Page 32 of Knox (The Devil’s Luck MC #6)

KNOX

I would rather spend the next month in a nice hotel with Caroline than see my brothers beat the shit out of each other for the plan.

To think I could be ruining her with just a few licks or thrusts…

Instead, we were staging a bar fight to make our grief look real and bait the Wolverines’ mole in the department into tipping off Bates.

Little did I know that Mason and Grant would take it to a personal level.

Caroline tucked her hair up in a baseball cap to hide it and slouched at the bar next to Tex. They pretended the other didn’t exist, picking at already cold food. They had regular patrons on either side of them, helping them to blend in.

Abel and Brody played cards with some tipsy bikers at one of the tables. Jackson was going around to each table like a general manager, gruffly talking up customers, mostly answering the same question, Where’d Sam just go ?

Jackson just forced a smile, which, in his case, was more of a grimace, and said, “She just needed the day off. Swollen feet.”

One of the guys, a grizzled old biker named Earl, grunted like Jackson told him to sniff glue. “Shit like that’s why I thank God every day I was born with balls.”

His friend beside him, another regular nicknamed Buzz, nudged his arm with an elbow. “Too bad you were born with three of them, Earl. We call you ET, for extra testicle.”

Earl waved a dismissive hand. “That ain’t a third ball. It’s a hernia. And when have you been looking at my balls, Buzz?”

“When you passed out naked in the parking lot?”

Earl grinned. “Oh yeah. That was a good birthday. You only turn sixty-three once.”

I sat on one of the chairs near the fireplace, drumming my fingers on the armrest anxiously.

I kept glancing at Caroline’s hunched back.

Tex wasn’t going to flirt with her, but what if the bastard next to her was going to?

I saw him come in earlier and drop into the chair.

He looked like a trucker trying to drown his exhaustion in whiskey.

If he so much as leaned toward her?—

Shit, what if he’s the Wolverine come to spy ?

The door opened, and two bikers swaggered in. I didn’t recognize either of them, but they looked like brawlers. My leg started to bounce. This was fucking nerve racking.

But then they saw Earl and the others at the table and got boisterous greetings.

I blew out a breath. Fuck this. I just want to fuck my woman senseless. Instead, we have to kill her dad today.

No , I corrected myself. It didn’t have to be instead . First we needed to kill her dad. Then I could fuck her senseless, and she would finally be free to live her own life the way she’d always deserved.

Something dark settled in my chest, coiling like a spitting viper.

Walter Bates would die today if it was the last thing I ever did.

The sound of a bike, louder than the others that had driven up, caught my ear. I carefully glanced out the window behind me. My heart jumped. That wasn’t a normal bike. And the guy parking it? Definitely not a regular.

“Showtime,” I muttered, loud enough for Mason to hear.

He was sitting in the other armchair, glowering like he had been for the past hour we’d been lounging around waiting.

Not a single cop had come to stop by the Well, of course.

The inside guy had gone straight to Bates, who must have bided his time for whatever fucking reason.

We could only hope he didn’t figure out what it was—a decoy.

Mason took a big, long swig of his third glass of beer, stood, and smashed the bottle on the shiny wood floor.

Glass exploded everywhere.

The bar went dead silent just as the Wolverine walked in.

I jerked to my feet when Mason pointed an accusing finger at me, looking drunk and vengeful. “What you did can never be forgiven.”

He swung.

Shit!

I ducked.

He swung again. This lash-out wasn’t entirely planned and he moved fast, the prick.

I knocked his arm aside. “Dude!”

Jackson, as planned, intervened. “Knock it off, High Roller!”

Mason whirled on him. “Stop pretending we’re fine, Black Jack! We’re not! We’re fucking falling apart!”

Tex, Abel, and Brody stormed over, also as planned. And then we were acting in our own cheap, alcohol-scented production of Let’s grieve over Gabriel by punching and screaming at our own brothers.

We were all yelling and shoving. Half of it was staged; the other half really wasn’t. It seemed like a few of us still had some shit to work out with one another.

Grant came out of fucking nowhere and grabbed me by the collar, shoving me into the stone fireplace so hard the back of my head bounced off it. I saw stars and my teeth rattled in my skull.

When my vision cleared, Grant’s eyes were red and puffy. Emotion hit me harder than any punch, drowning me in yet another wave of grief and guilt. No matter how many times Caroline was there to pull me out, it always came back.

“I trusted you,” the mechanic croaked, sounding like a chronic smoker as he pinned me with a forearm to my chest. “And you let Gabe get shot dead. My best friend. Was Will’s death not enough?”

The world narrowed to me, Grant, and his words. I didn’t know what to feel because I was feeling everything at once, and I was so overwhelmed that all I could think was nothing .

“Grant, I-I?—”

“Enough!” Jackson snarled, pushing Grant off me. He stood between us, glaring like we were bickering siblings. “Enough, all of you.” He sighed, exasperated. “We did our job. The Wolverine left. Knox, let’s ride.” Jackson raised his voice. “The rest of you, positions.”

Like nothing had happened, the Devils dispersed. Grant stormed off into the backroom.

The Well had long since emptied out, and only Caroline was left at the bar. I wanted to rush to her and kiss her until her lips were swollen, and the look she was giving me from across the room suggested she felt the same—but Jackson shoved my shoulder toward the door.

