Back at the garage though, thoughts of building something, anything, fled.

The small workshop door swung open to reveal four guys with black-and-white bandanas wrapped around their mouths loading tools into bags in the gloom of the workshop. Rusty stopped dead in his tracks. “What the actual fuck?”

Their heads jerked up when Rusty called out and one of them ran toward Rusty, punching him hard in the stomach so he crumpled over just like Grim had done a few nights earlier.

Rusty watched, winded, as the guy pulled on the main door chains and opened the full roller door before he leaped onto a bike. Beth tried to pull him down but he pushed her hard, and she fell, sprawling across the concrete.

“Beth.” Dragging himself up, he went to check on her.

“I’m fine,” she said, but she had blood coming from a cut on her head.

“You’re bleeding.”

“It’s just a scratch. Go, stop them.”

Pulling her hand away to make sure it was just a scratch, Rusty satisfied himself and then ran toward the center of the workshop, dialing Rocco’s number as he went. “I don’t know what you’ve heard, but I’m sweet with the Reapers. You’ve got no beef with me. Put everything back where you found it and this goes no further.”

The guy at the door finally had it open enough to drive a bike through. “Or what?”

“Or the Hell’s boys will fuck you into next week,” Rusty snarled.

“They can try.” All four men were astride bikes now. Custom bikes, Rusty realized, that his guys had just finished.

“Oh, no, you don’t, you fuckers,” he said and ran for the closest one. Too late. The guy, lean and long, revved the bike and pulled it into a wheelie as it headed straight for Rusty. It knocked him down.

“Rusty!” He heard Beth’s scream before he lost consciousness for a moment. Then, when he came to, it was to see the guy in black standing over him.

“Nice job. I’m going to enjoy my ride.” He threw something down on Rusty’s face, a bandana, Rusty realized, with the Reapers of Menace’s silver knight helmet logo with a long black lightning bolt through it.

When we came to again, Rocco was there and Martinez was interrogating Beth.

“She didn’t have anything to do with it. She was with me the whole time.”

Rocco nodded and Beth rushed over to Rusty. “Are you okay? I thought they’d killed you.”

He tried sitting up more but it hurt. Everywhere.

“You’ll have to go to hospital for that.” Rocco pointed at Rusty’s arm, the elbow pointing in the wrong direction.

Rusty waved him off. He looked around the workshop, taking it all in. The place was cleared out.

Every bike in the place was gone. The racks of tools stood empty, and the shelf of parts at the back of the shop was stripped bare.

“When you were out they backed a truck up to the door and drove everything in,” Beth said. “I tried to stop them . . .”

He looked at her properly and saw the black eye that was already starting to swell. “They hit you?”

“I’m fine. We should go. Get you to hospital,” she said.

“In a minute.” Struggling to get up, he walked over to the main roller door, cradling his arm. “It’s not broken,” he said.

“So they found another way in. Inside job?” Rocco asked.

Rusty shook his head vigorously and then regretted it. “My guys are solid. Let’s find out. There are cameras upstairs.”

He, Rocco, and Beth trudged up the stairs and Rusty pulled up the morning’s footage.

And there it was. At the back of the workshop was a small window, barely big enough for a grown man to get through. But on-screen, he saw a skinny figure dressed all in black shimmy through the window and then open the front doors wide. Men poured in. Men in leather. Black leather with the silver knight helmet logo with a long black lightning bolt emblazoned on the back. “What the actual fuck?” Rusty rewound the footage, but it was the same. “Recognize any of them?” he said to Rocco.

The older man shook his head but went to the door and yelled down the stairs. “Martinez!”

Martinez went through the footage. “Not from here,” was his verdict.

“But I had a deal with Mack,” Rusty muttered.

“Let me do some digging.” Rocco and Martinez went back downstairs and Rusty was left sitting in the apartment with Beth.

Beth put a hand on his shoulder. “So Grim was right? They came after you.”

“I don’t know how, or why.” Then the thought struck him and the rage flowed through him, hot and ice cold at the same time. “What else did you and Grim talk about yesterday?” He heard his voice. It was cold. Quiet. Brutal. “What did you tell him about my shop?”

Beth cowered under his angry glare but he couldn’t turn it off. Not until he knew what had happened between her and his brother. “I hardly said anything. He asked about how you ran it. The boys. And he watched the trailer like I said.”

“What’s in the trailer?” Rusty reached for his laptop and fired up the trailer. There . . . the shot of the back widow, and later, a view of outside, of the unused alleyway that ran behind the workshop. His own brother had cased the joint via video. “The fucker sold me out.”

“Hang on. You can’t blame Grim for this.”

“Oh, really. And why is that?”

“He’s not the one in an MC.”

Rusty grimaced. So it did matter to her that he was patched. He should have known.

“And why on earth would he rob his own brother’s shop?” she asked.

Rusty was already flicking through the files on his laptop. He found what he was looking for and pulled it up. INSURANCE. His finger stabbed at the screen; he couldn’t believe he’d been so stupid.

“Your brother has been nothing but kind to me. Especially recently. He’s opened doors for me that have been shut for months.”

She was defending him. The woman he’d only moments ago been thinking about building a life with, was defending his fucktard brother even while the evidence that he was a complete shit was playing out in front of her. Had he gotten her all wrong? Had Grim really won again?

But Beth either hadn’t registered his incredulity or didn’t get it. “And even though he was worried about you doing the TV show because of something like this happening, he agreed to support you. He said he’d even shop the show around for us with his agent.”

The full magnitude of what his brother had done hit Rusty in the guts like a bike at full speed. “You sent him the full pilot?”

She nodded. “Just an emailed version. I told him that we already had a producer but he said it would be better to have a few options. You can’t argue with that. This town is fickle if nothing else. Having Grim on our side is good for this show.”

