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ACE

I spent the morning calling in favors. That was the benefit of having gone clean recently—I still knew people, and people still owed me. I was out of the game, but I still had a reputation.

Despite not getting a lot of sleep, I felt better after last night.

Harley really had taken care of me in a way no one else ever had.

It made me feel… loved. Cherished. It was different from what I felt for my clan.

Harley loved me differently. She completed me, and it was easy to share my deepest hurts with her, knowing she wouldn’t turn away.

I rolled over and brushed her hair out of her forehead. It was late evening, and I had to leave soon. Harley hummed in her sleep and turned her head on the pillow. My dragon whined as his attention immediately zeroed in on her neck.

Mate. Mate. Mate.

It was a constant thrum, like a heartbeat. Last night in the shower, my teeth had ached with the desire to bite her. Outside, by the lake, it’d only worsened. It would’ve been the perfect place to do it, under the moonlight with the owls calling in the distance.

But it wasn’t the right time. As much as I wanted it, I knew I had to wait.

I leaned down and kissed her cheek gently. “Harley,” I whispered in her ear.

“Hm?” She woke up slowly, lashes fluttering.

“I’ve got to go,” I murmured. “Business meeting. Me and Hawk are going.”

She sighed and rolled toward me. “Everything okay?” There was a small furrow of concern in her brow, despite the sleepiness still present in her expression.

“It will be.” I kissed her cheek, then sat up before I could get wrapped up in a more intense, distracting kiss. Because that’s what I wanted to do. “I’ll wake Striker to keep an eye on the house.”

“Thanks,” she hummed. “Come back to me, okay?”

“I will.”

She watched me get dressed, a small, flirty smile on her face, but she was back asleep as soon as I closed the bedroom door behind me.

I knocked on the door to the guest room.

When there was no answer, I opened the door and stuck my head inside.

Striker was passed out on top of the covers, his glasses on and a book open in his lap.

I snorted. Well, at least he’d tried to do a little reading before bed.

I shook his shoulder, and he jolted awake, nearly knocking the book off the bed. “Jeez! Ace! Time’s it?”

“Late,” I said. “Hawk and I finally heard back from Link. You okay to hold down the fort here?”

“Uh-huh.” He rubbed his forehead and blinked hard into wakefulness. “Yep, fine. I’ll get a cup of coffee. You and Hawk be safe out there. You know I don’t trust that Link guy.”

“Thanks, Striker.”

“Yup.” He moved to walk past me, but I stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. Striker looked back, confused. “What is it?”

“Seriously,” I said. “Thank you. I wouldn’t be able to handle all this without knowing you were here keeping my family safe.”

“They’re my family now, too,” Striker said. He smiled down the hall at the door to Cassidy’s room. “You know I’m happy to do it.”

Even if Cassidy weren’t Striker’s fated mate, I knew he’d still be here. His loyalty was unshakable. The friendship Striker and I had was something Sean never had, the kind of relationship he’d never been able to build.

“You get out of here,” Striker said. “Go make sure our girls are safe.”

I put on my leather jacket and stepped outside, careful to close the door gently behind me. Taking a deep breath of the cool night air, I hopped on my bike and sped toward the clubhouse, where Hawk was waiting for me on the front porch.

“Where we meeting him?” I asked as I strode up to Hawk’s truck.

“Some bar about an hour south of here. You sure this is a good idea?”

“Michel said his information’s still good,” I said, “so it’s the best lead we have.” If our old arms dealer used Link as an information source, I could trust it would be accurate. Hopefully, it wouldn’t be a waste of our money.

Hawk drove. The roads were quiet, and it was nearly midnight by the time we arrived at the old roadside bar the coordinates Link had sent.

Calling it a bar was a bit of an exaggeration.

It looked more like a shack tucked into the woods with no identifying sign on it, just a hand-painted sign that said BAR.

A few trucks and motorcycles were parked in the gravel lot, and dim yellow light shone in the dirty windows.

“Well,” Hawk said, “definitely looks like a good place to do an information deal.”

He was right about that. We stepped through the doors, and no one even looked up.

A few patrons were slumped over the bar, and a couple of old guys crowded around a dartboard at the back.

I took a seat at a booth against the far wall.

Hawk stepped away to the bar and returned with two pints of beer.

These regular drinks wouldn’t give us a buzz—not that I wanted one for this meeting.

I was halfway through my beer when the door swung open again.

