Apollo leaned back against the brick retaining wall and scrubbed his hands over his face. “Ox, back off. It’s a coincidence.”

“No such thing.” Ox scowled down at him.

“That’s bullshit! Coincidence: two unrelated things happening at the same time. Coincidences happen all the time. This is one.”

He sat on the flimsy plastic bench outside the wall around the motel’s swimming pool, while Ox and Becker stood before him, like he was on some kind of Twilight Zone trial. It was dark, and the pool was closed. The parking lot was quiet and only about half full on this Monday night. It was the nearest thing to private they could get and still keep an eye on the room Jacinda slept in.

They’d booked a row of rooms at a mom-and-pop motel between Lincoln and Janeville, one without connection to the Great Plains Riders. They still had possession of the guns, had the truck hidden in an abandoned garage about ten miles away, and Gargoyle and Eight Ball were taking a shift on guard duty.

He didn’t know how to convince his brothers of the truth—as far as he knew, all this random craziness was just that: random. At the ER, he’d gone through his brain with a 500-mesh sieve, looking for any evidence at all that he’d turned Jacinda on in some way to their plans in Nebraska, but there was nothing. She’d known he was a Brazen Bull though he hadn’t been wearing colors, but she was simply observant and savvy and had added up his ink, rings, and bike to the sum of Bull.

She’d lied to him about what she did for a living, and he’d fucking well ask her why, but that was the only thing with even a hint of suspicion he could remember. He, too, was observant and savvy, and he had a near-photographic memory. There was nothing.

Except that she’d slipped out in the middle of the night. But if she’d been trying to get him on the hook, wouldn’t she have stayed?

Ox wouldn’t let up. “You’re fucking a goddamn PI who just happens to show up at Riggs’ place on the same day we pull up with a delivery, and that’s two unrelated things?”

“Yes. And I’m not fucking her. I fucked her. Once. I just met her Saturday night.”

“That’s suspicious, too, brother,” Becker interjected. “It looks like she was setting you up.”

“She was at Donovan’s when I got there, and it was a spur-of-the-moment thing that I went there at all. No way she could have known.”

“Then she’s an opportunist. You must’ve let something slip that night.”

“Fuck you, Beck. I don’t let shit slip. Ever.”

“It’s not adding up, Apollo.” Ox turned and took a few steps away, staring at the motel room doors. “The way you’ve been acting with her—like she’s somebody special.”

“I told the deputy I was her boyfriend. I’m acting like her boyfriend. To cover the club on this.”

Ox spun back and gave him an ‘aha’ look. “Because you wouldn’t leave when I did. You wouldn’t leave her.”

Apollo sighed. Ox was right. When he’d realized that it was Jacinda taped to that chair, his fear had spiked clear through the top of his head. Both sides of her face had been swelling, and she’d been obviously disoriented and fighting off unconsciousness. As shocked as he’d been, the impulse that had driven him had been fear. Second only to anger. Both for her. Then Coop had shot the crazy bitch who’d started the mess, and her sister had grabbed Riggs’ gun and shot at Coop, and all Apollo had felt was the need to protect Jacinda.

There was no earthly way he could have ridden off and left her with the people who’d beaten her and tied her up.

They had a lot to talk about, indeed they did. But right now, he needed to get his club off his ass.

“Have I ever given you cause not to trust me?” he asked Ox and Becker both.

“This is cause, bro,” Becker came back. “Right here.”

No, it was not. Apollo could only shake his head; he’d run out of ways to explain.

“We trusted Griff, too,” Ox muttered.

Griffin, who’d killed Dane, shot Rad, and aimed a kill shot at Delaney. He’d been mad with grief when he’d done it, his girlfriend had been lying dead on the floor, killed because she’d been left outside the Bulls’ protection, but the club had branded him a traitor for what he’d done to his brothers. If they were comparing him to Griffin, then Apollo was done with this discussion. He stood up. “Do what you’ve got to do. I’ve done nothing wrong, and neither has she. It’s fucked-up coincidence. That’s all.”

