A knock on the office door. “Hey, D?” Maverick leaned in as Dare looked up from the bag of patches on the desk. “Was looking for you, man.” The club’s vice-president and Dare’s cousin, Maverick Rylan was the light, good-looking, and upbeat yin to Dare’s dark, beat-to-hell, and brooding yang. The fucker. Good thing he was one of Dare’s best and most trusted friends in the world.
“What’s up, Mav?” Dare asked, letting his head fall back heavily against the tall leather desk chair. Hands linked over his gut, ankles crossed, shitkickers resting on the desk’s far corner, Dare was almost considering just sleeping there for the night—the party providing comforting white noise in the background, the warm spring air blowing through the open office window. The insanity of the clubhouse was a helluva lot better than the solitude of his own place sometimes.
Maverick dropped his big-ass frame into the beat-up wooden chair on the desk’s far side. “You should be out there with everyone.” The words were more question than criticism, more concern than censure.
Dare shrugged. “I was out there.”
The droll stare was pure smart-ass Maverick. “It’s a fucking celebration.”
“I know what the hell it is,” Dare said.
“Then you should be out there,” Maverick said, shaking his shaggy sandy-blond hair out of his face. Intelligent dark blue eyes glared at Dare. “We need you out there, D.”
“Get off my back, Maverick. I’m here. I’m always here. Everything I do, I do for this club.” Dare’s boots thudded loudly as he shifted position, all his peace from moments before gone now. Well, as close as he got to peace, anyway.
They glared at each other for a long moment, neither of them needing to explain why Maverick was hassling him. Harvey and Creed. The two brothers they’d lost and buried two weeks before. The two brothers whose loss they all still felt. The two brothers whose loss made tonight’s celebration just a little bit hollow despite a fight won, justice served, vengeance claimed.
Heaving a sigh, Maverick’s expression softened. “You’re a moody motherfucker.”
Now Dare was the one with the droll stare. “Oh, good. You’ve met me before.” Only thirty-four years ago. Back before Dare’s first family had been destroyed, back when Dare’s father wasn’t yet estranged from his grandfather and still returned to the East Coast for occasional visits. When they were kids, Dare and his brother, Kyle, and their cousin, Maverick, ran these mountains like the hellions they grew up to become. Well, Dare and Maverick got to grow up.
Maverick smirked and shook his head, his gaze falling on the bag of badges Dare had been studying earlier. The guy’s eyes went wide upon realizing what he was seeing. He sat forward and tugged the clear plastic closer. “Gonna give these out tonight?” he asked, voice solemn, all the sarcasm gone.
Dare nodded. “Was just in here pulling my thoughts together.” He wasn’t one for grandstanding and speech giving, though certain occasions called for it—like honoring the death of a fallen brother. Or two.
His veep reached into the bag and pulled out two of the narrow, curved black patches. White stitching spelled out Harvey’s name on one and Creed’s on the other, along with the date they both died. It had been a while since the Ravens had last had to add a memorial patch to their colors, or cuts—the sleeveless riding vests that proclaimed their club affiliation and loyalty.
“All right, D.” Maverick tapped the stiff patches against his palm and rose. “Sorry I hassled you.”
“If you didn’t hassle me, how would I know you loved me?” Dare smirked as his brother chuckled. “Now get the fuck out.”
Flipping him the finger, Maverick left and closed the door behind him.
Dare pulled two patches out for himself and set them on the corner of the ancient, well-scribbled, coffee-stained blotter buried under papers and bike parts and about a dozen figurines of dogs riding motorcycles that people had given him as jokes over the years because he’d once given his German shepherd Indy, named after the vintage Indian motorcycles, a ride on his bike. Indy had been a good dog, the best. He’d died in his sleep of old age a few years before.
They should all be so lucky to go that way.
Shit. No sense putting this off. Dare grabbed the bag of patches and made his way to the rec room. He caught Blake’s attention behind the bar and gestured to cut the music. The blond-haired prospect held up an empty glass in question. Dare nodded, and the loss of the tunes pretty quickly had everyone looking Dare’s way—his brothers, their girlfriends, ladies and friends from town. From a grouping of couches in the back corner, Dare’s grandfather gave him a nod, no doubt knowing what he was about to do.
