Gemma was a twenty-one-year-old psychology student at the university up the road, and she was the one who worked the late shifts at my gym on Wednesday nights. She was shutting everything down as I finished up my workout, and I watched her try to move some of the heavier dumbbells from the floor back to their racks.

I put mine down and stepped in to help her. “Let me get these for you, Gem. Some guys are assholes just leaving them lying around like this.”

“Thanks,” Gemma said as she straightened and tightened her ponytail. She was a cute girl who got a lot of attention from the guys who frequented this place, and she always shot them down.

“I’ll grab my stuff and get out of your hair.”

Gemma nodded and left me in the weight room while she went and did her rounds of the rest of the gym. I collected my stuff from my locker and slung my bag over my shoulder as I made my way out. Gemma came back to the front desk when I was leaving and locked up behind me with a wave and a smile.

Her smile reminded me of Evelyn’s.

Damn, she’d looked cute as hell when she opened the door in her pajamas. She’d been barefoot and her toes were painted a vibrant shade of red. Her dark hair was a curly mess piled on top of her head, and loose strands had framed her pretty, makeup-free face. The way her cheeks had gone all rosy was adorable, and so was her coy attitude.

Had Penny not been there, I wondered if things would have gone differently.

Probably not. Evelyn was a smart girl from what I could tell and she would know I was bad news for her in all possible scenarios, especially now that she knew I was a Lost Breed member. She’d been relatively knowledgeable about who we were. It wouldn’t surprise me to know she kept tabs on the news and our movements as an informed New York City citizen. She’d probably pay even closer attention now to the stories that were breaking, especially the ones written by Sabian’s girl, Angela. She had a way with words and an open hatred for The Hand. She’d be running stories about his dealings as we worked to snuff him out.

I got to my truck and opened the back door to toss my gym bag inside. My water bottle fell out of the open zipper and rolled under my front seat. I groaned and reached underneath to grab it and then dropped it back in the bag and zipped it back up.

I closed the door and nearly jumped out of my skin when I realized someone was standing behind it not three feet from me.

Someone familiar.

He was skinny and young. The features of his face were drawn and screwed up with anxiety. I turned to face him and blinked as he lifted his right hand up between us, leveling it out with his shoulder. His knuckles whitened as he tightened his fingers around the pistol he was holding.

Jason.

“What the fuck?” The words came out of me in an angry snarl. Fuck being confused. Fuck trying to play it cool. I was pissed.

Jason’s hand trembled, and his bottom lip quivered. “Don’t move,” he said. His voice was thin and crackly, and I noticed for the first time how pale he was. He looked sickly.

“What’s your deal, Jason? The Hand send you to off me? It’s like that?”

Jason jerked his head. I couldn’t tell if it was a nervous twitch or an intentional shake.

“Johnny will have your—”

“Shut up!” Jason shouted.

I clenched my jaw shut and glared at him from beneath my brows. So I’d hit a nerve, apparently. He still cared what Ryder thought. Which was bad news for the kid, because if Ryder caught wind of this, Jason would have hell to pay when Ryder got his hands on his nephew. Hopefully when that happened, I wouldn’t be a corpse in the ground.

“Put the gun down, kid. Let’s be rational about this. If you’re in over your head, we can get you out. He hasn’t given up on you. He’s been looking for months. Since the day you disappeared. So has Dani.”

Jason shook his head and whimpered. He actually whimpered. He was scared shitless, and he was the one who didn’t have the gun pointed at his chest by an unstable little shit. “They have to stop looking,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because!” he roared.

“Jason. If you kill me, there’s no going back from this. But you’re gonna do what you’ve gotta do. So let’s stop fucking around. Do something. Or fuck off. I’m fucking bored of this.” I wasn’t bowing down to the little prick. No way in hell. If this is how shit was going down, then so be it. You couldn’t fight fate, and you couldn’t fight a kid who was pointing a gun at your throat. Chances were that if he didn’t kill me, The Hand would kill him. And that might scare him more than Ryder did. If that was the case, I was doomed, and there was no sense fighting it.

I just hoped he got it done with one bullet.

I wasn’t keen on bleeding out after he put a few rounds in me in the parking lot to be found by poor Gemma.

Damn it to hell.

Jason was almost crying. His gun hand was wavering around all over the place. His finger flexed on the trigger.

For some reason, I found myself thinking about fucking mermaids.

The gun went off. I waited to feel weak, to fall to my knees, to clutch at a bloody wound, but I didn’t. I stayed on my feet feeling exactly the same as I had before the gun went off.

Then, the burning in my shoulder started. He’d shot me all right. But he’d missed on purpose. I was sure of it. The bullet had grazed the meat of my shoulder. Blood was spilling out and racing down my arm in snaking vines of red.

I clamped a hand over it as Jason took several unsteady steps back. He lowered the gun and stared at the blood leaking through my fingers with horrified eyes. “I-I—” he stammered.

“You chose,” I said.

Jason shook his head. “Don’t tell Ryder.”

