Mine: Black Sparks MC (6 page)

"No, she's smart. She'll do what she has to do to survive. You, more than anybody, should know the dangers of underestimating what she's capable of."

Nick watched his grip tighten on his glass of whiskey. He grabbed the bottle and poured himself another two fingers, slamming it down. Tryg watched him, the younger man knew the club president could read him, could see the memories clouding his face.

"Besides, even if she's not involved directly, that doesn't mean she can't be useful to us," he said.

Nick didn't like the sound of that at all; Tryg was honorable; Nick wouldn't have joined the Black Sparks if he didn't trust him. However, he was also a master manipulator; he used people before they even caught onto the fact that they were being used. He made them think they were getting something out of the arrangement when, really, they were eating right out of his hand. And Liana didn't deserve to be used even if she'd destroyed his trust and proved herself unreliable. On the other hand, Nick owed everything to Tryg; he was the one who'd taken him in after he'd been released after a year in Circleville, keeping him off the streets, giving him a place to live, making him a prospect and patching him in under a year, letting him move up into the ranks as his unofficial protégé. He'd been the first person to recognize promise in a throwaway kid, one everybody else had given up on – including Liana.

The hard line of his jaw softened. "Look at this way, kid. We both know you've moved on. You don't need her anymore. If there's one thing I know, it's that shitty things happen all the time. And you can't dwell on them. You admit they were shitty, then you move on. You use them. And, right now, you need to use them to help us. That's how you got to where you were. Because you're smart, and you can be trusted. Think of Liana being here as an opportunity for you to put it behind you once and for all."

He took a last swig from his glass and thought back to what he'd said in the garage that had so upset Liana she'd run out on him. He shouldn't have brought up Circleville. He should have been better than that. After all, she'd tried to
help
him and, in return, he'd made her feel like shit for something that happened six years ago, for something she couldn't change, even if she wanted to. He knew she would. In fact, he'd known the second he saw Liana in the garage, eyes widely gaping at his bloody wound, that she'd insist on helping patch him up, and it killed him that, after all this time, he still knew her so well.

That was one of the things that had drawn him to her, the fact that underneath her haughty façade, she had a genuinely kind and giving nature. She did art projects with her nieces and helped them put on plays; she volunteered to teach Sunday school. She was afraid of spiders, but he still remembered how she would shriek when she one, then trap them it in a paper towel and toss it out the window rather than killing it. That was why her betrayal had hurt, like acid in a wound that had not yet begun to heal. He thought of the bullet that had grazed him, aching.

Not like it really mattered now, anyway.

"I'll do it," he said, staring at the liquor bottles behind the bar so hard they started to swim before his eyes. He made an effort not to think of that summer they'd met, how the sweat used to glisten on her upper lip as she tipped her head back to laugh.

Tryg took the bottle from Nick's hand, reached up to place his empty glass in the bar sink. He flicked the lights off in the bar as they started across the lawn toward the garage, and the Ryans' house a few blocks down.

There was too much history behind them, anyway, for things to ever be the same again between them. She would never be the girl who brought him cold Cokes when he was exhausted from digging fence posts in her stepdad's garden, and he would never be the boy who sat with his sweaty, glistening back up against the shed and made her laugh by doing bad impressions of the school gym teacher they both hated.

"Now get to bed. You look like hell." Tryg clapped Nick on the back. "You can walk home, can't you? And take it easy on that bullet wound."

Nick's jaw dropped, but Tryg had already disappeared in his house and shut the door. Nick, too tired to put up a fight, obeyed and started toward the garage, a walk he'd made a thousand times, though it was different now, knowing Liana Ryan was back in Prudence. She was breathing the same air, seeing the same houses and fences and apple trees. The air felt thicker, somehow, more pregnant with tension, with history, and he tried to keep his wits about him as he made his way through the Ryan’s yard and up the back stairs to his tiny apartment above the garage.

He tossed his jacket on a chair and collapsed on the bed. His shoulder still throbbed, but the pain seemed mitigated now as he rubbed it, thinking of the woman whose hands alone seemed to contain a kind of healing. He'd be lying if his nerves didn't come alive at the thought of her hands brushing across on his bare skin, hesitantly at first, then more confident, tiny but strong. Trying to keep his eyes on the floor instead of the oval of golden skin between her breasts, above her V-neck t-shirt, of her chapped lip as she bit down in concentration, making them rosy.

