Page 18

Diesel

“Hate to break up the love-fest, but you two need to separate your lips so we can get the fuck out of here before the cops show.”

Hunter’s words hit me like a heart attack. One word in particular: love. I know he’s just fucking with me, but even that word treads too close to sacred ground and the name of a woman long dead who I swore would be the last woman I ever love. I pull away from Samantha, run a hand across my face, and shake my head. There’s surprise in her eyes, and something else, too. It might be hurt, but there’s no time to think about it — Hunter’s got a point.

“God damn it, he’s right. We have to go.”

I take Samantha by the hand and lead her. She tries to resist at first, but I tighten my grip and pull her toward the door. Hunter throws a couple of bills on one table and follows behind us. The three of us get in the car, Samantha again behind the wheel, and we tear out of the parking lot.

When the bar fades behind us, I let out a sigh. Samantha’s quiet, and she has a look on her face like, even though she’s silent in the moment, there’s a lot of things she wants to say to me, and none of them I’m going to enjoy hearing. But it’s not my fault her lips taste so good, not my fault that, once she looked at me the way she did, once she made that move and leaned in, that I had to kiss her and keep kissing her. That’s on her.

I shake my head again and remind myself of Brandy; the way she smiled, the way her laugh got this herky-jerky quality to it when she was really, really cracked up about something and we’d both call it her donkey laugh, and the way she always knew just what to say when something was ripping me up inside.

I had it all with her. Then lost it in a bloody night.

That mistake can never happen again. I got lucky that I survived losing my heart the first time, even if every day since then has its moments where I envy her she wound up six feet under.

Yet, knowing all that, why do my lips burn with the memory of her?

“We should get on the highway. It’ll be faster, and there should be enough traffic that we can blend in,” Hunter says.

I grunt something. It sounds and feels like yes.

“Thank god. I can’t wait to be rid of you two,” Samantha says.

“Feeling’s mutual,” I say.

She flinches. I do, too.

“Harsh, brother. Let’s leave the fighting back in that bar, OK?” Hunter says.

I clear my throat. “I just want this to be over, that’s all.”

Something softens in her grip on the wheel. Behind me, I swear I hear Hunter chuckle — something must’ve softened in me, too.

“Who were those men?” She says.

“The type we should’ve recognized from the start. And the type you never want to meet alone,” I say, as I grit and grind my teeth at the thought. “I did a little wandering a while back. Aimless stuff. I had some shit to work through. Met a group like them in a nothing town just off one of the highways to Las Vegas. They were responsible for the disappearance of twenty-three women before someone, who shall remain nameless, tipped the FBI off about them.”

“Thank you,” Samantha whispers. “For saving me.”

“No one deserves what those bastards had in mind.”

We speed down the highway, the roar of the engine filling my ears. I try to focus on the road ahead, on getting to Ironwood Falls and ending this mess. But my mind keeps drifting back to that kiss in the bar, the way Samantha melted into my arms, the electricity that coursed through my body at her touch.

I clench my jaw, my fingers tightening on my knees. I can't let myself go down that road. Getting close to Samantha, letting her in, it'll only put a target on her back. The memory of Brandy — lifeless and blood-soaked — flashes through my mind; they killed her to send a message to me. I can't let that happen again, especially not to Samantha. She's already in enough danger just by being near me.

Besides, what kind of future could I possibly offer her? I'm a goddamn biker, an outlaw, with more blood on my hands than I can ever wash off. She's a social worker for fuck’s sake and she gives everything she has to helping people, including those who don’t deserve it, like her shit-show of a brother. That's the person she is—she sees the good in people, even when they can't see it in themselves.

I'm not that man. I'm the man who puts people in the ground, who breaks bones and busts heads. I live in the darkness, thrive in it. That’s who I am, and that’s all I’ll ever be.

The rest of the drive to Ironwood Falls passes by in a tense silence. Mile after mile of stiff lips, stern expressions, and dark thoughts. When we finally pull up to The Noble Fir, I let out a breath I didn't realize I was holding. Rabid, Goldie, and Mayhem stand waiting for us outside, their faces grim.

