Cavan

I’d heard plenty about the Lake of Fire MC during my ten years with the Black Dog. They were based in Nevada, bumped up against the Black Dog territories of Arizona, New Mexico, and southern California. The two clubs had clear lines drawn, and they stayed out of each other’s business and left each other alone. The Lake of Fire was into some of the same businesses as the Black Dog—drugs, guns—but they had different suppliers and supply routes. The two clubs were rivals, but as long as no one crossed into each other’s territory, they didn’t go to war.

I wondered if that would change.

I had the daughter of the Lake’s founder and first president in my passenger seat. I should be freaked out about that, but I found that I wasn’t. I still planned to save her life. I’d have still saved it if I’d known who she was when she was in my chair.

Dani, in the end, was Dani. It didn’t fucking matter.

We took I-95 until it slipped over the border into California, and I kept driving north as night fell, trying to get as much distance between us and McMurphy as possible. Dani offered to take a shift driving, but I turned her down. We stopped only briefly to eat and fuel up, and another hour down the road we stopped for the night.

In a town called Rio Verde, we found a strip of steak houses, bars, and hotels, for the tourists spilling east from Joshua Tree National Park and south from Vegas and the Mojave. I found a motel called the Rancher, which at least looked clean and decent, and got us a room.

One room this time. I didn’t bother with two. Dani, who checked in with me this time, said nothing. I had no idea what the hell my plans were. I just knew we weren’t going to sleep in separate rooms tonight. She wasn’t leaving my sight.

I paid in cash, and as we walked to our room I mentally counted the money I had left. It wasn’t much. In fact, I couldn’t get us to another town, another hotel, or fill another tank of gas with what I had. If I was going to get us both out of this, I was going to have to face my status as a billionaire. I was going to have to find Max Reilly, even though I hadn’t seen him in ten years and he maybe didn’t want to talk to me. Max, I could face. I wasn’t ready for Devon yet.

While Dani took a shower, I pulled out my old laptop, logged in to the motel’s wifi, and Googled Max Reilly Los Angeles. What I saw knocked the wind out of me.

I’d missed everything in ten years. Fucking everything.

There wasn’t much about him, but there was enough. He was a veteran—he’d done four years in Afghanistan. He came home with PTSD and part of a leg missing. And he’d started a charity called Real Heroes, that connected vets who needed it with free psychological help. There was an article in a small San Francisco magazine about it, with a picture of Max and his fiancée—his fiancée—standing in front of an office building, surrounded by their small staff of four.

Max looked different than he had ten years ago. When I left he’d been a young man, clean-cut and good-looking. He was the steadiest of the three of us, the calmest, the most responsible, despite being raised by an alcoholic father and an overworked mother who eventually left. It was Max that Devon and I went to when we were in trouble, when we needed to figure out how to get out of a problem. And it was Max who always had the answers. He was less dark then Devon and me, the guy we relied on for at least a little optimism and light.

But after what he’d been through, he’d changed. He had dark hair and a beard, worn thick but trim, and a big body, muscled and hard. He was wearing jeans and a black sweater, and his broad shoulders were clearly visible, as were his big arms. His dark eyes held calm, serious depths to them, and though his face was relaxed, he didn’t smile for the camera. I got the impression that post-war Max Reilly was a man who didn’t smile much.

Standing next to him was a blonde knockout, a woman who could probably be on a magazine cover. She wore a classy gray sheath dress and very little makeup, but none of that could suppress her natural beauty. She was leaning close to Max, her shoulder touching his, her arm through his, her hand on his wrist. That hand, the way it curled around him naturally and possessively, supporting him with a touch, told me everything I needed to know about Max and his future wife. Unlike him, Gwen—that was her name, according to the caption—was smiling widely, her happiness obvious.

So Max had been through hell, and—it looked like—come out the other side. The article said he’d started the charity with his own money, and I immediately knew what that meant. Devon had given Max some of his money, probably—if I knew Max at all—under protest. And because Max was a good guy, even after what he’d lived through, he’d used the money to help other guys instead of keeping it.

All of this hit me as I stared at the faces in the picture. And fuck, I missed them—Max, Devon, both of them. They’d been my brothers, though only Devon was blood. We’d been so fucking close. And then the shit had gone down, and we’d blown apart like a bomb had hit us. Especially me.

