Page 4 of Sinner's Steel
“Why do I get the feeling, there’s something you’re not telling me?” Jagger raised his voice and gestured to a bush in front of them.
“There’s a lot I don’t tell you. Get over it.” He carefully made his way around the bush, his finger on the trigger of the gun.
“I got over your reserved nature when we were ten and met Evie and our entire playground conversation, which until then had consisted of grunts and one-word answers, evolved into naming the guys we were going to beat up after school because they’d hurt or scared her in some way.”
“Those were good days.” Zane signaled that he was in position, and shone his flashlight on the bush. Twigs cracked and leaves rustled in the warm summer breeze. He aimed his gun. And then a fox shot between his legs and took off into the night.
“Fuck.” Zane’s adrenaline surged and he slid his finger off the trigger. “Can’t you tell the difference between a man and a fox?”
“It’s dark. I heard a noise.”
“I almost shot off your damn head.” Zane tucked his weapon away. “We’re not gonna find him in the dark. Not without more men. I say we regroup at the shop and keep a watch on the road.”
“Agreed.” Jagger lowered his weapon. “But his bike is forfeit. We’ll get it repainted, and give it to Hacker. I promised I’d help him out with a bike after we patched him into the club. He’s still riding that ancient Electra Glide his dad left him. They do painting here. I’ll get Evie to give us a deal.”
“You’re gonna ask a bunch of civilians to paint a stolen bike?” Zane didn’t want any ties with Evie’s shop. He didn’t want a reason to come back. Hell, he didn’t even want a reason to remember this night.
“It’s not stolen. It’s ours.” Jagger laughed. “And it’s not like Axle’s gonna go to the cops and report it missing.”
They walked the rest of the distance to the shop in silence. What the hell was Evie doing here so far from home? Had she and Mark moved to Conundrum? If she’d been his girl, no fucking way would he have allowed her to work in such a deserted location at night. Or in a motorcycle shop which, no doubt, would attract some of the worst elements of society.
Kinda like him.
“You want to talk to her about the detailing?” Jagger pulled open the back door to the shop.
“I think we should stay the hell away from her,” Zane replied. “Let her lead her nice civilian life.” He followed Jagger inside. Did Evie work in the shop or in the store? Had she gone through with her plan to get a Fine Arts degree in college? If so, what the hell was she doing here? And why the fuck did he care?
“I figured that out when you didn’t say hello. And if there’s something you need to tell me, now would be a good time. Otherwise I’m gonna come back tomorrow, have a talk with her about the bike and catch up on her life. You should tag along. After all, you knew her as well as me.”
Better. Intimately. And he was pretty damn sure Jagger didn’t appreciate all the little things that made her Evie: from the soft lilt of her laughter, to her penchant for tight jeans, kick-ass cowboy boots and fringed leather jackets; her risk-taking wild streak that had made his heart pound, to the compassion, that had drawn him in when they were young.
Jagger probably hadn’t noticed that she cried over books and romantic movies, preferred nachos to cake, and never passed an elderly person without smiling and saying hello. His Evie had a big heart. But he’d figured that one out when, at eight years old, she held a wet paper towel over his eye after his father had beaten him one of many terrible nights.
Too bad she had no fucking loyalty and no damn faith.
“I’m pretty sure we won’t find Axle tonight, so I’ll be busy tracking tomorrow,” Zane said. “You go catch up with her. Just… don’t mention me.”
Jagger looked back over his shoulder. “For a man with a string of blood patches on his cut, you’re sounding like a pussy. It’s Evie, dammit. You’re acting like you’re afraid of her.”
“I’m not afraid of Evie.” But hewasafraid of himself, and what he might do if he saw her again.
THREE
If you jump into a repair, without planning it through, you will break something. Guaranteed.
—SINNER’S TRIBE MOTORCYCLE REPAIR MANUAL
“Where are the biker hotties today?” Connie Vandenberg, store clerk and Evie’s best friend, tugged down the neck of her black Big Bill’s Custom Motorcycles T-shirt, exposing a few extra inches of her modest cleavage. Gene, one of Bill’s junior mechanics, a thin, lanky man with thick glasses and a perpetual frown, dropped the box of riding gloves he’d just brought out from the stockroom and stared. Which was entirely the point. Connie had hit a dry spell and since Gene was the only unattached man in the store, she’d decided he should be the one to assuage her thirst.
“We already spent an hour talking about your biker love last night when I was supposed to be asleep.” Evie stashed her purse in the secure drawer under the till and tucked her phone in her pocket.
“Sleep? Who could sleep after that tribute to testosterone walked in the door last night?”
“You’re forgetting they had guns and clearly intended to shoot Axle in the back.” Evie still couldn’t believe Jagger, one of her two best childhood friends, had become an outlaw biker. What had happened to the boy who had been so proud to join the army, and fight for what was right? And why the hell wasn’t he dead? Not that she wanted him to be dead, but she’d heard from old friends in Stanton that shrapnel from an RPG had lodged in his heart while he was on tour in Afghanistan and he died in a hospital in London. Why did no one know he was still alive?
“At least Axle had time to give you Vipe’s message. Your new boyfriend doesn’t seem the type who would cope well with being stood up, although if that was an issue he should think about joining the twenty-first century and buying a phone.” Connie tied her store apron around her narrow waist. She was pixie pretty, slim and petite with blond hair cropped short in the back and long in the front and wide bluish-gray eyes, she could have passed for a teenager if not for her loud, slightly obnoxious, firecracker personality.
“His name is Viper, not Vipe.”
