Jacinda enjoyed the drive to Lincoln. She’d left early, before rush hour traffic, and tooled up US 75, blaring Nirvana, then Pearl Jam, then Soundgarden, then Stone Temple Pilots, and feeling pretty good. The music kept her mind from wandering off to find things about the weekend to obsess over, the air conditioner kept her cool and comfortable, and the miles flew past. She stopped once, to gas up the Pathfinder and grab a Coke and a package of Zingers, called that lunch and made Lincoln by one o’clock.

Lincoln wasn’t her real destination. According to her MapQuest printout, she still had about half an hour to go, to the sheriff’s substation in Janeville, a little bump of a town about thirty miles west of Lincoln.

It was just past one-thirty when she pulled into the Seward County Sheriff substation and parked in the visitor lot. Before she went in, she ate her last Zinger and studied the file on her bounty. Colleen Ann Jones. Facing eight felony charges of credit card theft, twenty-three misdemeanor charges of unauthorized use of a credit card, and one count of felony failure to appear. It looked like Ms. Jones would be doing real time pretty soon.

Now that she was within a few miles of the address she had for her target, Jacinda’s belly was full of butterflies—and some biting insects as well. The confidence she’d shown her mother had ebbed. She’d never done a job like this before, not on her own. She knew the procedures and protocols, but still, she was nervous. Obviously, Colleen Ann Jones did not want to go to prison. It was unlikely, therefore, that she would simply answer the door, say hey, and pick up her handbag, thankful for the ride back to Tulsa.

Rehearsing what she’d say, Jacinda got out of her truck and headed into the substation.

It was a tiny place, with everybody seeming to work all out in the open, and they all noticed her right away. ‘All’ was three people: an older woman near the front desk, and two uniformed deputies, both male, one middle-aged and the other younger.

“Help ya?” the woman asked.

Jacinda pulled her PI license and showed it. “Hi. I’m Jacinda Durham, an investigator out of Tulsa. I’m here on a bounty—a bail jumper with an arm-long list of fraud charges. Colleen Jones. Her sister and brother-in-law live out here, and I’ve got a lead they’re harboring her. Norman and Kathleen Riggs.”

The older of the deputies waved his hand at the younger, and the younger stood and came to the desk. “I ain’t heard Norm and Kath talkin’ ‘bout visitors. You say you got a lead?”

Jacinda took note of his badge number and nametag. ‘T. Rodgers’ was his name. The way he was looking at her, she decided to turn on the charm, and she gave him a smile that hit him smack in the face. He actually blinked. “I do, a solid one. I’m here because I was hoping a deputy would come ride along with me, help me keep the situation cool. I don’t suppose you could spare the time, Deputy Rodgers?” She flipped her hair over her shoulder and leaned on the desk, not making a big show, just enough to look like she wasn’t aware that she’d just pushed her tits together into a nice seam of cleavage.

His eyes dropped where she wanted them to, and he blinked again. Before he spoke, he swallowed; his throat made a dry click. “Uh ...” he turned back to the older deputy. “That okay, Judd?”

The older deputy stood up and moseyed over. J. Temple, his nametag read, the J apparently standing for Judd. His face shifted around until he’d managed an expression Jacinda made out as a paternal glower—like he was pissed off that she was shoving her nose in his town and simultaneously protective of her. “I think that’s for the best. People out here don’t much like strangers showin’ up unannounced, and ever’body out here’s well armed. They know Tom. He’ll keep it polite.” He stared hard at her. “What’s a girl like you doin’ with a PI license, honey? That ain’t work for pretty girls.”

What she wanted to do was punch the old bastard in the face, but she smiled. “My daddy’s a PI, too. Family business, I guess.”

He grunted, and in that noise she heard a thick volume of judgment about the quality of her father’s parenting.

“Go on, Tom. If missy’s bail jumper is there, see if you can’t keep this all civil and calm.”

“I’m on it.” Deputy T. Rodgers came around the desk. “Let’s go, Miss...”

“Durham. Jacinda.” She held out her hand

He grinned and shook. “That’s real pretty. I’m Tom.”

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~oOo~

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After twenty minutes, they pulled from the paved, unlined road onto a gravel drive. The Riggs farm was an unremarkable place—a ranch house that looked like it was probably a pre-fab, a corrugated steel barn and an open-air shelter beside it that housed the tractor and its assorted attachments. All around those buildings were the usual random dross that built up when a family had owned a place a long time but had rarely had much more in the way of assets than the place itself.

