“We’ll be listening to every word,” Kyle was saying into her ear. Angel had excused herself to use the ladies’ room before they left. She let Kyle know that she intended to go to the clubhouse with Dax. Her brother wasn’t happy, even though that had been the plan.

“Okay,” she answered Kyle.

“If you need us, we’ll be right there; but call us as soon as there is any sign of trouble, because it might take us a minute to get inside. That place is set up like a compound.”

“Got it.”

“Angel?”

“Yes, Kyle?”

“Please be safe.”

“I will.”

Kyle was still talking when she stepped out of the stall, but another woman had stepped into the room. Angel didn’t think she’d be able to hear Kyle’s voice in her ear, but just in case, she turned the water on full blast and as she washed her hands, she whistled. Kyle got the hint quickly and stopped talking. She smiled at the other woman, who barely acknowledged her with a look. After drying her hands, she went to find Dax and when she did, he was standing in the parking lot next to a shiny chrome hog with a black and blue custom-painted gas tank that said “Skulls” in darker blue script. There was also the image of a burning skull splashed across it.

She looked at the bike and then up at Dax. “Um…no, thank you. I didn’t drink much. I’ll follow you in my jeep.” Dax looked over at the jeep and back at Angel.

“I thought you were looking for something different, more exciting?”

“Exciting, not death-defying.”

He laughed and slid a helmet off the handlebars and held it out to her. “I won’t kill you, I promise.”

“What about the jeep?”

“It’ll be fine right where it is for now. Have you ever been on the back of a bike?”

“No,” she lied. She had ridden a few times with Kyle. She actually loved it, but that didn’t feed into her backstory.

“You’re going to love it,” he said in a seductive voice. “You’ll be begging for more.”

Angel shuddered slightly before slipping on the helmet. Dax grinned and straddled the bike. She climbed on behind him and placed her hands tentatively on his sides. They felt like steel. “You’re going to have to hold on tighter than that, darlin’, or I’ll lose you on the first rotary.”

As she slid her hands around and linked them together across his tight stomach, he fired up the engine. She felt his muscles flex as he let the throttle rip and in seconds they were gaining speed as they pulled out onto the main highway and headed south. She automatically leaned her body into his for safety but even if she’d felt more confident, she would have stayed. The muscles in his back rippled with every movement he made and she could feel the warmth of his body through both of their clothes. As the wind pressed into her, the vibrations of the motor sent sensations of pleasure shooting up her thighs. For the next half an hour she almost forgot who she was and what she was doing there, all that mattered was how she felt…free.

* * *

The clubhouse was way out on the southernmost edge of the county. It was set out in the middle of about five thousand acres of farmland. Dax turned off the main road they’d been on for about ten miles and onto a dirt road. They passed by a guard shack. Dax gave the guy in the shack a wave and the young guy in a jean vest waved back. He didn’t look fazed at all by Angel’s being on the back. Apparently she was not the first girl Dax had ever brought home to meet the club. Dax drove slowly along the dirt road, presumably to keep from stirring it up too much. It gave Angel the opportunity to look around. Small farmhouses that looked like farm labor workers’ quarters were scattered across the property. The paint on some of them was fresh and they had little yards and even window boxes with colorful flowers in them. Others were faded and peeling with weeds grown up around them.

Once they got past the houses a large building came into view. It looked like an old barn, and there were several Harleys and an old pickup parked in front of it. Just past that was a large stone building. This building was the newest of all of them and surrounded by a fence that was about eight feet tall and had barbed wire wrapped around the top of it. There were no windows, only a set of double doors that looked like they might be made of steel. This must be the clubhouse. It was painted a dark gray color, and once Dax turned off the bike and she stepped off on shaky legs, she saw the big skulls painted on each end of the building.

“So what did you think?” he asked her with a grin.

Damn, he’s hot.

“It was fun,” she said with a smile.

“The fun is only beginning,” he said. He took her by the elbow and led her up to the gate. He pressed a buzzer and Angel felt like they were at the county jail. The gate in front of them slid open and when they stepped in, it slid shut behind them, before the second one opened in front of them. The Skulls had definitely used the jail’s architect. Dax put his hand on the small of her back and guided her up to the door. He pressed another buzzer and Angel heard the subtle sound of a surveillance camera moving into place. She looked up to her right and saw the eye of the camera looking down on them. Once it stopped moving a buzzer sounded and Dax pushed open the heavy metal doors.

The inside of the clubhouse wasn’t anything like what she’d pictured it. On television they always had a bar set-up and a big room where everyone gathered and watched television or had meetings; then there was another room that held their meeting table. But this one was just a wide-open space with a gigantic wooden table and a lot of chairs. The rest of the space was filled with motorcycles, motorcycle parts, tables with tools on them, and toolboxes. The walls were the most interesting thing about it. They were painted with skulls, but the skulls were in every size, shape, and color that she could imagine and they were superimposed over each other in places. Whoever did their painting was very talented.

“You like the art?”

“I love it,” she said, honestly.

“You have any tats?” She was suddenly self-conscious about her brother’s listening in. She’d gotten a tramp stamp about two years before, something her father and brothers knew nothing about.

“Yeah, one,” she said.

Dax smiled and raised his eyebrows. “Well, that skirt isn’t leaving a lot to the imagination and I don’t see any on your arms or your left shoulder.” She realized the t-shirt had slid down again. She reached and pulled it up to cover her shoulder as he went on to say, “It must be someplace fun.”

“So, what is this place?”

He laughed at the way she’d changed the subject and said, “This is our clubhouse, the Southside Skulls. Have you ever been in an MC clubhouse before?”