But could she really be involved with the Vipers?
he thought as his hand absently drifted down to undo the front of his jeans. There was no harm in it now, he told himself. He'd already been punished for wanting her, had paid as big a price as a man can pay, short of his life. That was too much to speculate on; he'd rather, just for a second, though he knew it was dangerous, remember how Liana had looked in the doorway of the garage, the bright moonlight behind her like a silver stream in the brownish-green grass. Time had ripened her, filled her out; she had come into her looks. She was no longer the petite, soft, pouty-lipped girl with deposits of baby fat sitting on her cheeks and hips. She had cheekbones now, her face sculpted and womanly, and she was taller. But her dark-blonde hair still cascaded down her back, and she still had the deep, honest concern in her oval, honey-colored eyes, the ones that had bewitched him so long ago, that made him want to be better. Her epic curves like a question mark, asking him eternal riddles, ones whose answers he never could find.

CHAPTER NINE

Liana had long given up on the cat, but she told herself she'd wait a little longer in case she decided to show. She sat on the back porch in darkness except for the overhead light that buzzed yellow, a few curious insects circling it, checking it out. It was too early in the year for crickets; in fact, it was kind of eerily quiet out there. Up above, the half-moon lay shrouded in misty silver clouds that had rolled in. She froze on the steps when she heard the voices, the hairs on the back of her arms and legs standing up like soldiers, one by one. She wasn't alone.

You're in Ohio. You're safe.

It was her uncle, and he was talking to Nick. She hadn't heard her name, but she was certain they'd been discussing her mere moments before. She wondered what Nick had told her uncle, how savagely he'd indicted her for her betrayal, for her duplicity. Her face burned to think of it. Sure, she was family, but Nick, as the Black Spark, was family, too--and she had fucked him over, royally and utterly, and now that Tryg knew it, there were bound to be consequences. She wasn't looking forward to facing the music tomorrow, but she could only hope that Kirrily's sympathy would keep Tryg from judging her too harshly. If he threw her out, she'd really be up the creek.

She heard the front door open and close and she relaxed briefly. Tryg had gone inside. Until she heard footsteps round the corner of her house. It was Nick, of course, hands jammed into his pockets, his strong, broad shoulders hunched over into his jacket, a slight lump where the bandages were. He stopped once, briefly, as if he'd hear something, straightening up, looking over his shoulder, if he had noticed the light on the back porch, as if he knew someone might be watching him. She held her breath.

He looked up to the moon, to lacy clouds that veiled it and, somehow, she knew immediately what he was thinking about. Of course he was. He may have moved on, because he was man enough to do that, but what he said to her in the garage made it all too clear to her that her sin was too great to forgive. She'd ruined it. The moonlight wasn't strong enough to illuminate his features, but her imagination made up the rest, to those full, pillowy lips and earnest green-gold eyes she had once coveted so shamelessly--until her cowardice had ruined it all.

I'm sorry,
she mouthed, as if, somehow, he could hear her, that the words would travel over the air and reach him, though they never had before. She wondered if there was anything left she could do to make them.

***

"I don't think it worked," Nick said in the bar the next day, as he dropped the crystal into Kirrily's hand. He knew Tryg must have already told her everything about what had happened with the shipment. He'd ripped off the bandages since Liana had patched him up last night, done a shitty job of trying to reapply them, them gave up. What could it hurt, anyway? Getting gangrene couldn't be any worse than what he'd already been through. He straightened up, puzzled. “What?”

Kirrily turned the crystal over in her hand, then raised her eyes to study Nick's face. He shifted uncomfortably; nobody ever looked that intensely at him without having an ulterior motive. "Of course it did. You're still alive.” She smiled at him and slid it back across the bar.  Nick wondered what she'd be saying if she knew what his shoulder looked like under his shirt. She seemed to sense his hesitation. “Are you sure nothing else happened out there, Nick?” she said gently. “You know, there are other ways of healing.” Nick staring down at the crystal, as if he expected it to move, to speak, as it somehow held some answer he couldn't see, but Kirrily could. "It's just that, your aura...something changed since I saw you last.  The space you're in—it doesn't feel healthy." She grabbed his hand, catching his eyes in that motherly way, making it impossible for him not to take her seriously. He shifted uncomfortably, as if she could see right through his clothes, to the bloody wound beneath. "Well, getting shot at and stolen from will do that.”

