harder when she goes off to marry.”
The old man was full of acid today. As rage seethed beneath the surface, I kept my exterior cool. For some reason, the bastard had decided to test me, and this time he did it without stringing me up in his dungeon. This time he was messing with my head.
“Told you this isn’t the middle ages, Dreygon. You can’t force Angel to marry anyone.”
His thick fingers caressed the butt of the gun tenderly as he grinned at me. “She’s not ever going to be yours, Boy.” He switched to calling me boy when he wanted to make me feel small, but I never felt small in his presence and it drove him nuts.
I didn’t bother to respond. As far as I was concerned, she was already mine. “So are we giving that thing a whirl?” I asked. I figured my acting skills were getting better each day, and if necessary, I could make that weapon look foreign in my hands. But my sudden enthusiasm, along with the heated tension between us, seemed to have changed his mind about handing it over to me.
“Not today,” he said. “We’re going to figure out some pricing. I’ve got a whole shipment of these beauties coming into the compound tomorrow. Jericho and Gunner are driving them in, and I want you to go along and act as a watchman. I need a marksman like you in the back of the truck in case there’s any trouble.” This was how he did things. Once again he would have little connection to the illegal arms. Knowing the way he worked, he’d made sure there was no paperwork to prove anything either.
Dreygon stepped closer to me. The man always reeked of weed and sweat. “How do you feel about that? You on board?” He knew damn well I had no choice but to be. I would play along. For now, it seemed, he had no idea that he was feeding volumes of damning information to a DEA agent.
“I’m on board.” I looked down at the weapon questioningly.
“We’ll get you something smaller but just as deadly. I don’t want to hand you over a submachine gun if you’ve never used one.”
“Right.”
Chapter 2
Luke
4 months earlier
Five of us had gone on the raid, nothing too explosive or earth shattering, just a report of domestic violence in a rundown house on an otherwise not completely shabby street. Several of the men living there had been on our watch list for months, and the 911 call had given us a reason to go inside. Our black SUV pulled up to the curb two houses down, and wrapped in bullet proof vests, we climbed out onto the sidewalk. The quiet street with semi-green lawns and boxy houses transformed into the scene from a video game as we crossed the
sidewalk with our Glocks strapped to our thighs and our UMP40’s gripped tightly in our hands.
The usual rush of adrenaline pulsed through my veins as it always did when we first landed at a new scene. It was the eyesore house on the block, the house that, no doubt, all the other neighbors complained about, the house that brought down the value of the street. An eerie calm swept around the tiny, littered yard in front of the suspect’s home. Eerie calm was always worse than chaos. With chaos you knew where bullets were coming from, where the guns were at and how many. Unsettling quiet meant anything could happen or that an opportunity had been missed and the people inside had fled.
The air outside was brisk but sweat dripped down my back beneath the heavy vest. Sometimes the protective gear made it all seem surreal and somehow easier, easier to face down an angry gun, easier to deal with the prospect of dying or the even shittier possibility of having to kill someone. I’d only ever killed one person, and, even then I’d aimed to take out the guy’s leg. He dove at the last second and landed straight in the path of my hollow point. I’d stood over him a good five minutes hoping to catch one flicker of movement, one sign of life, but he was dead. And I’d killed him. He’d been only twenty-two, two years younger than me, and it had taken far longer than I’d expected to get over it. My dad had always warned me that having balls of steel wasn’t enough for the job. He’d warned that I needed a heart of steel too. Something he never had, and it had been his downfall in the end. And something told me it would be mine too.
Like well-programmed robots, we assumed our assigned positions with no more than faint hand signals between us. Sometimes the choreography of our movements made everything feel more fluid, more secure. Everything would go as planned, and in several minutes, we’d have our suspects in custody. Then we’d all pile back into the Chevy and head back to the office. Sometimes that was how it all went down. Sometimes. And then there were times when a wrench was thrown into the plan, a wrench that could slap all of us out of robot mode and back into the stark reality that we were human.