“He’s going to take it all.”

“Don’t be silly. He’s your brother. He’s the one that was worried about these Reaper guys coming after you. Looks like he was right. It seems he has both of our best interests at heart. Maybe it’s time for you two to let go of the past and start to build something new together.”

Rusty stood from where he’d been sitting and turned to face Beth properly. “My brother has no one’s interests but his own at heart and if you believe anything else, you’re a bigger fool than I took you for, Beth Ravens. I wanted you the moment I knew you wanted my brother.” He flinched as he said the words, knowing they weren’t true. Knowing that he wanted her, mind, body, and spirit, and had right from the start. It had nothing to do with his brother for a change. But right now he needed to lash out to stop the pain that was threatening to explode inside him. And she was the closest target. “I wanted to have a taste of what comes so easy for him. But it looks like I was the fool in that particular shit-sandwich.”

The gasp was audible and the shock drained her face of all color, but Rusty couldn’t stop now that he’d started. All the frustration and rage against his brother came rushing out at the one person who’d dared to stand up for him. “He’s smart, I’ll give him that. Getting the Illinois Reapers to do the job was a stroke of genius. They’ve got connections down here, but the LA chapter have got plausible deniability so they’re not going to start a turf war with the Hell’s boys. Twenty bikes. Fuck. Twenty of the best bikes we’ve had in here since we opened.” He rubbed his face again with his good hand, but he wasn’t done. “Everyone knows my past with them so it’s easy to write it off to bad blood. But I tell you, we were square. There’s no reason for them to be up here unless this is a paid job.”

He pointed at the insurance papers again. “His name is on these. No one was going to give me insurance, not with my background, so he signed for it. Fuck. Don’t you see? He sends a check back to Illinois, the Reapers are in and out, and he takes half the insurance payout. His debt is paid, he fucks me over all in one go. I’ll never get work here again. Not when people think their bikes might get taken by an out-of-town MC. And you can bet your pretty little ass he’s selling me out with the TV pilot too. He shops it around like you say, and our producer will walk. No point in him busting a gut for us if he thinks we’re not all-in with him.”

“But that can’t be right. Grim got me this last audition. And he’s genuinely interested in my career. In making sure I do well in this town. He’s done more for me in a couple of weeks than anyone else has done the whole time I’ve been here.”

The breath felt ragged going in and worse coming out, but the words were flowing now and Rusty couldn’t have stopped them if he’d wanted to. “You know, you say you’re all about making it here on your own. About how you’re going to show your folks that you can be a big star and make something bigger of your life. Fuck me, you want to cure polio. But you still want someone to hold your hand. You want Grim because he makes you feel safe. Because if he’s by your side you don’t have to make it on your own. But all he really wants is to get into your pants.”

She slapped him. Hard. Harder than he’d have given her tiny frame credit for.

“Come on. Smart girl like you, you know what he wants. Hell, you even tried to give it to him if I recall correctly. Sorry I got in the way of that.”

If she could have breathed fire he figured she would have given it a go right then and there. She drew herself up to her full five-foot-nothing height and put her hands on her hips. “I was desperate. You know that. But you also know that’s not who I am. I thought you were one of the good guys. A man who stood up for what he believed in. All that talk about loyalty, it was just a line. Why would your precious club rip off your shop if they were all about loyalty? You don’t have any proof that Grim was involved; you don’t have anything on him at all.” She paused, as if trying to consider whether Grim could really be behind the break-in like Rusty knew he was, but then couldn’t bring herself to give it credence.

Rusty was matter-of-fact. “It was him.”

“I just can’t believe that. Seems to me more likely that there’s something else going on here.” She looked at him hard. “I wouldn’t have believed it, but you’re jealous, aren’t you?”

“Jealous? Of my brother?” He laughed but it was a bitter, cold sound, even to his own ears. “He’ll never be happy. Always chasing the next role, the flashier car, the bigger paycheck. I didn’t think you were like him, but if you can’t see him for who he really is when I’m standing right in front of you with the evidence, then you’re more like him than I thought.”

“Screw you, Rusty McKinley.”

“Oh you already did, little bird. It was fun while it lasted.” He turned away and heard, rather than saw her leave. His heart paused for a beat, but he was so full of adrenaline and hurt, fear and rage, that he ignored it, focusing instead on what to do next.

Rocco came up the stairs after she’d left.

“You did a good job on that broad. She definitely wasn’t in on it?”

“No. Leave her be. She and Grim deserve each other.”

“Fair enough.” Rocco paused. “You’re going to have to call the cops on this one. We get involved and there’s a good chance you’ll lose everything. You need to report it to collect insurance.”

“I get the cops involved and I lose everything anyway. No one is going to come back here if they think the Reapers will come over from Illinois anytime they like and steal their bikes. Those motors were custom. It’s not like they’re going to be able to sell them.”

“They’re already stripped down for parts.” Rocco’s face showed that the idea of such beautiful bikes being reduced to parts hurt him as much as it hurt Rusty.

“Fuck.”

“Pretty much.” Rocco paused. “Want me to go and visit your brother?”

Rusty shook his head. “No, it’s time I pulled his head out of his ass myself.”

“Well, if you need someone to put it back up there once you’re done, you give us a shout. He’s no family to you.”

Rusty felt the words like hard chunks of concrete. “He’s no family to you.” It was true. Grim had finally managed to sever the one thing that Rusty had thought held them together. But if this clusterfuck trail really did lead back to his brother, it looked like their blood connection wasn’t going to be strong enough to hold anything.

“Boys will drop you at the hospital gate. Come on. Get your arm fixed. You can see your brother after. I’ll make sure he doesn’t go anywhere.”