Ox stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “We’re not done, brother. We got to figure out what to do with her.”

Apollo knocked Ox’s hand away and stood toe to toe with the much bigger VP. “We don’t do anything with her. I take care of her until she can drive, and then I follow her back to Tulsa. You will work out with Coop how to hand off the cargo. She doesn’t know shit about why the Bulls are here, and she doesn’t need to know. She’s a fucking innocent, and the club will touch her over my dead body.”

“Apollo.” Becker said, quietly, behind him. “If you were standing where I am, listening to somebody else say this shit, you’d hear somebody picking wrong.”

“Would I, Beck? Coming down on the side of not killing innocents is picking wrong now?”

“What if she’s not innocent? What if she causes trouble for us?”

Apollo closed his eyes and waited until he could speak calmly. Blowing up would only make their case stronger. “If she does, that’s a different story. If there’s proof. But right now, she’s innocent until proven otherwise, and you’ll hurt her only if you can get through me.”

He walked away, back to the motel. Ox called after him, but Apollo didn’t turn around.

––––––––

~oOo~

––––––––

Jacinda slept on one of the queen beds, propped on a stack of pillows. The Percocets he’d given her once they’d arrived at the room had laid her out—her mouth was open a little, and each inhale went in with a quiet snore. The ice bag he’d bought at the hospital pharmacy had slid off the pillows at the side of her head and now slouched over her shoulder.

Apollo sat on the edge of the bed, near her hip, and picked up the ice bag. Its contents had turned to water, so he set it on the shelf that served as a nightstand between the beds.

It had been a couple of hours, and he was supposed to wake her and get her to focus every two hours, but first, he simply sat at her side and studied her. He’d left on only the light over the mirror by the bathroom, so the room was full of long shadows. Even so, he could see the nasty bruise growing on the side of her face, sending red fingers across her forehead, under her eye, over her cheek. She’d taken a hard kick to the side of the head. She’d also been hit across the mouth; the other side of her chin and mouth was red and puffy. The crazy bitch she’d been chasing had done both, according to Cooper.

She was a PI. Well, that made more sense than ‘secretary’ had. But why had she lied, unless she had something she wanted to keep hidden from him? And why had she needed the secret? It suggested that there was something suspicious going on somewhere, and now he’d put himself between her and his club. He didn’t believe she was up to something, but it sure looked like she was.

If he was wrong about her, they could both end up dead.

He picked up her hand and kissed it. “Jacinda.” When he got no response, he tugged lightly on her hand. Nothing.

He shook her hip, trying not to bobble her head too much, and she moaned. Her eyes fluttered. When she frowned, she flinched and moaned again, and that woke her up.

Confused and lost, she sat up with a gasp, and her hands flew up and grabbed her head.

“Easy. It’s okay.”

She blinked at him. “Apollo?”

He grinned, hoping the expression had landed on ‘reassuring.’ His head was a fucking mess at the moment, so he wasn’t sure his emotional calibrations were good. “That’s me.”

“Oh.” She sank back down to the pillows. “Ow.”

“I’ll get you some more ice, and you can go back to sleep. I’m supposed to ask you some questions first. Doctor’s orders.”

When she only stared, he decided that was acquiescence.

“Do you know what day it is?”

“Uh...June twenty-eighth? Monday?”

It was Tuesday now, but he nodded. “Good. Who’s the President?”

“Clinton.”

“Do you know where you are?”

For a few seconds, she frowned and said nothing. Then she asked, “Nebraska?”

“Yeah, good. Do you remember what happened?”

Her frown eased and became wonder. “You saved me.”

“Maybe so.”

“Why are you here? How did you—I don’t understand. Why were you there?” She whimpered and rubbed her head. “I don’t understand.”