Frank “Doc” Kenyon had whitish-gray hair and a beard. A hip and knee replacement a few years before made it difficult for him to ride much anymore, but there was absolutely no one else in the world that Dare respected or trusted more. After all, the man had once saved his life. And then he’d helped Dare build a whole new life—based around this club and this compound—when Dare hadn’t thought it possible to go on after losing so much.
Glass of whiskey in hand, Dare scanned the room. Despite the festive atmosphere, the group’s collective grief hummed just below the surface. He breathed it in and spoke. “It’s a terrible tragedy when a brother takes his final ride. But Harvey and Creed haven’t left us behind. Their spirits live on. In this family they loved. In each of you. In Phoenix,” he said, raising his glass to Creed’s cousin.
Despite the scary-looking jagged scar that ran from the guy’s eye and through the side of his short brown hair, Phoenix almost always wore a smile that made him look younger than his thirty years, and he was nearly as often chasing skirts. But just then he wore an uncharacteristically solemn expression. The guys around him clapped him on the back and offered quiet words of support.
“I miss them both,” Dare continued. “And I know each of you do, too. But I won’t shed a tear for them. Because they lived free. They lived the life they wanted. They died helping others. And they died with honor.” Nods all around. Dare raised his glass high, and others joined him as he spoke. “So ride on, my brothers, and rest in peace. Wherever you are, may you always have the sun on your back, your fists in the wind, and the road stretching out before you.” Dare raised his glass higher, then threw back the whiskey.
“Hear, hear,” rang out in the room, and everyone drank in honor of Harvey and Creed. The bag of badges made the rounds.
“Now let’s turn the music up, keep the liquor flowing, and celebrate a job damn well done. Because every one of you deserves it,” Dare said to a round of raucous cheers. Music, conversation, and laughter filled the room once more. Stopping to talk to everyone as he went, Dare made his way across the room until he finally found Phoenix, Maverick, Caine McKannon, and Jagger Locke hanging out near the pool table. These four men made up most of the club’s executive committee, with Phoenix serving as Road Captain in charge of all club runs and travel, Maverick running the club’s chop shop, Caine serving as Sergeant-at-Arms in charge of rule enforcement and threat assessment, and Jagger serving as Race Captain in charge of organizing and running the club’s racing activities.
“Hey, D,” Maverick said, an approving look in his eye. “Good speech.” He lifted his beer in salute.
Dare gave a nod, but he didn’t want to put any more focus on their losses. Not tonight. And the look Phoenix wore said he felt the same way. Dare’s gaze landed on Caine. “I want us to keep our ear to the ground for a while. Make sure nothing’s coming back on us, given everything we’ve been involved with the past few weeks.” Namely, taking down Baltimore’s Church Gang, their longtime enemies, and helping expose a major military conspiracy. Officially, the authorities proclaimed that they’d rounded up all the conspirators, but you could never be too careful.
“Agreed,” Caine said, answering in the fewest possible syllables, just like he always did. Scrubbing a hand over the dark scruff on his jaw, his gaze was calculating and filled with lethal intent toward anyone looking to harm them. From his six-four height, to his shaved black hair, which he always covered with a black knit cap, to the all-black ink covering a lot of his skin, to the small, round gauges in both ears, everything about Caine read intimidating—which often suited their purposes well. The only spot of lightness on him were the blue eyes so pale they didn’t look real. “I’ll make contacts on it in the morning.”
“We have a run on Friday,” Phoenix said, his voice flat and so unlike his normal smart-ass self. “I’ll do some quiet asking while we’re out.”
Dare nodded. “Sounds good.”
With his wavy mess of dark brown hair, his ability to play the hell out of any guitar, and his habit of humming under his breath, Jagger had come by his handle honestly. The guy took a swig of his beer. “I think I’m gonna need two weeks to get the races running again. We’d cleared the calendar when we didn’t know how long the shit in Baltimore would take. That work for you?” Hosting stock-car and dirt-bike racing at the racetrack they owned was their main business, along with more occasional demolition derbies and less formally organized quarter-mile drag racing at a strip constructed on their property for that specific purpose. Three-hundred-plus acres gave them all kinds of room to move.
