Kyle got out of the car in front of the dilapidated house on the south side of town. The neighborhood was sketchy and this house in particular looked like it should have been condemned long ago. He saw Chris Matheson standing near the front of it. The captain had appointed Chris to take over as lead on the task force after Kyle’s father was killed, and he was so pissed off about that, he could hardly see straight. Chris was an okay guy, but this gang stuff was Kyle’s specialty. He’d taken every online class, training, and seminar he could find on it. He could recite who belonged to each gang, what their tattoos meant, and practically nearly everything they were all involved in at the present moment. He’d been on this task force since the beginning and he’d lost his father to it. Yet Chris Matheson was suddenly the captain’s golden boy. He was an okay detective, Kyle guessed. But he didn’t think the guy had the balls for this.

He grabbed his weapon out of the car and tucked it into his holster before making his way across the cracked cement and through the weeds up to the lopsided front porch where Matheson stood. Matheson gave him a chin nod. Kyle nodded back. “What do we have here?”

“One dead Sinner, on his way to hell no doubt.”

Kyle raised an eyebrow. “Do we know who sent him there?”

“I reckon my guess is as good as yours, or exactly the same. But there were no witnesses…surprise, surprise. No weapon and so far, no evidence. Hell, we can’t even identify him at this point, other than the patch on his vest and the tattoos on his neck and arms.”

“You can’t identify him? Why?”

“Take a look,” Chris said, cocking his head toward the door. Kyle showed his badge to the officer posted there and stepped inside. He was immediately assaulted by a smell that told him the body had been in the house for quite some time. The closer he got to where the flurry of activity was happening, the more his stomach turned from the foul odor that seemed to permeate all his pores. He stepped up behind the M.E. and one of the crime scene techs who was taking pictures, and looked down in front of them. He’d been a cop for ten years and never once had he thrown up at a crime scene…but this day was going to come as close as he ever had. He covered his retch with a cough and the medical examiner looked up at him.

“Nasty mess,” the older man said. Kyle nodded and forced himself to look back at the body…or what was left of it. Decomposition had set in and the bugs were having a field day, but that wasn’t the worst part. The body had no head and no hands. They’d left enough to identify him as a Sinner, but barely as a human being.

“Cause of death?” Kyle asked.

“Don’t know. Since they found a bullet hole in the floor underneath where his head should be, I’m guessing a shot to the head at the moment, but that’s just a slightly educated guess.”

“Any ideas how long he’s been here?” Kyle asked.

“As close as I can tell from the larvae and state of decomp”—those words made Kyle’s stomach roll again—“maybe a week…or two.”

Two weeks. It had been two weeks since they’d collared Vince Miller. Two weeks since one of the animals in the club his little sister wanted to be a part of had killed their father. Two weeks since the Sinners declared war on the Skulls by terrorizing their ranch. Kyle had seen Dax Marshall there that day. He’d been home by order of the chief, grieving the loss of his father. But sitting there looking at all the reminders of his dad in the house had been killing him and when he heard the call out to the ranch on the scanner, he’d got into his car and headed out there. He called Angel on the way to make sure she wasn’t there. She told him that she was at her apartment in Hartford. When he got there Dax Marshall had been talking to the captain. The captain admonished him for being there and told him to go home. He was in no frame of mind to work. In the back of his mind, Kyle knew he was right, but it still pissed him off. The captain had threatened to suspend him before he agreed to leave. As he got into his car he felt Dax Marshall’s eyes on him. He looked over at him and Dax didn’t turn away. He had a look on his face as if he knew who Kyle was, and for the first time it dawned on Kyle how much he and Angel looked alike. He admonished himself all the way home, praying he hadn’t done anything stupid to get his sister hurt. The past two weeks, things had been quiet except for the pain-in-the-ass FBI sniffing around. Kyle wasn’t fooled by it, though. He’d known it was the calm before the storm, and when he got the call about the body in the house, he knew the torrential rains were about to begin to fall.

