and our territory extends to Barstow and beyond. We’re just as infamous in California as we are in Nevada, and even if we weren’t, most drivers give bikers a wide berth no matter where they’re from. They wouldn’t dream of challenging a guy in a cut.
Had I not been in a hurry, I’d have followed the driver, and as soon as he was alone, I’d have dragged him from his truck and bashed his head into the side of it, leaving him at the side of the road.
For anyone else, such a reaction would be seen as road rage, but for me? An obligatory answer to a challenge demanded by those same gods that called me to punish my Wildcat for stealing those fucking tips. No one disrespects the club, and the loud, long, angry blare of that horn could be seen as nothing else.
I was already keyed up enough coming out here. I’d have taught him a lesson that my fists, and his head, would not have soon forgotten.
Wildcat. An image of the little thief floats up before my eyes, causing my fists to choke the handlebars of my ride as I crank the throttle and put on a burst speed.
I hadn’t been there when she’d faced down with Gary, but I’d called Penny from the road, and she’d told me what had happened. She’d told me how Gary had pointed his fucking gun at both of them, how he’d tried to kidnap Ben and threatened both her and Emma. How Emma had protected Ben, pushing him behind her before Gary could grab him. How she’d given Ben time to get away, protecting him and tripping Gary, even though the fucker could have done so much worse than pistol whip her senseless. Images of what I’d been told play through my head, as they have a thousand times over the last few hours since it happened, and a now familiar, unwelcome knot clenches in my gut.
Gary could have killed her. He could have shot her and left her lying there, bleeding out on that hospital room floor.
She’d protected Ben. She’d saved him, and his mother, just as she’d saved Cap, two people I feel as close to as I do to him, only this time, she’d put herself in the fucking line of fire to do it.
A fiery mix of possessive anger, and an annoying protective impulse, rushes through me. Both are nearly as strong as the rage toward Gary that’s coursing through my veins, and both piss me the fuck off.
I tear up the road, imagining all the things I’ll do to Gary when I get my hands on him. If he was in front of me now, I’d tie him to my bike at the ankles and drive him through a deserted street until his skin peeled off his body, pump every bullet from my gun into his skull, and bury him in the deepest hole I could find. I want to destroy him, tear him limb from limb for what he did to her.
But as pissed as I am with him, I’m just as livid with her. The urge to punish the Wildcat for her actions is as strong as my need to kill Gary.
Maybe another man would have said her actions prove that she’s more than just a liar and a thief, that she’s worthy of trust. Another man, a softer man, would have said that her saving Ben’s life has absolved her of her crimes against the club. That it indicated truthfulness when it came to Adamson, and what she’d told me about her past with His Holy Peace. That they earned her the benefit of the doubt and squared things with those greedy MC gods who demand I show my allegiance by making her suffer. But I couldn’t afford to be so easily swayed, and those gods are not so easily sated.
It’s been driven into me, bred into me over the years, that women can’t be trusted. A selfless act—or more than one—doesn’t mean a woman isn’t capable of treachery. Emma obviously cares for Ben, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t still lying through her perfect teeth about Adamson. It doesn’t mean she isn’t using the story about the Colony as a way to earn my sympathy.
The last time I’d spoken to Rat, he’d said he was still trying to find anything he could on her kidnapper’s tattoos. He hadn’t found anything save the name he’s going by—Jay—and he hadn’t found out what