Her questions gave Apollo enough answers to ease his mind. If she was confused about his presence, she hadn’t expected the Bulls. He took her hands in his and held them. “We don’t need to talk about it now. You need to rest and feel better. I’ll get you some more ice, and you can sleep.”

When he came back with the full ice bag, Jacinda was almost back under. He set the bag against her bruised temple, and her eyes rolled open. “I need to call my folks,” she muttered and dropped right back off.

She was in no condition to call her parents; she’d only cause them more worry in her current state. But her dad was also a PI, and he could set all kinds of trouble on them if he was worried for his daughter.

Apollo had gone through her bag earlier, seeking answers, so he knew she had a cellphone. He dug it out of her bag now and scrolled through her directory until he found a listing for RENTS. Assuming that meant ‘parents,’ he dialed. A man answered; the voice sounded the right age to be her father. Though it was past midnight, that voice bore no sign of sleep, but it was full of tension. Yes, her parents were worried.

“Mr. Durham?” He tried to strike the best ‘good guy meeting her parents’ tone.

“Yes, who’s this?”

A thought occurred to him, and he acted on it before a second thought could silence it. “My name is Neil, sir. Neil Armstrong. I’m a friend of Jacinda’s.”

“Neil Armstrong? Is this some kind of a sick joke? Where’s my daughter?”

“No joke, except on me. My dad’s a space buff.” He’d uttered that explanation thousands of times in his life. “I’m calling to let you know Jacinda’s okay.”

“Where is she? Who the hell are you?”

“A friend, like I said. She had a little bit of a mishap, and she’s sleeping now, but she’s okay. She’ll call you in the morning, but I wanted you to know she’s okay now, so you can stop worrying.”

Her father leapt into a barrage of angry rebuttal that Apollo could hardly keep up with.

“Give me the phone,” Jacinda said, her voice remarkably lucid. “You’re making it worse.”

Apollo turned and saw her sitting up, pale and shaky, but holding her hand out for her phone. “She’s awake, sir. Here she is.” He handed the phone off.

“Dad, I’m okay...He’s a friend...A good friend...The job went south. I didn’t get it done...I’m a little banged up, but I’m okay...I’ll call again tomorrow and explain everything, but I really am okay. I promise...No, Dad, don’t come up here. I’ll call in the morning, okay?...Okay. I love you.” She ended the call and let the phone drop to the bed.

Easing her head back to the pillows, she gave him a wan smirk. “He already doesn’t like you.”

Apollo laughed. “I’ll be sure to make a better impression when I meet him in person—he’s not coming up here, is he?”

“If I don’t call by nine a.m. tomorrow, he is.”

“Then I’ll make sure you’re awake by nine.”

As her eyes fluttered closed, she smiled. “You’re a good guy, Neil Armstrong.” He’d bent down to kiss her cheek when she added on a sigh, “I hope you’re not a killer.”

––––––––

~oOo~

––––––––

Apollo had taken a quick shower and was just about to stretch out in the other bed when he heard a knock at the door. Grabbing his Beretta from its holster, he checked the peephole. It was Ox. He shoved the gun into his waistband, unlocked the door, and opened it.

Ox looked past him and got a good look at Jacinda, sleeping deeply, now tucked under the covers. “D and Rad’ll be here by noon. They’re gonna want to talk to you and her, too.”

Apollo sucked his teeth. “Fine. If she’s up to it.”

That earned him an angry squint from the VP. “Brother, you need to step out of your own head and take a clear look at this situation. Even if this is all a bunch of crazy coincidences, it looks bad, man. After last year, everybody’s twitchy about missing shit we should see, so we’re all looking twice at everything out of the ordinary.”

“Look twice. Look three times. It’s still coincidence. I wasn’t even supposed to do the north run. You and D moved me on Sunday.”

Ox sighed. “Okay. I want to believe you. Maybe I do. But I need you to think about how you come at this. You’re all puffed up and defensive, and it’s making you look guilty. Eight’s halfway to wanting your head. You’re smarter than this. Make your case better, or you and that little girl are going to have more trouble than you can handle.”

