Burn, page 2
part #1 of Sentinels MC Rebels Series
Dani didn’t want him to see her fear, but she had a feeling it was a scent on the air. “I have a son.” Her voice trembled slightly, but she lifted her chin and clenched her teeth to contain the shaking. “I can’t sleep over here. Ever. So don’t bother getting another bed.”
“We’ll make sure he’s safe,” Tyson said, ignoring her remark about the bed. “You’d be perfect to work in Daddy’s office. He hasn’t stepped foot in there in about five years, and there are a ton of records to go through.” He wasn’t telling her everything, Dani knew that. She’d worked as a camp counselor for teen girls in the summers between college semesters, and she had a five-year-old son. She knew a half-truth when she heard it.
“I’m not going anywhere near Daddy,” Dani said.
Tyson sighed, the gesture moving through his whole body. “Dani, you can’t just walk in and out of a motorcycle club. Especially this one.”
“I can’t live here.” Hysteria built inside her, and she turned back to the door. As if reading her thoughts, Tyson darted in front of her.
“Dani,” he said, his voice low. His wide shoulders filled the whole doorway, and there was no way she could get past him. “I’m Tyson Pike. You remember me, right?”
She nodded, no amount of clenching able to keep her chin from trembling.
“This is an outlaw motorcycle club,” he said. “And no one’s claimed you as their old lady. I can, but I really don’t want to.”
Dani knew enough about motorcycle clubs to know what being his old lady meant. It meant no one else would be able to touch her. It meant she’d be his, and Dani was never pledging herself to another man.
“I don’t want you to,” she said.
“I heard about Reid,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
Dani stared straight into his eyes. “Thank you.”
“How old is your son?”
“Five.”
“Name?”
“Jonas.”
“Do you have anyone who can take care of him during the day?”
Dani nodded, blinking back her tears. “My sister has him right now. But she has two kids of her own, and I can’t ask her to just take him. Her husband works so much and—” She silenced when Tyson’s pointer finger touched her lips, as if shushing her.
“I have two sisters with kids,” he whispered. “They can help if we need them to. I promise you, Jonas will be fine while you’re here.”
Dani believed him, and not just because he was over six feet tall and spoke with the sexiest voice possible.
“And I promise you’ll be fine here too,” he said. “You just need to do what I said. If anyone talks to you—anyone—you say you can’t talk to them. They have to go through me. Okay?” His eyes burned with an intensity that had shivers running across her shoulders and down her spine.
But having the warm touch of a man in her life was not on her to-do list right now. Or ever again. She’d loved Reid more than life itself, and it seemed cruel that he’d been taken so soon, leaving her and Jonas behind to try to make things work.
She’d waited so long for Reid and then Jonas. She’d been doing okay until her job at the dentist office had disappeared when the old man had retired. Without a way to buy groceries and pay rent, she’d been scraping by as best as she could on savings and life insurance money for the past two years.
And it was all gone now. All the money. All of her resources. She needed a new job, but she hadn’t been able to find anything that would work for a woman in her position. And then someone had mentioned taking drinks to men and making a hundred bucks a night.
“Okay?” Tyson asked again.
“Yes,” Dani said. “Fine.”
“I’ll get us something to eat and get things cleaned up in here,” he said. “Don’t go in the bathroom. Just because I was cleaning up the clubhouse doesn’t mean I keep things neat in my personal quarters.”
Dani turned around and surveyed the room again. No windows. No other ways in or out. It was definitely much safer than the room she’d stayed in last night, huddled in the corner, afraid to fall asleep.
A piece of carpet had been put on the floor, and the room was big enough for a full-size couch, a mini-fridge, and a TV on top of that. She took several steps and went into a bedroom with a queen-sized bed, another TV mounted to the wall, and a closet in the corner. The only door in this room led into the bathroom, but Dani didn’t go in there, as per Tyson’s request.
The warmth from his body melded with her own, but Dani didn’t turn toward her. “How do you stand this?”