She shook her head. “Nope.”

“You’ll love it. I know it seems a little dead right now, but by late afternoon it’ll be the best party in town. Come on, I’ll show you into the great room.” She followed him through an open archway and across a hall. She glanced down the long hallway and couldn’t help but wonder what was behind all the closed doors. Dax opened a door and stepped through it. Angel followed and suddenly she was in a place just like the ones that she had seen on television. There was a small bar and an old jukebox. An antique car, a red Buick—probably a late 1940s model—sat in the center of the room. The top had been cut off and the doors removed. Around the outside of it the floor was smooth and shiny, like a dance floor. There were a few tables here and there along one wall, a couch and two easy chairs, a seventy-inch-screen television on the wall, a dartboard, pool table, and most interesting to Angel, a wall with photos that started out black and white and ended up in vivid color. The interesting thing about them, though, was that each 8x10 glossy photo was a mug shot. Underneath each framed mug shot was a little brass plaque with the “biker” name of the subject. Dax’s photo looked like it was probably ten years old. He couldn’t have been over twenty or twenty-one years old when it was taken. “Don’t judge,” he said, startling her.

“Excuse me?”

“The wall. It’s just for fun. We’re not really bragging…much.” She smiled and he said, “We all have a past, right?”

“Sure,” she said. “So, you’re the president of this club?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Dax moved over behind the little bar and pulled out a bottle of whiskey and two shot glasses.

“How long have you been…part of the club?” She knew the answers to almost every question she planned on asking him, but she had to let him think she knew nothing about him. She’d just happened to stumble upon that bar as she was passing by.

He poured a shot into each one of the glasses and said, “I guess the answer to that would have to be all of my life. I was born into it. My father was president back in the late eighties and early nineties and my mother was his old lady. I was brought up out here on the ranch. It’s the only home I’ve ever known.” He had a thoughtful look and for the first time Angel looked at him as a regular human, with a past that had shaped his future. What else has he really known? “Here,” He held out one of the shot glasses to her.

“Oh, I really shouldn’t. I do still have to drive…”

“Nah, not tonight. You can stay here.”

She laughed nervously. “I’m not really in the habit of spending the night with men I’ve only just met.”

He threw his head back and laughed. “Well, darlin’, as much as I’m sure we’d both enjoy a night together, I was actually thinking you might stay out in the club girls’ house.”

“Club girls?” she asked, innocently. He held the shot in her direction again and this time she took it.

“To new friends,” he said. She smiled and let him tap his glass against hers.

“To new friends,” she said. They both downed the shots. Angel didn’t drink hard liquor. She’d only ever had whiskey once. It burned all the way across her tongue and down her throat into her stomach. Her eyes were watering and Dax was grinning like he found her amusing.

“Good stuff, huh?”

She coughed. “Yeah, good. So, about these ‘club girls’?”

“They are girls that hang around the MC and do things like laundry and cooking and…well, other stuff for the guys. We give them room and board in exchange. They have a nice five-bedroom house out there. The rooms all have two beds and we’ve only got seven girls staying out here right now so you could probably have your own room.”

“They won’t mind?”

“No, darlin’, they’re used to it.” For some reason Angel didn’t like hearing that. She didn’t like knowing that Dax probably did this often, picked up women and brought them back to the clubhouse. His reputation with women was actually legendary according to all of the research she’d done. Strangely it hadn’t bothered her until she laid eyes on him. She knew she had to shake that. It was not okay to get romantically involved with a suspect, ever.

“I don’t know…it’s a little…”

“Exciting, new, adventurous?” He grinned again and poured two more shots. This time when he handed her one she just took it. He tapped her glass again and said, “To new experiences.”

She nodded and downed the shot. The second one went down easier. She was still tingling all over when she heard a whisper in her ear. It took her a second to process that it was Kyle. “Bathroom.” She must have had a funny look on her face because Dax was giving her a concerned look.

“Are you okay?”

“Oh…yeah, I’m fine. Is there a bathroom I can use?”

“Sure, follow me.” He led her out the door they’d come in through and pointed down the hall. “Second door on the right.”

“Thank you.” She could feel the whiskey slowing her reflexes as she walked down the hall and it began to slowly move through her veins. She had a pretty good feeling what her brother wanted to talk to her about before she ever pulled the bathroom door closed behind her.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“What do you mean?” she asked, knowing the answer full well.

“Two beers, two shots of whiskey…he’s trying to get you drunk.”

“Oh, no, he’s not. This is how they spend their time. I’m not going to be able to get anything done here if you’re going to nag me every step of the way, Kyle.”

“Don’t lose yourself in this, sis. That’s all I’m saying. Stay alert and don’t forget who you are and why you’re there.”

“If I was Micah, would you be telling me this?” Angel got so tired of the double standard that her brothers and her male co-workers had for her. She’d spent five long years proving that even at five foot four and a hundred and twenty pounds, she was as capable of doing her job as anyone else on the force. The fact alone that her captain trusted her to be where she was said a lot.

“Yes, I’d tell any cop the same thing. I just happen to be more worried about you because you’re my sister.”

“Then you’re the one with the problem, Kyle,” she whispered. “I’m a cop, just like you, and you need to think of me that way, or recuse yourself from this assignment—because I won’t be able to get anything done with you constantly whining in my ear.”

“Angel…”

“I’m going back in there to do my job, Kyle. If you don’t stop chattering in my ear, the stud comes out and goes down the toilet.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Don’t tempt me.”

“Shit, Angel, I’m just worried about you.”

“And that is the only thing putting me at risk right now.” Kyle stopped talking. Angel knew that he knew she was right.