Another car was coming in at high speed from the other direction. It cut me off from Hawk who was running toward me and I awkwardly had to take last minute evasive maneuvers. My ankle turned, I wobbled and I threw both my arms out to stop myself from going down. My heart was racing, my adrenalin pumping and my mind was blank of anything but surprise and fear.
Then suddenly from out of nowhere there were motorcycles everywhere.
Everywhere.
Shooting through the two cars, all through the parking lot and, as I continued to stagger, one shot right toward me.
Before I could avoid it, I was hooked at the waist by something strong and solid and couldn’t hold back my, “Oof!”
Then my ass was planted in front of the rider.
“Hold on,” a gravelly voice ordered.
“I –”
“Hold the f**k on!” the gravelly voice barked.
Even as we kept cruising, I turned to face him, my arms sliding around his middle. His arm around me went back to the bike handle and he must have given it some gas because we shot out of the parking lot.
Oh God.
What was happening?
“What’s happening?” I asked.
“Keep quiet and stay calm. You’re safe,” he answered as, from my vantage point of looking over his shoulder behind us I saw the rest of the motorcycles line up behind ours.
“Safe? Safe from what? Who are you?” I asked and tipped my head back to see a strong jaw, a partial view of a goatee and longish dark hair curling around a muscled neck and his ear.
“I’m Tack.”
Oh boy.
“President of a biker gang Tack?”
His chin tipped down slightly but not enough for me to get a good look at him before his eyes went back to the road and he muttered, “See Lawson’s told you about me.”
“Uh –” I started.
He cut me off. “Motorcycle club.”
“What?” I asked.
“Chaos isn’t a gang. It’s a club.”
From the firm tone of his gravelly voice sounding over the roar of the motorcycle I noted that, clearly, this was an important distinction.
Right.
“Um…sorry,” I murmured.
“Just keep quiet and hold on,” he ordered and I thought this was good advice seeing as I’d never been on a motorcycle. I also didn’t know you could ride on a motorcycle like this. It didn’t feel very safe though he seemed in command.
Still, probably better if he had nothing to concentrate on but the road and making sure we didn’t crash and die since neither of us were wearing helmets.
We roared onto Speer Boulevard then we turned and roared up University Boulevard then another turn and down we roared on Alameda then another turn and more roaring down Broadway and then we turned into the enormous forecourt of a mechanic’s garage.
He parked in front of a long rectangular building and all the bikes roared in beside us like they practiced this formation often and they were the motorcycle equivalent of the Air Force Thunderbirds.
It was then that I realized somewhere along the way I’d lost my phone and purse.
And I’d been talking to Mitch when it all happened.
“Oh no,” I whispered, staring at Tack’s neck.
“Hop off, chestnut.”
I blinked and looked up at him to see his shadowed face looking down at me.
“What?”
“Can’t get off until you let me go and get off so hop off, chestnut.”
“Chestnut?”
“Your hair,” he grunted. “Now hop…off.”
And it was then I noticed that I still had my arms tight around him. Considering his tone was becoming impatient, I felt it prudent at that juncture to let him go and hop off. So I did that and stood unsteadily beside his bike while his brethren closed ranks.
He threw his leg off, grabbed my hand and started walking with wide strides toward the rectangular building taking me with him.
“Um…Mr., uh…Tack –”
“Just Tack,” he interrupted, not breaking stride and dragging me toward the door to the building.
“Right, uh…Tack. I lost my phone. I was on a call to my boyfriend, um –”
He pushed open the door at the same time he twisted his neck and ordered, “Dog, call Lawson. Tell him we got his woman at the compound and she’s safe.”
He knew who I was?
“You know who I am?” I asked as he dragged me into what looked kind of like the rec room of a house except a lot bigger and decorated in shades of seedy bar.
“Make it my business to know everything worth knowin’ in Denver,” he muttered, stopped and stopped me with a tug on my hand.
And since the lights were on I saw him.
Wow.
I’d had a lifetime of rough, gruff men like him visiting my Mom’s trailer and even some of them coming in to visit me in my room. Therefore, I was not big on rough, gruff men who required haircuts and needed to carve out some time to trim their facial hair.
But he was different.
He had some silver in his unruly black hair. He also had visible tattoos and lots of them. Further, he had fabulous bone structure, a dominant brow, a strong jaw. His goatee was long at the chin but for some reason I liked it and I figured this reason was because he wore it well. He had lines radiating from the sides of his eyes and they were extremely attractive.
And he had very, very blue eyes.
“You’re dangerous hot too but a different kind,” I blurted, unfortunately still drunk regardless of the drama I found myself involved in.
His eyes narrowed on me, his head tilted to the side then his goatee moved as both ends of his mouth tipped up slightly.
Oh yes. Dangerous hot.
He turned his head to the boys who followed us in and ordered, “Lockdown Ride. Eyes on the perimeter. No one gets in except Delgado and Lawson.”
On that, he started walking while dragging me behind him again. He took me around a bar to a hallway that had lots of doors off of it.
“Do you know what’s going on?” I asked as he dragged me.
“You know Grigori Lescheva?” he asked back.
Russian mob.
I felt my stomach clench.
Oh boy.
This could not be good.
“I know of him,” I answered as he pushed open a door.
Then he turned on a light and I saw it was a bedroom, a very untidy one.
He pulled me in, stopped us and looked down at me. “Well, he knows you.”
Fantastic.
Tack wasn’t done.
“He also knows your cousin was talkin’ with the DA.”
Damn.
Tack kept going.