CHAPTER 2
GRACE
Patches of unmelted snow sparkled on the tops of the mighty pines that towered over the Gods of Chaos Motorcycle Club’s clubhouse. Even though Christmas had come and gone weeks ago, our lights were still up. Ryder wanted to take them down, but I asked him to keep them up just a little longer.
Something about them made me smile.
And we’d had such a good Christmas, after working so hard bringing down the Vipers right before the holidays, that I wanted to extend the feeling just a little longer. We deserved it.
Our family had expanded, quite a bit, in fact, now that we’d welcomed thirteen new members into our fold. Eli, Nate and Fury convinced the other ten guys of their old club to prospect for the Gods and I had to admit, I loved the bustling energy that seemed to buzz around the place endlessly these days.
The men spent most of their time training all day. Some of them were working with Riot, who was teaching them the technical side of the job, and others were working with Ryder and Slade, enhancing their fighting skills and increasing their strength and reflexes.
Slade was in heaven with all the fresh meat to fight.
All in all, besides the feminine energy of Lacey, Frankie, Cherry and myself, we were surrounded by testosterone.
Not a bad way to spend the day, if you ask me.
Of course, I only looked.
My heart belonged to one man. Ryder was my rock, and how he still had the ability to weaken my knees with just a glance was beyond me. I had no complaints, though. Our love deepened with every passing day and I knew exactly how blessed I was to be living this life.
It hadn’t always been like this. Love wasn’t something that came naturally, and it wasn’t something I’d grown up around. Having such a close-knit family now, which I’d found in these remarkable men and women, had taken some getting used to. A family that wasn’t full of pain and dysfunction was foreign to me.
I was a quick learner, though. And, more importantly, I was quick to learn to love. While I was just getting to know the new guys, the others held a special place in my heart that would never fade.
Now, I knew what family was. Unfortunately, now that I knew how important it was, it only made the fact that I’d never had it before sting a little more.
I was hell-bent on making up for lost time.
We’d all come so far together. I think back on those first few months, when I didn’t even know my name, after Ryder found me passed out at the end of his driveway, my very life seconds from being extinguished by an angry pimp who’d discovered my secret — that I was an undercover cop trying to bring him down — and I’m in awe of how everything played out. Without Ryder having come along when he did, I might still be lying in a ditch somewhere.
He saved me, just enough to allow me to safe myself.
And in saving my life, he’d set in motion a series of events that would take us on some of the wildest adventures of our lives. We’d paid it forward, I guess you could say. Together, we created Solid Ground, a secret organization that worked to help victims who couldn’t help themselves, the ones that couldn’t just call the cops and expect help to magically arrive in a flurry of red and blue flashing lights.
We handled the cases that needed a little more. People whose rescues required fearless acts that might not be so lawful every time.
For a long time, I’d thought I had a few friends left in the force, even after I’d given up my badge. This last job with the Vipers made me realize just how wrong I was. I hated being betrayed once again by the people I thought I could trust, but I’d learned my lesson now.
I’d severed all ties with anyone connected with the police at all. Whatever jobs we did in the future, we were on our own now. That meant we’d have to change the way we did things a little bit. In the past, the cops were good to have in our pocket, in case we needed help disposing of a body or dealing with the press.
Not anymore.
This was a new day now.
I had every confidence that we would do just fine without them, though. Our men were intelligent and bright and we’d adapt our procedures accordingly.
This morning I’d found my confidence again, the Christmas lights flickering through the misty fog still hanging heavy in the air.
Dozens of gleaming bikes littered the gravel in front of the clubhouse and even this early, I could hear Cherry already up and cooking in the kitchen.
Cherry was a part of the club before I’d arrived and even though we’d had a bumpy start, we were fast friends now. Her bright red curls bounced around her head as she flipped the bacon in the skillet as I walked in. She greeted me with a smile and I walked over and kissed her on the cheek.
“Mornin’, Cherry,” I said.
“Good morning!” she chirped, cheerful as always. “Still foggy out there?”
“Sure is,” I said, grabbing a piece of bacon from the platter and sitting at the counter behind her.
“Well, maybe the sun will come out today,” she said. “Been a while.”
“Maybe in a few months,” I joked. Sunshine was something you could go months without witnessing during the grey Oregon winters. The Tillamook Forest, where we live, is a temperate rain forest off the northern Oregon coast, and the massive amount of Douglas-fir trees alone can block out the sun on the ground.
“Where’s Ryder?” Cherry asked. “I’m surprised he let you out of his sight.”
“He’s easing up a little finally,” I said. Ryder tended to stay glued to my side after the Viper’s job for a bit. Things got a little dangerous during that assignment, which caused him to get a bit over-protective.
“That’s good,” Cherry said. “A woman needs a little breathing room. But I guess if you gotta get crowded by a man, Ryder’s not a bad choice.”
“That’s true,” I laughed, just as my phone began buzzing in my pocket. I pulled it out and walked back outside to answer.
“Solid Ground,” I answered. “What’s the password?”
“Sanctuary?” I was surprised to hear a little boy’s voice on the other end.
“This is Grace,” I said. “Are you in a safe place?”
“Y-yes,” he answered.
“Good,” I said. “What’s your name?”
“My name is Benjamin William Bernard the Third, ma’am. But you can call me Benji.”
I paused, smiling to myself before continuing.
“How can I help you, Benji?”
“I’m not the one that needs help. It’s my best friend, Molly…”
***
“I got a call this morning,” I said to Ryder, once he’d joined us for breakfast.
“Another job?”
“Not sure. It was a ten year-old boy. He’s concerned about his best friend. He said her father is abusing her and nobody will do anything about it.”
“Why not?”
“They live in Greenville. Up in the foothills of Mt. Hood. The boy, Benji, said her father owns the town and everyone’s afraid of him.”
“Weird.”
“I know. I think I’m going to head up there and see if there’s someone I can talk to.”
“The police?” he asked, raising a skeptical eyebrow.
“Maybe. Think I might start with her mother, or perhaps the principal of the school she attends.”
“Why don’t you just make a phone call?”
I thought about that a second. It’s true I could easily make a few calls. But something told me I needed to do this in person.
“I think I’ll trust she’s getting help if I can look someone in the eye, you know? Sounds like she just needs someone to advocate for her. She deserves that much. All little girls do.”
He nodded silently, his smoldering eyes holding mine.
“Let me guess, you’re going alone,” he said.
I smiled and nodded.
“I’ll be fine. Just a quick drive over and back. Shouldn’t even take an entire day.”
“Sure you don’t want me to come?”
“No, you’re busy training the new guys. No need. I’m just going to visit her school and come right back.”
“Okay, but if anything gets weird…”
“…call you, I know. Will do, babe.” I stretched up on my toes and brushed my lips against his. He snaked his arms around my waist and pulled me close, kissing me deeply as I leaned into him.
“Get a room, you two,” Slade joked. He’d just walked into the clubhouse, lured by the smell of Cherry’s bacon, no doubt. As usual, he wore only jeans, shirtless and barefoot, his ever-present crooked smile paired up with his cocky swagger forming a powerful cocktail of bad boy that was easy to get drunk on.
We pulled away laughing and joined him at the table after filling our plates.
“Cherry, I think we’d all starve without you,” I said.
“Oh, you’d make do,” she protested.
Slade’s mouth was full of bacon but that didn’t stop him from talking.
“Oh, no, we’d starve, we’d definitely starve.”