“No distractions, Royal,” he growled. “We ride hard and fast, avoid detection. Get locked in or I’ll?—”

“I got it, I got it,” I told him. “I’m focused, chief.”

We were on our bikes and peeling out of the lot in one minute flat, riding like hell to catch up to the Wolverine.

His bike was a heavy Harley-Davidson, muscle meant for show, not racing. The Devils’ engines were all custom jobs and we hauled fucking ass.

We caught up fast, even with Grant’s freakout. Jackson and I weaved among traffic, ignoring the horns, slipping ahead or falling back in rotation—always keeping eyes on the Wolverine, never letting him know we were there.

This was it.

The beginning of the end.

We were finally going to track down Bates’s rat nest and tear through it like a goddamn wildfire—and rain holy hell on him until he and his MC were nothing but a red smear on the concrete.

We veered off when the warehouse came into sight. Caroline told us where the back road was that led to an overlook of the warehouse for a bird’s-eye view. We killed our engines to watch the scout pull into one of the docking stations and disappear.

Now we wait.

There was plenty of noise from Reno behind us, but between Jackson and me? Stone-cold silence. And it stretched longer and more awkwardly until I was being eaten alive.

“I’ll understand if you exile me from the club,” I said, leaning forward on my handlebars, staring ahead at the still warehouse. “It is my fault Gabe’s gone.”

Jackson didn’t even tilt his head toward me. He was like the Queen’s Guard or some shit, unmoving, unflinching. Seemingly uncaring.

“Right now isn’t the time to settle your conscience.”

I dropped my head briefly on the gas tank. “Yeah. I guess.”

“And stop feeling fucking sorry for yourself. Be a little bitch later, once these fuckers are dead.”

I sat up. “Yessir.”

Just then, a snarling monster of revving engines. Wolverines started pouring out of the front of the warehouse—fourteen in all, most of them riding those heavy-ass Harleys while some rode others built for speed.

My heart jumped when I made out Bates leading the pack. And then my gut roiled violently when I saw who brought up the rear. The sicko who tried to hurt Caroline the night I saved her, turning MC tension into total fucking chaos.

Vane.

I pointed him out to Jackson, growling. “That’s the one we have to watch out for. Vane. Mercenary.”

Jackson took my warning seriously. He narrowed his eyes at the bastard in the distance. “Ex-military?”

“Maybe,” I said. He would know better than I would. “Doesn’t matter as long as he’s dead as Bates.”

I revved my bike to life like I was going to drive after him, but Jackson’s question made me freeze.

“What’d he do to her?”

I looked at my president square in the eye and said, “He had one thing on his mind, and it wasn’t a fucking conversation. I stopped it but just barely.”

Jackson’s eyes flashed with understanding, but he didn’t say anything. Just pulled out his phone and tapped a contact. He put the ringing line on speakerphone. “Mason. Wolverines are twenty minutes out. We’re already fifteen out from the back route. Load the trucks.”

“Got it,” said Mason from the other end. “Ride like hell.”

“Is Caroline okay?” I blurted before either of them could hang up.

“She’s fine,” Mason said coldly, then ended the call.

Jackson pocketed his phone and gave me a sharp look. “Stop thinking with your dick,” he warned.

“I’m not,” I snapped back without thinking of the consequences. “I’m thinking with my head and heart. Same as you about Sam. This ends today.”

I knew Jackson wanted to argue that Sam was one of us and Caroline was still a liability, but we were short on time.

We rode hard for the Well, not hindered by tailing anyone. Miraculously, we weren’t caught by any cops.

And we made it with minutes to spare before the Wolverines got there.

The other Devils were gone, precisely as planned, as Jackson and I hopped into his battered pickup that we loaded with road spikes courtesy of one of Black Jack’s old military buddies.

They were heavy sons of bitches, but the hard labor took my mind off Caroline and the impending bloodbath, even if temporarily.

We went stock still when we heard the pack of engines up the road.

“Shit!” I hissed. “We can’t be seen. Go .”

We hauled ass out of the back lot, doing some illegal off-roading, and skidded onto the main road. Somehow, we managed it at a time when no cars were in the way to slam on their horns and draw attention.

Then came the scary part: we had to drive past the gang of bikes.

I ducked down to hide myself entirely, and Jackson yanked up his hoodie. He was white-knuckling the wheel, shoulders hunched, jaw clenched. I held my breath, trying to peer out the window to catch a glimpse of the fuckers trying to ruin our lives for the past several years.

As the last one roared by, I sat up like a shot and twisted in my seat to count their stupid heads through the back window as they drove toward the now-empty Well.

“Shit,” I muttered.

Jackson yanked his hood down. “What? What’s wrong?”

My heart was pounding in my ears. I watched them disappear over a hill, and my thoughts kicked into gear at a hundred miles an hour.

Jackson shoved his palm against my head to snap me out of my daze. “Fucking what, Knox?!” he roared.

“I only counted thirteen,” I said. It sounded like a death knell.

Jackson gripped the wheel so tightly I thought he’d break it in half. “Fuck. Fuck, shit, damn, hell?—”

I swallowed hard. “Thirteen. One is missing.”