Twisted Mercy (Red Team Book 4) (7 page)

Rocco met the team lead’s stare with an even gaze. “I’m good.”

“I’ll call you down when I get the motel footage,” Greer told Rocco.

Max glanced around the table, wondering what the hell had happened in his absence that made Kit question Rocco once again. He knew his friend was battling a wicked case of PTSD, but he’d thought he was back on his feet now that he had his son back.
 

“Let’s talk about the girl.” Kit turned his attention to Max. “What do you make of her?”

Max pressed his lips together as he shook his head. Her dark eyes and pale hair danced into his mind. “She’s not who she said she is. Someone helped her set up a cover ID.” He looked at Greer. “Have you checked with the bike shop listed on her tax returns?”

Greer nodded. “The shop’s flipped owners twice since the original Hope’s death. No one knows her.”

“With her at the WKB’s garage, it’s going to be tough accessing the silo. The timing of her arrival can’t be a coincidence. She said she’s trying to find her brother, but she doesn’t know his name. Says they grew up in different foster care systems. I’ll get you the biometrics you asked for,” he said to Greer.

“Good. If she’s in any systems, we’ll find her.”

They talked about a few more things before the meeting broke up. Kit stopped him from going out to the loading dock where his bike was. “You need to head out right away?”

“Not really.”

“Come upstairs. Stay for the lunch,” Kit said. “The girls would like to see you.”

* * *

“Max!” Mandy hurried over to hug him when he stepped into the long dining room. Eden too. “We’ve been so worried about you.”

He looked down at the two women in his arms, feeling a little off his game at their welcome. “Have you? Why?”

“The WKB’s a hard place to be,” Eden said, no doubt remembering the way her two friends had been brutalized by Holbrook and his buds.

Max looked from the two women he held to the two who stood near—Fiona and Ivy. Concern filled their eyes as well. He smiled, trying to relieve their worries. “I’m not always at the compound. I’ve got my bike and my cabin.” Really, what the fuck more did he need than that?

The guys had all wandered into the long dining room. None of them seemed worried that he was the center of focus for their women. So different here than at the club, where everyone was always watching for that knife in the back.

That in itself was the main reason he didn’t visit frequently. He couldn’t get in the habit of letting his guard down.
 

Kathy, the team’s housekeeper and cook, brought out the last of the dishes for the buffet lunch. He released the girls and went over to see what she was setting out—fixings for sandwiches, with sides of salad and fruit. And chocolate brownies. Max’s stomach growled.
 

She looked over and smiled, then frowned at him. “You’ve lost weight, Max.”

“Well, of course I have.” He set his hands on his flat stomach. “There’s no one to feed me.”

“Maybe I should bring you a food basket a few times a week,” Kathy suggested.

“No! No, ma’am,” Kit said, quickly squelching that. “He’s got a kitchen. If he gets hungry enough, he can cook something for himself.”

Max pulled a long face. “I’ll just have to suffer through till I get back. But Kit’s right. Don’t bring things to the cabin.”

“Well.” She gave Kit a displeased glance as she straightened her apron. “That’s fine. But he can raid the freezer anytime he wants.”

“Deal,” Max said with a grin.

CHAPTER SIX

Hope looked up as Mad Dog walked into her Quonset that afternoon. She stopped sweeping. The hang-arounds and prospects he’d recruited had gone off to collect the tools that had once stocked Flathead’s shop. She had her own set of tools, but didn’t want to break them out if she didn’t have to. They were her livelihood. If she started using them and then had to cut out fast, she’d be leaving behind a major fortune.

Mad Dog’s mood seemed little improved from this morning. Her mind flashed to how he looked yesterday as he’d plowed through the bikers to get to her. God, he’d scared her. She couldn’t have imagined anything worse than the men who’d ganged up on her, cutting the clothes from her body. And then he’d barreled in, squashing them like ants. At the time, she'd feared what he’d do to her had to be a thousand times worse than anything the gang of thugs had in mind for her.

But he’d done nothing. Yet.

Mad Dog pushed his dark sunglasses to his forehead, freeing his hazel gaze to catch hers. “Hey,” she greeted him.

“Where are the guys? They’re supposed to be here helping you.”

“I sent them to retrieve Flathead’s tools. They seemed to know where they ended up.” She set her broom aside. “Why did you do it, yesterday? Rescue me?”

