Page 7

Chapter Seven

Tynan

T he sight of Sutton covered in blood and carving up a man’s chest was almost as striking as the fucking scorpion tattooed across the expanse of her back. I couldn’t see all of it—the artwork obscured by the high waist of the spandex black shorts she was wearing and her black sports bra. But I could see enough.

The body of the poisonous creature started on her lower back, its pinchers completely hidden. But the massive tail traveled up the length of her spine, the needled tip curled at her nape.

It was a fucking statement.

Who was I kidding? All of Sutton Brant was a statement. From her pierced tits—the outline of the metal visible through the fabric of her sports bra—to her septum ring to her scorpion…her whole statement was, well, fuck around and find out.

And that piece of shit in the alleyway had found out.

Jack Kang. A nobody in the grand scheme of things, but a somebody to her. And this morning, I was going to find out why.

“What are we doing here?” she demanded, her hips defiantly perched to one side as she scanned the gym at the garage. The room was on the smaller side, but it had all the essentials. Rack of weights against the large mirror on the wall. Bench. Punching bag. Treadmill. And there was a small area in the center of the matted floor that was just big enough and empty enough for a brawl.

Still, I grabbed hold of the bench and moved it out of the way against the wall just in case.

Turning back to her, I met those charged, ice-blue eyes and told her, “We’re here to fight.”

Her eyes went wide. “What?”

I’d run through a hundred scenarios—a thousand ways to get Sutton to explain what the fuck I witnessed last night and what was really going on with her. But in each and every one of them, she refused to talk.

She had this expectation of me—of why I was here, what I was doing, what I wanted from her—and those expectations infuriated her.

But when I broke that mold…when I cooked dinner and waited for her to eat. When I watched her slice and dice some random drug dealer in an alleyway and then didn’t demand answers…those were the times I got through to her. When I got through her anger.

And that was why, after a night of no sleep, I’d come up with the idea to bring her here—to the gym at the garage.

She wanted a fight. The need was laced into every word, braided into every breath, stitched into every movement. So, I was going to give her one.

She’d behaved like a beautiful marionette of rage, anger pulling on her strings, directing her movements, until there was something sharp enough to cut through them. And if I needed to be that blade, then so be it; it was the least I could do for Jon.

“We’re going to fight,” I repeated, and then grabbed a rolled-up spare tee from the small set of shelves. “Put this on,” I said and tossed it to her.

It wasn’t a fair fight when I was having to battle myself to keep from staring at her pierced tits. It was bad enough her shorts outlined the curve of her ass, but her nipple piercings…all they tempted me to think was that this woman—my friend’s fucking daughter—might enjoy sex the way I did.

And that was a goddamn dangerous thought.

“Why are we fighting? Is this some kind of joke?” Her fist tightened around the fabric.

Goddamn, this woman was always on the defense. For Jon , I reminded myself.

“Because you’re pissed as fuck at something—someone. Maybe me. And the fact you’re going to have to tell me about it is only going to make you angrier.”

At that, her eyes flashed, and I knew I had her. “I don’t have to tell you anything.”

I chuckled low. “Yeah, Sutton, you fucking do.”

“Or I could just leave.” She threw the shirt back in my direction, but instead of catching the fabric, I lunged forward and caught her wrist. One yank sent her stumbling to the other side of the mat and then down to her knees.

Her head whipped over her shoulder, and her eyes glinted feral. I swore the tattoo on her back rippled as though the scorpion had come to life.

“If you can get past me, you’re welcome to leave,” I baited her. “If you can’t, you’re going to tell me why you carved ‘PIG’ into Jack Kang’s chest.”

I tossed the shirt back at her.

She looked at the shirt and back at me. “And why would I make this easy for you?”

I gritted my teeth as she chucked the shirt to the corner of the room and then lifted her arms in front of her, her hands balled into fists.

“You sure you can hit a girl?” she taunted as I mirrored her position.

Not a fucking chance was I going to actually hit her. I wouldn’t need to. But I wasn’t going to tell her that.

