It was a little before five when I stepped out from an open bay at Torque & Talon Autobody Shop, wiping my hands on an oil-stained rag.
My guts in fuckin’ knots as I let my attention travel over the gravel drive that led onto the property.
I squinted against the sunlight pouring from above. A thick, stagnant heat saturated the summer air and slicked my skin in sweat.
Or maybe it was just the irritation boiling inside me that made me feel like I was getting burned alive.
Trevan was already out there, leaning against the white exterior wall and sipping from a bottle of beer.
His own anxiety rolled from his burly frame as he eyed me from the side.
“You think this is a good idea?” he finally asked, hard voice cutting through the tension, verbalizing the same damned thing I’d been asking myself all day.
A heavy sigh pilfered from between my lips as I looked in his direction.
Dude was pure beast.
Dark brown hair and even darker eyes. A mountain of muscle that was covered in ink and oozing the type of ferocity required of my second in command.
He was also my oldest friend. With me from childhood. I trusted him more than anyone else.
I scoffed at my own expense. “Afraid it might be one of the biggest mistakes I’ve ever made.”
Inviting more danger onto our property than we were already facing.
We’d packed our shit and left Moonlit Ridge to get my sister farther away from the bullshit I’d gotten us mixed in there, and we’d come here to Crimson Creek, a small town in Southern Oregon.
But it seemed no matter where I went, peril loved to hunt me down.
He took another swig of his beer, dark eyes narrowed back at me. “Then why are you making it?”
He was the only one with balls big enough to question me. More than that? He was the only one who’d earned the right to do it.
“He was intrinsic in saving my sister. I owe him the favor.”
Trevan chuckled a disbelieving sound. “Thought that favor was leaving him alive? Not that the bastard won’t end up dead, anyway.”
Air heaved from my lungs, and I sank back against the wall next to him as I dove frustrated fingers through my hair. “Have to believe there is some kind of good in him since he came to me and offered the information.”
“Or did he know he was a dead man otherwise?”
Uncertainty bound up my insides.
I considered myself a damned good judge of character. You didn’t live long with a life like mine if you weren’t.
But there was something about Dereck Webber that I couldn’t put my finger on.
Instinct told me he couldn’t fully be trusted.
“Don’t know. But the one thing I do know is that his sister is innocent of the whole thing.”
Trevan’s brows raised like he was questioning that, too. “You sure about that?”
“As far as I know, she doesn’t know a thing.”
Was clueless as to what her brother was really involved in.
“Only thing that matters is that this arrangement gets us what we need,” I insisted. “He’d never dish if he didn’t think he was getting something out of it.”
Incredulity heaved out of Trevan. “There are other ways to get information out of someone.”
“Can’t take the chance that he would remain tight-lipped before Phoenix killed him.”
Phoenix was the club’s sergeant at arms.
Amused agreement huffed from Trevan before he shook his head. “You’re breaking every fuckin’ one of your own rules, man. You know that, right?”
I scrubbed a palm over my face. “Yup.”
It didn’t matter, though. With one thought of my baby sister, Elena, I knew what I had to do.
Dereck Webber might have been a low-life scumbag piece of shit, but when he’d had the barrel of my gun shoved down his throat, his one concern had been his sister.
To me, that counted for something.
“As long as you don’t mind when I tell you ‘I told you so’,” Trevan goaded around another gulp of his beer.
“As long as you don’t mind when I kick your ass when you do it,” I tossed back.
“Would like to see you try.”
Fucker tried to hide his grin before he sobered. “Seriously, though. I get it. Just worried it’s gonna bring us trouble, and God knows we already have plenty of that.”
Nah, trouble wasn’t anything new to us.
Being a part of a brutal MC tended to do that to you, and you could be sure the Crimson Crows were no strangers to strife and turmoil.
Funny that motorcycle club acted as a front for what we really did. The minor crimes we let fly flagrant used as a distraction from the monsters we became under the shadows of the night.
But it was my one big fuckup that brought us here, and I’d do anything I had to in order to rectify it.
“We’ll handle it if it comes to that,” I told him. “We always do.”
I let my attention skate over our new compound.
It was ten acres surrounded by twelve-foot walls. Tucked at the edge of the woods on the outskirts of Crimson Creek, my motorcycle club was named after my hometown. A town I’d left at sixteen and had just returned to.
Drawn here, I guess.
By the history. The loss. The ghosts that remained.
The front building housed our main legal gig.
An autobody shop.
The skill was something I learned when I was nothing but a kid.
A semblance of peace found when I took the mangled and broken and made it whole again.
Figured it was a paradoxical sort of thing. A balance to the destruction I caused.
Forging metal into something beautiful while my hands were stained crimson red.
Make no mistake, I wore that truth as proudly as I wore the Crimson Crows patch on my back, but I craved the respite, too. When, for a few moments, the weight I carried didn’t feel like it would crush me.
Our clubhouse was on the left side of the property, tucked out of sight from the everyday patrons, though plenty had come gawking, thinking they were going to sneak a peek at the violent MC that had rolled into town.
Yeah, we’d come with a reputation.
Hidden deep in the massive trees in the deepest recesses of our land were two houses. One was reserved for my second in command, Trevan, and the other for my family.
My guts tangled and coiled.
In the end? They were the only thing that truly mattered. They were the reason I did everything.
The sound of a high-pitched engine carried on the rustle of the trees, a car screaming a path down the two-lane road.
My twisted guts coiled up tighter, and I gritted my teeth as I watched the yellow sedan come into view, a blazing blip of color blinking through the forest.
“Here we go,” Trevan rumbled under his breath.
The car slowed to make the left onto the gravel drive, and it came through the large gate that sat wide open as if everyone were welcome when it was half my crew’s job to make sure the ones who didn’t belong here never got through.
Gravel crunched beneath the turning of the tires as the Honda came to a stop in front of me and Trevan.
A flurry of energy radiated from it.
Chaos.
Rage.
Confusion.
I could taste each one of them the same as I could taste the clean, fresh woods on my tongue as I inhaled a steeling breath.
A brunette was in the passenger seat, shifted toward the driver, shouting something that I couldn’t quite make out.
Then she threw open the door and jumped from her seat, slamming the door shut behind her.
She looked like autumn riding in on a hurricane.
Long locks of hair threaded with strands the color of harvest leaves blowing around her. Golds and reds and browns, the shade of freshly whittled bark on a tree.
Eyes the same tumbled hue, though they glowed the brightest flames.
Not to mention a body that could incite a fucking riot.
All legs and tits and curves.
She sent me a glare that could decimate an entire village right before she spat, “You.”
This woman was a wildfire.
And standing there, maybe I somehow knew she was going to burn the whole place down.