“Yeah, there it is,” he gritted out, his fingers moving harder.
“Slider,” she said. Her fingers dug harder at his arms as his strokes made her knees feel too soft to hold her. He gave her a nod, his eyes on fire, and then the orgasm was . . . almost . . . there . . . She shouted his name before her release stole her breath. Shaking against him, she writhed as her muscles clenched again and again. She clutched at his wrist, his touch suddenly too much. But he wouldn’t stop, wouldn’t let up, until she was limp against him and only his arm around her waist held her up.
“God, that was beautiful to watch,” he said, kissing her forehead.
“I think I’m dead now.”
He chuckled and shook his head. “Nope. You’ll live to come another day. Count on it.”
Cora laughed, because Slider had been hiding an awesome sense of humor all these months, and she was getting to see more of it every day. “I love you,” she said.
“Right back atcha, sweetheart.” He brought his hand to his mouth and licked his fingers clean.
“Jesus,” she whispered, watching him. “Not gonna forget watching you do that any time soon.”
He gave her a wink. “By the way, the bus will be here in six minutes. So I got you off with time to spare.”
His tone was so smug that she wasn’t sure whether she wanted to hit him or kiss him, but she could only laugh. “Duly noted.”
When she was buttoned up again, they walked hand in hand toward the house, past her car—
“Oh, no,” she said, frowning. “My tire’s flat.” The front passenger’s tire sat flat against the ground. And then she gasped. “That one is, too!”
“Sonofabitch,” Slider said, crouching down to inspect it. “That’s not flat, that’s been cut.” He fingered a slit in the black rubber, and then he stalked around the car to find that all four had been sliced.
“Who would do this?” she asked, her belly tossing.
“Davis,” he growled. “Making sure you took his warning seriously.”
The school bus pulled up and Cora tried to shake the worry off her expression. “Are we telling them?”
“No,” Slider said. “Not unless we have to. Take them inside. I’m going to let the club know and get Martin over here to file a report. And then I’m gonna wring somebody’s fucking neck.”
Chapter 22
Slider waited until the boys were in bed, and then he invited his brothers to come over to strategize. Martin had been there hours before to take pictures of the car and get Slider’s statement, but he came back again now for the meeting. Because shit was escalating, and they needed a plan.
When they were all gathered in his family room—to reduce the chances of their voices drifting up the stairs and waking the boys—Slider turned to Martin.
“I want to know what you’re going to do about this Davis situation. Because this shit is now ten kinds of personal to me. He was at my house, harassed my girlfriend, and now he’s sliced her tires to drive home the threat he issued as he left her that day.” Cora sat beside him on the couch, and Bosco lay in a big lump right between both of their feet.
Martin was a few years older than Slider and had gone to school with Dare back in the day. The friendship they’d made then was even stronger now, which was why Martin held up his hand and said, “Dare and I have talked and he’s shared everything you’ve learned. I’m on board. Trust me, I’d like nothing more than to put Davis away and get him out of my office and off the streets. But this needs to be airtight, and that means that I’ve got to minimize the extent to which Raven Rider hands are all over it.”
“No way are we stepping aside,” Caine said. Slider nodded.
Raking a hand through his wavy brown hair, Martin shook his head. “Gimme a little credit here. I’ve known you guys for twenty fucking years. You think I don’t know that already?” He sighed. “I propose the following. First, I’ll have one of my men patrolling by here on a regular basis.”
Slider rolled his eyes so hard they nearly fell out of his goddamn head.
“Second,” Martin said, clearly sensing their frustration. “I’m going to organize a sting on this dogfighting event Saturday night. I’ve already reached out to several surrounding jurisdictions for backup. Take out the dogfighting, maybe some Crew members, and Davis all in one fell swoop. Combine that with the other evidence that you’ve collected about Davis’s activities, and he goes away. For a long time.”
That sounded good, but Slider shared the question that Caine voiced: “Are you asking us to sit out of it then?”