I wondered if Max hated me now. It was time to find out.

It wasn’t hard to get his number with a little online digging—he obviously hadn’t taken many precautions to hide it, because until now he’d been no one instead of a rich man running a charity. I picked up my burner phone and dialed.

“Hello?” came a gruff voice, thick with sleep. I was so screwed up, I had no idea what time it was.

“Max?” I said.

“Yeah?”

“It’s me.”

There was a second when I knew he knew. He fucking knew.

“Cavan?”

“Yeah. It’s me.”

He was awake now. “Cavan. Where the hell are you calling from?”

In the bathroom, the shower turned off. “I’m in Arizona,” I lied. “I’m not sure exactly where. It’s a truck stop on the highway.”

That was me, good old Cavan. I’ll call you in the middle of the night after a decade, then lie about where I am so you won’t look for me. I’m a real fucking prince.

And still, Max gave a fuck. “Are you all right?”

“Sure,” I said. “I’m fine. Things are just weird right now. I read some crazy thing about an inheritance.”

“Yeah,” Max said, calm as could fucking be. “It’s true. You should call Devon about it.”

“I’m not calling Devon,” I said, the words immediate out of my mouth the way they always were when his name came up. “Not now.”

“Why not? He wants to hear from you.”

I didn’t want to find out if that was true. “I’m not. I’m calling you, Max. You’re saying the money is for real?”

“Yes, it’s for real,” Max said. He sounded like himself now, though his voice was a little rougher, and it made me feel so fucking sad for ten lost years. “But you have to claim it.”

The article about the inheritance hadn’t said anything about claiming the money. “You mean come to California.”

“Yeah, I mean come to California. You should come here anyway, man. Your brother wants to see you.”

“I really doubt that,” I said. But I needed the money. “Shit. This might be complicated. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Why is it complicated?” Max asked me, and I knew what was behind those words. Where are you? What is your life like? Tell me.

“There’s a woman,” I said before I could stop myself from telling the truth. “She’s in trouble. I’m trying to help.”

“You have a girlfriend? A wife?”

“No. She isn’t my girlfriend. She’s… I don’t know what she is. Like I say, it’s complicated. We can’t come to California yet. I have to get her out of trouble first.”

“Cavan, I don’t get it. You aren’t making any sense.”

Dani was moving around in the bathroom, and I had to get off the phone. “It won’t take long,” I told Max. “It’s just a quick stop. And then maybe we’ll come. Or maybe I’ll come alone. I don’t really know. Just tell Devon that, okay? Tell him I’ll come when I can.” If I live.

“Cavan—”

“Tell him,” I said, and hung up as the bathroom door swung open.

Dani stood there, her short hair—I was still getting used to it—hanging damply to her shoulders. She was wearing a pair of panties and nothing else. She had a towel pressed to her front, holding it over her breasts, like that was some kind of cover. Those long, slender legs, those slim hips, her dark eyes watching me. I just stared at her like an idiot. I couldn’t think of a single thing to say.

“Hey,” she said. “Were you talking to someone?”

I found my voice. “An old friend,” I said, trying to think of what Max was, exactly. “A friend of my brother’s.”

“What did he say?”

Still I couldn’t take my eyes off her. “That my brother wants to talk to me.”

“Oh.” She smiled a little. “That’s good, right?”

“Probably not, no. I didn’t leave on good terms.”

She nodded, understanding, and then she shifted her weight in the bathroom doorway, as if she was nervous. “I wanted, um, for you to look at my tattoo. The bandage came off and I don’t have another one.”

We locked eyes for a second, and she licked her lip. I knew what this was. This gorgeous, brave, damaged woman was making a move on me. A seduction, maybe. She wanted to get me on the bed, then pull that towel off. The inevitable happening. Her and me.

I could say no.

I could say yes.

Did I have a choice, really? She was standing there in her panties. They were pale and lacy, and I could see the dark patch through the fabric that was the hair between her legs. I felt a slow pulse of surprise and pleasure, because it was fashionable with the women in the club to shave or wax themselves bare. Dani hadn’t.

There had never been a choice. Inevitable, like I say. I had nothing to count on except Dani, and me, and the next hour. Right now, that was all I knew.

“All right,” I said. “Come here.”