As soon as I exit the car, Goldie pulls me into a tight hug and slaps my back.

"Damn good to see you, brother. I was worried about you two. With everything that went down, I lit some candles and said some serious mantras. I’m joyful you’re back."

I’m not a hugger, I don’t give a shit about candles or mantras, but I still hug him back.

"Me too, man. Me too."

Rabid turns to Hunter and puts a hand on his shoulder. "Emily and Charlie are safe. Tank helped them slip Moretti’s men, then got them to the clubhouse. He took off after that. Where the fuck he went, we don’t know — he’s a fucking strange one. We moved Emily and Charlie to the safehouse as soon as we could. Goldie will take you to them when you’re ready."

“I’m ready now. No more waiting,” Hunter says.

Goldie leads Hunter away, and Rabid's attention shifts to Samantha. She's standing off to the side, her arms wrapped around herself, looking lost and out of place. My chest tightens at the sight.

“Who are you?” Rabid says.

“She’s Samantha,” I answer for her.

“I can speak for myself,” she says. “My name is Samantha Brooks. I’m a social worker from Boise. Your two guys kidnapped me.”

Mayhem raises an eyebrow at me.

“That’s not a good way to enter the dating game, brother. If you need help, they have apps for that. Unless this kidnapping thing was consensual. They have apps for you to find people for that, too. There’s this one, it’s called ‘Kinkfinder Plus’ and it is phenomenal. Back before I met Stacy, I fooled around on it a bit. I’m not afraid to say I had their paid subscription, too. It was worth it just for this one time alone, when I was planning a trip out to Whitefish Mountain for some skiing. A rail line runs near there, and I wanted to get a little sexy Snowpiercer action going on. You know, maybe rob a train, maybe pretend it’s the end of the world, maybe just shoot some explosives off in the middle of a snowy forest and then have an org—”

“This isn’t that,” I say. “Moretti was holding her hostage, too. Forcing her to work at the strip club where he was keeping us prisoner. When we broke out, we took her with us. WE made it look like a kidnapping to give her a cover.”

“Made it look like a kidnapping? You took me at gunpoint,” Samantha says. “That is literally the definition of a kidnapping.”

“It had to be believable,” I say. “Otherwise you would’ve been in danger.”

“And the other times since you kidnapped me, where I said I’d like to leave, where I wanted to go home, and you still said no? What do you call it when you force someone to be your prisoner?” She says.

“Kidnapping,” Mayhem says. When I give him a dirty look, he says, “That’s just the definition of the word, brother. Go get Webster’s if you want, but I stand by it. I’ll bet even TikTok or that AI search stuff would agree with me, too.”

“Shut up, both of you,” Rabid says. “This isn’t the time for a debate or an English lesson. Samantha, for the time being, you’re staying with us. Diesel, we got a place set up for you. Another safehouse. It’s small, but serviceable. Since you brought this girl into the mix, she can stay with you.”

I stiffen. "Whoa, hold up. Me and her? No fucking way."

Samantha glares at me. "Yeah, I'm not exactly thrilled about the idea either."

“Do I look like I give a flying fuck about what either of you two think? I don’t. We’re in the middle of a fucking war, fucking miscreant thugs with more bullets than brains are fucking abducting my brothers from the damn streets of my own fucking town, so your concerns about space, privacy, or what constitutes a kidnapping — consensual or otherwise — don’t mean shit to me.” Samantha looks like she’s going to make the biggest mistake of all and open her mouth to argue with Rabid, but then he glares at her in a way that’s so cold a nearby puddle freezes over and her mouth snaps shut. “Diesel brought you into this mess, which means you’re his responsibility until it’s over. Now, I know you’re probably not fucking thrilled about that, because Diesel is Diesel, but I promise you this: he will treat you like a decent human being because I am ordering him to. And, even as dumb as he is, he knows that to defy a literal fucking order from me is to ask to be taught what it feels like to have the skin of his scrotum peeled off in strips using a dull and rusty knife. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir,” Samantha says.