“Ideally, yeah,” Martin said, eliciting groans all around the room. “But I know you fuckers. I try to box you out, you go in anyway and shit goes fubar. So the three of you can go in like you planned, ID Davis for us and confirm he’s there, and then we close in. Obviously, we want to take the dogfighting down, but if our primary target is Davis—”
“And it is,” Dare said.
Martin gave a nod. “Then making sure he’s there is useful to both of us.”
“What about Jagger?” Maverick asked. They all murmured in agreement.
“I can’t control the courts,” Martin said. “But you can sure as shit bet I’ll press the district attorney to review the new evidence. And I’ll get Jagger’s lawyer working on it, too—but not until after Saturday night’s event. We can’t let anything tip Davis off. And that includes all of you. Same routines. Same activities. In case he’s watching—or has someone else doing it—nothing to alert him that anything’s happening. If he was over here interrogating Cora about her statement, then he’s already paranoid enough. We don’t want him acting—or running.”
“He’s already escalating things if he’s the one behind cutting Cora’s tires,” Slider said.
“Agreed,” Dare said. “Send by your patrol cars all you want, Martin, but we’ve also got three details around Slider’s house now. No one will go up or down this road without us knowing it.”
Maverick released a frustrated breath. “Fuck, Slider, I’m sorry I didn’t get people in place first thing this morning.”
“This isn’t your fault, Maverick,” Cora said, piping up for the first time. “This is all on Davis.”
“She’s right,” Slider said, appreciating her for defending his brother that way. “And Saturday night, we finish this once and for all.”
A plan in place, the week absolutely dragged. But at least there was something fun to celebrate—on Wednesday, Haven started her first day working down at Dutch’s, an old-time diner located in the heart of Frederick’s old town.
“Let’s take the boys and go for dinner,” Cora said. “Maybe Dare and some of the brothers will come. We could all go down and support her.”
Slider nodded, loving the way his woman always wanted to take care of everyone around her. And getting out of the house would be better than sitting around waiting for the weekend, because they were all going a little crazy doing that. “Yeah, all right. Let’s make this happen.”
Which was how he and Cora, his boys, and a dozen Ravens ended up filling the joint, one of those hole-in-the-wall-looking places with amazing food. Situated on a street corner, Dutch’s was a long, narrow space filled with red-and-white booths, a jukebox, and a Formica counter with a dozen spinning stools. Once, Dutch had opened it only for breakfast and lunch, but now that he’d finally had his hip replaced, he was newly open for dinner a few nights a week.
Standing behind the case of desserts, Haven nearly glowed with happiness and surprise as more Ravens came in until the place was absolutely jumping.
“I should’ve hired you years ago, Miss Haven,” Dutch said to everyone’s laughter. A tall, older man with warm brown skin, graying hair, and a manner that always put everyone at ease, Dutch had been a friend to the club for as long as Slider could remember.
“Look at her,” Cora said from their place at the counter. “I’m so proud of her I could burst. You don’t understand how painfully shy she used to be. Six months ago, t
his seemed like an impossible dream.”
Slider spun his stool toward his own impossible dream. “I know exactly how that feels, Cora. Sometimes things actually do work out right.” He couldn’t believe those words were coming out of his mouth, of all people, but these days, he was living proof of it. And he was finally going to let himself embrace it, despite all the shit swirling around them.
“Yeah,” she said, her smile so pretty. And all for him.
Everyone ate too much and then piled one of Haven’s big desserts on top of it. The boys had thick slabs of chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream, while Cora moaned over a piece of strawberry shortcake, and Slider tried a piece of the pumpkin-apple spice cake with chocolate chips and raisins in it and a sinful creamy icing drizzled over it.
“Jesus,” he murmured around his first bite. “This is amazing.”
Cora laughed. “Annnd another one bites the dust.” She shook her head. “It’s impossible not to fall in love with Haven’s baking.”
