I feel my cheeks heat up. Truth is, all of that is still very jumbled up in my brain. In the space of a week—less than a week—I went from thinking he was a scumbag sex trafficker to someone I desperately wanted to lean on and be protected by, and now I’m standing at the spot where those two roads diverge and I have no idea which to follow.
“You say Chance and his MC help the women you rescue?” I ask.
She nods.
“And they had nothing to do with abducting my sister five years ago?” I go on.
She winces, looking very startled. The slight breeze is catching her neat curls and making them dance around her face, but that’s the only part of her that’s moving.
“Your sister was trafficked,” she says. “That’s why you’re so determined to help women who suffered the same fate.”
“Yes,” I say even though none of those things sounded like questions.
“I can tell you Chance’s club had nothing to do with that,” she says. “But I’d like to also tell you that you shouldn’t allow the work you’re doing to help those women swallow you up. It’s easy for that to happen if you’re not careful.”
“And easy to say,” I mutter. “I know what I’m doing.”
“You’re doing great work, I didn’t mean to suggest you weren’t,” she says. “But don’t forget to have some fun too.”
I don’t know where all this is coming from and it’s not something I want to listen to.
“I’ll also tell you this,” she adds. “Convince your parents not to go to the police just yet. Let the club deal with this and protect you until it’s done. It’s the best course of action now.” She unlocks her car and walks around it to get in. “And afterwards, you’ll see a whole lot fewer victims coming your way.”
She climbs into her car and I let her drive off without saying anything more, even though her vague statements have made about a thousand questions pop up in my mind. But I also know she won’t answer any of them, just like Chance wouldn’t last night.
What protection is she even talking about?
The bikers that looked like mounds of stone in the darkness last night are gone, and the street is empty in both directions, as it is every morning. There’s an electrician’s van parked across the street from our house and a handy man’s a few yards down, but that’s it. Did they already pull back the protection because my dad said he’d go to the cops?
And how the hell am I going to convince him not to do that?
He does his own thing and has his own reasons for doing it. No one, least of all me, has ever been able to talk him out of doing what he sets his mind on.
Plus, he could be right.
A week ago, I wouldn’t trust an outlaw MC as far as I could throw them, even if Mother Mary herself came down to tell me they were good guys. I know Anne, I know she’s a good person and a good Samaritan. But does that mean she’s telling us the truth now?
The slight breeze is carrying the myriad scents of spring—sweet and tangy, thick, pleasant and rejuvenating—and I wish I could just sit down in the sunshine and enjoy them all without a care in the world.
Instead I’m facing my worst fear and I don’t even have to power to fight it, because the ability to do that is completely out of my hands.
And I wish Chance was here with me.
Because for all the ways he makes me crazy and unhinged, he’s also the only one who can pull me back and anchor me before I float away too far. I know what to do when he’s around the way I never do when I’m on my own. And I don’t feel so very alone when he’s with me. In fact I don’t feel alone at all.
* * *
Chance
It took all day to lay the plans, but they’re laid now. And they’re in motion already. We’re striking hard and we’re striking fast. One night, maximum damage. Hit them where it hurts and when they least expect it.
Cross asked for a meeting with whoever’s running the Horned Riders MC now that Bam is down for the count from the festering gut wound I gave him. That would be Bam’s son Gazz, the guy who thought it was a good idea to gun down Veronica and me last night. He’s now acting as their president, and they couldn’t have picked a bigger idiot for the job.
Cross told them he wants to meet to discuss stopping the hostilities, figuring that they’ll think they broke him by going after his son, and agree. They fell for it completely, as he predicted they would. He’s not usually wrong about things like this.
According to Hawk’s intel, the Riders have been converging on their clubhouse all afternoon. Clearly they all want to witness Cross beg.
“They think I want peace,” Cross said when he told us we’re riding. “They think they’ve forced me on my knees. I don’t kneel and they’re not getting peace.”