But there were two shiny new pickup trucks at the end of the drive, one bright white and the other cherry red metallic. Flashy.

Also four big Harleys, parked in a row.

Jacinda had done her research and knew that Norman Riggs was the VP of the Great Plains Riders MC. A small recreational club, though, not outlaw. Only six members. Just buddies who liked bikes and played Easy Rider on the weekends. That they even had officers was affect more than anything.

Deputy Tom Rodgers parked his cruiser right behind those bikes, and Jacinda parked her Pathfinder at his side, spreading out so that they had effectively blocked the trucks in. Unless Colleen could ride, she wasn’t going anywhere.

She met Tom on the decaying walkway made of wood planks that seemed to have simply been nailed straight into the dirt.

Tom put his hand on her lower back, a flimsy, but standard, gesture of masculine protection. “Looks like most of the Riders are here, probably in Norm’s shed out back. Let’s play it cool. A couple of those guys’ve done time.”

“Okay. Following your lead here.”

With a nod, Tom headed up the rickety walkway.

A rail-thin, severe-looking woman came through the squeaky screen door and stepped onto the porch. She wore skin-tight jeans and a black beater with the word BITCH bedazzled across her tits. Classy. She also had an intricate, but badly blurred and faded, tattoo over the left side of her chest, around that shoulder, and down the arm. Her long, mostly grey hair was pulled to a side ponytail, an incongruously youthful style for this woman who had been ridden very hard and put away soaking wet.

“Tom.” Threat and suspicion dripped off the ends of the name.

The deputy must have heard her tone, but he acted as if they were here for a friendly catch-up. “Hey, Kath. How you doin’ today?”

That lurking hostility still dragging at her tone, she answered, “I’m good. How’s your mama? She feelin’ better?”

Tom shrugged. “Chemo always lays her low, but she’s done with this round. She’ll be doing okay again soon.”

He’d reached the porch and put a foot on the bottom step, and he set his arm across his thigh, leaning casually. But he’d unstrapped his sidearm as they’d stepped along the walkway, and Jacinda saw Kathleen Riggs take note of that little loose flap of leather.

“I hope this is the last time she’s got to deal with that. You send her my good wishes.”

“Sure will.”

Kathleen crossed her arms, obscuring her bedazzled self-assertion. “What brings you by, Tom? Who’s your friend?”

Jacinda stepped up to his side then, putting on her charming and harmless smile.

As soon as she looked up at Kathleen with her practiced ‘we’re all friends here’ smile, she caught a strange movement in the shadows behind the closed screen door. Then she heard the unmistakable ratcheting clunk of a shotgun being cocked.

Tom must have seen more in those shadows and recognized that shotgun a tick sooner, because he leapt in front of her and took a full load of buckshot in the chest.

She slammed to the ground under his body, and the air burst from her lungs and left empty shells behind. Her ribs shrieked and her chest turned to concrete, and she was half sure she was going to die. Her vision had gone to sparkles and swirls, and she didn’t know what she needed most, breath or sight.

Her hearing was fine, however, and she tried to focus there while she forced a tiny breath into her chest and struggled to get out from Tom’s crushing weight.

Two women’s voices—Kathleen and another one quite similar, most likely Colleen—screamed at each other. Jacinda listened for a few seconds.

What did you do? You idiot! Look what you did!

She was here for me!

We don’t know that! You killed Tom! Jesus, lookit him!

They hadn’t come over to get her, so Jacinda sucked in a bigger breath and redoubled her efforts to get out from under Tom. She still had her Sig. Sprained ribs or not, she could get on top of the situation.

And then the ground rumbled, and male voices rose up. One of the women—she didn’t know which—ran over to her. She saw the hiking boot just before it struck her temple.

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~oOo~

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When she came to, they—whoever ‘they’ were, at this point—were duct-taping her to a chair. She was in the barn. Her head hurt, and her chest felt like Tom still lay across it, but other than that and the sting of the tight tape at her wrists, she was okay. They hadn’t gagged her.

She blinked her dizzy vision clear, or tried to. What she saw kept jumping around, like the horizontal hold was off.