He pressed a sticky kiss to her cheek. “It’s impossible not to fall in love with you.”
“Sweet man,” she whispered, her expression so soft and beautiful.
“Aw, come on, Dad. We’re eating,” Sam said.
Cora laughed and ruffled the kid’s hair, and then she went in for a sneak attack and nabbed a bite of his cake.
“Hey!” Sam turned to the side, shielding his plate with his body as they all laughed.
Many of them cleared out when they were done in order to make room for other customers, but Slider and Cora hung out with Dare at the counter, and the boys entertained themselves with a stash of comics that Dutch kept under the counter. While Cora chatted with Haven, Slider and Dare shot the shit about everything and anything. And it was fucking nice.
Once, they’d been close. Not as close as Dare and Maverick—who were connected by blood and had grown up together. But Slider and Dare had once hung out a lot, run on road trips together, and generally raised hell together, even after the kids had come along. Dare had seemingly accepted Slider back into the fold, no questions asked, but Slider was suddenly feeling like he owed one of his oldest friends an explanation for the way he’d just dropped off the face of the planet.
His gut squeezed at the idea of coming clean.
And that little niggle of fear was exactly why Slider should do it. It was time to move on. So. Right.
Slider took a deep breath, and let the question fly. “Hey Dare, can I talk to you for a minute? Outside maybe?” A wave of nausea made him regret having finished that whole piece of cake.
Dare gave him a look and a quick nod, and then they were heading out onto the quiet evening street. “Everything okay?”
“Now it is,” Slider said. “But I feel like you deserve to know what happened to me all that time.”
Eyebrows shooting up, Dare shook his head. “You don’t owe me anything. Your wife died, Slider. The mother of your kids. I can’t even imagine what that was like.”
His stomach was a wreck. “It was more than that, Dare. It was so much fucking more.”
His friend’s eyes narrowed. “Okay. Whatever it is, brother, I’ll have your back. You know that.”
Slider sighed, his gaze catching on something down the street. And then he manned up and looked Dare in the eyes. “Kim was cheating on me. For about a year. Was going to leave me. She told me all this a few weeks before she got sick, and then the asshole she was with refused to care for her when it started getting bad.”
“Christ,” Dare bit out, his expression solid, no pity to be found. “But you stepped up and took care of her. That took a lot of fucking guts, man.”
“I just . . . I couldn’t let the boys know that their mother planned to leave them. Not after the way I grew up. I couldn’t let them have to live with that.” He shook his head. “But it ate at me from the inside out until it felt like there was nothing left to give, not even to my friends and this club I have loved most of my life.”
“Jesus, Slider, you’re a damn good man. And an even better father. Don’t think for a second you owe an explanation for doing the right thing or for being wrecked by having done it. You’re here now, and that’s what matters.” Dare held out his hand. “But know that I appreciate like hell that you trusted me with knowing this. You can count on me to keep it between us.”
Slider returned the shake, feeling like a weight he’d been carrying for so long lifted off his shoulders. It was the past, falling away, at long last. “I know I can.”
“Everything all right?” Cora asked when they returned.
He slid onto his stool and squeezed her thigh. “Never better, sweetheart. Never better.” And it was true. Somehow, Slider Evans had finally found love, belonging, and peace. That was everything he’d been searching for but thought for sure he’d never be able to have.
Now, just one more fight stood in his way of keeping what he’d found, once and for fucking all.
The big excitement at the shelter on Thursday was the arrival of a bunch of new dogs, neglected, but at least not abused. A farm in rural Maryland had been discovered housing—poorly—nearly fifty dogs of all ages, and the local shelter there hadn’t been able to take them all. So Cora got to help do intake on the eight dogs they were taking in, including two seven-week-old shepherd-collie mix puppies that were so cute she could hardly stand it.
“We get to name them,” Dr. Josh said. “Well, at least give them temporary names until they’re adopted. These guys are sure to go quick. Would you like to do the honors?”