“Why would I make this easy for you?” I repeated her question.

Her lips curled. “Good.”

We moved slowly, inching closer to the center of the mat. Each of us feeling out the energy of the other. Sutton lunged for me first. Her strikes were smooth and swift, honed by all those years of training Jon had prided himself on.

But war provided a much different kind of training. One that had me easily blocking or sidestepping her blows.

“I thought you weren’t afraid to hit me,” she taunted.

“I’m not,” I returned, watching her steady herself and prepare for another strike. “You just haven’t given me a good reason to yet.”

Sutton snarled and charged at me again.

I stepped to the side as she threw her arm, but it was a fake. She threw her arm only so she could drive her shoulder into my gut.

My grunt was a mingle of surprise and pain as I fell back on the mat, Sutton’s shoulder pinning me down.

“I think you underestimated me,” she purred next to my ear with the soft tenor of victory, and then she was scrambling up to escape.

“I don’t think so.” I grabbed her wrist and pulled it over my head, making her fall flat on top of me.

“Let me go.” Her free fist connected with my side. Fuck. I launched my full weight and rolled us over so I was on top of her. For being so small, she didn’t even grimace under the whole of my weight.

Our eyes connected, heat sparking like a match against the tinderbox.

“Tell me what’s going on with you.”

“It’s none of your fucking business.”

I growled. “It is now.”

And she went wild. Bucking. Thrashing. Cursing. It felt like I was trying to control an exploding grenade with nothing more than the cover of my body.

My jaw locked, feeling every lithe muscle and soft curve of her small body as it pressed and arched against me. Even the metal studs through her nipples, I felt them indenting my chest. Vaguely, I wondered if she similarly could feel the bars piercing my cock as she tried to wriggle free from my hold.

“I’m not your enemy, Sutton.”

And then her anger flamed back to life. “No, you’re nobody to me. A stranger,” she spat. “Just because you were friends with my father doesn’t mean you know me—doesn’t mean you have a right to know me.”

She bared her pearly white teeth and slid her arm between us and began to press against my neck, forcing me back. “Go waste your hero complex on someone else.”

I felt the veins in my neck start to throb, blood pumping against the blockade. She was a good fighter. Even better in close combat like this, especially for someone her size. Right now, my strength didn’t matter because she had leverage, and that didn’t leave me much of a choice.

“Maybe I enjoy wasting it on you.”

Gasping in a breath, I rolled us again so she was on top, but because of where she’d positioned her arm, when we rolled, she went from facing me to laying on me with her back to my chest.

But now I had both her hands, and I locked her ankles with mine.

“Fuck,” Sutton swore low, knowing she was beat.

She struggled to move. Scrambled to get leverage. But she was nothing more than a fish out of water with her head and tail pinned in place.

I was in full control of everything except the way my dick turned to stone against her ass that wiggled and rocked along my length.

“What were you doing last night? Why did you go after Kang?” I demanded next to her ear, trying to ignore the faint scent of citrus on her skin.

“It’s none of your business.” She lifted her head, and I caught the movement before her skull dropped back. I turned my head just in time, so she managed to only headbutt my collarbone.

I swore because it still hurt like a bitch.

“Enough, Sutton.” Growling, I easily encircled both her wrists with one hand and wrapped my other arm over her front and clasped my palm over her throat.

I held her tight enough so she knew I meant business, but not so tight that she couldn’t still easily breathe.

“You’re my fucking business now,” I rumbled, her head now tipped back onto my shoulder, our faces separated only by the small diameter of her arm that I held above her head. “Mine,” I heard myself repeat for a reason I couldn’t explain.

Only then did she finally still. Like she’d never been fought for before. The heartbreaking thought was like a wrecking ball to my chest.

“Tell me what happened. Let me help you.”

“He asks with his hand around my neck,” she mocked.

I gave it a second, unsure if this was the right move, but damn sure that I needed to let go of her softness for my own sanity.

I released her neck first. Then her legs. And finally, her wrists. In a blink, she was off of me, crawling to the wall and resting her back against it.