She faced five people: three men and two women. Kathleen, she’d met. Her sister Colleen, she recognized from her mug shot—and noticed that she wore a pair of blurry shitkicker hiking boots. The men all wore kuttes. Great Plains Riders. No longer recreational, as of today. Now they were kidnappers and fugitive harborers. So far.

And Colleen had graduated to murder. Of a uniformed officer.

Jacinda tried to keep her heart in check, but it wanted to tear itself free and beat hell out of here. Only once before in her life had she been afraid like this. Never in her life had anyone been shot right in front of her, killed right in front of her. She’d been in tough scrapes before, she’d been hurt before, she’d been subject to the whim of bad people before, but this—this fear reached every cell. She’d learned martial arts to prevent this powerlessness, but she hadn’t had a chance to use what she knew.

If she hadn’t been bound, she would have been calmer, even in this situation. She would have had her body under her own power. But she was at their mercy, entirely beyond her own control, and she couldn’t deal. Her limbs began to shudder against the rigid bonds.

She had to deal. She had to find some control over herself. Outside, she was trapped, but inside, she could find calm. With calm, she might find a way out of this. Something to do or say, some moment of inattention in her captors, something that would get her out of here.

She wanted to go home. She just wanted to go home.

Seeking somewhere safe, her mind offered an image of Apollo, hovering over her, staring into her eyes, sweat pebbling his brow. Maybe one of the last good memories of her suddenly short life.

One of the men crouched before her. “We got ourselves a bit of a problem, Miss Durham.”

She found a slice of calm in his words. This man—a flash on his kutte identified him as the president of the Great Plains Riders—knew who she was, knew, then, why she’d come. She was not a weak girl subject to the bad intentions of strangers. She was a private investigator, and they’d tied her up because they were afraid of her. There was power in that.

“You sure do. Colleen over there is going to the electric chair.”

The woman in question stomped up and slapped Jacinda hard, making her already sore brain cramp. “Shut up, you stupid bitch! This is all your fault!”

The MC president backhanded Colleen, and she landed hard on the dirt floor. “Colleen, you cunt! I will tie you up and gag you, so help me!”

“Don’t talk to my sister that way, Coop!” Kathleen shrieked, helping Colleen to her feet.

“Riggs,” Coop growled. “Get your women under control. This shit is bad enough.”

Thunder filled the air suddenly, which was odd, since the sun was out, but then Jacinda made out the sound as Harley engines. More bikers. Oh shit. Reinforcements.

But Coop’s head fell forward. He sighed and stood up. He was not pleased to have more bikers join them.

“Cooper!” A big voice boomed behind her. “What the fuck is going on here?”

“Hey, brothers. Got a bit of a complication. I sent Van to you to get the cargo out of the way.”

“I know,” said the big Barry White voice. “We’re clear. But what the fuck?”

“It’s Riders’ shit, Ox. We’re handling it. Give us a couple hours, I’ll call, and we’ll be back in business.”

Ox. That name sounded distantly familiar.

“What the holy hell?”

That voice, she knew. She’d heard its echo whispering in her ear for the past two days. But that was completely insane. No, it was wishful thinking or whatever, but she couldn’t have heard right.

She tried to turn her head, but it hurt too much. She sensed somebody coming up fast from behind, and tensed, her eyes clenching instinctively shut, expecting a blow. Instead, she felt a hand on her knee.

“Jacinda?” That voice again.

She opened her eyes. Things were still a little blurry, but there could be no mistake now, unless she was straight-up hallucinating. “Apollo?”

“What the hell, baby?” He looked up, over her head. “What the hell?”

“You know this chick?” Cooper asked, his voice rising with fury.

Apollo nodded. “Yeah. Not well, but yeah. What’s going on?”

A lot of people began to talk all at once, and Jacinda’s aching, overwhelmed brain had trouble parsing it all out. Cooper argued that it was none of the Bulls’ damn business, and Ox shouted that it was, considering what else was going on today, and the women shrieked their own arguments every now and then. Riggs was quiet, and the other Rider, too.

All through it, while she listened, she kept her attention on Apollo, still crouching before her with his hands on her knees. His own attention shifted from her to whatever speaker had the barn floor, and back to her. She saw the shock and betrayal when it was announced that she was a PI here to collect a bounty. She didn’t try to explain. She wasn’t sure she needed to, and she had much bigger problems just now. Like being taped to a damn chair.