Rabid turns his glare to me. “Diesel, are we clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

I haven’t called anyone ‘sir’ since the Army.

Rabid grunts, and looks at me long enough that I shift in place and wonder if he’s still going to peel my scrotum with a rusty knife. “I’ll text you the address of the safehouse. Now, go see Bishop and get your wounds looked at. Then get to the safehouse and await my further instructions. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

After a quick, not-gentle visit to Bishop — who gives me a dressing down about changing my wound dressings, keeping my wounds clean, and not being a dumbass who gets kidnapped and tortured by Montana meth heads — all while Samantha watches from the bar, sipping a glass of wine and getting an earful of what I’m sure is nothing more than gossip and warnings from Molotov Molly, we return to her car and I follow Rabid’s directions to our safehouse, which turns out to be an apartment building just outside of downtown Ironwood Falls that looks like it at one time was a motor lodge, then a homeless shelter, and then converted to an apartment building when the people running the homeless shelter decided the building was too rundown to be of use.

“This place looks bad,” Samantha says. “I might want to sleep in the car.”

“You aren’t the only one thinking that.”

“In that case, I’ll sleep inside,” she says.

I let out a sigh. “Listen, I know you don’t care for me, and that’s fine. Actually, that’s better than fine, because that’ll make it so much easier for us to split up when this nightmare is over. But if you sleep outside, that makes you more vulnerable and likely to be picked up by whoever is after us. I don’t want that, even though you get on my nerves and test me in ways that make me want to swallow my sidearm. And you don’t want to sleep out here alone, either. Let’s just be reasonable adults about this. We’ll go inside, see what the living situation is like, and do our best, OK?”

“You lecture me about being a reasonable adult? You? The man who kidnapped me?”

“Someone has to, and since you’re not stepping up, that leaves it to me. Come on, let’s go in there and work it out.”

“Are you only saying that because your boss threatened to cut your dick off?”

“He’s not my boss. He’s the club’s president.”

“So, are you saying that because your president threatened to cut your dick off?”

“No. And he didn’t threaten to cut it off. He threatened to peel the skin off it with a rusty knife. There’s a massive difference.”

“Well, you learn something new every day.”

“Stop it. Just stop it. Now, let’s go inside and get this over with.”

I get out, and thankfully, she does, too. Silently.

We walk toward the apartment building, Samantha leading the way. I follow her, locking up the vehicle behind us. Despite my frustration with her attitude, I can't help but notice the way her body moves as she walks. The sway of her hips, the curve of her ass, the bounce of her dark hair against her shoulders.

Fuck, I shouldn't be looking at her like this.

But I can’t fight it; it doesn’t matter what I try to tell myself, my eyes don’t listen. Other, more dangerous, parts of me don’t listen, either. Because they know that my words about Samantha being an awful, annoying bitch don’t match up to the truth; she’s a kind, decent woman with an ass so magnificent it would make Michelangelo weep.

I tear my gaze away and focus on the cracked pavement beneath my boots instead.

We climb the creaky stairs to the second floor and make our way down the dimly lit hallway. The carpet is threadbare and stained; the walls scuffed and peeling; one of the hall lights dangles from the ceiling by some wire, like it gave up and hung itself. I

Samantha stops in front of door 2B and turns to me expectantly; I fish the key out of my pocket and open the door.

“Oh shit,” I murmur.

“Damn,” she says. “That sure is something.”

The apartment shines, with sparkling clean hardwood floors, a small but modern kitchen, a couple of wooden chairs in the living area that don’t look that comfortable to sit in, but look like they may have been handcrafted from wood — by Ranger, probably — and there’s a bed set against the far wall of the living area. Maybe staying here won't be so bad after all.

But as I glance over at Samantha, I notice her expression change; her eyes widen, her brows furrow, and her lips part slightly.

"What's wrong?" I say.

She turns to me, her face a mix of disbelief and something else I can't quite place.

"Don’t you see it?”

“See what?”

“Diesel… there's just one bed."