Page 2

Sorry, Black Jack.
I’d set myself up for recon at an underground poker game where it was rumored Caroline would be playing in an abandoned warehouse basement. I hadn’t told any of my brothers, Jackson included. If he knew I’d disobeyed his orders not to engage yet, he’d skin me alive.
“An undercover man is our last resort,” he’d said a month ago, “but it’s something to keep in the back of our minds.”
Caroline Bates was an easy target. It wasn’t to say she was easy to kill, with the insurance of her father and the rest of the Wolverines as her shield, but she wasn’t invincible, and she was Bates’s weakness—a possible gap in his armor. They’d hurt my club members too many damn times for us to wait around and lounge by a firepit until they came at us again.
Jackson was becoming increasingly distracted by approaching fatherhood. His protective instincts were on high alert, and on more than one occasion, it bled into daily club goings-on. It was cause for plenty of good-natured torment, but to me? It was the president getting distracted from what the Devil’s Luck had been gearing toward for damn near a year: killing Walter Bates.
If my getting to Caroline got us even one step closer to that, I would risk it all. What was the harm of one poker game? My tattoo seemed to prickle at the idea—the shamrock and skull. Luck had my back.
Grant had teased I wanted to spend time with bleach-blonde Barbie from hell.
And what had I said?
“No, I’m keen on seeing the look in her eyes when she realizes she led her father to his doom at our hands.”
I meant it. The club had more to lose than ever, with two babies on the way. Everyone felt the need to protect what we had like the precious gifts they were. The world those kids were going to enter needed to be safe.
I snorted at myself for thinking that shit. Since when was I ever a family man?
I thrived on chaos just as much as my brothers. I liked bloody knuckles and knocking back whiskey until I forgot my troubles.
But this was the Wolverines. This was Walter Bates, and I needed to figure out why and where the fuck they were hiding before hell broke loose in the streets of Reno.
I leaned back in my chair as the trucks rumbled off down the street. My grin faded, staring at the crackling flames. I finished my beer and crumpled the can up, tossing it on the edge of the firepit.
After a too long moment, Gabriel toed my calf. “You’ve been quiet.”
Grant grunted in agreement. “Makes me antsy. What’s on your mind, Knox?”
I glanced up at them, meeting their gazes briefly, unexpectedly amused at the genuine concern on their faces, even if it was half-hidden behind their scruffy beards. I shrugged my broad shoulders and popped open another beer with one hand while the other slid through my hair.
“We’re all on edge.” I grunted, took a deep swig, then winced. “Nasty shit, man,” I said to Grant. “You’re rich as fuck, and you can’t get good beer?”
Grant raised an unimpressed brow, though he couldn’t fight a smirk. “You drink them so fast, you don’t even taste them. Don’t avoid the question.”
I matched the smirk, considering tossing the alcohol in his firepit to see if it exploded like the turpentine it tasted like. “Not avoiding anything. You just don’t want to see what’s going on in this meat computer.”
Gabriel threw his head back and howled with laughter. “Meat computer? I’d rather call my brain anything fucking else.”
Grant elbowed him, grin broadening. “How rotten do you think it is?”
“Don’t know,” Gabriel played along. “But mine’s quality as wagyu.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Yours is sirloin.”
“Get the hell off my porch.”
“Can’t. Need to finish the nasty beer.”
I shook my head at their sibling banter. “How’s anyone supposed to believe you two are grown-ass adults?”
Grant’s phone buzzed. Gabriel peered over, ignoring Grant’s glare, and grumbled, “Same people who think we don’t deserve our own women.”
“Huh?”