Finally, Cooper dragged Colleen forward and made her tell what she’d done.

When she’d told her story, Cooper pulled his sidearm and shot her in the head.

The report exploded in the barn and made Jacinda’s brain shatter. Her ears rang like tuning forks and, nearly deaf, she watched the rest of the scene play out like a silent movie. Kathleen screamed, and Riggs grabbed her before she could leap at Cooper. Another shot rang out somewhere; Apollo dived over Jacinda, knocking the chair back with her on it, and lay over her. The air left her lungs again, and she stopped watching the drama play out. With Apollo protecting her, she let the pain and fear and confusion have her, and she passed out.

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~oOo~

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The ER doctor set the stack of discharge papers on the metal tray beside the gurney. “No driving for at least forty-eight hours, remember, and come straight back here if either of you see any of the signs on that list.” He shook an amber pill bottle. “Take these for pain, but no more than the recommended dosage, understand?”

Jacinda nodded—carefully. It hurt to move her head. And to breathe. And to be conscious.

Apollo pushed off the wall he’d been leaning on. “We got it, doc. Thanks.”

The doctor gave the big angry man a wary eye and then nodded. “Well. You’re all set. Just stop by the cashier on your way out and get the billing squared away.”

“Will do.” Apollo held out his hand, and the doctor shook it. With a nervous cough, he scurried from the room.

Apollo turned and stood at the doorway, watching him go.

He hadn’t left her side since the Riggs’ barn, but Jacinda wasn’t so sure that was compassion and protectiveness on his part. She got the impression—he wasn’t really trying to hide it—that he was there to keep an eye on her more than anything else.

His anger was obvious, and it seemed aimed in all directions: at her, at Colleen, at the Riders, at Ox, at himself. He’d barely spoken to her except to ask if she was okay and tell her to shut up if she tried to bring up the events of the day.

He was right about that—her brain was sore and slow, or she’d have known better than to talk about what had happened while they sat in an ER examining room, with countless ears all around them.

Judd Temple, the older deputy she’d met, had come in and wearily, sadly, asked her a mountain of questions, and that had helped straighten her concussion-fogged head a bit, as she’d repeated the story Apollo had told her on the drive to the ER.

It wasn’t hard to remember; the important parts were true. Colleen had shot Tom and tied up Jacinda. The Riders had come upon the scene, and when Colleen attacked Jacinda again, Cooper had shot her.

Everyone agreed on that story, even Kathleen, who had apparently been convinced that it was in her best interest to agree. Ox had made himself scarce, removing the Bulls from the equation.

Apollo wouldn’t leave her alone in that scene, so he’d shed his kutte and was now, according to the incident report, Jacinda’s boyfriend, who’d ridden up because he was worried about his girl doing this job by herself.

He’d identified himself as Neil Armstrong. Every time she heard someone call him Neil, she got confused.

Hours had passed since Deputy Tom had been shot. Jacinda ached everywhere, and she was exhausted. Her couple of concussion naps hadn’t been that restorative.

“Oh, shit,” Jacinda muttered, remembering something important. “What time is it?” Her wrist was bare, except for the plastic ER bracelet. Had she lost her jewelry somewhere? “Where’s my watch? I have to call my dad. He’s got to be freaking out.”

She jumped off the gurney, and the room wobbled and slid. Just as she thought she’d drop in a heap, Apollo’s huge arm caught her around the waist—which made her bruised ribs bark, but she didn’t fall. She grabbed his arm and steadied herself.

“Easy, easy,” he muttered, holding her close. It was the nicest he’d been to her since he’d shielded her with his body.

“I’m okay. I need to call home.”

“You can call from the motel. Let’s get out of here.”

“Wait, what?” Motel? What motel? She hadn’t checked in anywhere; she’d been planning to turn the bail jumper in for transport back to Tulsa and head straight back home.

He didn’t answer. Instead, he grabbed her boots, sat her in the one chair in the tiny room, and crouched in front of her. As he started putting a boot on her foot, he muttered, “After you get some sleep, we’ve got shit to talk about, Jacinda.”

She watched him slide her foot gently into her boot and zip it up. He picked up the other boot and lifted his beautiful face to meet her eyes. His eyebrows went up; he wanted a response.

Clenching her hands around the arms of the chair so she wouldn’t reach out to touch him, she gave him what he wanted. “I know.”