Chaos Bound (31 page)

Nausea roiled in Holt’s stomach, and his hand wavered. Was he ready to do this? To kill the men he had called brothers? To lose the only man he’d considered a friend?

“Don’t do it,” Naiya murmured, as he pushed her to safety behind his back. “You aren’t thinking straight. You’ve been through hell, and meeting your brothers like this was a bad idea. They aren’t the enemy. I wasn’t there, but it sounds like they did everything they could do. And yeah, maybe they could have tried even harder, and maybe they fucked up, and you suffered terribly for it, but what I saw when you walked in the door was that they were overjoyed to see you. Viper is the enemy. Viper made you suffer. He took a lot from you. Don’t let him take this, too. You all want the same thing. You want Viper dead. They just want to do it a different way.”

“So you’re with them, now?” His voice was rough, harsh. Broken.

“No. I’m with you.”

The front door creaked open. Holt glanced back over his shoulder and saw Arianne in the hallway, her gun pointed at Naiya. Jagger’s old lady was the best shot in the club thanks to her old man, Viper, who had given her a gun when she was three years old. She’d left him after years of abuse and slapped him in the face by becoming Jagger’s old lady. But she was Viper’s daughter through and through. No one fucked with Arianne or the man she’d risked her life to have.

“T-Rex!” she shouted. “You pull that damn trigger and I’ll pull mine.”

Holt struggled to contain the tidal wave of anger that surged through his body, turning the world into a red haze. “You get that fucking gun out of my girl’s face or I’ll shoot every damn person in this room!” Holt roared, desperate to turn, but knowing the minute he dropped his weapon, Zane would be all over him.

“Last time I saw her, your girl was a Black Jack brat,” Arianne spat out. “Is that what this is all about? You’re with the Jacks now? You thought you’d just walk in here and take out Jagger? The Sinners? Not on my damn watch, you won’t.”

Naiya cursed and reached under Holt’s jacket to grab the weapon holstered at his back. Before Holt could stop her, she yanked it out and plastered her back against his. “I’m not with the Jacks. I never was. And this is getting out of hand. Holt and I are leaving. Everyone is going to lower their weapons and let us pass. No one is going to hurt Holt. He’s been through enough.”

“Darlin’, are you pointing that weapon at Arianne?” Holt asked, his gaze still on Zane and the weapon pointed at his heart.

“Yes. You want me to point it somewhere else? Like at Zane? Because if he hurts you…”

“I want you to put it down,” he murmured, struggling to keep his voice even. Damn brave woman had his back, even though she didn’t know how to shoot a gun. But with her inexperience, she was now the most dangerous person in the room, and that meant he had lost control of the situation. “I get that you want to protect me, but I think there’s a bigger risk of someone getting hurt if you don’t.”

“Zane lowers his gun first,” she said.

“I’ll drop.” He lowered his weapon, and Zane did the same. Holt holstered the weapon and raised his hands in the air, turning to show Arianne he was now unarmed. She nodded and holstered her gun.

“You can drop the weapon now.” Holt gently pressed Naiya’s arm down and pried her fingers off the gun.

“I wasn’t really intending to shoot her,” Naiya said. “I just got angry at how they were treating you.”

“You gotta keep a cool head when you’re handling a weapon.” He tucked the gun back in its holster. Ironic that he was chastising her for being emotional when he could barely contain his own anger. “Otherwise the wrong people get hurt.”

He’d almost lost Naiya back there. Yes, she’d been trying to help, but she’d put her life at risk and taken away his one chance to avenge himself against the MC. No way would Jagger let him anywhere near the clubhouse again. He was surprised Jagger was even letting them walk out the door.

Fuck. How had he got it so wrong? He’d thought the best way to protect her was to keep her with him, be there for her the way he hadn’t been for his sister. But he was a danger to her. If not for him, she wouldn’t have been in a situation where she had to put her life at risk, and the longer he stayed with her, the worse it would be. He was going down a path she couldn’t follow.

A path he had to take alone.

TWENTY-ONE

Naiya tightened her grip on Holt’s waist as he took a sharp corner, his motorcycle leaning so far to the side she was surprised they didn’t tip. She’d ridden with Jeff and a few of the Black Jacks when she was younger, and they’d taught her what was expected of a pillion rider, but except for the ride out to the clubhouse, it had been a long time. Still, she trusted Holt, and the key to a safe pillion ride was trust. If he leaned, she leaned with him. Second-guessing his actions and shifting her weight in the wrong direction could be disastrous to them both.