“Sounds good. Let’s make sure Ike’s in the loop so he can open betting again.” As his day job, Ike Young was a tattoo artist at Hard Ink Tattoo in Baltimore, not to mention the guy who did most of the club’s official ink when he was here, but he was also the Ravens’ longtime betting officer and their point man in the city for racing bets and debt collection. Ike made the Ravens lots of coin. Dare did a quick sweep of the room but didn’t see Ike around.
“Will do,” Jagger said, his fingers moving with the chord changes in the rock song that was playing. The guy was brilliant. He could equally pick up an unfamiliar instrument or take apart an engine and perfect either within a day. Two at most.
Dare put in another hour of face time at the party and didn’t feel bad for cutting out as people passed out, couples paired off, and the whole shindig started to wind down. Sometimes he felt like the years he’d spent alone and drifting had transformed him into an incurable loner. Because there were moments when he could stand in a roomful of people and feel totally alone, and other times when being social took more effort than he had to give and he absolutely craved his solitude. Like now.
On the way back to his office, Dare heard voices coming from the small room Ike used for his studio. Dare knocked.
A pause, and then, “Come in.”
Dare opened the door to find Ike sitting on his stool, a tattoo machine in his hand and the tattoo on his bald head visible. Jessica Jakes sat in the chair next to Ike, the red skin on her neck revealing where Ike had been working moments before. Dare didn’t know much about Jess besides that she worked at Hard Ink with Ike. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to interrupt,” Dare said, before looking to Jessica. “How are you, Jess?”
The woman had jet black hair with thick red strands and pretty much as many tats as Ike. “Good now that everything’s over in Baltimore. Glad you all are back and we can all get back to normal.”
Dare nodded. “Hope so.” No doubt Ike and Jess were anxious in their own way about what would happen now. The tattoo shop’s building had been heavily damaged in a firefight—the same attack that had claimed the lives of Harvey and Creed.
“We were just finishing,” Ike said. “Need me?” A big mountain of a guy, Ike had found his way to the Ravens a decade before, and he and Dare had bonded over a fuckton of unfortunate shit they had in common. Evil fathers. Lost loved ones. Long years drifting on their own. The usual.
“Jagger’s looking for you. Find him about the race schedule tonight if you can,” Dare said.
“As soon as I finish up with Jess I’ll get on it.” Ike gave the petite woman a look, and her answering smile suddenly clued Dare in. They were together. Well, damn. In all the years Dare and Ike had known each other, neither of them had gotten serious about a woman. But good for Ike. Given everything the guy had been through, he deserved it.
“That works,” Dare said. With a nod, he stepped out of Ike’s studio and closed the door.
Back in his own office, Dare shut himself in, turned on the desk lamp, and dropped his ass into his chair. For a long time, he sat in the dim golden light, staring at the two remembrance patches on the desk. Slowly, he became aware of a soft sound—music? Or humming, maybe? He shifted toward the window that looked out over the clubhouse’s big back porch. The darkness kept him from seeing much, but the sound—definitely a woman humming—was coming from someone out there for sure.
He stretched further, far enough to see the moonlight reflect off of long blond hair.
Haven. Sitting with her head lying on folded arms on the porch railing. Her face was totally in shadows, but her humming continued on. Soft. Sweet. Peaceful.
Dare clicked off the desk lamp and settled back into his chair, arms crossed, feet up. In the darkness, Haven’s song seemed a little louder, more distinct. As tired as he was and as calming as her singing was, Dare was surprised he didn’t nod off sooner. Instead, he hung there, right on the edge of sleep. The image of Haven standing in the doorway of the rec room played against the inside of his eyelids.
He hoped their talk had put her more at ease. She and Cora had nothing to their names as far as Dare knew, and, though he hadn’t yet learned all their details, it seemed pretty clear they were runaways from something or someone. Until he got the backstory on them, he wouldn’t know fully how to help them. So they were probably here to stay for at least a little while.