Tyson didn’t answer, and she turned and looked up at him. “It’s pretty obvious you’re not happy here.”
“Is it?” He glared at her. “Why wouldn’t I be? I’m second-in-command, and with Daddy drunk or stoned most of the time, I practically run this place.”
Dani didn’t want to fight with him. She just wanted to sleep. “Can I go home?”
“Tonight,” he said. “I’ll come get you in the morning, and I’ll take you home at night, and in between, you’ll work in Daddy’s office.” He stepped away from her. “You can sleep in my bed for now. I’ll go see if I can find some food.”
With that, he walked out of the room, pulling the door closed behind him. Dani turned at the sound of it, hurrying through the smaller, outer room to check and see if it locked. It didn’t, but Tyson—or someone—had put a hook and eyelet on the door, and she quickly latched them together. Anyone who tried to come in would only be able to open the door a couple of inches at most.
“Someone Tyson’s size could bust right through that,” she murmured to herself. But maybe it would buy her a few seconds when he came back. She opened the fridge, expecting to find beer and spirits inside. She found bottled water. Suddenly thirsty, she pulled one out and opened it.
She expected to see some sign of Tyson in the room. A family photo. A stack of mail. Something. There was nothing. The walls were white, much cleaner than the ones upstairs, and Dani was starting to realize that while Tyson was here, obviously a member of this outlaw club, he was a lot different than the rest of the guys here.
In his bedroom, the bed wasn’t made, but the air didn’t smell like anything but cologne and leather. She found his jacket and road gear hanging in the closet, along with several T-shirts and lighter jackets. No sweaters. No parkas. A row of boots sat on the floor, all black, all lined up perfectly.
Dani puzzled over the contrast between this room and the party she’d seen last night. She couldn’t remember if she’d seen Tyson there or not. She’d made a rule as soon as she’d gotten off the back of the bike and the man who’d brought her had folded the blindfold. She wouldn’t look anyone in the face. Absolutely no one. Then, if something happened, she wouldn’t have to make any IDs.
She sure had looked into Tyson Pike’s face, though. And Daddy’s.
Her phone rang, and she dug it out of her pocket to find her sister’s name on the screen. “Jodi,” she said, turning back to the only door leading into this place. “I’m so sorry. How’s Jonas?”
“You’re sorry?” Her sister bit the words out, and Dani pressed her eyes closed. She was the older of the two of them, but she always felt like such the screw-up. “Jonas is crying, Dani. He wants his mother.”
“I know.” Desperation clawed its way up her throat. “Look, I’ll explain everything tonight, but I can’t get home until then.”
Jodi sighed in an exaggerated way. “Dani, where are you?”
She sucked back the words. Jodi wouldn’t be able to come here anyway, as Dani wasn’t entirely sure where she was. The ride from the pub in Grand Central had only taken about fifteen minutes, so she couldn’t be terribly far from town. She’d recognized nothing as she’d looked around last night, but it had been dark, and all she’d seen were some trees.
“I’m safe,” she said. “I’ll tell you everything I can tonight.” Behind her, the hook rattled as someone tried to come into the room, and she spun around.
“Dani,” Tyson said through the gap. “Open the door.”
“I have to go.”
“Dani—” her sister started, but Dani hung up, hurried over to the hook, and unlatched it. She opened the door and found Tyson holding two coffee cups in one hand and a couple of loaded grocery bags in the other.
“Move,” he said, and she backed up, stumbling over a fold in the carpet as he crowded into her space.
“Where do you guys get your food?” she asked, backing into his bedroom as he just kept coming at her.
“Same place as everyone else,” he said, lifting the groceries to a table against the wall opposite of the couch. He unpacked a couple bags of chips and two apples before he looked around, his chest heaving. “I thought you were going to sleep, not snoop.”
“I wasn’t snooping,” she said, a flash of fire moving through her. “I was thirsty.” She held up the half-empty water bottle. “And I called my sister to let her know I’m not dead somewhere.”