“I don’t need your help,” she muttered.

Goddamn, I wondered what her defiance tasted like. If it was sweet and strong or sharp and swift. I wondered what it would taste like to dominate her mouth. Her body. To have all that rage taken out on my cock and to feel the depth of her submission when she came.

Fuck.

I stood and grabbed two water bottles from the case next to the door.

“You don’t have a choice.” I extended one of the bottles to her.

Her lips cracked open, and it was then that the last of the fight left her. Like the last leaf of autumn giving way to the bare necessity of winter.

“What’s going on, Sutton?” I growled and stalked toward the door before I could no longer hide what I was thinking.

I rested my back against the door and crossed one ankle over the other. Even though I beat her, I didn’t trust that she still wouldn’t try to make some kind of escape rather than answer me.

Sutton looked away from me—stared blankly ahead of her for a second before fitting that fiery mouth around the top of the water bottle and drinking slowly.

Maybe she knew exactly how she was torturing me, and that was why she did it.

“Four weeks ago, my best friend, Mara, went missing.”

“The one whose apartment you broke into?”

She gave a small nod. “I went there looking for her.”

“After four weeks?”

Her eyes darted to the ground for a nanosecond—just long enough to tell me there was more to the story.

“We’d gotten into a big argument four weeks ago. She said some things. We weren’t exactly talking for a few weeks because I was trying to give her time to cool down, so I didn’t realize…” She trailed off, but the look on her face was one I was familiar with.

Guilt . I saw that same damn look, the one littered with invisible scars of regret and immeasurable pain of remorse, every morning in the mirror.

“She was dating Jack Kang,” she revealed. “He was the reason we argued.”

“Did you report it to the police?”

“No, I regularly just start stabbing people for answers,” she retorted, her tone drenched with snark.

I growled low, demanding the truth.

“Yes, I went to the police. They didn’t believe me. They said she probably just left on her own.”

“Why would they think that?”

“Because women are legal prey.”

My eyebrow rose.

Her lips pursed. “Guess you don’t remember all of the book then.”

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

“I remember the gist.” I didn’t need to recall the exact phrases to remember the underlying theme of the story and the injustices it tried to highlight.

“When I got out of juvie, Mara was mixed up with the wrong crowd. And when I told the police she was missing, they seemed to have already decided that she was just one more druggie who disappeared to fuel her degenerate lifestyle and not worth their effort.”

“But the two of you argued?”

Anger flashed on her face. “It didn’t matter. It was just an argument. Just words. Minutes of anger wouldn’t erase our entire friendship. I was texting Mara, and it was going to be okay.”

“How do you know?”

She jerked like the question was a spear in her side and then glared at me. “Because Mara and I were more than friends. In case you hadn’t noticed, I got the short end of the shit stick when it came to family. She’s the only reason I have any idea what that word means.”

A bead of sweat trailed down the side of my face. Hearing the pain in her voice when she talked about her past, it created a physical response in my body like I was being tortured. The stress. The adrenaline. The urge to say or do anything to get the pain to stop, but knowing no matter what I said, it would only make things worse.

I took another drink of water, trying to swallow down the guilt that wouldn’t stay settled. It wasn’t my fucking fault. I’d had no idea what she was dealing with, but neither did it feel like I had an excuse.

“She was all I had after my dad died. After Mom…she was the only person who wrote to me while I was away.”

My throat tightened, knowing exactly how she felt. Her father had been that for me—a mentor and friend who’d kept me on the right path. And Harm and the guys had filled out my found family. Thank God, because without them…without this…I would’ve been lost when Jon died.

But while I had a crew of loyal friends to pick me up, Sutton had been a teenager with only a teenage best friend for support. It wasn’t nothing; I wasn’t saying that. But it sure as hell wasn’t enough.

“Sutton,” I croaked.

For an instant, I saw the woman behind the warrior. The one who was wounded and ravaged. Who’d had no one to support her…console her…except her best friend, who was also a fucking child at the time.

And just as quickly, the warrior returned.