No," she said closing her eyes briefly. "It's not that. There's a different color. It's like something from your past has resurfaced. Something you tried to forget." She opened her eyes and blinked back at him, her dark eyes swirling like crystal balls. “It's Liana, isn't it?”

Nick tried to extricate himself. “It doesn't matter. I'll be fine. I'll stay away from her.”

“That's not going to work, Nick. You can't run from this. You have to use it. Now's your chance to make it right.”

“Nothing about me and Liana can ever be right.”

Kirrily leaned forward calmly, her impressive arm muscles flexing underneath her black ribbed tank top. “That's your head talking, not your soul.”

“Fuck my soul. What has it ever done for me?”

A lesser medium might have taken offense at this. But Kirrily just smiled in that knowing way she had. “More than you think.”

***

Later, outside the bar, Nick showed Tomahawk the address on the receipt he'd found in the cab of the hijacked truck.

The tall redhead turned it over in his hands, whistling softly to himself. "You know where this is, right?" he asked, the cloudless atmosphere of the brisk spring morning highlighting his ruddy features.

Nick had slipped out of the garage as early as he could that morning, looking forward to getting on the road, even if the house turned out to be a dead end. He told himself it was just because he looked forward to clearing his head. Occasionally he went to Tryg's for a cup of coffee or a piece of toast, but he knew that wasn't happening--and wouldn't as long as Liana was there.

"North side of Cincinnati," Nick said. "So what?"

"Dude, you've heard of Pill Hill, where the doctors live?"

Nick frowned as he opened the saddlebag and took out his driving gloves. "Yeah? So?"

"Well, that's nothing compared this place. This is where the HMO executives live. The kind of place with helicopters pads on the roof."

"Dude, nobody has a private helicopter in Cincinnati."

Tomahawk handed him back the piece of paper, blinking at him like a sage. "You'd be surprised."

CHAPTER TEN

"Looking for something?"

Nick froze, then looked up from the name on the mailbox he'd been examining, and into the face that blinked out at him from behind the wrought-iron fence where he had pulled up on his bike, still half-straddled.

The tall, willowy woman looked older than him by a decade or two. She was dressed in a skintight white, long-sleeved dress that looked like it had been made out of some space-age fabric. Her platinum-blonde hair was groomed and shiny as if she'd coated it with something, and when she swayed toward him on white flat sandals to open the gate, it was as if she had dollar bills under her feet to soften the noise.  He tried not to startle as she reached up to press a code on an electronic keypad. In a second, the gate had swung open.

He looked down to gather his thoughts, putting the bike in neutral and moving it slowly forward as the gate creaked open. He did his usual athletic hop off the bike and took a step back, feeling scrutinized, sized up, even though he'd come there to do the scrutinizing. The woman's eyes drifted down to the logo on his jacket identifying him as VP of the Black Sparks. Recognition dawned.

"So you're Nicholas Stone," she said, her raspberry-colored lips parting in a bemused smile. "I'm Helena Kinski. I think we need to talk."

He parked his bike where she indicated, in front of a stone fountain that looked like something out of a storybook someone had once read to him. Nick took off his helmet and ran his hand through his hair nervously. He prided himself on being able to handle just about any woman you could name, but, for some reason, this woman, who reeked of money and privilege, made angst bubble up inside him. Maybe because it reminded him too much of his time at Noel Richardson’s--of being a have-not living among the haves. Of knowing precisely just how much power they held over him, and not being able to do anything about it.

"Ever since I read about that Chillicothe truck being hijacked, I figured one of you would show up at my door. Can I get you anything?" she asked, ushering him in the open front door, through the front hall, and into the palatial kitchen, opening the gigantic stainless-steel refrigerator.

Nick tried not to gape like a peasant at the ivory parquet floor or the curling staircase up the ceiling, or the floor to ceiling bay windows looking out at the lake beyond. "Yeah," he said. "You can tell me where it is."

She tipped her head back and laughed. "That's what I like about you outlaws. You're so blunt. You're going to point a gun at me if I don't tell you what I know?"