He ground his teeth. His nostrils flared. “I guess I needed me a female.”

Hope’s breath jumped, forcing a cool thrill through her body. The thought of being intimate with a man like Mad Dog was terrifying…and more than a little exciting. She looked away, severing the connection. “Well, thank you for what you did.”

“Don’t thank me.” At the sound of his growling rumble, gooseflesh rose across her skin, as if his hot breath had been there. “Just tell me why you really came here.”

Nothing but the absolute truth—or a well-practiced lie—would satisfy him. She lifted her gaze to his and forced herself to not blink. “I needed a place to hang, let the heat pass.”

A lopsided grin showed some of his teeth. “And you thought a one-percenter motorcycle club was the place to do that?” he scoffed.

“Since I’m hiding from the cops, yeah.”

She kept herself from fidgeting beneath his stare, but jumped when a man called out to Mad Dog outside the Quonset. “I asked Pike to swing by and check out your electrical system,” he explained as a tall, balding blond guy stepped into her garage.

Hope almost held out a hand to shake with him before she remembered to stay in character and just give him a sullen nod.
 

“So you’re the new wrench?” Pike asked.

“Yep. You must be Captain Obvious.”

Pike’s eyes narrowed. His gaze moved over her before switching to Mad Dog. “If she can fix my bike, I’ll fix her electricity.” Pike nodded at a couple of hang-arounds, who rolled his Harley into the shop.
 

Hope refastened her hair in a ponytail, then put a baseball cap on backward to keep the wind from dragging her hair free and getting it in her face. She pulled on a pair of black nitrile gloves. “What’s wrong with it?”

Pike laughed. “That’s for you to tell me.”

Hope glared at him, then shook her head. “Get this piece of junk out of my shop,” she ordered his helpers. “I don’t have time for bullshit.”
 

“Some wrench,” Pike snarled. “You can’t even diagnose a simple problem.”

Hope narrowed her eyes. It was such an old game Pike was playing. She’d run into it at motorcycle school and in both of the shops where she’d worked. For some reason, women weren’t expected to understand how to handle a wrench. Like you couldn’t have a vagina and be a mechanic.

“When Mad Dog brought you down here, he said there could be an electrical problem at Flathead’s house and shop, right?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“He didn’t say there’s an electrical problem somewhere on the compound and leave it to you to find. Specifics help. You don’t have all week to diagnose a problem. Neither do I. But if I had to venture a guess, your bike’s backfiring when you’re coasting and the accelerator lurches.”

Pike leaned back and studied her. Now she was talking his language. “How’d you know?”

“You retrofitted a new exhaust pipe that’s wrong for the bike, and you’ve put the wrong carburetor on it. Look at the graying on your spark plugs and muffler.”

“Can you fix it?” Pike asked.

“Yes. And since you’re going to fix my electrical problems, if you provide the parts for your bike, I’ll provide the labor. If you need parts for the house, I’ll get them.”

Pike shook his head. “I got all kinds of parts in my van. How about instead of you providing the electrical parts for your house, since I already have them, you give my friend’s bike a tune-up? If you need parts, we’ll bring them to you.”

Hope held out her hand. “Deal.” Pike shook with her. Mad Dog gave her a considering look. She wondered if she’d just made some good marks with both of them. She needed to fit in here quickly so she could switch her focus to finding her brother.
 

* * *

Max returned to the Quonset hut several hours later. The front and back garage doors were open. A hot breeze rolled through. Half a dozen guys were lounging about, drinking beer, smoking weed, watching the female wrench work. He chased them out, handing out chores to the hang-arounds and the prospects among them.

Hope looked up from the bike she was working on. She had a grease smudge on her cheekbone. She was wearing a pair of train engineer overalls and a black tank top. He remembered his first sight of her. Her lean stomach and the mounds of her breasts. All those goddamned hands on her.
 

“How’s it goin’?” Pete asked, interrupting their silent stare-off.
Shit
. Max hadn’t even been aware the guy had come in. The girl was fucking with his head.

“Good,” Max answered, covering his momentary lapse.

“That Pike’s bike out front?”

“Yeah.”

“So she knows her stuff, huh? I’ve been telling him for months that was the wrong carburetor.” Hope went back to work. They stood silently and watched her, then Pete said, “Let’s take a walk.”