He forced himself to look at the bloody patch on the vest. It was so covered in blood that he couldn’t see what it said, other than that it had the Sinners’ emblem, the silhouette of a holy man—a black-robed monk—with the face of the devil shining out underneath it. He moved his eyes up to the mutilated neck where there was a tattoo of a pair of lips that had “Lita” underneath them in black script. “Motherfucker!”

“What?”

“Nothing,” Kyle said to the M.E. The task force wasn’t going to believe this. This was going to change everything. What the hell was going on?

He made his way around the crime scene techs collecting evidence and dusting the practically rotting house for prints, and went back outside. Matheson looked at him as soon as he stepped out the door. Kyle hoped his face didn’t look as green as it felt.

“Any idea from his tats who it is?”

Instead of answering his question Kyle asked one of his own. “Who owns the house?”

“Grant Benning.”

“Shit.”

“What? Who is it?”

“You’re not going to fucking believe it.”

“Try me,” Matheson said.

“Maximillian Lewis.”

“What? No fucking way!”

“It’s Mad Max, I guarantee it.”

“Jesus fuck. What the hell was he doing in a Sinners vest, and in one of Grant Benning’s houses?”

“No clue,” Kyle said. “I don’t know what the hell any of this means. We need to find Dax Marshall and bring him in, though. Like now.”

* * *

Dax was watching Angel as she put on her make-up. She smiled at him in the mirror. “You have a funny look on your face. What’s up? Is everything okay? Hawk hasn’t…”

“No. He still hasn’t been resurrected.” After the morning that the Sinners hit the ranch, they all disappeared. Dax told Angel that if he had to guess he’d say they’d scurried like cockroaches into the city. They had been neck deep in working for a drug cartel in New York, providing the guns and firepower, before this went down. He told her that was what he’d heard on the street. When Angel reported that to Kyle, he already knew about it. He had all the information on the gang they were working for as well. Sometimes she wondered how her brother had room in his head for so much information. “I still think they’re lying low somewhere in New York, waiting for the police and the FBI…and us…to stop looking for them.”

She put down her mascara and turned to face him. “Are you going to?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Stop looking for them? Hell, no. You think I should let Hawk get away with what he’s done? He killed Bruce…”

“No, of course I don’t think he should get away with it, but the police are looking for him too, right?”

“And I’m going to find him first and he’s going to look at me with the respect he should have given my father, right before he dies.”

Angel winced. She hated when he said things like that to her. She knew he was a good man at heart, but she also knew that he had the spirit of a warrior and now that his “family” had been threatened and his “home” invaded, that warrior had a taste for blood. If Grant Benning turned up dead, she’d like to have no knowledge of how he got that way.

“Where are you going?” he suddenly asked her, changing the subject.

“I have a meeting, at work.”

“Oh, okay. I’ll give you a ride.”

She tried not to show the tickle of anxiety that suddenly filled her stomach as she said, “Oh, that’s okay. I have some errands to run afterwards. I don’t mind driving.”

“Angel.” He’d been sitting on the side of the tub. He stood up behind her and his presence completely filled the room, almost suffocating her. “What are you hiding from me?”

She put the make-up brush in her hand down and turned around to face him. “What are you talking about?”

“You didn’t want me to go to Massachusetts with you last week for your uncle’s funeral. You disappear on me sometimes all day long. You just haven’t been acting like yourself…or at least the Angel I’ve come to know.”

“I’m sorry about the funeral. I just didn’t think it was a good time for you to leave. I thought I was doing that for you. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings…”

“It didn’t hurt my feelings. It made me suspicious.”

She sighed. “Well, I definitely didn’t mean to do that. What exactly are you suspicious of? Do you think I’m cheating on you?” Her insides were shaking. What would she do if he decided to follow her today? She’s supposed to be at a task force meeting in three hours. She’d have to call the surveillance van and have them follow him to make sure that he wasn’t following her. Shit.

He changed tack again, or so she thought, and asked an odd question: “Do you have a brother?”

“A brother? No. Remember that I told you I’m an only child.”

“Yeah, I remember that’s what you told me.” She was looking up into his blue eyes. They had an accusatory look in them and suddenly she was even more worried. Did he find something out about me? Did I do something to blow my cover?

