Sly (19 page)

“Anybody hurt?” I asked. “Where the fuck’s Colt?” I tossed my phone on the table.
 

“Boss, we have a problem,” Sawyer answered, his voice stern. He, Charlie and Tiny passed a look between them and I didn’t like this one damn bit. I took my seat at the head of the table. Sawyer had a manila file in front of him and he tore at its edges with his fingers.
 

“Out with it.”
 

“You’re not going to like what we have to tell you. We went round and round about what to do with this.”
 

I took my seat at the head of the table and pounded my fist against it. “Colt texted me 911. He wakes me up out of a damn good sleep next to a fine woman and he’s not even here to fill me in? At this point I don’t give a shit about any of that. What do you have for me?”
 

“It’s Scarlett,” Sawyer said and my heart dropped into my boots. But she was fine. Safe. I’d just left her naked and snoring in the bed. Sawyer handed the folder to Tiny and he pushed it across the table to me. I stopped it with my palm.
 

“What am I going to find in here?” I tapped the edges of the folder, not wanting to open it.
 

“She’s lying about who she is,” Sawyer said. Tiny just looked green and uncomfortable.
 

“We didn’t have much to go on besides the plates on that Mustang she drives.” Tiny chimed in. He wouldn’t look me in the eye and a sick feeling rose up my spine.  “I called in some favors down at Green Bluff P.D. “
 

Charlie coughed. He was petting his long, grey beard, something he only did when he was nervous. “I called a friend to help us out with the credit card number she used when she bought beers in here the other week. The night those pricks tried to drug her.”
 

“And?” My temper flared. Even as I curled my fists, I kind of realized the hypocrisy. I’d given Colt the go ahead to look into her. Now that he had, whatever the results, I needed to know. As they talked, I flipped open the file. The numbers on the printouts in front of me swam and had no meaning. Sawyer’s voice drilled into my head.
 

“Credit card she used came back to someone named Elizabeth Martel. Plates on the Mustang to someone named Marie Parish.”
 

I flipped a page in the file. A full color mug shot stared back at me. Marie Parish. She looked like a fifty-year-old crack head with wild, kinky black hair and vacant eyes. I flipped another page. Another mug shot. Elizabeth Martel. This one had crazy eyes and heroine-gray teeth.
 

“What is this?”
 

“Both of those chicks are dead,” Sawyer chimed in.
 

“Okay?” I tried to make sense of what was in front of me. Scarlett had lied. I’d kind of known that from the beginning.
 

“We can’t find anything associated with Scarlett Shaw from the paper trail she’s left,” Charlie said.
 

I nodded. They were all being cagey. And where the fuck was Colt? Sawyer spoke with halting words and it was clear he was trying to handle me.
 

“I knew she had a deeper story than what she was telling me. I’ll talk to her. She might get pissed when I confront her with it but I think she’ll come clean.”
 

“Boss,” Sawyer said. “She’s a con artist. That much is pretty clear. Now, it might just be small-time shit. Credit card fraud. I mean, if she stole the car, that’s something else again but by the looks of those chicks in the mug shots, I don’t think either of them were really the owners of either the credit card or the Mustang. There’s identity theft going on. I mean, that’s pretty obvious.”
 

“Okay.” Of course, I didn’t like it. Not one bit. But I wasn’t ready to throw her over just yet. Not without talking to her.
 

“Boss,” Sawyer said again. “If she’s some kind of two-bit con, that’s one thing. Hell, time was we maybe could have used somebody with her set of skills.”
 

“But what?” I said. I closed the file and leaned back in my chair. None of the contents of that file warranted the ashen-faced looks I was getting from my top soldiers. Half of them wouldn’t even look up. At the end of the table, Avery and Big John were busy picking at their nails.
 