I just usually expect the worst. That way it doesn’t hurt as much when it happens.
Her words from earlier came back to him in the quiet. In some ways—and certainly in that sentiment—she reminded him so much of himself. Or, at least, of the person he’d been back before he’d found his grandfather and a home at the clubhouse. The Raven Riders MC had already existed back then, headed up by Doc and a small group of his friends. But it wasn’t until Dare arrived that the organization started to grow and take in new blood. First Dare. Then Maverick. Then Bandit. Then Caine. And many others, too.
Now these men were his family of choice if not by blood. Though they’d spilled plenty of that together over the years, too.
Finally, Haven’s humming lured him into a state of semiconsciousness devoid of thoughts, free of concerns, and increasingly unaware of the world around him. And then he was out altogether.
IT STARTED THE way it always did. With Dare standing in the doorway of Kyle’s bedroom.
“Mom’s home from the bank,” Dare said. “And Dad just pulled in after her.”
“What?” Kyle asked, his eyes going wide. Their father was supposed to be on an overnight ride with the club. That’s why they’d picked today for this.
“Shit, the bags,” Kyle said, already in motion.
They scrambled down the steps to the living room, where three suitcases and two duffel bags sat packed for the new life their mother wanted for them. There’d been a time when she’d been fully supportive of the Diablos—after all, she’d married the man who became the club vice president. But that was before Kyle had been forced to kill two men—his first kills—as a way of proving his loyalty to an outlaw motorcycle club that viewed jail time as a badge of honor. When Mom found out what her seventeen-year-old son, the youngest Diablos prospect, had done, she’d been angry, then terrified, then resolved—she wanted her boys as far away from Arizona as they could get. Kyle might not have gone along with it if their father’s alcohol-induced rages hadn’t been getting worse and worse—landing both Dare and their mom in the ER in pretty quick succession.
Kyle shoved a duffel bag onto Dare’s shoulder and a suitcase into his hand. “Gotta get these outta here,” he said, grabbing the rest. Raised voices outside said their parents were close to the front porch of the old split-level. He and Kyle had just reached the top of the stairs when the front door crashed against the wall in the small foyer.
Yelling. Arguing. Crying.
Kyle all but shoved them into their parents’ room and raced to the window which faced the backyard. He lifted the sash and squeezed the releases to lift the screen, too. “Climb out. I’ll drop the bags down to you. Just make sure you catch them so they don’t make noise,” Kyle whispered.
Willing to follow his older brother to the ends of the earth, Dare was already half out the window. The house’s split-level style meant that the drop wasn’t as high as a regular second-story would be, but it was still enough that Dare’s ankles, knees, and elbows took a beating when he hit the ground. One by one, Kyle dropped the bags out of the window, both of them trying like hell to be quiet and ignore the escalating noise coming from the living room.
Yelling. Arguing. Crying. Crashes.
Gunshot.
Dare got dizzy as all the blood rushed down to his feet. “Mom!” he cried, looking up at his brother.
Kyle’s eyes were wild with anger and fear. “Get out of here, now,” he rasped. “We’ll meet you. You know where.”
“No, Kyle,” Dare said. “I’m not going without you.” They could disappear together into the woods surrounding their house. That’s what their mom would want them to do. She’d catch up when she could. If she could. God, the thought tore through him as hotly as any bullet would.
“Kyle! Dean! Get your asses down here!” Their dad’s voice. “Dare” had been Kyle’s nickname for him, one Dare had used without exception since that day. Dean Kenyon didn’t exist. And hadn’t for over twenty years.
Kyle’s expression was livid. “Get the fuck out, Dare. Now!” Then he disappeared from the window.
Seconds later, a new round of chaos erupted. More yelling. More arguing. A scream.
Then nothing. The silence hung heavy and suffocating over Dare as if it had a physical form.
More screams.
Another gunshot.
Dare gasped awake.
For one heartbeat, his brain remained unaware enough to hope it’d all been a dream. And then reality came crashing back down. Kyle and Mom were dead. And Dare hadn’t done a single thing to save them.