Page 5 of Vengeance (Ruthless MC 4)
However, when they join me over at the table, Vampire just says, “Spotted a couple of the Savages passing bags last night. We’ll need to stop by their clubhouse and have a conversation with them before we leave town.”
I take a gulp of coffee and try to concentrate on that. Our MC comes first, and Vengeance has plenty of work to do on its behalf.
Finding Persy and taking that meeting with the Savages is the only thing I should be talking with Vampire and Hyena about right now.
But instead of simply nodding along, I tell them, “Doc’s sleeping on the floor behind the bar—not at her house. And she won’t tell me the real reason why.”
Both Vampire and Hyena still.
CHAPTER 3
DOC
Thanks to last night’s emergency Reapers meeting, the coffee service takes forever that morning. I guess failing to hunt down poor Persy made them extra eager to drink and get busy upstairs with a roadhouse girl. Only a few of the bikers in the line aren’t from that MC.
But I’m just about to hand a cup off to a Bandit, the second-to-last guy in the line, when I notice Hyena standing behind him.
Clean-cut with blond hair he tends to keep slicked back, I wouldn’t necessarily guess him to be a biker if not for the leather Reaper jacket he wears. He practically kicked me out of the meeting room where the Reapers congregated last night. But I should have guessed that was a one-off.
He rarely fails to leave the roadhouse without at least one flirting pass at me.
“He’s like a dog who keeps on trying the bedroom door. Like, maybe if I keep on pushing, one day it won’t be locked,” Bernice observed with a laugh during one of the nights she worked with me here at the roadhouse.
I laughed too…and pretended my stomach didn’t flip over a little bit every time he insinuated that Vengeance was just waiting for me to give in so they could rock my world.
“Oh, hey, Hyena,” I say, setting my voice to friendly but distant. “What can I get for—”
“What the hell is going on with you?” he asks before I finish with my polite greeting.
I have a light Southern accent that I try to cage in when I’m on rotation at the hospital where I’m completing my residency. But his accent is from the deepest part of the South. So despite his clean-cut good looks, he sounds extra menacing when he demands, “Tell me why you’re sleeping on the floor of the bar.”
I come close to my second near coffee drop of the morning.
“Um…”
I struggle to come up with an answer. I still feel a little guilty about lying to Des-E earlier—though I totally shouldn’t.
Giving personal details to any of the biker outlaws who come through the roadhouse is never a good idea. And getting too close to a Reaper can especially come back to bite you.
I think of Bernice, who I never should have recommended for this job—no matter how much she said she needed quick money. And that pretty nurse. Waylon, one of the Reapers’ presidents, spent half the night punishing her for daring to help poor Persy escape from the other Reaper prez, Hades—who, by the way, made Persy tattoo PROPERTY OF HADES across her back. I don’t care how good-looking that man is, he had no right to treat anyone like that.
And guess who had to clean up all the broken glass and vomit when he just about drank himself to death over her rightful leave-taking. Well, the answer to that question is Black with two thumbs and an impractically long weave she can’t wait to get rid of when she’s done doing time at this ridiculous roadhouse.
Seriously, if the last four years of bartending here have taught me anything, it’s that no woman in her right mind should touch a Reaper with a ten-foot pole.
And trust, I’m in my right mind. I’m also trying to finally free myself completely from the chaotic criminal underworld I was unfortunately born into when my mother decided it would be a great idea to have a drug kingpin’s baby—about two months before he was killed in a shoot-out.
I’ve dedicated almost twelve years of education and training to not ending up like her by putting all my eggs in some criminal’s basket.
And besides, Vengeance already knows way too much about me. They’re the ones that labeled me with the roadhouse name Doc. Hyena’s always dropping tidbits he learned from Nestor to coax me into giving them a chance.
And I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve found myself telling Des-E way too much about my shifts at Nashville Baptist. He has a terrible habit of not only coming down early for coffee service, but also posting up near the beer station during lulls and just making himself way too easy to talk to with his silent-but-curious presence.