“But.” Sawyer took a deep sigh. He leaned forward and tapped his fingers against the table. His dark eyes flashed and I could see whatever he had to tell me was eating at him. “Colt had one of the prospects pay a visit to Hansen over at the motel. You know he owes us a lot. He was in a talking mood. She’s had some visitors in the last few days. And again, none of that makes a damn bit of difference. She’s entitled to her life. But the other day, Jinx Howell came to see her. Hansen said he went into her room with her. Alone. They were in there together for at least a half hour. Then Scarlett left but Jinx stayed there.”
 

Jinx Howell. Shit. He was only the right-hand idiot of one of the club’s biggest rivals. “You think she’s hooked up with the Devil’s Hawks.” My throat felt thick with rising bile at the thought of it. The Devil’s Hawks were some of the worst scum in the world. The idea that Scarlett would willingly spend time in the same room with any of them, much less Jinx, had me reeling.
 

Sawyer nodded and ran his thumb over the dark stubble of his chin. “It’s really looking that way.”
 

“You think she’s fucking Jinx Howell?” The words made me sick. I didn’t really believe them. Jinx was a lowlife meat head. Scarlett might be a con artist.
This might all be part of some scam she was trying to run, but she had to have her standards.
 

It was like the ground beneath me was made of quicksand. I had a million arguments. Scarlett was Scarlett. It didn’t matter to me that she had secrets. It didn’t even matter to me if she made her living scamming. Hell, there were plenty of us in this very club who had done much worse.
I
had done much worse. But so many little things started to shift in how I looked at them.
 

Scarlett, showing up just after I nearly bought it at the cliffs. Her refusal to give me real details about her business. The panic in her eyes last night when she begged me to skip town with her. I decided not to share that last part with the guys. I didn’t know what it meant yet.
 

“I want to talk to her.”
 

“Boss.” Charlie folded his hands in front of him. “We all get it, okay? She’s special. Nobody’s denying that there’s something about her. We get that you care about her and we all understand.”
 

“Quit fucking handling me.”
 

Sawyer held his hands up in surrender. “Yeah. Okay. It’s just, things being what they are, we need to get some solid answers from her. You know damn well if this girl had her hooks into any of the rest of us ... you’d do the same thing.”
 

“Do what?” I knew the answer, and a part of me hated myself for the tone I leveled at Sawyer. He was loyal. He was trying to look out for me and for the club. He was doing his job. And still, I wanted to rip his fucking throat out. This was Scarlett.
Scarlett
. My heart shredded just thinking about what had to be done.
 

“Nobody wants to hurt her,” Sawyer said. “We just need to get some answers from her. That’s all.”
 

My heart thundered in my chest. I wanted to rip the room apart, smash heads. A war brewed within me. I had to put the club’s interests ahead of everything else. Their safety and mine was the only thing that mattered.
 

I pressed my thumbs into my eye sockets and let out a great sigh. My fucking guts were torn to bits. I couldn’t admit it to them. Hell, I had just admitted it to myself.
 

I loved her. I was fucking in love with Scarlett. And yet, the possibility was very real that she’d come into my life to do me and the club harm.
 

“Sly?” Tiny’s voice shattered me.
 

“Fuck. Just . . . fuck.”
 

I put a hand up and nodded even though I was shaking my head. “I get it.” Though the words came out of my mouth, they sounded far away. The blood of Blackie Murphy ran through me just as much and in that moment I hated myself.
 

“Nobody’s going to hurt her,” Sawyer said again. “And if you hadn’t almost fucking died last month, well, nobody would say another word about it.”
 

I covered my face with my hands then looked up. Ice snaked through my veins as I looked around the room. Colt. Where the hell was he? Unless . . .
 

I sat back in my chair hard. “Mother fucker. Where is he? Where’s Colt?”
 

Charlie put a hand up. “Take it easy, Sly. We said it a million times, nobody’s looking to hurt that girl.”
 

"So you all decided to make a move on Scarlett without coming to me first.” Heat blazed in my chest. Colt. This was Colt. I knew it as I looked in Sawyer’s eyes.  I tried to work it out in my head. What the hell would make Colt take action behind my back like this? It was an act of defiance that was seriously messing with the dynamics of the club. Bitter bile filled me. I wanted to punch something or someone. No. Not someone. Colt. My Irish brawler blood was flaming hot.
 

