Devil's Mark

  “There’s always too much crap.” Chaser shoved the whiskey bottle an inch or so across the scarred wood surface toward Uptown. “Drink up.”

  “Whiskey isn’t gonna solve the problem.”

  “Maybe not.” Chaser shrugged, though his expression stayed set and dark the way it usually did. “But it sure helps the bullshit go down easier.”

  Uptown didn’t think anything was going to help the current load of crap wash down, easy or otherwise. He and Chaser had spent a bruising afternoon cleaning out another brand-new meth lab where a bunch of douchebags had started cooking their poison in the bayous inside the town limits. That had meant tracking rumors and shifty motherfuckers through the swamp and then dealing with what they found, because the club’s zero-tolerance policy on drug shit within Lagrange’s borders meant that no one could be left to get away with breaking the rules. It wasn’t that it was straight-up disrespect, though it was and that had to be addressed. It also sent a bad message to all the other scumbags out there. It encouraged them to get creative.

  Got some vermin out in the swamps, Chaser had said when Uptown had rolled into the clubhouse around noon, after a few hours of restless sleep that he’d spent fighting off wet dreams like a fucking thirteen-year-old boy who didn’t know what his dick was for. Digger thinks you and me should do a little exterminating.

  That right there was a problem, of course, though neither one of them had pointed it out, standing there in the clubhouse surrounded by too many ears. Digger knew how very, very little either Chaser or Uptown wanted to be around tweakers. Everybody knew they’d had their fill. Uptown’s mother’s banshee appearances at the clubhouse door were legendary. Waco liked to do an impression of her that about shattered glass. Tick and Butler often retold the stories of packing her into the back of a pickup and hosing her off at the nearest car wash because she clearly hadn’t bathed in a while. All hilarious—if it hadn’t been Uptown’s mother they were talking about.

  Meanwhile Chaser’s junkie ex had taken four-year-old Kaylee and run. Chaser had spent years tracking them down through the shitholes of the South and Midwest, only to finally find his ten-year-old daughter abandoned in a flophouse in Kansas. Destiny, that kidnapping bitch, had gone off with another biker according to all reports—one who wore a Black Dogs patch and was only too happy to supply her with an endless quantity of shit to shove up her nose.

  It seemed like there were any number of brothers around who could handle the tweaker problems in Lagrange without worrying they might stumble across a family member or the mother of their kid while they were cleaning out flophouses and handling makeshift labs. And yet Uptown couldn’t help thinking that Digger kept choosing the two of them for a reason.

  But all the reasons he could think of pointed to the kind of bad shit no one wanted to talk about. Everyone knew Greeley, their sergeant at arms, had gotten in Digger’s face about these things back when his woman’s stalker was in town and had turned out to be connected to the cartel, earning the asshole a free pass no one thought he deserved. But business was business, and the club couldn’t afford to bite the hand that fed them. At least not over one random dickhead. Greeley, not surprisingly, had seen things another way—and the brother wasn’t shy about sharing his opinions.

  Still, nothing had come of it. Greeley had made nice with Digger because it wasn’t smart to start a war without knowing all the weapons in play. And those brothers—Uptown included—who wanted to see what Digger would do next had been forced to wait.

  Finally, Benny had been arrested, the way they’d known he was going to be for months now, thanks to friends of the club inside the sheriff’s office. Uptown had thought the town would turn on the Devil’s Keepers once that happened. He’d expected a mob with pitchforks or a few huffy assholes citing parish codes, because that was the usual progression of things around here when people were forced to look at what actually kept the town going.

  And he’d expected Digger to react to any acts against the club as personal attacks on him. Because they all knew that when Dig thought someone was coming at him, he usually opted for the nuclear response.

  So Uptown didn’t know how to interpret being repeatedly sent out to perform tweaker janitorial services all over Lagrange. It didn’t seem like Digger’s style to wage a little psychological warfare. Then again, he was the one who kept sending the two of them out. Not any of the other brothers. Just Chaser and Uptown.

