Chapter 2 The Last Person I’d Ask

Sable

“Then you’d better tell me why,” I said, because Tori looked ready to bolt and I wasn’t spending the rest of the afternoon guessing.

I led her into the little room beside the kitchen where we stored supplies for the toy run. Stacks of cardboard boxes took up half the floor, and somebody had abandoned a plastic reindeer on the folding table. I moved it aside and shut the door, leaving the music and shouting from the clubhouse on the other side.

Tori stayed standing. “I know we aren’t friends.”

“You’ve established that we agree on something. What’s going on?”

“I’m seeing someone. His name’s Dane Pritchard. The Dust Devils call him Fuse.”

I’d heard of the Dust Devils, a smaller MC operating outside our immediate territory, but not enough to know every man wearing their patch. “How long?”

“Eight months. It wasn’t supposed to be serious. We had fun together, went on rides, spent weekends at their clubhouse. I thought we understood each other.” She rubbed a thumb along the edge of her purse. “Apparently we didn’t.”

“What’s Fuse done?”

“At first he just wanted to know where I was. Then he wanted pictures to prove it. If I went out with friends, he’d call until I answered, even if he knew I was working.” Tori gave a strained laugh. “He told me it was because he cared.”

“Bet he didn’t enjoy you asking where he was every five minutes.”

“I tried that once. He told me not to act like his mother.”

“Convenient.”

She nodded, but there was no humor in her face. “When I told him I wanted to stop seeing him, he said I’d embarrassed him. Started showing up at my apartment, waiting outside my work. Last week, he grabbed my arm when I tried to leave an argument.”

“Did he leave marks?”

“For a couple of days. He apologized afterward.”

“An apology doesn’t make it okay.”

“I know, Sable. That’s why I left.”

I respected that answer. She hadn’t come in to be told she’d been stupid. She already understood how badly things had gone.

“Where are you staying?”

“With a friend. He doesn’t know which one.”

“Keep it that way. And don’t go back there alone for your stuff.”

“I’m not planning to. My friend thinks I should call the cops, but I’m afraid that would make him angrier.” She hesitated. “I haven’t told her everything. She’s got kids, and I don’t want him showing up at her place.”

I understood the calculation, even if I hated that she was having to make it. A man who wanted control could turn every ordinary decision into a risk: going to work, answering a phone, staying with someone kind enough to give you a couch. Tori had already changed where she slept to get away from him. She shouldn’t have to give up the rest of her life, too.

Her eyes lifted to mine. “That’s part of the problem. He has some of my things, and now he’s telling me I can’t leave the Dust Devils behind just because I’ve decided we’re over.”

I frowned. “You’re dating a club member. That doesn’t make you property of his club.”

“Try telling him. He says breaking up with him disrespects every brother wearing his patch.”

“Sounds like his brothers have bigger problems if their pride depends on who you sleep with.”

Tori approached the table and set her phone beside the plastic reindeer. A crack ran across the screen. She unlocked it, scrolled through a conversation, and turned it toward me.

The messages weren’t subtle. Fuse demanded she come back, accused her of making him look weak, then warned that she would regret treating his club like a joke. In the last message, he’d written that she shouldn’t expect her old friends in Nowhere to help her.

“Does he mean the Daggers?” I asked.

“Yeah. That’s the other reason I’m here.”

She pulled out the chair but didn’t sit. “For a while now, the Dust Devils have been talking about getting closer to your club. Joint rides, helping each other if there’s trouble, that sort of thing. Fuse says some of your brothers have been meeting with them.”

“Brothers who?”

“He won’t give me names. I asked.”

“Has he mentioned Jarek? Or Marcus?”

“Only to say they’ll fall in line.”

I stared at her. Jarek was the Black Daggers president, and Marcus was his vice president. Neither man took orders from a Dust Devil, and neither had mentioned a new alliance to me. That didn’t prove the brothers hadn’t discussed one in church, but it told me Fuse was selling Tori a version of events I didn’t recognize.

“Those are his words?” I asked.

“Pretty much. He says the Daggers are going to back his club, and once that happens nobody around here will want to cross the Dust Devils. When I told him I’d ask Jarek whether that was true, he laughed.”

“What did he say?”

“That your club has already given its word, and Jarek won’t embarrass his own brothers by taking it back.”

There it was. Not just a possessive bastard trying to scare an ex-girlfriend, but somebody claiming authority from the Black Daggers patch. Worse, he seemed convinced a deal had been made without our president’s approval.

“Why come to me instead of one of the officers?” I asked.

Tori looked down at her phone. “Because I used to sleep with Jarek. I didn’t think he’d want to hear from me, and I figured you’d be the first person to tell me to get lost.”

“You weren’t entirely wrong.”

“I know.” She looked up. “But when I was here years ago, you never backed down from anybody. I thought if I told you what was happening, at least you’d tell me whether Fuse was lying.”

I didn’t owe her friendship. I didn’t owe her a warm welcome, either. But that didn’t mean I could let some idiot threaten her with a promise my club might never have made.

“I’m not going to guess what Jarek knows,” I told her. “I’ll ask him. Until then, don’t answer any invitations from Fuse to meet, and keep those messages.”

She nodded and finally pulled out the chair, as though permission to stop running had only just reached her.

Then her phone lit up again. I watched her read the new message. The little color she’d regained drained from her face.

“What?” I asked.

She turned the screen toward me.

Tell Sable whatever you want. One of her own brothers already promised us the Black Daggers’ backing. Ask her president why he doesn’t know yet.

I read it twice. Then I looked up at Tori.

“How the fuck does he know you’re talking to me?”

“I didn’t tell him I was coming.”

Somebody had seen her walk into the clubhouse, or Fuse had found another way to keep tabs on her. Either possibility made my skin crawl. And if his message was true, one of our own brothers was handing the Dust Devils authority he didn’t have.

Jarek was going to want a name.