Twisted Mercy (Red Team Book 4) (23 page)

“Yeah. We’ll be there.”

Max straightened and nodded at Kit. “Get there ahead of us and scope out an exit for him.”

* * *

Hope realized the next morning that she was beginning to feel at home on the compound. The guys were falling over themselves to have her do some repair or tune-up on their bikes. She was glad for the work; it gave her an excuse to be there. Besides, most of them were willing to trade labor or household items, like pots and pans and a dinette set. Made for a mishmash of décor, but she didn’t care. She didn’t intend to be there long.

A shadow moved across Hope as she leaned over a carburetor she was rebuilding. When she looked up to see who had come into her shop, Mads was standing there, looking oh-so fine. Hope’s heart kicked in a few extra beats. He was still as rough and edgy as before, but she’d been lying to herself when she said she didn’t find him attractive. Her mind flashed to the feel of his beard on the inside of her thigh as he’d knelt between her bound legs last night. She had to still her hands from an instinctive move to check her hair; the gloves she wore were covered in grease.
 

“Hi,” she said, as nonchalantly as her dry mouth would allow.

He looked at her and nodded, then focused on the guys lounging around by the back of the shop. “Get out,” he ordered them.

“She’s working on my bike,” Axle snapped.

“She’s gonna take a break. Get out.”

“How long's she going to be?” the biker asked.

“As long as I want. She’ll park it outside when she’s finished. Don’t come around asking about it. You’ll know when it’s done.”

“No. I need it for the run.”

Mads flashed a look at the carburetor Hope was working on. “Not happening. She’ll get it done tomorrow.”

Axle slowly crossed the room, moving to stand in Mads’ face. “I’ll go when my bike’s done.”

“Your carburetor has been shit for a week. Your maintenance procrastination doesn’t make your bike her emergency. Find someone to ride bitch with tonight. Your bike’ll be done when it’s done.”

“Pete never should have given the wrench to you.”

“But he did. And she’s mine. So take a hike.”

Hope nodded at the guys as they left her garage. “What run?” It was possible she could get Axle’s bike done in time.

“Down to Cheyenne Frontier Days. Wanna go?”

“I really can’t. Axle’s right. I need to get his bike finished—I have three more behind it.”

Mads grinned and folded his arms as he leaned a hip against her workbench. Heat poured through her veins, a molten reminder of their time together last night. And God, his apadravya. She couldn’t look at him without thinking about how it felt to have him slowly penetrate her with that piercing.
 

“Sure. I understand. I’ll let your brother know you had to work.”

His words took a second to filter through her lust haze. She frowned. “He’s going, too?” This could be it, could be the day they get him out!

“He is.”

“Then yes, I’ll go!” She jumped forward to hug him, completely forgetting about her greasy gloves. He caught her wrists and pulled her up against his body, holding her hands clear. “Sorry.” She braced her forearms on his shoulders, holding her hands in the air. Mads lifted her and turned to set her on a clear patch of her workbench. He moved between her legs and leaned over her, his hands braced on the wood.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

His warm, rumbling voice and his intense focus again filled her mind with their nocturnal activities. She was sore, but those aches seemed minor as a new heat filled her body. She schooled her features as she tried to hide her reaction from him. “Fine.”

“Good. I’d like you to be the club mechanic for the run, so bring your tools.”

Hope’s heart started a fierce thumping in her ribs as a new thought occurred to her. “Is this it? Are we getting him out today?”

Mads shook his head. “No. I just want to get him out of his insulated world for a bit, start easing him back to reality.”

“What if he doesn’t want to leave?”

“He’s not going to want that yet. Your presence here means the world he thought was real isn’t. That’s a lot of news to chew on.”

“What if he tells on us?”

Mads grinned, warrior through and through. “What if?”

“The club could turn on us.”

“Not gonna happen.” Hope was unconvinced. Mads’ face tightened. “If you’re worried, I could crash here. Just until you head out. On the couch, of course.”

Hope studied his face, trying to read his shuttered expression. He’d saved her the very first day she arrived. He’d made more progress in a day with her brother than she’d been able to in a week. But he was the club’s sergeant-at-arms; he wasn’t someone she should be putting her trust in.