“No? But you all just took it upon yourselves to lure me back here. Is that it?”
 

Sawyer cast his eyes downward. “Watching your back is our number one priority. If she
does
have anything to do with the Devil’s Hawks and what almost happened to you, it wouldn’t have made a lot of sense to tip her off.”
 

“You sent him over there? He’s there now?” I stood up. Sawyer, Avery and Tiny got up too. They stood in front of the door. Sawyer put his hands up.
 

“Just sit tight, okay, boss?”
 

“Get out of my way.”
 

“Samuel,” Charlie snapped. The only old-timer left, Charlie was also the only one who could still get away with calling me by my given name. “Just take a ten count would you? You know damn well everything Colt’s done is exactly what
you
would do if this shit were turned around.”
 

I turned on Charlie. Old Timer or not, even Charlie needed to remember who wore the president patch in this room. “Colt fucking answers to me.
All
of you answer to me. If you want a different deal, you bring it to the table for a vote. Until then, we run shit
my
way, not Colt’s.”
 

I wondered if any of them actually had the balls to put their hands on me if I decided to keep walking toward that door.
 

“Get him on the phone,” I said; my voice came out lower than I was used to and strange to my ears.
 

“Gunner’s there with him,” Sawyer said. “He knows to call if there’s any trouble.”
 

Gunner was the prospect most likely to get patched in next. Or at least he was until he decided to go with Colt behind my back. He was currently staying at my guest house at the foot of my driveway. Scarlett had never met him.  Sawyer kept talking but his words were drowned out by the slow, sick beat of my heart.
 

“Goddammit.”
 

“It’s gonna be okay,” Tiny said.
 

I nodded. Except it wasn’t. I had the very real feeling that nothing about this would ever be okay again.  I stood up and headed for the door.
 

“Boss?” Tiny said.
 

“I need a fucking minute, all right? I need to ride..”
 

“Here.” Sawyer tossed his keys to me. “Take my ride. But don’t go by yourself, okay? Avery and Big John, you go with him.”
 

“I don’t need a babysitter.”
 

“Dammit, Sly!” Charlie heaved himself away from the table and stood in front of me. “Take Avery and Big John. Keep your phone on you. Come home in an hour. Shit’s serious right now and your temper tantrum isn’t helping.”
 

I curled my fist at my side.
 

Charlie put a beefy hand up. “I’m sorry. Look, I really am. This is about the last thing any of us wanted to be doing today. But Colt’s going to take care of this. It’s gonna be okay. But none of us need to worry about you riding off halfcocked when the club’s in the midst of a little crisis.”
 

I took a breath. I wanted to say a thousand things, but again, I might be a hot head. I wasn’t an asshole. I nodded. “I’m going back to
my
house. If Gunner and Colt are already there, nobody else needs to come. Anyone here wants to try and stop me?”
 

Chapter Nineteen

Scarlett
 

Twenty minutes after I woke, Sly still wasn’t back and he hadn’t answered my call or text. Every cell in my body was screaming at me to run. This was all wrong. Something had happened and I needed to bolt. There could be no good reason for Sly to take off without telling me after the conversation we’d had last night.
 

I checked my phone again. No messages from Sly. Half a dozen messages from Lewis. I turned the thing off and slid it into my back pocket. I had my purse and the keys to the Mustang. And I had something more important: a head start.
 

Then the back door opened and my heart leapt. I took the hallway almost at a run, ready to leap into Sly’s arms at the same time I gave him shit for scaring me. I made it halfway there before I stumbled backward.
 

Colt stood in the hallway looking large and powerful. He had a hand behind him and I recognized from the set of his shoulders he was reaching for the piece he carried in his waistband. Just like I did. My hand went behind me but clutched air. My weapon was in my purse. My purse was sitting on the front hall table about twenty feet away.