She glanced over her shoulder at the thicket of trees that hid the clubhouse from view, half-expecting Arianne or Tank or some of the Sinners to come after them. Even she knew you didn’t pull a weapon on the president of an MC and his old lady and walk away. Viper would have killed them both in a heartbeat. That Jagger let them go said a lot about how he felt about Holt.

Holt slowed the bike. Without the cool rush of pine-scented air, her hair fell over her face and she brushed it away, tightening her legs around his hips as he turned off on a gravel road. About one mile off the highway, where the grassy foothills gave way to trees, he stopped the bike and turned off the engine.

“Why did we stop?” Naiya slid off the bike, grateful for the chance to walk off the strain on little-used muscles. A cloudbank had rolled in while they were at the clubhouse, and she shivered in the cool air.

“I can’t fucking believe you pulled on Arianne.” Holt dismounted and flipped the kickstand. Naiya startled at his tone. She knew he was angry when they left the clubhouse, but she hadn’t realized it was directed at her or that he would feel the need to stop on their way back to the hotel.

“She was going to kill you.”

“You don’t ever fucking put yourself at risk again.” He thudded his fist on the seat. “And especially not for me.”

“If not for you, then who?” Naiya folded her arms, annoyed that he would question her choices. She’d saved his damn ass back there. The least he could do was say thanks. “I’ve spent my life hiding in my books, watching the world pass me by. I saw all sorts of bad things happen, but I never did anything. I didn’t tell the police or social services what happened at home with my mother, or about the men the Jacks killed, or the drugs they sold from my mother’s apartment, or how Viper kept her addicted so he could control her. I didn’t try to get her help—“

“You were a kid.”

“I was fifteen when I left. I could have done something. Instead, I pretended it wasn’t happening. Just like I pretended Viper didn’t hurt me or that I was fine after what he did. I pretended there was nothing wrong with Maurice and me and that I was happy living a life where I was empty inside.”

She dropped her gaze, stared at his bike, not recognizing her reflection in chrome. “And then I met you,” she continued. “And you were so real. Bad things happened and you dealt with them. Everything about you is up front and honest. And when we were in there, and I knew you were hurting, and they weren’t understanding, I suddenly got tired of pretending. That situation wasn’t right, and for once in my life, I wanted to do something about it.”

“It was the wrong fucking thing to do.” His face darkened. “You almost got yourself killed. How can I protect you if you’re gonna do crazy shit like that? That’s not who you are. That’s not what you do.”

“Well, obviously, I didn’t get killed,” she huffed, kicking at the rocks on the road. “And it was the right thing to do because we’re both still alive, which was iffy from the moment you pulled your gun on Jagger. And it is who I am and what I do because I just did it.” Her voice rose in pitch, and she glared. Who was he to tell her who she was, when she didn’t even know herself?

“Christ.” He scraped his hand through his hair. “It wasn’t a fucking game. I lost control of that situation because of you. People could have been hurt. You don’t belong in this world anymore, Naiya. You don’t understand the rules. You don’t have the experience to survive.”

A ball of disappointment lodged in her throat. Ever since she met Holt, she’d done things that scared her, things that took her out of her controlled, comfortable world and thrust her back into the biker craziness she’d been running from for the last seven years. She’d started living life instead of reading about it. She’d let her inner wild child out, and it had been fun and reckless and scary and exciting. And at the Sinners’ clubhouse, she’d stepped out of the shadows and taken control of a situation that she knew was wrong. She’d felt confident and brave. For once, she’d felt like she mattered, like there was something she could do aside from tagging along with Holt on his quest for revenge. But he’d just ripped that all away, and now she felt stupid and foolish for thinking she could be part of his world.

She opened her mouth to retort, to tell him the Naiya he met in the dungeon wasn’t the Naiya who stood with him now, and closed it again. Why bother? She’d been wrong about Holt. She thought he’d seen her as she truly was, but clearly he hadn’t seen her at all.