And yet he was the only one she’d ever felt safe with.

She nodded. “I’d like that. And if we’re here, we’ll be closer when it’s time to get my brother out.” She looked at him, sensing the talking was finished. He didn’t move away. She stripped her gloves off and dropped them on the floor, intending to do what she’d wanted since he first walked in: touch him. She looked up at him, then at his chest as she reached out to lay her palms against the soft, heated fabric of his tee.
 

Part of her still thought it was better to make a clean, fast break and deal with the fallout after. “Mads,” she said, staring at her hands before looking up at him, “why can’t we just take him today? Take him and go?”

“Because we’re not going to break him if we don’t have to.”

“Have you done this before?” she asked. His face settled into its familiar closed lines, which in itself was an answer. She nodded. “All right. We’ll do it your way.”

He gazed down at her as if he might touch her, or kiss her, but he did neither. He stepped back and lifted her off the bench, then walked out of her garage. She watched him leave, then looked down at Axle’s bike.
 

At any moment—hopefully very soon—she would walk away and leave all of this here, in whatever state it was in. This wasn't her life. She was on borrowed time here.
 

She crossed the shop and entered the attached house. The smell of paint was strong in the air. She hurried to change and get ready for the bike run.
 

A few minutes later, the screen door leading into the living room slammed shut. Hope felt her breath lock up in her chest. Mads and Randall were here. Her brother was in her house. He wasn’t quite as tall as Mads, but he was over six feet tall. He looked at her without a hint of emotion on his face. Not annoyance at having his routine broken or curiosity about the change in his schedule.

“Hi,” she said with a smile.
 

“Ready?” Mads asked.

She picked up her purse and keys. “Yep.”

“You’re riding with your sister,” Mads told Randall. “You’ll be bringing up the rear of the formation. Keep an eye on her.”

Randall looked at her. “I don’t want to ride with the girl.”

Mad Dog looked over at him. “The ‘girl’ is your sister, and she has a name. It’s Hope. Something you and I could both use a good dose of.”

Hope’s gaze flashed over at Mads. What did he mean by that? His hazel eyes revealed no clues as she stepped through the door he held for them. The ride down to Cheyenne would be plenty of time for her and Randall to get to know each other. Had Mads arranged that for her on purpose? Or was it just a lucky happenstance?

“Mads. Mad Dog.” She had to say his name twice to be heard over the bikes that had begun rolling past as the club got into formation. He came back over to her. She touched his arm. “Thank you.”

Some flicker of emotion cut through his gaze, the only warning he gave before catching her up with an arm around her back. He forked his hand into her hair, letting it span the back of her head as he brought his mouth to hers. His kiss was hard, hungry. She circled her arms around his neck. He lifted her from the ground. When the kiss ended, he still held her tight.
 

“I don’t know how you made this happen,” she said with a smile, “but I’ll use the time well.”

He kissed her forehead, holding his lips there for a moment. “I know you will.” He set her back on her feet. “I’ll see you in Cheyenne. Wait by your truck for me to come get you.”

Hope watched him walk over to his bike and mount up. She got in her truck and followed him up to the line of bikers. She pulled into a spot well behind the forming line. She looked over at her brother. “Have you been to the rodeo before?”

“No.”

“Are you curious about it?”

“No.”

“It’ll be fun. Who’s watching the boys while you’re gone?”

“Hawk. He’s my second in command.”

The long column of bikers started to roll out onto the narrow mountain highway. Several of the bikers had women riding with them. A few of the women had their own bikes. Mads took up the sergeant-at-arms position behind Pete. Hope pulled up the rear, coming behind the prospects and hang-arounds. In all, there had to be close to fifty riders that afternoon.
 

The air conditioning was out in Hope’s truck, so they rode with the windows down. Hot summer air swirled through the cab, sweet-smelling from the high mountain forest. Hope glanced at her brother, wondering how to approach their conversation.
 

