Six months ago.

Cash paced the room with his eyes glued to the floor. I stroked my beard with the web of my hand while I waited for him to respond. After wearing the soles of his boots thin and streaking my freshly cleaned floor with scuffs, he paused and looked up.

“We don’t kill women, children, or the elderly,” he said under his breath.

His actions were unacceptable. As the president of Devil’s Disciples MC, I had many responsibilities. Keeping my men out of prison was one. Being a babysitter wasn’t. I demanded that everyone follow the rules outlined in the club’s bylaws. If they couldn’t – or wouldn’t – there was no place for them in the MC.

I could count the rules on one hand. Following them was paramount to the club’s success.

I studied him. An intimidating man to outsiders, he was lean and muscular with a mess of hair that obscured his eyes when he didn’t take the time to clear it away from his face. His jaw was sparsely covered in scruff, and his tanned skin was spotted with tattoos. His eyes were commanding, making looking away from him difficult.

“You understand the importance of that rule, don’t you?” I asked.

“Suppose so,” he said in a flat tone.

I pushed my chair away from my desk and stood. “You suppose so?”

“I guess so.”

“You’re guessing?” I sauntered toward him. “You know how I hate guessing.”

“What the fuck, Baker? It was an accident.”

“You expect me to believe you fired that weapon on accident?” I narrowed my gaze. “You left a bullet buried in the cabinet beside that bank manager’s shoulder.”

“I don’t care if you believe it or not,” he snapped back. “That’s what happened. It was an accident.”

“If you’re prone to discharging your weapon on accident, maybe this club isn’t the best place for you. I can’t put the rest of the men at risk, Cash.”

He looked me over as if sizing me up. “What are you saying?”

“I just said it. I can’t put the men at risk. You know the rules. Only point where you intend to shoot, and only shoot who you intend to kill. No women, no children, and no old people unless it’s self-defense. It’s a pretty simple set of rules. You’re lucky you didn’t kill her. If you had, we’d all be facing murder charges.”

“It was a fucking accident,” he insisted. “It won’t happen again.”

Our club was a close-knit group of men who were friends long before we chose to prove our alliance to one another by donning leather jackets and getting matching tattoos. My friendship with Cash began in kindergarten. He made the mistake of challenging me on the playground. An ass whipping ensued.

As much a kindergartner could administer, anyway.

We’d been friends ever since. Friendship didn’t afford him a pass for putting the club at risk, though. We had a strict set of rules we followed, one of which was training monthly as a group at the firing range. It provided assurance that we were as fast – or faster – at reacting when we faced a threat.

Another was indexing our weapons when we were on the job. Indexing – or carrying the weapon with the index finger out of the trigger guard – was a crucial step in preventing gun related accidents from happening.

I gestured at his right hand. “If you were indexing your weapon, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“Accident, motherfucker. It was a fucking ac-ci-den-t. I’m done talking about it.” He folded his arms over his chest. “She was a mouthy bitch, anyway.”

“She was doing her job.”

“She was mouthy.”

“She was trying to protect the bank’s interest.”

“Fuck her,” he hissed. “It’s insured by the feds.”

“Sounds like she got under your skin.”

“I was sick of listening to her.”

“It wasn’t an accident, was it?”

He glared. “If I wanted to shoot her, I would have shot her. Right in her shit-talking mouth.”

“It wasn’t an accident, was it?” I asked mockingly.

He chuckled a dry laugh, and then cut it short. “Yes, it was.”

I turned toward the window. Three stories down, the street was lined with parked cars, most of which disappeared at five o’clock when the workday ended. I scanned the block while Ben Harper’s Burn One Down played. When the song was over, I turned to face him.

He’d done little to convince me it was an accident. The bank manager in question had directed some pretty choice expletive-laced threats at Cash, and I suspected his temper got in the way of him doing his job.

“Your cut will be reflective of that accident,” I said in a dry tone. “Mistake. Poor judgement. Temper tantrum. Whatever you want to call it.”

He scooped the hair away from his eyes and shot me a glare. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“I’m not.”

“How much you gonna cut me?”

“Enough that we don’t have this conversation again. No matter how much someone gets under your skin.”

“Fuck that bitch,” he said through his teeth. “She was trying to give me the bait money. And, she talked a huge line of shit. We voted, Baker.”

I gave him a sideways look. “If the tables were turned, tell me what you’d have done.”

“If I was her?”

“If you were her. What would you have done?”

His eyes searched the floor for a moment. “I’d have given the thief the bait money.” He tilted his head to the side and raised both eyebrows. “But I wouldn’t have made it so obvious.”

I spit a laugh on the floor between us.

His eyes thinned. “What?”

“You’d follow the conditions of employment at the bank, but you won’t follow them with the club?”

“She was an irritating bitch.”

“It wasn’t an accident, was it?”

“Yeah.” He grinned a sly grin. “It was.”

It wasn’t an accident, and I knew it. “Whatever you want to call it, it’s going to cost you roughly fifty-three thousand bucks. After the club’s paid, that’s seventy-five percent of your take.”

“God damn it, Baker,” he seethed.

“It’s not negotiable. I’ll announce it to the club on Wednesday afternoon.”

“Fine. But that bitch better hope I never see her on the street.”

The job was in Indio. The odds of him ever seeing her again were nil at best. “She’s a hundred and fifty miles from here, so we won’t have to worry about that, will we?”

“It’s a good thing.” He tapped the tip of his index finger against his forehead. “Because the next one’ll be between her eyes.”