The Biker and the Loner (Oil and Water #3)- S. Ann Cole Page 0,50

most serious of the four. The oldest. The one hardly ever seen. The one who joined the army at eighteen and served for eight years.

Tripp kicks the chair next to his, a shit-eating grin on his face. "Take a seat, Landon. We won't bite. Promise."

"Quit using my real name," I grouse as I move to the seat at the other end of the table, the seat opposite Torin who's at the helm. "It's Scratch for you."

Flavio Garza—their father, also known as Flave—was a successful, infamous Italian championship-winning card player. Also, a notorious womanizer who was obsessed with black women and knocked them up just as easily as he won high-stakes poker games. None of his children have the same mother. Rumor has it that he's got at least three kids in each country. Somehow, these four half-brothers managed to stick together and built a solid enough relationship to run a professional business as one.

"You haven't been ‘Scratch’ since you decided to serve," Torin says. "Scratch is dead. You're Landon now. I know it as much as you do."

Our glares meet. Torin and I are army brothers, whether I like it or not. At some point in his journey, he’d no doubt faced the same identity crisis after war that I'm facing right now. He's right, I haven't been Scratch since before I left.

I clear my throat and lean back. "What's this meeting about? Why am I here?"

"You plan on going back?" Torin asks.

"If I get cleared, yeah."

"You won't." He taps the folder sitting in front of him. "Save for the fact that you're marked down for willfully disobeying orders twice, the screws in your leg, the missing trigger finger, and your PTSD episodes, I've been assured that you won't."

"You shouldn't have any of that information." Though I'm not surprised. There's no information that's unattainable to them.

"We shouldn't," he agrees. "But we do. Because we want you on our team."

Doing what? "Sorry, but investigating isn’t my thing. I thoroughly enjoy minding my own damn business, thank you very much."

Truman snorts and Trent flips me the finger.

"We're expanding our services," Torin informs me. A subdivision for SAR."

"But not for lost puppies and runaway teens and shit, if you get the drift," Truman adds.

"Serious shit," Trent chimes.

"Dangerous shit," Tripp adds with a grin and jumping eyebrows.

This piques my interest, so I lean forward, arms on the table. "Commando?"

"Commando," Torin confirms with a nod. "There's an eight-week training program and a three-month probationary period, but the short of it all is that we think you'll be a great asset to the team."

Trent pitches in, "Goes without saying that you'll have to leave 'Scratch' behind. That is, the Den of Heathens."

The club’s a nonfactor in this. I've been putting in my time with them, stepping in when needed, going on road drops, faking it with the Club Cats… just waiting for the right time to pull the plug.

Leaning back, I brush my thumb back and forth across my bottom lip, pretending to think about it, letting them sweat it out.

"I’ll need a few days to think about it,” I say after a while. “Need to talk to my girl."

I've got nothing to think about. I already know my answer.

"The Latina?" Tripp asks, his eyes lit with curiosity. "Yeah, I wanted to ask, how'd you manage to land that one? She’s straight up the most unattainable woman in Denver."

I’m dead serious when I warn, "And even more unattainable now that I'm her man, so I'd keep my eyes in my head if I were you."

"Hey now!" he backs off with a massive grin, hands up in surrender. "We're teammates now, c'mon."

"I haven't agreed to anything yet."

"We understand that you need to think about it," Torin says, ever somber. "But do you mind sparing us a few minutes to convince you why joining the Red Cage family will be worth it for you?"

Unnecessary, but...I jerk my chin. "Let's hear it."

~

"So, what, you're gonna trade in your leather cut for cargo pants?"

I shoot the asshole across from me a glare as he bites into his cheeseburger.

After my meeting with the Garza brothers, Grunt was the one person I wanted to hit up about this. The sonuvabitch might be four years younger than me, but I'm man enough to admit he's always been smarter, more driven, and a winner through and through. There's no one who's advice I value more than his. So I rode straight to his workplace and waited for his lunch hour. Jaunted to the nearest