“Me? Really?” Cora asked. She picked up the first of the puppies, who was so small he almost fit in her hand. Brown and tan with soulful little brown eyes. “I think this guy should be called Howie.”
The doc laughed. “Howie it is. And his brother?”
What went with Howie? She wanted something fun and silly, since he’d probably have another name before too long. “How about Horace.”
Dr. Josh pulled a face. “That is quite possibly the worst dog name I’ve ever heard.”
She laughed. “I like it! Howie and Horace. That’s cute!”
The names stuck, and Cora was still chuckling about it when she left at the end of her shift. And her smile just got bigger when she found Slider there on his bike to pick her up again. He’d taken her car to his shop and replaced her tires, and her red baby was now locked in his garage to keep it safe. Until the dogfight was over and Davis was finally behind bars, Slider wanted to personally take her wherever she needed to go.
That wasn’t much of a hardship.
Except that, unlike on Monday afternoon, Slider wasn’t smiling back at her today. “What’s wrong?” she asked, sensing it before he even said a word.
He pushed his sunglasses up on his head. “Caine just got a text. The dogfight’s been moved up.”
Standing beside his bike, her hand on his thigh, Cora frowned. “Okay, to when?”
“Tonight.”
Surprise rocked through her, along with a wave of nervous anticipation. “Okay, so . . . What does that mean? Why is that bad?”
Slider sighed. “Because Martin can’t get the other jurisdictions in place within the next two hours on this short notice. These dogfights can attract a hundred or more people, so the original plan was for the cops to be in place at least two hours beforehand, maybe more, to set up a perimeter that would contain all the participants without the Crew knowing. There’s no way to do that now.”
“Does that mean going this time is off then?” she asked, her stomach dropping. She’d so been hoping this would all be behind them sooner rather than later.
“No. Me, Caine, and Phoenix are still going in. Martin and two other sheriffs are going to give us some backup, but it’ll be a smaller operation than we initially hoped.”
Cora gasped, because that sounded really freaking dangerous. “Slider, I don’t like the sound of this.”
He grasped her hand against his thigh. “Don’t worry. The plan’s still the same. Observe. F
ind out who’s running this ring. Get some pictures of Davis there. Get back out. Hopefully we won’t even have to be there that long, because I am not looking forward to watching dogs tear each other apart.”
Her mind scrambled for an alternative. “Why can’t more of the Ravens go so it’s not just the three of you?”
“Because, sweetheart, if the 301 Crew perceives us as attacking their territory, it’ll start a war that’ll only end when a whole bunch of bodies are lying on the ground, and that’s the last thing we want. We have to do this low key, and hopefully, they won’t even realize we were there.”
“But won’t Davis recognize you?” she asked, stepping in closer. He put his arm around her waist.
“If we spot him there, we’re going to keep our distance. And we’re going to borrow a page out of his book. Street clothes. Hats. Phoenix even found an old pair of glasses he’s going to wear.”
That made her smile, just a little. “I just don’t like the idea of you in danger, Slider.”
“That’s why I gotta do this. It’s time to put it behind us.” He handed her a helmet, and too soon they were back at the house so Slider could change. He came downstairs fifteen minutes later in the same jeans and boots, but wearing an oversized hooded sweatshirt under a blue and brown flannel jacket. A Ford baseball cap sat low on his head. And he had a clean shave.
“You make redneck look good,” Cora said, trying to inject a little humor into the situation. But it fell flat.
“Right?” he asked, crouching at the end of the living room couch where she sat with Bosco at her feet. “The boys will be home in a few, so let me ask you before they get here and want to interject their opinion. Would you prefer to spend the evening at the clubhouse or at Dare and Haven’s? Meat had reserved the clubhouse tonight for his fortieth birthday party, so it might be a little crazy there, but of course you can grab one of the rooms upstairs.”
“Would Dare be okay with us crashing over there?” she asked, not sure she was up for pandemonium tonight with the way her head already pounded with tension.