He looked Goth in his black jeans and long-sleeved black tee with a hood. He was slouching in the passenger’s seat, his big hands relaxed in his lap. She wondered if he’d quit growing. She was the same size she’d been at sixteen, but didn’t boys still grow in the early years of their twenties?

“I didn’t know about you until last month,” she said. “I had to come meet you.” He looked over at her, his blue eyes hinting at none of the turmoil she felt. “We come from different worlds, but we’re family.”

“I know that you’re lonely, Hope, but I’m not the answer you’re looking for.”

“You are. You’re my little brother. Biology doesn’t lie.”

“Biology is only one aspect of a family.”

“Did you know about me?”

“No.” He looked out the window. “Well, I knew I had a sister, but I was told you were dead.”

“Who told you that?”

“My father. And the family he gave me to who raised me, preparing me for my special calling.”

A surge of emotions tangled Hope’s thinking. He needed to know the truth, but was now the right time? Before she’d marshaled her response, the words came marching out. “Our father killed our mother when he carved you out of her belly and ran off with you.”

He shook his head. “No. My father is a hero.” Something in the tone of his voice made her doubt he believed what he said.

“Our father, if he’s still alive, is a murdering thug who kills people for a living. I have the police reports. Our mother was trying to build a new life, a safe one for us and for herself.”

Randall shook his head. “That’s a terrible story to tell a kid. It’s a shame they lied to you.”

“It’s not a lie. It’s the truth. Did you never wonder what happened to your mom?”

“I did. Once. I was told she died when I was born.”

“She did. She was slaughtered.”

He looked out his window. “I have nothing to contribute to the lies your people told you. I know the truth.”

“What if what you believe is the truth isn’t?”

“I could ask you the same.”

“I’m afraid for you, Randall. You live with dangerous people who foster a false reality.”

“I am Lion.”

Lion. That was what he took away from their conversation. He wasn’t listening.
We’re not going to break him if we don’t have to
, Mad Dog had said. Perhaps she was going about this in the wrong way. Perhaps she should play along for a while, learn more about him.

“How did you get that name?” she asked.

“I had pale hair as an infant and the soul of a warrior. They said I was a lion. The Lion. It was how I was allowed to join the pride.”

“The pride?”

“My band of boys.”

“That’s your pride? I thought prides were mostly comprised of females.”

“Not ours. There are no women among us.”

“Is yours the only pride in the WKB?”

“We aren’t part of the WKB. We have a symbiotic relationship with them, nothing more.”

“But are there other ‘prides’?”

“Yes.”

“So…do I call you The Lion? Lion?”

“‘Lion’ is my name.”

“Lion.”

Hope was full of questions, but didn’t want to push too hard too fast. In some ways, they’d had similar childhoods. They’d both suffered the loss of their parents and had been raised by other families. Both had learned to fight and to succeed.
 

They drove the remaining distance in silence. At one point, she put the radio on, but he turned it off minutes later. The bikers pulled into Cheyenne without any issues during the run. At the rodeo parking lot, the column of bikes chose a distant section of the lot where the bikes could be parked together, ignoring the parking attendant who tried to wave them on to the next open spaces. Hope followed the bikes and picked a spot next to the double-parked column. She moved her tools into the cab and locked it.

Lion got out and stood by the bed of the truck, hands in his pockets, a freestanding shadow in the late afternoon’s burning sun, still and composed in the noise of the dismounting bikers. Hope draped her slouch purse across her chest, wondering how her brother would react to the mayhem of the big rodeo.
 

“I brought sunscreen, if you’d like some.”

Lion looked down at her. She could see he was trying to find the right way to decline her offer. “No.”

She smiled. “This is going to be fun. I’m excited to be here. And to have you here, too. But if it gets to be too much for you, we can leave, okay? Let me know.”

He didn’t answer this time, just looked up as Mad Dog came over and wrapped an arm around her shoulder. He’d flipped his vest around to show his patches. “Ready?”

She nodded, excited for the evening.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Mads bought their tickets and they stepped into the park. A guy with a radio made a point of blocking their way. His shirt identified him as part of the rodeo’s security team. After a moment, he stepped aside. Hope looked up at Mads to see his take on that little show of force.