  How many is this now? Uptown had asked Chaser, but he’d been talking more to the brothers nearby who were no doubt listening in. It seems like the local loser drug addict community isn’t getting the club’s message this year.

  Chaser had looked across the big, open general room, where that little bitch Whale, son of their questionable president and all-around epic douche, was doing something on a laptop at the bar. He’d hunched over his screen like he thought some of the other brothers—all either sacked out on the couches or watching one of their favorite local strippers play with her collection of piercings like a little afternoon show—might try to get up behind him and see what he was doing.

  Uptown didn’t give a single shit what Whale was doing, as a personal policy. Not even when it seemed like the asshole had an unnecessary interest in Holly Chambless when everyone else fully got that she was Uptown’s. But the way Whale seemed to want to flaunt the fact that he was hiding some shit? That made Uptown interested against his will.

  Chaser had scowled. A few prospects nearby flinched. Over on the nearest couch, Okie and Butler exchanged a look.

  I’m starting to ask myself how that message keeps getting garbled, Chaser had said.

  Uptown had shared a pretty grim moment of understanding with Chaser, and then followed him to take out all that grimness on junkie assholes who should have known better, but were too wired to care.

  Every time it fell to Uptown to roust some drug fiends out of Lagrange, he had to steel himself for the possibility that one of the zombie assholes he’d find in some or other putrid nest would be his mother. This one was no different. There were two women out in the swamp, one he’d had to look at twice to make sure, because god knew the hard shit made them all look the same. Emaciated and sunken in, like the walking fucking dead.

  But his mother hadn’t been out there today, thank fucking Christ. And lucky for Chaser’s ex Destiny, neither had she. He and Chaser had dealt with the situation in that shithole tar shack—thankfully all amateur hour and easily contained. Then they’d spent the rest of the afternoon trying to track down Etienne Marchand, local drug dealer and known piece of shit, who should have nipped this shit in the bud before it became the club’s problem. That being the entire reason he was allowed to exist inside DKMC territory.

  What that meant was that Uptown had spent a whole long day neck deep in scumbags and filth. He never loved that aspect of his life. It hit a little too close to home and reminded him way too much of his childhood, if he was honest, when that had been his whole life, against his will. Usually a hot shower, a little whiskey, and an excess of pussy set him right.

  But tonight he was in Dumb Gator’s watching a local princess wind her way through a crowd of rough assholes, and it seemed like the dirt on him was a whole lot more than skin deep.

  Uptown studied Holly as she took her place behind the bar. She smiled at Bart like he was a friendly shopkeeper instead of a conniving, dirty-minded asshole who was loyal to the club but never quite man enough to patch in. She smiled even wider at her supposed best friend, Katelyn, who looked like she had half a mind to throw the drinks she was making in Holly’s face. She smiled and smiled and smiled, and it should have made his blood run cold. He didn’t trust anyone who smiled that much. Junkies, con men, and sleazy politicians, that was who flashed teeth like that, so indiscriminately.

  But Holly looked squeaky clean and he knew, now, that she tasted like sunshine and clear blue skies. And he told himself it was fury at the blood in her veins and the rich-bitch life she’d led that surged in him
then. He told himself he wanted nothing more than to corrupt her and only because he wanted to stick it to her father. He wanted to dirty her up and make her like everyone else sunk deep in this swamp town.

  But he knew, down in his bones and no matter that he didn’t want to admit it, that his real problem was that he wanted all her pretty smiles for himself.

  —

  By midnight, Holly was less concerned with the fact Uptown was there, staring at her in his brooding, unsettling way from across the bar, than she was with the outright hostility Katelyn was showing her. Over and over again, and then more obviously still, as the night wore on.

  There’d been a crowd earlier, but it had thinned out. That left Holly with nothing to do except pretend Uptown’s distant, watchful gaze wasn’t getting to her—which was hard to do while Katelyn threw evil looks her way. But then the looks stopped being enough for her, apparently. While moving around behind Holly to grab some ice, Katelyn “accidentally” shoved her.