“You bet your skinny ass I’m gonna tell Ryder, you little punk. Or you could get in my truck and come with me and tell him yourself. You can still fix this, kid. Trust me. He’ll take you back, and we’ll keep you safe.”

Jason met my stare for the first time since he’d shown up behind my door. His eyes were hollow. There was nothing in his gaze that was the same as I remembered. The youthful pothead who just wanted to have fun and hang out in the yard with us was long gone. He was a scared child. “I can’t,” he whispered.

“Yes, you can.”

“He’ll kill me.”

“He can try. But we’ll protect you. Just get in the fucking truck!”

Jason blinked and then looked around in a panic. His chest was rising and falling rapidly, and he had the look of a prey animal that had just caught the scent of its predator. He shook his head again and started backing farther away. “No. No. Just don’t tell Ryder. Please? Don’t tell him.”

He took off running. For a sickly looking guy, he was pretty quick. He darted out around my truck and raced across the parking lot to the lane on the other side, which he turned right down and disappeared into the darkness.

“Little fucker,” I growled as I glanced at my bleeding shoulder.

The door to the gym opened.

Gemma came out in a hurry. She was looking off in the direction that Jason had run, and when she concluded he was gone, she broke into a full run and only slowed when she reached me. She looked at my shoulder and unzipped her purse. “I brought some bandages from behind the counter. I didn’t know … I didn’t think … I don’t know. Here.” She handed me a rolled up piece of white bandaging.

“Thanks.” I pressed it to the wound.

“Do you want me to call the cops? I saw the whole thing. I can give my statement.”

“No,” I said, a little too sharply. She flinched, and I felt guilty instantly. “Sorry, Gem. I can handle this one on my own. It’s MC business. You know how it is.”

Gemma was aware of the Lost Breed MC. Caleb and I and some of the others came to this gym all the time, and I’d stepped in on more than one occasion when a guy was giving her or any of the other girls a hard time.

I held up the bandage she gave me. “Thanks for this. I have to get out of here. Get in your car and drive away. I’m not leaving until you’re out of here.”

Gemma nodded but hesitated to leave. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Yes. Just a flesh wound. He only grazed me.”

“Okay,” she said nervously. Then, she walked over to the little silver coupe a few stalls away and got in. I kept my word and stayed where I was until she pulled out of the parking lot and drove away.

Then, I got in my truck, cursing like a madman, and headed for Ryder’s place.

He was going to be pissed. No, he’d be more than pissed. This changed everything. Not only was Jason helping The Hand push Zandra, but he was working as a hitman for him, too, apparently. The Hand was scaring him into going after his own uncle’s crew. We’d been right. The man had no honor code whatsoever. He was sadistic. Cruel. He was clearly getting off on twisting Jason’s tiny little brain in his hands.

My blood leaked out onto my leather interior. I grumbled to myself as I took a sharp turn onto Ryder’s street. “Little bastard. Thinks he can come at me and put a gun in my face. Thinks he can shoot me dead, just like that. He’s got another thing coming.”

I was glad it had been me Jason was sent after. Had it been one of the others, maybe someone he hadn’t known as long, he might not have hesitated. He might have actually gone through with it. His fate would have been sealed. He’d never get back in with Ryder, and he’d have proved to The Hand that he was capable of murder. He would become more useful to the big bald bastard, and that only spelled one thing: chaos.

I parked the truck in Ryder’s driveway and glanced at the clock in the dash. It was a half hour past midnight. Ryder and Dani were probably in bed. Right now, they had no idea how bad things had gotten. I didn’t want to go in there and tell him what had happened. I didn’t want to be the one to soil his image of his nephew even further.

But it had to be me.

I reached over and yanked my glove box open. I grabbed a wad of napkins and clamped them over my shoulder. The bandage Gemma had given me had soaked all the way through with blood and was only making more of a mess than necessary. I rolled it up and put it in my cup holder to deal with later.

Then, I slid out of the truck, walked up to the front door, and knocked.

The lights inside flicked on, and I could hear Ryder telling Dani to stay where she was. He was on high alert like the rest of us. I knocked again. “Ryder, it’s Derek.”

“Hold the fuck on. I’m not wearing any fucking pants. It’s nearly one in the morning. What the hell are you doing here?” Ryder yanked the front door open. He was only wearing sweats that were riding low on his hips. He was angry until he saw I was bleeding on his front step. Then, he stepped aside, invited me in, and called Dani to come help.

She emerged from the bedroom wrapped up in a gray robe. She went to the kitchen and hurried to grab antiseptic, towels, and the kettle to boil some water. When she looked nervously over her shoulder at me as I sank down into a chair at their kitchen table, I noticed the dark circles under her eyes and the slow way she moved. She looked like she wasn’t feeling well. I knew better than to ask a woman if she was under the weather. Maybe I’d just woke her up from a dead sleep.

Ryder sat too. “Who did this to you?”

“You’re not going to like it,” I said.

Ryder exchanged a look with Dani. Then, he turned back to me. “There’s been a lot of shit going on lately that I haven’t liked. I can handle a bit more.”

So I told him.

And he was just as furious as I’d expected him to be.