"I haven't decided yet," he said, figured he could at least enjoy the repartee until she proved dangerous. "What do you know?"

"I know Tryg, and I knew he would send his errand boy instead of coming himself," she said.

He knew she was taking him in, from the crown of his said down to his boots that were probably tracking spring mud all over her clean floors. "Errand boy? What, you think this is a trip to the post office? There was almost half a million worth of steel in that truck."

"I know. Tryg doesn't exactly do small potatoes."

“You act like you know him.”

"I make it my business to know all of the one-percenters around here. Force of habit, I guess. I grew up around them back in Cleveland. Can I offer you something or not?"

"Yeah," said Nick, eyeing the wheeled rosewood liquor cabinet, his eyes gleaming a bit hungrily. What the hell? "Scotch."

"Brilliant idea," she said, going to cabinet and taking out two glasses and a bottle of Lagavulin.

Nick had never had it, but he'd been to enough liquor stores to know that one bottle of that stuff cost more than he made in a month. "You drink Scotch at nine in the morning?" he asked, slightly amused.

"You’re the one who suggested it."

"I didn't think you'd actually say yes."

She didn't reply, merely plopped two ice cubes in the glass with little silver tongs and handed it to him, its peaty aroma strong enough to send him reeling. He drank it greedily, relishing the taste of something they didn't serve back at the Black Sparks clubhouse.

"I've known for some time that my husband is mixed up in some dangerous stuff," she said as she led him out onto the lawn. She started down stone steps built into the hillside. Nick trotted at her heels, patting his back pocket to reassure himself the gun was there if she tried anything, though he didn’t yet know what that might be. Below them, a small lake glistened, its water open except for a tiny island of ice that still sat in the center. A rowboat sat on the landing.

A schnauzer bounded back with a pinecone in his mouth, dropping it at Nick's feet with a look of expectation that was almost entitled. He couldn't hide a grin as he bent down to pick it up, grateful for the distraction, and to mitigate his discomfort in this strange milieu. Helena made no move to stop him as he lobbed it like a baseball pitcher, as far as it would go, watching the dog take off like a slingshot.

"He won't be back for a while," she laughed. "He's no retriever. Anyway, my husband came back from Russia last year after meeting with the arms dealers. I don't like these people; they scare me, in fact. But I don't have a lot of say in it. Back when I lived in Cleveland, my dad was a semi-legitimate businessman who took out a loan from the Vipers, using me as collateral." She stopped speaking, as if the even the memory jolted her.

"He didn't pay it back, did he?" asked Nick after a beat.

"When Dad got me back from the Vipers, he asked me to describe where I was, but I told him there wasn't much a view from the plastic bag over my head." She stared down at her feet and, as she blinked, Nick could see the fragility in her eyes. All of a sudden, he saw a reflection of the frightened girl she'd been, used as merely a tool in her father's dreams of power.

It was a look that was strangely familiar to him. Liana briefly flitted across his mind, though he quickly forced her out. She didn't deserve his sympathy--and Helena Kinski probably didn't either.

"But it was okay. He turned to Liam, and Liam got me out. Well not so much Liam, but his money." She kicked a splinter of wood into the lake with the toe of her sandal. "Even if I divorce him, I don't get a dime. He ensured that when he made me sign. I'm less a resident in this house than a piece of the furniture. Even the housekeeper doesn't listen to me." She laughed.

"Are you sure she speaks English?" asked Nick slyly.

"You know, I'm going to have to check on that," chuckled Helena. "I've got Rory, though," she said patting the dog who had grown bored with waiting for someone to come chase him and decided to come back with a pinecone--a smaller one, Nick was pretty sure, than the one he had thrown. "I suppose it's my own fault. If he got involved with some unsavory characters once, it shouldn't have surprised me that he did so again. But I can't blatantly undermine him with the Russians. There are other ways, though," she said, and Nick felt her fingers graze across the fabric of his jeans. Nick felt his thigh stiffen, the heat of her hand awakening something inside him--something he knew he really couldn’t afford to awaken. Not now.

"What if I said I knew how you could get your shipment back?" she said, walking her fingers over Nick's shoulder, caressing the skin near his wound, almost as if she knew it was there. He hissed, more in anticipation of pain than the real thing. "Shhh. It's okay."