“Dax, I don’t understand where any of this is coming from. Have I done something to upset you?”

“I saw a man a couple of weeks ago and I couldn’t help but wonder where I’d seen him before. He looked so familiar. I kept thinking about it, racking my brain, you know? And you know what I finally came up with?”

“What’s that?”

“It was you. I didn’t know him. I’d never seen him before. It was your face I was looking at. I mean, fucking exactly. The same color and shape eyes, the same color hair, the same skin coloring. He could have been your twin, if he was a girl.”

“Wow.” Fucking Kyle. Where did Dax see Kyle? “They say everyone in the world has a twin.” She smiled. Dax didn’t. She couldn’t believe Kyle hadn’t thought about how much they looked alike. Despite the age difference even, they could be twins. People had told them that their entire lives.

“Angel, I couldn’t stand it if you were lying to me. You know? I just couldn’t take it.” She closed the space between them and put her hand on the side of his face.

“Dax, I’m with you, body and soul. I don’t know why you suddenly have these suspicions about me, but I’m telling you that I am a hundred percent loyal to you.” She hated herself for lying to him. She knew that wasn’t what it was supposed to be like when you were undercover. You lied when you had to, in order to save your own ass and get the collar. She was lying to save her own ass alright, but ninety percent because the thought of losing him made it hard for her to breathe.

Dax suddenly brought his hand up and traced her jawline with his finger. He let it run down under her chin and then used it to tip her face up to his. With an intensity in his eyes that caused her to shiver he repeated, “I couldn’t take it.” Her heart was hammering in her chest and before she had a chance to respond he said, “Turn around and put your hands up against the counter.”

“Why?”

Her question seemed to make him angry. He grabbed her wrist and pressed her hand into the front of his jeans. His cock was rock hard. “Because you’re mine and I’m going to fuck you.” She could feel the heat radiating from his body, and hers began to shake. He’d never taken her like this before and it both excited and frightened her a little bit. She was about to open her mouth again when he used the hold he had on her arm to spin her around. He wasn’t gentle about it, and her thighs slammed into the counter as he propelled her into it. “Bend over.” That time Angel did as she was told. She pressed her palms into the counter and she felt him flip up the skirt she was wearing. Suddenly his big, rough hands were on her ass, groping and massaging it. He let go with one hand and used that arm to pull her back even further. Then with the other one, he pushed her panties to the side and traced the crack of her ass with his finger. She bit down on her lip to suppress a moan. She wasn’t sure yet if she was enjoying this or not. He was still frightening her a little bit. He let the hand on her ass slide down between her legs and he dipped a finger into her hot, already wet pussy. “Mm, somebody likes being told what to do.” She felt her face go hot, but then he let that finger slide up inside of her, and all other feelings were forgotten as he moved it around inside the walls of her tight pussy. She let the moan boil to the surface, and the sound of it made him move his finger faster. As he pushed it up into her the knuckles of his hand slammed into the rest of her pussy. It was slightly painful, and sexy as hell at the same time. She pushed her hips back into him harder.

“Are you all mine, Angel?”

“Yes,” she said in a breathless voice, almost a moan.

“All mine. Body and soul. No-fucking-body else touches either one, right?” He was finger fucking her as he talked and she was trying to focus.

“Nobody but you, Dax.” She was panting and each word was pushed out with a heavy breath. He plunged another finger up inside of her and this time he flexed the two so that they rubbed into her g-spot. She cried out and opened her eyes. She could see him looking at her face in the mirror. The look on his face was different than it usually was when they had sex. He looked almost angry and determined.

“So fucking wet,” he said, “And tight. And fucking all mine, right?” She nodded and he let go of her waist and used that hand to slap her ass hard. She yelped. “Answer me.” His fingers were still doing hot, sexy, crazy things inside of her.

“Yes, Dax. Yes, baby. All yours.”

“That’s better.” He pulled his fingers out of her and she whimpered. “Stay there,” he said. “Don’t move at all.”