  And that was the final straw. Holly could ignore almost anything. But today she’d learned there were two exceptions to that. Her daddy calling her a whore to her face with no remorse. And her supposed best friend actually, physically shoving her after days of increasing hostility.

  Holly had always thought she was a decent person. She’d tried to be good. She’d tried to be kind. And yet here she was anyway, trying to figure out how to deal with the truth about her father she’d been ignoring too long, how it had come to pass that her best friend didn’t like her much anymore, and—returning to a topic that had taken up the bulk of her thoughts all day—why it hadn’t even crossed her mind that of course Uptown had some hidden agenda when it came to her.

  He wasn’t just one of the outlaw bikers who lorded it over this town. He was widely held to be the most gorgeous of them, by far. An opinion that had been set in stone while he was still answering to the name Killian and charming girls out of their panties in high school. Literally inside the high school, if the legends were to be believed.

  What the hell would Uptown want with an untouched virgin like her—especially when, as he’d indicated this morning, her inexperience was written all over her? Not like a beacon of goodness and promise for her future husband, as she’d told herself while refraining from having sex with boys she didn’t like all that much. More like a humiliating tattoo covering far more than merely her cleavage.

  Was she really that much of an idiot?

  The answer, sadly, was that she was. She’d proved repeatedly that she really, truly was. But the beauty of that was that there was no need to rein herself in. If she was already considered the biggest idiot in St. Germain Parish, it wasn’t as if there was any farther to fall, was there?

  “Is something the matter?” she asked Katelyn, and it was harder than usual to keep her tone even. Calm. Not particularly accusatory or worse, hurt.

  Katelyn didn’t even look at her, her face set in that mulish expression Holly remembered all too well, from having watched her aim it at other people all throughout their youth. They’d both been cheerleaders back in school. Co-captains of the squad their junior and senior years, in fact. Had they always been this different, even then? Was that yet another thing Holly had failed to see when it was right there in front of her?

  “Nothing’s the matter.” Katelyn’s tone was so flat it edged over into belligerence.

  “It’s just that you seem a little tense.”

  “I’m fine. Never been better, in fact.”

  “Glad to hear it. You seem particularly tense at me, though.”

  Katelyn sighed theatrically and folded her arms beneath her impressive chest as she leaned back against the wall behind the bar, as if she was so annoyed it was a physical weight upon her very bones and she required support to bear up under it. If it hadn’t been aimed at her, Holly might have applauded.

  “Here’s a little newsflash, Holls. Not everything is about you.”

  Holly flushed at that, then hated herself for being that sensitive to any suggestion she was selfish. As if it really was the kiss of death, as she’d been told her entire childhood. She’d been expected to be virtuous. She’d had no choice but to make good grades. But every last person in her life, from her daddy to her priest to her teachers to her friends, had been deeply and actively invested in making sure Holly didn’t get a big head. The threat of her potential self-centeredness was so extreme, apparently, that half the town had been engaged in making sure she never succumbed to it. Holly knew on some level that it was inspired by darker motivations on the part of those who’d been so “concerned,” but it still kicked at her—especially when she was sure that was satisfaction in Katelyn’s gaze as it moved over her.

  Because, she reminded herself, Katelyn had known her throughout her entire childhood in this town. She knew exactly how to draw blood.

  That meant Holly could do the same. But she wouldn’t. And Katelyn probably knew that, too. Holly had always been the one to try to solve problems, unlike Katelyn, who’d taken a more rule by fear approach. Except it occurred to Holly that maybe her recollections of herself as someone who tried to be nice and kind was just so much more bullshit, like everything else in her life seemed to be. Maybe she wasn’t good or decent at all. Maybe she was just a pushover.