“Mara was the only one who fought for me when I needed her. I sure as hell am not going to sit back and do nothing when I know something happened—when I know something is wrong.”

“And Jack has something to do with her disappearance?”

The muscle in her jaw tightened.

“The security guard who called the police on me…he told me the last time he saw Mara, she’d been leaving with Jack.” Her words slowed like she was being more careful which ones she let out. I made note of it for later. “When I asked Jack about Mara, he said we couldn’t talk in the club, so he led me outside. Once we were in the alley, he told me if I wanted answers, I had to be willing to give him something in return.”

The way she said the word something left no doubt as to what Jack had meant. Instantly, I regretted pulling the knife from his hand.

No, I didn’t regret that. I regretted not removing it from his hand and replacing it through his fucking eye.

Sutton’s head jerked in my direction, and only then did I realize I’d crushed the water bottle—still half-filled—in my hand, water running down my fingers and forearm and dripping onto the floor.

Her eyes met mine, and she finished, “I was unwilling.”

“So, it was self-defense,” I muttered low.

“No. It was a fucking lesson,” she spat, and I forced myself to breathe because otherwise the tug of war between admiration and absolute fury would’ve torn me in two.

“What did he tell you?” I asked as I trashed the mangled bottle and grabbed a towel to wipe my arm dry.

When she didn’t answer right away, I looked at her—met her sharpened stare for a split second before she replied.

“That Mara disappeared on him, too,” she said and tipped her head back against the wall. “He said he brought her to the club, and they’d argued. She’d told him our fight was eating at her, and she was realizing I was right and that she was leaving him. She left the club, and he hasn’t seen her since.”

I watched the steady oscillation of her breath. The immovable expression on her face. Damn, she was a beautiful liar.

“I see,” I rumbled and rubbed my hand along my jaw. “And he didn’t worry something bad happened?”

Her brow lifted too sharply, it cut my breath like a knife.

“Worry? You think the man who was ready to assault me would worry about anyone other than himself?” She snorted. “Yeah, right.”

I folded my arms. “Well, rumor has it, Kang is involved with the Wah Ching.”

Sutton rolled her eyes. “He’s not with the gang. He just wants to be.”

“How do you know that?”

Her back straightened against the wall. “Because Mara told me he was a Blue Lantern—like being uninitiated in the Wah Ching gang made it any better. I told her she was a fucking idiot for dating him and to get out before she couldn’t.”

I grunted, unsure if that one was a lie or not.

“Are you satisfied now?”

My gaze whipped to hers. Satisfied. I wasn’t sure satisfied would ever be something I’d feel in Sutton’s presence. Not unless some serious fucking boundaries were crossed.

“No.”

All this, and she still wouldn’t trust me with the whole truth. But she had given me some of it, and maybe that would be enough for now.

Enough to get her to trust me with more.

“No?” She rose from the ground, folding her arms over her as she came up to me. “Planning on reporting all this to Daws then?”

I winced. After all this, she still was more prepared to believe I’d rather be rid of her than the truth.

“Fuck no,” I rasped and inched closer, watching her pulse thrum against the side of her neck. “I’m going to help you find Mara.”

Her eyes grew wide as I approached her. “What?” she gasped. “How?”

“Come with me.”

“What is this place?”

I hesitated, wondering if I should’ve thought a little longer before bringing her to my office.

Her expression didn’t alter as she scanned the high-tech space, but I knew better than to think she wasn’t taking it all in…and wondering.

“Security for the garage.”

Her pierced brow lifted. The first and only crack in her facade. “Seems a little excessive.”

Clenching my jaw, I tapped on the keyboard to wake my computer up.

“We work on a lot of expensive bikes.”

Sutton offered me a flat stare and a slightly tipped mouth in reply.

I cleared the white lie from my throat; I wasn’t the one who had to answer for my secrets.

“I need all the information you have on Mara.”

Her full lips tightened, and I could see her rolling the answers around on her tongue, tasting them first to make sure they wouldn’t betray whatever it was she was hiding before she finally put her voice to them.