So far, Apollo had been too freaked out over the situation and worried about Jacinda to be anything other than furious at his brothers’ constant questioning and refusal to trust him. But now, with Ox standing at the door, his beefy arms crossed but the angry suspicion gone from his face, Apollo really acknowledged the potential for a bad outcome.

Yes, the club still felt the wounds of the year before. Yes, they were more guarded because of it. Shit, he’d been twitchy about Delaney just a few days ago, worried that his ties to Big Ike were in the club’s way.

Ox and Becker were right—if it had been another Bull in his place, Apollo would have made all the same arguments.

He relented. “Okay, I get it. I’ll make it right.”

For that, he got a spasm on Ox’s face that might have been a smile. “Good. Get some rest.” He nodded toward the inside of the room. “She goes nowhere until all this is straight, got it? You’re on her 24/7.”

“Yeah, okay.” He’d intended nothing different.

Ox went to his room, and Apollo went back to his bed. Making sure the safety was on his gun, he put it under the extra pillow.

Jacinda sighed in her sleep, and he turned onto his side and watched her for a while. His brothers thought he was going far out of his way for this woman, putting the club at risk—and that was best case, if they gave him the benefit of the doubt. He could see their point, if he took the time to look, but it didn’t feel that way to him. There was shit he didn’t understand, but he had no doubt that all this mess was innocent. Maybe not harmless, but not nefarious, and she didn’t deserve to get swept up into club trouble simply because she’d accidentally landed in their lap.

He’d take this stand for any innocent woman, he told himself. For any person. The fact that he hadn’t been able to get her out of his head since he’d first laid eyes on her was irrelevant.

Whatever it was, he was going to protect her.

––––––––

~oOo~

––––––––

Apollo watched Jacinda spear the sausage patty from her breakfast tray and nibble around the edges. She’d already cleared out her hotcakes. Gargoyle had delivered McDonald’s to their hotel room first thing that morning.

“I thought you were a vegetarian.” Yet another lie she’d told, obviously.

She blushed, and her mouth quirked up at the corner. “I don’t know why I told you that. I guess I was just being contrary.”

“Is that why you told me you were a secretary? To be ‘contrary’? ”

She set the plastic fork, with a core of sausage patty still speared, onto her Styrofoam plate and pushed the works away. “Okay, let’s talk. I need to know some shit before I call my dad again, anyway.”

She got up from the flimsy table by the window and sat on her bed. He’d been stretched out on his bed, so he swung his legs over and faced her. He waited.

“I didn’t lie when I told you I was a secretary. I do that work at the agency, too. I’m the only secretary we have. I also live alone with my cat. That’s true. I held back the PI part because it’s not something I just blurt out to people. I wouldn’t be a good PI if I did.”

“And it had nothing to do with who I am?”

“You never told me who you were.”

“But you figured it out. Before or after you lied about your job?”

“Why does that matter? You kept it to yourself, too. You even rode without your kutte, and I know that’s out of bounds for you guys. We didn’t know each other. We kept some things back. It’s what you do when you don’t know if you can trust somebody.”

That was true, but it didn’t matter. The stakes were too high for ‘just because’ to be an acceptable answer. “My club is worried that what happened yesterday wasn’t coincidence. They don’t know whether you’re working me or we’re working them, but they’re worried the club is at risk. My president is riding up this morning so the officers can talk to us both. I need to know, right now, if there was anything about Saturday night, or yesterday afternoon, that was you targeting the Bulls. I need you to be straight, or I can’t protect either of us.”

“Protect us? You, too? From your own club? I thought you guys were all about loyalty.”

“Exactly. And they will put a bullet in my head if they think I’ve been disloyal. So help me out here.”