Her body heat radiated some kind of intoxicating scent, like lavender-flavored ice cream at some upscale restaurant Tryg had once taken the Sparks to for his and Kirrily’s anniversary party.

"Tryg should be ashamed of himself," she whispered when she saw the wound. "Sending you to do something he knew damn well was dangerous."

Nick dropped his gaze. He should have expected something like this, should have been clever enough to avoid it. "I fucked up. Not him."

"That's what he wants you to think to keep you in line. And now he's punishing you for something he should have known wasn't your fault."

Her bold blue eyes blinked again, as if she were seeing into him, looking down a long telescope into his soul, into his history, into a childhood that had been basically been defined by false accusations, of being setting up to fail. She couldn't possibly know what had happened with Liana, could she? No. She was manipulating him, doing the equivalent of a TV psychic, making vague hints and allowing him to fill in the rest. And he should have been putting a stop to it. Problem was, most of the women he so skillfully avoided weren't this bold--or this rich. He tensed further, and he knew she felt it.

She started massaging a knot, right where it felt the best. "And you've been kept in line for too long. Like a good little errand boy."

"I told you." He shifted his shoulder away. "I'm not going against Tryg. He's the closest thing I've ever had to a father. Don't you understand--"

"Don't
you
understand?" she leaned in closer, whispering intensity. "You don't have to. I can help you get that shipment back from the Vipers and more. Tryg won't know what hit him." Nick frowned. "No violence. No blood. We'll just make it so he'll know he can't tell you what to do anymore." He dodged her gaze. "Look at me, Nicholas," she said, touching his chin to tilt his face up, using his full name in a way that seemed strangely authoritative, like a schoolteacher or a parent. Maybe it was her age, but strangely enough, it wasn't unsexy. "It's okay." He blinked at her. She laughed softly. "Why are you are you so hesitant? Why can't you relax and just," she said, "go with it?"

He squirmed and shoved her away, turning his back, though not fast enough to miss how her lips turned up in sultry laughter.  Everything about this was foolish, he knew. She may not be overtly coming onto him, but she also hadn't gotten to where she was by being demure. A woman in her position knew her sexuality was her most important tool—because most men were weak enough to fall for it. Nick knew he couldn't afford to be one of these men. "I can help you. We can both finally get what we deserve – to finally be our own people, to live freely. That's a promise. "

He extricated himself and turned away, trying to reassert his dominance, to try to show her that  she couldn't jerk him around like a dog on a leash. "Promises are worthless," he growled.

"Then don't consider it a promise," she whispered. "Consider it a vow." As if on cue, his phone buzzed from the pocket of his jeans. He tore away, still half in a daze, signaling to Helena as he ducked behind a stand of fir trees, under which sat a wrought-iron bench. Above him, a chickadee flitted from branch to branch. It was almost peaceful here, despite the adrenaline that had begun to course through him. "Tryg, can't it wait? I'm kind of in the middle of something."

"In the middle of something, or in the middle of someone?" Nick could barely hear the club president chortling derisively over the atmospheric noise. Nick tried to laugh off Tryg's comment, hoping the older man wouldn't realize he was onto something.  "Anyway, where were you this morning?" Tryg demanded.

"What do you mean?" Nick crumbled a piece of peeling bark between his fingers, watching it rain down on his boots, suddenly feeling very vulnerable. Helena almost skipped down the hill after her schnauzer, pausing once to glance back at him, a tempting gaze. He glanced up at the window of the house, wondering if there was anybody else home.

"Kirrily said you didn't even stop by the house for breakfast."

"I wasn't hungry."

"I don't care."

“Sorry, I didn't realize the sovereign lord required his serfs to pay tribute on a daily basis," said Nick, angrier than he meant it to sound.

Tryg didn't even miss a beat. "I do when we have a highly useful guest living inches living inches away from you. She could be the key to unlocking this whole thing."

Nick wasn't sure he believed that, but he was willing to entertain the fact that Tryg was right.

"Well, I talked to Ted Rogers at Chillicothe, and he told me he doesn't want you supervising the next shipment. We're already absurdly lucky that he's even willing to give us another chance. He's worried about putting you in charge, Nick. He thinks you can't be relied on after what happened. He thinks you can't hold your own against the Vipers. I told him you're my best man, and that I trust you with my life, but he wasn't buying it."