“Her name is Mara Chen.” She stepped in front of my desk, my computer screens blocking everything right up to the level of her tits. Her pierced nipples taunted me above the edge.

For the next couple of minutes, she rattled off details about her best friend. Her birthday. The address of her apartment in the city. Phone number. Most of the information, I was able to pull instantly from her license as soon as I ran her name and date of birth, but I didn’t say anything.

Mara seemed to be the one thing she was comfortable talking about, and I just wanted Sutton at ease, even if it was only for a few minutes.

“So now what? You call the police and try to get a different response?” She folded her arms and turned away, giving me a close-up of the scorpion on her back.

I hadn’t noticed before, but there were smaller flowers tucked against the creature—the same kind as the ones that bloomed on her shoulders. At the base of her spine was the head of the beast, its two arms stretching to the side and down, its pinchers disappearing below the waist of her shorts. It wasn’t a stretch of the imagination to realize they stopped at the top of her ass.

I wondered how long she’d sat for the tattoo artist to ink her. How naked she’d been.

I shifted in my chair, moving closer to the desk just in case she decided to look over the edge of the computer monitors and see how fucking unacceptably hard I was.

“No. No police.” I left it at that. Better she think it was for her reasons than for my own. Considering what we really did here at Sherwood, we tried to avoid the police when at all possible. “When was your last communication with Mara?”

Sutton reached for her phone. “A week ago, she liked a text message I sent her. I sent more, asking if we could talk. Begging. But she didn’t reply—didn’t even read the messages. I gave it a couple of days before I went over there. That’s when the guard told me she’d left with Kang. First, I went to the police, but when they brushed it off, I went back to the apartment, thinking I could maybe find something inside before I went to find Jack.”

And then she’d been delivered here. For breaking and entering.

“All right.” I reached for my cell until I found Creed’s number.

“Who are you—” She practically snarled at me when I held up a finger to stop her from talking.

“Tynan,” Creed’s deep voice answered. “It’s been a long time.”

“Too long,” I returned.

Creed Stone had been part of Jon’s unit. I’d replaced him on that final mission because he’d been recruited to the Secret Service. The man was a mountain. Strong, reserved, and deadly. But it wasn’t only his military skills I was after—it was his unconventional upbringing.

Creed and his five siblings had been raised off-grid by their father in Wyoming. He didn’t talk too much about his past—none of us really did—but he had shared that his family had gone into business as trackers. Hunters for hire. They went after bounties. For missing people. Missing things. Anything that was missing, they’d find it.

And right now, I needed Mara Chen found.

“I’m calling because I need your services,” I said, holding Sutton’s gaze the entire time. “I have a girl I need found. Friend of Jon’s daughter.”

He made a low noise. “Last seen?”

“Her apartment in San Francisco.”

“I’ll need all the information you have.”

“Sending it over now,” I said as I sent the email with all the information Sutton had given me.

“It’ll be either my brother Colt or I that come out. We’ll be in touch when we have something.”

“Thanks. And whatever the fee is?—”

“No fee,” he interrupted. “Not for Jon.”

“Thanks, brother,” I said lowly and ended the call.

“Who was that?” Sutton propped her hands on the edge of the desk and tipped forward like she was ready to fight—like we hadn’t just fought and I’d won. Soundly.

“Creed Stone.” I stood and leaned forward, putting our faces close above the desk. “Him and his family…they find missing things.”

“Things or people?”

“Both.”

She gave her head a small shake. “Had I known you were just going to call someone else, I never would’ve?—”

“You don’t have a choice when it comes to my help, Sutton, so you better get the fuck over thinking that you do.”

She jerked her arms back like the desk was suddenly scalding and straightened.

“Why’d you mention my dad?”

“Because he was part of your dad’s unit.”

Her expression blanched, but she recovered quickly. “I see.”

“They’re the best at what they do,” I told her low. “If anyone can find out what happened to Mara without mutilating half the city, they can.”

Her gaze narrowed. “We’ll see.”