“Fine. Take me back to the hotel.” She didn’t need him and his stupid quest for revenge that was going to get him killed, especially now that he’d alienated his club. And she’d never wanted to be involved with bikers. She had a career to establish, rent to pay, car payments to make, and student loans to pay off. She wasn’t going to do that riding around on the back of Holt’s bike on the run from Viper and the ATF. Holt didn’t need her, and she clearly wasn’t cut out for this life. What the hell had she been thinking when she pulled that gun on Arianne? Holt was right. That wasn’t her. She abhorred violence, followed the law. Hell, she didn’t even know how to use a gun. Time to get back on track and make a plan to move forward; she’d been living without one too long.

He gave a satisfied grunt. “You stay there until you get the all-clear either from me or the Sinners.”

Stay? No way was she sticking around. She had an interview in Florida next week. Might as well head down there early, get some sun, and forget about the hot biker with an over-protective streak who didn’t think women could look after themselves.

“You go do your thing, and I’ll do mine.” She was giving him what he wanted—a chance to go after Viper, unfettered and unencumbered by her or the need to protect her. And she was doing what she wanted—pursuing a normal life, away from bikers and everything they represented.

So why did it feel so wrong?

*   *   *

Six hours later, Naiya sat in front of the computer in the hotel’s business center, with a prepaid cell phone pressed to her ear, listening to Ally talk about the police visit to their house and how easily Doug put them off. Although the room looked out over the street, the brown-and-green decor gave it a dark, dreary appearance, fitting with her mood. She’d already filled Ally in on everything that had happened from the time they parted ways at the cabin to Holt’s abrupt departure a few hours ago.

Other than a quick good-bye, she and Holt hadn’t talked after their heated off-road discussion. He’d picked up his stuff at the hotel, left her with a bundle of cash she didn’t want, kissed her cheek and walked out the door. She didn’t know where they stood. Was that the end? Was he leaving her to find Viper and get himself killed? Or was he planning to come back?

Naiya didn’t like uncertainty, and the only way to deal with it was by having a plan. She’d used the last of Ally’s money to buy a cell phone and spent the afternoon responding to interview requests—two in Colorado and one in Hawaii—while wallowing in the ache of missing Holt. How had it gone so wrong?

“Maurice has been calling ever since Doug caught him with his new … that girl,” Ally said. “Doug met up with him for a drink, and Maurice told him he’d made a huge mistake. He wanted to see you to explain, so Doug told him what was happening. He’s worried about you on the run with an outlaw biker. Do you want to see him?”

It took Naiya a second to realize Ally had asked her a question. The minute she’d mentioned Maurice, Naiya had switched off. “I’m in Conundrum.”

“And I’m heading your way as soon as I get off work,” Ally said. “I’m not leaving my girl alone in a strange town when she’s hiding out in a hotel, all broken up over her biker walking out on her, and she’s being chased by cops and psychopaths. The question is: do you want me to bring Maurice? He wants to come to see you. He says you can stay at his place and he’ll look after you.”

Naiya leaned back in her chair, fiddled with the computer mouse on the table. “Maurice who lay on his couch as I walked through the streets in the dark wants to look after me?” She couldn’t imagine Maurice shooting someone like Leo or facing off against an ATF agent or pulling a gun on the president of an outlaw MC, but then she and Maurice had led a pretty sedate life. They both worked hard, went to the gym, met up a few evenings a week and usually spent the weekends watching movies and walking in the park. Calm. Predictable. Safe. Just what she needed after stabbing a biker, going on the run, becoming an accessory to murder, stealing motorcycles, and threatening to shoot someone with what she was pretty sure was an unregistered weapon.

“Doug thought he sounded genuine,” Ally continued. “Maybe you should just hear him out. Even if you don’t get involved with him again, you need friends right now, and although I still want to poke out his eyes for what he did to you, he’s definitely not involved with the kind of people who could hurt you.”

“Bring him along.” Naiya sighed. “I’ll hear him out. Frankly, I wouldn’t mind feeling like a normal person again, having a normal conversation and just hanging out with people I know who aren’t going to shoot someone or steal something or ride a motorcycle at one hundred miles an hour and almost get me killed.”

“Does that mean it’s totally over with Holt?” Ally hesitated. “I kinda liked him. He was an over-the-top hunk of alpha loving, and he was totally into you.”