  “In fact,” Katelyn was drawling, like she felt emboldened by Holly’s reaction, which she probably did, because she’d always warmed to a little blood in the water—especially if she’d put it there, “Lagrange managed to get along just fine while you were off at college. It’s nice that you’ve decided to come on back and grace us with your presence now that you have your fancy degree, but it doesn’t mean I need to throw you a parade every time you show up to work.”

  It had been a very long day. Holly had started it off learning that Uptown could kiss her silly even if he was using her as some kind of horrible leverage against her father. More than that, she’d discovered that she wasn’t the moral person she’d always believed herself to be, waiting for marriage and all that—she just hadn’t met a man tempting enough before now. She’d ridden around on Uptown’s motorcycle until she couldn’t see straight and no longer cared what was moral or what was right when it was so good, because there was no pretending that rush of sheer, sweet freedom hadn’t been one of the highlights of her life. Then she’d suffered her father’s contemptuous fury and insults, and seen what she very much feared was his real face. All before eight in the morning. There was a time—yesterday, maybe—when Katelyn’s spiteful words might have really, truly hurt her, but not now.

  Or not as much as they might have then, anyway.

  “No parade necessary,” Holly said, and she kept her voice as calm and friendly as ever this time. Maybe even a little bit cheerful, because everyone had their own superpowers and that was still hers. No matter if everything else had changed beyond recognition. “But maybe stop being such a bitch.”

  Katelyn’s mouth dropped open in a manner that might have been amusing under other circumstances. Because, of course, no one expected sweet little Holly Chambless to fight back. Or stand her ground. Or do anything but take whatever they threw at her and thank them for it.

  Sweet little Holly Chambless needs to die in a fire, she thought then. Enough with her.

  “Are you fucking kidding me, Holly? You did not just call me a bitch.”

  “You tell me the right word then, Katelyn.”

  Holly didn’t turn and face the girl whom she had once huddled with in the center of her bed with every light blazing in the room all night because they’d watched a scary-movie marathon on a sleepover—after being expressly forbidden to do just that. She kept her attention on the handful of men left in the bar tonight, the bulk of them gathered around the pool table while a few drunk girls laughed and made loopy spectacles of themselves. She didn’t look over toward the row of booths lining the far wall. She didn’t allow herself to search out Uptown sitting there, sprawled out on a fake-leather seat with that terrifying-looking bi
g guy they all called Chaser and the bottle of whiskey Bart had let him liberate from the bar himself. She’d seen him the moment she walked in the bar. She may or may not have snuck a thousand glances over the past few hours. The truth was, Holly didn’t know how she’d handle any sort of interaction with Uptown after everything that had happened this morning—but of course, she’d come here, hadn’t she? She wanted to find out.

  She wanted to see if, whatever his motives, she’d imagined all that wild and potentially disastrous chemistry between them. That it hadn’t been just her, silly and in over her head. Maybe the truth was she wanted to know exactly how foolish she really was.

  Pretty goddamned foolish, said a voice deep inside, right on cue. Which wasn’t helpful.

  Beside her, Katelyn was quickly shifting from astonishment to anger. Holly knew that particular transformation all too well, and how it usually ended in melodrama and tears. Or once, memorably, a textbook hurled across a science classroom. It was funny how well you could know someone without knowing them at all. Maybe that was the lesson in all of this.

  Maybe you should worry less about knowing other people and figure out how to know your own damn self, that caustic little voice in her gut suggested.

  She turned then, catching her once best friend’s gaze as it narrowed with temper, never a good sign.

  “You’re the one who told me to come here and get a job,” she reminded Katelyn. And there was a little emotion in her voice when she would have said she was perfectly calm. She cleared her throat, not wanting to admit that. Not wanting to deal with it. “You’re supposed to be my friend. Or anyway, I thought that’s what we were. But if anything, you act like I’m trespassing on your territory.”

  Katelyn looked impatient. And stubborn. “Because you don’t belong here. Look around. Does this look like your kind of place?”

  “I grew up right here in Lagrange, same as you.”

  “Not the same as me.” Katelyn rolled her eyes. “Not the same as anyone.”