Voices approached from out in the hall, and Tyson twisted to look in that direction. “Go,” he hissed. “Close and lock the door. Now.”
Dani didn’t hesitate. She did what he said, hurrying into his bedroom and closing the door, turning the lock right when she heard someone bellow, “There he is! Martha-Freaking-Stewart.”
Dani didn’t know what that meant, and she backed away from the door. Her legs bumped into the bed behind her, and she fell down onto it. Men continued to talk on the other side of the door, but no one tried to come in. Thankfully. She didn’t want to admit how nervous she was, and she knew she’d have to put on a tough front when she went to work in Daddy’s office. She could do it when she had to. She had last night.
Right now, she didn’t even have a pair of pajamas to change into, and she crawled up to the pillows on Tyson’s bed, snuggled into them, and pulled the blanket all the way to her chin. She wanted to wait until Tyson handled whatever was happening. Surely he’d knock. Any minute now.
Any minute….
Chapter Three
Bulldog steadfastly refused to look at the closed door that led into his bedroom and bathroom. Rooster and Crawler wouldn’t go back there, even if the door was open. Apparently, Big Al had left the club that morning, claiming he wouldn’t be coming back.
“And you should see Daddy,” Rooster said. “He’s callin’ for a retrieval group.”
“I bet he is,” Bulldog said. “Big Al handled things he doesn’t want getting around.” He looked out the open door, knowing someone could be loitering just out of sight. Conversations had come to blows lots of times around the Hawks clubhouse, and it was usually Bulldog who broke them up.
“Davy’s calling for a club-wide search,” Rooster said next, and he actually looked worried.
Bulldog thought about the woman in his bedroom, and he could admit he was worried too. “Daddy will never allow that.”
“He will if it comes out that certain items are missing.” Crawler leaned closer, and Bulldog didn’t like the biker at all. He jumped from ship to ship, voting strangely and coming up with wacky hypotheses that just fueled Daddy’s paranoia. And he was so earnest, like everything was such a big deal.
Bulldog labeled men like him as ambulance-chasers, and he had absolutely no use for them. “Like what?” he asked, though he knew the club stored and moved sensitive items.
“I heard that Big Al took a whole backpack of the weed with him.” Crawler wiped his hand across his forehead, and Bulldog knew the tell. He was just speculating now, and he might have been the one to start the rumor.
Didn’t really matter. Daddy operated on rumors until they were proven wrong, and Bulldog had been the voice of reason for a few years now. He’d kept the Hawks from becoming anything too dangerous, but they did move drugs and people from the US to Canada at least once a month. Sometimes the items came the other way, but most unsavory people wanted out of the country, not back in. Things were definitely more dangerous along the southern border, but Bulldog knew things happened up here too.
He tried to stay out of the worst of it. Tried to keep the Hawks away from it too. Daddy never left the clubhouse, and as long as there was no shortage of food, drink, pot, and women, he didn’t seem to care what the club or its members did.
If it were up to Bulldog, he’d call a contest vote on Daddy’s leadership and get him out. Clean up the club to make it into more like what Maverick Malone ran down in Forbidden Lake. They helped people and distributed food and rode with B.A.C.A.
Bulldog didn’t like Maverick or the Sentinels on principle, but they weren’t outlaws. Thy took care of each other, and he’d slowly realized over the years that he should’ve joined their club instead of this one.
But he’d been born and raised in Grand Central, and one of his two sisters still lived here. Lila lived in Forbidden Lake now, but that wasn’t far enough away should the club decide she was leverage they could use.
His mother, at the time, was two days away from going into rehab for the third time, and the Hawks were convenient, easy. He’d needed a way to keep his sisters safe, and he’d needed a way to pay the bills. The Hawks had provided both, and he hadn’t been thinking long-term when he was nineteen years old.
Rooster said, “We should go see what Tug has to say,” and he nudged Crawler toward the exit.