He’d stunned her, he could tell. She gaped at him for a few seconds, and then, when she spoke, her tone had changed. The challenge had faded out of it. “I was here to collect a bail jumper. That’s all. My dad gave me the job Sunday night.” She laughed bitterly and frowned at her hands, the dark polish he’d first noticed Saturday night now looking a bit worn. Red abrasions banded her wrists, left by the duct tape. “It’s the first time he’s given me a job like this. My parents think it’s too dangerous for me.”

Apollo had to laugh. “I guess they’re right.”

She lifted that frown and aimed it at him. “No, they’re not. I got caught off guard yesterday, yeah, but I can handle myself. You have no idea what I can do. If the deputy hadn’t gotten all macho and tried to shield me—”

“You’d’ve had a chest full of buckshot, instead of him.” The thought, and the image accompanying it, twisted his stomach.

She sighed and rubbed at her temple, then hissed when the pressure of her fingers hurt her bruise. It was a bad one, with a dark red center and rays of blue and purple creeping over her face. The swelling on her mouth had gone down significantly, however. “My head is all mixed up after that. I need to know as much as I can before I call my dad, or he’ll be up here, too, and that will be a mess.”

“Okay. Here’s what I’ve put together, from what I actually witnessed to what I heard and saw of the scene, and what I’ve put together in between. You went to the Riggs’ place with the deputy. He took lead to try to keep things calm”—she scoffed at that irony, but he ignored it—“and Colleen shot through the screen door. She was aimed at you, but the deputy saw it coming and jumped in the line of fire. Knocked you down when he fell. The women knocked you out before you could get up”—she touched her temple again—“and you came to tied to that chair. That sound right so far?”

Jacinda nodded. She’d paled, and she shifted to rest against the headboard. She’d picked up a habit this morning of rubbing the red marks on her wrists, and she started in on that now.

“You okay?”

“Yeah. My ribs hurt, and my head aches, but I don’t feel that bad. Just freaked.”

“You and me both, baby. Okay. When we came in, things get confusing, but it boils down to an argument between the Bulls and the Riders. Colleen mouthed off, and Cooper shot her. Then her sister bugged out and tried to shoot Coop. She missed.”

What had happened to Riggs’ old lady, Apollo didn’t know, nor care to know.

Jacinda was quiet for a while, her eyes moving back and forth like she was reading the transcript of what he’d just said, or watching the scene he’d conjured. “That lines up with what I told Deputy Temple.” She looked up and met his gaze. “Except that the Bulls aren’t in that story. That’s what I don’t understand. Why were you there?”

Apollo shifted from his bed to hers and sat at her side. “This is important, Jacinda. The Bulls were not there. How I keep you safe, and how you keep the club calm, is you don’t ask that question. There’s no answer you can have, and you’ll look like a snoop interested in club doings if you ask. I’ll look like a patch with a loyalty problem if I’m trying to protect a snoop with an interest in the club. As far as you’re concerned, the story you gave the deputy is the whole truth.”

She stared at him. He stared back, waiting for her to see whatever she needed to see in his eyes. When she eventually smiled, a full, broad, brilliant smile, he was taken aback. And entranced. Goddamn, she was beautiful. Even bruised and mussed.

“That story says you’re my boyfriend. Are you my boyfriend now, Adonis?”

It was an excellent question, without an answer. He liked her, absolutely. She flipped all his switches. That she truly had been at the Riggs’ place innocently, as far as the Bulls were concerned, didn’t change his feelings one way or the other because he’d never believed anything else. Was he her boyfriend? No. It was too early to be slapping a label on it. But he wouldn’t mind the label. Especially not when she smiled at him like that.

The change in the atmosphere between them was like sun breaking through clouds. He grinned and leaned forward, planting his hands on either side of her. “Isn’t there a Chinese proverb or something that says if you save somebody, you’re responsible for them forever?”

Her smile beamed amusement at him. “Are you Chinese, hon?”

“No, but I got a little French in me. Want to put a little French in you.” He leaned all the way in and covered her mouth with his.