Tex (Hell's Ankhor #5) - Aiden Bates Page 0,43

the bar and jumped in as well, grabbing Jazz by the wrist and hauling him to his feet. The big guy lunged at Jazz again, missed, and Jazz countered with a sharp left hook that caught the guy’s nose with a crack.

Blood gushed from the man’s nostrils. He grimaced and spat a mouthful of blood onto the bar’s floor. “You hit like a bitch,” he said. “No surprise, with a fuckin’ girl on your enforcement team. Crave told us you were a bunch of pansies. Looks like he was right.”

Siren took the guy’s legs out from under him easily. He crashed to the floor and she ground the heel of her boot into the fleshy back of his neck. “Think so?”

Jazz got the other Liberty guy in a chokehold, and Gunnar restrained the third.

So of course, that was when the cops walked in. “Seriously?” Coop asked from behind the bar. Rebel grimaced.

Jazz dropped the guy like he’d been burned, and the Liberty enforcer staggered, coughing, and fell to his knees. That protective urge clawed at me again and this time I didn’t resist it—I moved to stand halfway in front of Jazz, putting my body between him and the cops.

“We got a problem, here, boys?” one of the officers said. His partner muttered into the radio, calling for backup.

“No, sir,” I said.

Siren let her heel off the big guy’s neck with some reluctance.

“Right,” the cop said, unconvinced. “We’re gonna have to take this to the station.”

More red and blue lights flashed through Ballast’s front windows as more patrol cars pulled up.

“Fuck,” Jazz cursed quietly behind me. “Fucking hell.”

“It’s all right,” I muttered.

Jazz’s fingers brushed across the inside of my wrist, and I was gripped by the sudden need to take his hand, like we were kids again. Instead, I curled my hand into a fist, so tight my nails bit into my palm.

He hadn’t done anything wrong. He’d made the right decisions. Attempted to de-escalate. Told the guys to leave. Only used the force required to keep them from hurting our members.

And still he was going to get taken away. Again.

My heart beat wild in my chest.

More cops filed into the bar, and even with Blade arguing animatedly and explaining the situation, it was clear we wouldn’t get off with a warning. A citizen had called it in. The cops seemed as annoyed as Blade was, like we should keep our scuffles out of the main streets of Elkin Lake. Rebel was talking to one of the officers, too, explaining what happened, but despite Rebel’s connections, the other officer didn’t seem convinced.

Everyone who’d been seen fighting ended up in cuffs: the three Liberty Crewmen, Siren, Gunnar, and Jazz.

The click of the cuffs snapping closed on Jazz’s wrists sounded louder than a gunshot to my ears. The cops led him out the front door, and I followed, trailing after like a lost puppy. Like there was something I could do to stop it. I felt so fucking useless, pathetic—after all the worrying I’d done about him screwing up this job, it was the job done well that got him back in cuffs.

His time in San Quentin already weighed on his mind—a stint in the local jail wouldn’t help, and the realization ran cold through me. It’d likely make it worse. All the work he’d done to move past it those years… This could drag him stumbling back.

But I’d be there.

We. We’d be there. The club. Not just me.

“Come on.” Blade grabbed me roughly by the shoulder. He looked furious. “We’re going to the station.”

“It’s bullshit,” Rebel said. He crossed his arms and sneered at the lights of the patrol cars as they drove away. “They weren’t listening to anything I was saying. They’re just trying to prove their authority. They didn’t need to take anyone away.”

His gaze was suspicious as it narrowed on the patrol cars, but he didn’t elaborate.

“You’re coming,” Blade said. It wasn’t a question.

I nodded in agreement. The three of us mounted our bikes and rode, engines roaring, toward the police station.

11

Jazz

The holding cell was cold.

That was the worst part of it. Not the bite of the cuffs into the skin of my wrists, nor the rough intake process, nor the judgmental looks of the cops. Not even the clank of the cell door as it was closed and locked. At least they’d removed the cuffs before then.

The worst part was the fucking cold. Jail cold was different than any other cold I’d ever experienced—it was an empty