“Yeah,” Bulldog said. “Let me know what he says.” Tug was a short, squat man who could bench press his entire body weight. For some reason, he had the most trustworthy face, and people told him secrets they wouldn’t tell anyone else. Bulldog didn’t get the same courtesy, but he had plenty of men in his pocket too. Some of the old ladies too. And all of the pledges. He worked with them the most, and if Daddy knew he was training them to be more like a law-abiding club than drug runners…Bulldog would be in serious trouble.
He waited until Rooster’s and Crawler’s footsteps receded, and then he put the food he’d brought to his room on a set of shallow shelves above the table. He waited a bit longer, and then he closed the door leading into the hallway.
Unsurprisingly, the door leading to his bedroom was locked, and Dani didn’t come to unlock it when he knocked. Bulldog opened the fridge and took out the key. The doorknob unlocked smoothly, and he found Dani asleep in his bed, snuggled under his comforter.
He took a long look at her, wondering why he felt such a need to protect women like her. She reminded him so much of his sisters—women doing the best they could while raising their families in a crumbling town. Meanwhile, forty-five minutes south, Forbidden Lake was thriving, and a slip of frustration moved through Bulldog.
He walked around to the side of the bed, gazing down at Dani. She was a beautiful woman, and his heart skipped a beat. Or maybe it kicked out too many all at once. Something had definitely happened that hadn’t happened before, at least for a very long time.
“Not happening,” he told himself. He already had way too much on his plate, and the last thing he needed was his heart messing with his head.
“Dani,” he said, reaching out and lightly touching her arm. She didn’t stir in the slightest, and Bulldog decided to let her sleep as long as she wanted. He knew JJ and Lila never got enough sleep, and he could go get the paperwork started for her to work in the office. He locked her back inside his bedroom, and then he steeled himself for a conversation with his least favorite person on the planet.
He took his time crossing through the rec room, where several members sat at the bar, steaming cups of coffee in front of them. They gossiped about Big Al, but their energy wasn’t nervous or filled with panic.
Bulldog suspected the man had stumbled out in the middle of the night, threats coming from his mouth. He’d probably find him in the woods, passed out. So Bulldog gave the bikers at the bar credit for being up this early, as it was barely two o’clock, and for the night after one of their major parties, that was saying something.
“Bulldog,” a couple of them said, and he acknowledged Gil and Deputy and Sampson as he went by. A woman worked behind the bar, and the scent of something salty met his nose. Irene was Rooster’s old lady, and she made a mean hash the morning after parties.
Bulldog didn’t need the hash. He didn’t need coffee. He needed Daddy to be smoking when he got to his rooms, and he needed him to be compliant. His focus singular, he ignored everyone and everything else as he made his way across the rec room to the hallway that led down the east side of the building. There was a TV room in the front corner, with a couple of pool tables and a storage room that looked like it held soda fountain syrup at first glance.
Down the hall, at the back of the building—the most protected, hardest-to-penetrate, part of the building, waited Daddy’s quarters. He had the most space, and Bulldog wouldn’t be surprised to find a couple of members standing guard.
Sure enough, Jerome and Redheart stood at the door, their arms crossed as if Bulldog was one of the club’s unattached women who came trolling down this way looking for some of Daddy’s approval.
“Boys,” he said, nodding at them as he paused a healthy distance away. “Is he busy?”
“When isn’t he busy?” Redheart asked, and Bulldog would get all the information from him later. He and Redheart had similar opinions about the club, and yet Bulldog would never stand guard outside Daddy’s rooms.
“Women or drugs?” Bulldog asked.
Neither guard answered, and Bulldog moved forward again. “I’ll be quick.” He’d seen much more of the leader of the Hawks than he liked, but often, Bulldog could get what he wanted when Daddy was in a good mood.
The outer room was empty, and it actually looked like someone had at least picked up the trash. Besides this room where he usually entertained select members or held audiences with people, Daddy had three other rooms, including a large bedroom. He wasn’t in there, though two women slept in his bed.