Max put his sunglasses on as they moved into the sunshine. Greer was picking up on everything Max was hearing and saying, and the camera in the glasses gave him a visual.
 

“S’on your mind, Pete?”

“We got a shipment going out tomorrow night. I need you here for it.”

“What time?”

“Sometime between midnight and one.”

“Where?”

“The warehouse.”

Max nodded. “I’ll be there.”

“Round up the standard crew for guard duty. Come by the clubhouse later. I’ll give you their numbers.”

“Will do.”

When he returned to the shop, two guys were rolling Pike’s friend’s bike out front. Hope removed her gloves. A stained rag hung from her hip pocket. The sun had shifted, casting a shadow in front of the Quonset hut. She smiled up at him. His heart did a weird thing, like squeezed tight for a beat. He handed her an unopened bottle of water.

“Thanks.” She took the cold plastic and pressed it against her neck. He tore his eyes away and ripped into his own bottle. Tossing the contents back in long guzzles, he looked at the blue summer sky as he pulled the cold water into his mouth. Who was she? And why was she really here?

Hopefully, Greer could get the info he needed from her bottle. Her fingerprints would yield quick results, but the DNA search would take a few days.

“Want dinner?” he asked.

“Sure.” She grinned. “You cooking?”

He shrugged, watching as she drank the water. “I guess. Let’s take a ride into town to pick up some steaks. You eat meat?”

She smiled and nodded. “Love a juicy steak. Let me just clean up. Give me fifteen once we get to your place?” She finished her water and handed the bottle back to him.
 

“Works for me.” While she closed up her shop, he wrapped her bottle in plastic, then tucked it away in one of his saddlebags.

On the way back to his cabin, he tried to block her from his mind, but it was useless. The woman was damned near perfect. A meat-eating mechanic, gorgeous, and capable of cleaning up in minutes rather than hours. And she was tough, too. He grinned when he thought of the way she’d shut Pike down. Hell, the way she’d taken on the entire WKB, supposedly to let things chill out from her old shop. But that story just didn’t wash.
 

And that thought brought him face to face with her biggest fault, like a splash of ice water…all the unknowns about her. He needed to get to the bottom of who and what she was so he could contain the hell she meant to unleash.

They were at his place for less than ten minutes when she came out of his bathroom wearing low-rise jeans covered with tight-fitting leather chaps that seemed to draw his eyes to her crotch. She wore a fresh T-shirt, which she adjusted, triggering his gaze to move upward. The pink fabric was cut low. Matching pink laces drew the two halves together at her breasts, exposing her cleavage through the open weave. Her blond hair was loose, streaming down both sides of her shoulders.

“How’s this?” she asked, lifting her arms.

How was it? Shit. He was rocking a helluva hard-on. “Great.”
 

He handed her his helmet—he’d already shut down the comm system so she wouldn’t inadvertently pick up a call from the team. He kicked his bike to start, then waited for her to mount up behind him. Her slim arms wrapped around his ribs. Her breasts pressed against his back. He could feel the weight of them even through his vest.
 

His body tightened another notch. She was like a toy he wanted to unwrap inch by inch, tasting and pleasuring her as he went. He wondered how she felt about restraints…he liked having complete control of a woman’s body, leaving her no choice but to surrender to the mercy of her passion.

“You good?” he asked.

“Oh yeah.” Her low voice rolled over his shoulder.
Fuck. It. All.
He needed to get his reaction to her under control. Fast. She was like kryptonite to him.

The rumble of his bike’s engine and the evening’s hot wind soothed his edginess as they made the long trek into town. He pulled into a spot in front of the grocery store in Wolf Creek Bend and waited for her to dismount, then got off his bike. He didn’t even try not to look down her shirt as she took off his helmet and shook out her hair; the view was damned fine.

He hooked his helmet over his handlebars; if anyone was stupid enough to steal it, Greer would let him know where to go to retrieve it.
 

Max took Hope’s hand and started for the front entrance. It was a warm night, still an hour or more from sunset. Lots of people were milling about Main Street. He was the recipient of all sorts of darting looks, some filled with disdain, some with fear. People made way on the sidewalk. He kept himself in front of Hope to shield her from the worst of the glares.