A skinny man in a dark beanie skittered inside and joined us at the booth.

He was wearing dark sunglasses that he didn’t remove, and his jacket was zipped all the way up to his chin.

If he was trying not to look suspicious, he was failing.

“Link,” I said. “Good to see you’re doing well.”

“Jesus Christ. Don’t say my name. It’s like you’ve never done this before.”

Link was a good source, but he’d always been a little antsy. But never quite like this. His hands twitched, and he shifted restlessly in the booth like he was moments from bolting.

“You have the info?” I asked.

Link unzipped his jacket just enough to reach inside it, and withdrew a brown envelope. He slid it across the table. I opened it and pulled out the papers inside.

“It’s all there.”

He’d managed to get a copy of Forrest’s recent bank statement. At the top, it confirmed the sheriff’s name and address. I furrowed my brow as I skimmed through the transactions.

“A lot of cash withdrawals,” Hawk said. “There’s two there—the day before the drugs were planted, and the day after.”

“Two payments,” I said. “Probably before and after the job was done.”

It was likely, but it wasn’t proof. I flipped the page and skimmed the second page of statements, brushing past a long list of gas tank fill-ups and fast-food stops, until one caught my eye. “Hawk, this familiar to you?”

He narrowed his eyes. “What is that? Some kind of refund?”

“Yeah, I don’t think so,” I said. A few thousand dollars had been deposited directly into Forrest’s account from Talon Drywall LLC. “That’s one of Sean’s shell companies.”

“Shit.” Hawk’s eyes widened in realization. “So, we were right.”

“Looks like it.”

“There’s something else there,” Link said. He jabbed his finger on a highlighted transaction at the bottom. It was an outgoing payment to a company I didn’t recognize.

“Lucky’s Towing?” I asked. “What’s this?”

“Another front,” Link said. “You might know the guy who runs this one. You remember Thames?”

“Jesus.” Hawk sat back in the booth and rubbed his hand over his forehead. “Forrest and Sean are mixed up with that old bastard?”

“Seems like,” Link said. “And you know he’s probably offering Thames something good since Thames wasn’t keen on returning to Lakeview after your clan ran him off the first time.”

I grunted in acknowledgment. I’d allowed Michel to be the only arms dealer in my territory, and when I had been in the business, he’d operated under my protection.

Part of that was because Michel only ran guns.

Thames, by contrast, would take money wherever he could find it, and that meant he was involved in less savory enterprises—things I didn’t want touching the edges of my territory.

Thames had agreed to my terms and left Lakeview behind.

Until now, apparently.

“This isn’t good,” Hawk said. “If Forrest and Thames are working with Sean, it’s because they want to. You know Sean doesn’t have the resources to get them to agree on money alone.”

“Thames thinks Sean actually has a shot at taking the territory,” I said. “And that would triple his business.”

Hawk nodded. “Sean takes the clan, Sean suddenly has control of all the Lakeview businesses and connections, and then Sean is suddenly a lucrative new cash cow for Thames.”

I tucked the bank statements back into the folder, then pulled an envelope with cash out of my jacket pocket. I slid it across the table to Link. “As promised. Good work as usual.”

“Anytime,” Link muttered. He always talked like he never wanted to work with me again, and yet, he always did. We shook hands briskly, and he nearly ran out of the bar.

“Call the enforcers,” I said to Hawk. “We need to meet.”

“Right now? It’ll be the middle of the night by the time?—”

“Right now,” I interrupted. “We need this on everyone’s radars.”

Hawk made the calls. When we arrived back at the clubhouse, the enforcers were already inside waiting: Rome, Tank, Tammy, and six other clan members. Only Striker was absent, since he was still on duty at my house.

“Thanks for meeting here on such short notice,” I said.

The enforcers murmured their acknowledgment. Everyone watched me with concern. I didn’t often call emergency meetings like this. We were all on edge, and the enforcers knew that a late-night meeting like this couldn’t mean anything good.

“We’ve got proof that Sean is paying Forrest off,” I said.

“Jesus, fuck,” Tank said.

“Seriously?” Tammy asked. “With what money?”

“That part we’re still working on,” Hawk said.

“We also know Forrest paid Thames, too.”

The room fell silent.

“I can only assume that means Sean is working with Thames, too,” I continued. “As you can guess, this complicates things.”

“What exactly are they trying to do?” Rome asked. “Take over Lakeview?”

“Probably,” Hawk said.