Twisted Mercy (Red Team Book 4) (2 page)

Maybe one day she’d be the old Hope again. Or maybe this was the beginning of many new identities. Either way, she’d do what needed to be done to protect herself and her brother.
 

She didn’t want to die like her mother had, a victim of a WKB kill order.

* * *

The roaring noise coming from the White Kingdom Brotherhood’s clubhouse gave Max Cameron an uneasy feeling. Whatever brand of fucked-up was going down over there, it drew members, prospects, and hang-arounds like a magnet over metal shavings.
 

He went to the opening of the club’s old bike shop, standing in the ankle-deep weeds that poked through the crumbling concrete. A skinny biker was running toward him.
 

“Mad Dog. Mads! You gotta come. Quick.” Feral, his personal hang-around, shouted and waved as he approached.
 

Max grimaced. He’d offered to sponsor the kid—if he proved himself worthy of becoming a prospect. The gesture wasn’t altruistic; he needed eyes and ears inside the organization, listening to the gossip that didn’t always make its way to a fully patched member like him.
 

“I mean it, Mads.” Feral kicked up dirt as he came to a stop next to Max’s Harley Panhead. Max groaned as pebbles pinged against metal. Judging by the look on the kid’s face, the sound he’d made was more growl than groan.
 

Feral spilled his news in a rush of words. “They got fresh meat in the clubhouse. Some chick they’re tearing apart.” He grabbed Max’s vest. “You gotta come, man.”

Max shrugged him off. “No. I don’t. You don’t either. Leave ’em to it.”
 

This wasn’t his fight; the bikers could tear themselves to shreds, for all he cared. He had a very specific mission to complete: get their heroin tagged with radio frequency identification, infiltrate their IT systems, and get into the silo complex to map the damned thing. So far, he’d made little progress on any of those fronts.

Disappointment cut through Feral’s eyes as he glared up at Max. The kid shook his head, then ran back into the fray.

Given the club’s heightened level of excitement, if Feral tried to stop whatever was going on, they’d turn on him. And if that happened, Max would have a much bigger mess to clean-up. It was a matter of honor that no one fucked with his hang-around; he had no choice but to follow. He picked up a heavy wrench from a workbench, then crossed the barren compound grounds in the wake of his wannabe prospect.
 

The crowd of bikers was thick outside the clubhouse. Max shoved his way into the mob, pushing men—and some females—out of his way. When they realized who was coming through, they cleared an opening for him. He didn’t pause to wipe his feet on the tattered Jewish flag that served as a welcome mat to the clubhouse; there was no time, and it was too crowded for anyone to catch his oversight.

He moved from the blazing afternoon sun into the dark box of the steel building. The space was pulsing with noise and heavy with the stink of sweat. He dropped his sunglasses to the neck of his T-shirt, knowing Greer, back at the team’s ops center, was seeing and hearing everything through his sunglasses and earbud. The feed would go sideways, but Greer’s software would right it.

The clubhouse was crammed far beyond fire code thresholds. Men were standing everywhere—on the floor, on tables, on the bar, on the narrow backs of booth seats, looking toward something happening in the middle of the room. Excited shouts bounced around the steel walls, cutting a path of dread through Max’s gut.

He saw the girl’s blond hair first, loosened and fisted by half a dozen dirty hands. She was at the epicenter of the roaring crowd. He could barely hear her howls of rage as bits of her clothing were cut free and tossed into the mob. One of the guys sawed away at the fabric with his switchblade, unmindful of what was fabric and what was skin. Her bared breasts jiggled with each cutting motion. Dirty hands pawed her soft flesh.
 

Max felt himself go all kinds of mad.
 

The crowd stood so close around the girl that he couldn’t make headway without the strategic use of his wrench to club his way through. Halfway to her, the bikers parted, baring a stretch of filthy concrete that led straight to Max’s old enemy: Hatchet. He stood in front of the terrified girl, still cutting at her clothes. The small nicks on her skin spilled red over porcelain flesh.
 

Max’s nostrils flared. “Enough, Hatchet.”

The biker glanced over at him, but didn’t stop, didn’t step away from the girl. Baring his teeth, he snarled through clenched teeth, “Finders keepers. Get fucking lost.”

Max smiled. “I just found her.”

The mob quieted in a wave from the center to the outside ring. Onlookers drew back, collectively retreating in a circle to give Max and Hatchet space to fight. The two guys still holding the girl pulled her back with them, their hands all over her. He’d deal with them shortly. Max tossed the heavy wrench from hand to hand.
 

“Only a fool would bring a wrench to a knife fight,” Hatchet snarled as he faced Max.

Max shrugged. “Only a fool would fight me.”
 

He’d been the club’s enforcer at Callum. He could fight dirty. He could fight clean. He could fight to the death. What he didn’t know was which kind of fight this was going to be.

Hatchet looked across the crowd to the bar. Max followed his gaze and found Pete observing the proceedings from a chair set on the counter. The WKB’s new leader did nothing to stop their fight, as he’d done nothing to stop the girl’s mauling.
 

Hatchet lunged at Max while his gaze was turned away, but it was a dance Max knew like his own heartbeat. He blocked the arc of the biker’s thrust with the thick arm of the wrench, hearing steel scrape steel. A small twist of his wrist let him circle the blade and toss Hatchet’s hand out to the side, giving Max room to shove the blunt end of the wrench into the bastard’s throat, bouncing him back a step.

They began to circle each other inside the tight ring of onlookers. Hatchet waved his blade like a kid with a sparkler on the Fourth of July. When Max had his back to the girl, he let Hatchet’s forward thrust slip between his side and his arm, embedding itself in one of the guys holding the girl. The gangbanger screamed and released her so he could grip his bleeding arm.
 

Hatchet pulled back and tried a backhanded slice. Max dodged it in time to let the blade slice across the forehead and ear of the remaining biker holding the girl. He released her to clutch his face, leaving her to stand alone in the melee, half-naked, no shelter, no shield.
 

She tried to pull her torn clothes over her bare body, to no avail. She folded her thin arms across her chest and lifted her chin, staring at Max from beneath the curtain of her tangled hair.
 

His senses sharpened, muting the jeers of the crowd until all he was aware of was the girl, the dense throbbing of his heartbeat, and the danger she was still in. He turned his back on her.
 

He was going to fucking end Hatchet.
 

Hatchet slashed overhanded, underhanded, to the left, to the right. Every way he went, he met Max’s wrench until Max grabbed his arm and yanked him forward. Keeping hold of his knife hand, he shoved his knee into Hatchet’s groin, sending his jewels up to choke him.
 

The biker dropped his knife and bent over, clutching himself. Max kicked the blade toward the girl, then walked in a wide, slow circle, making eye contact with every man in the first and second rings, daring any to step forward and challenge him. None did.

He glanced at the woman, who now gripped Hatchet’s knife with shaking hands, with no clear idea how to hold it properly. She was like a baby rabbit in a pit of vipers, defenseless, delicious…and apparently lacking any instinct for self-preservation.
 

Max tossed his wrench to Feral, then stepped behind his nemesis. He grabbed the thug’s chin and wrapped an arm across his shoulders, then glanced at Pete, checking for the go-ahead, primed to make a decisive end to the fight should the club’s president nod.
 

The crowd shouted, revved anew by the potential of Hatchet’s death. Max left it to Pete to choose the biker’s fate, a decision entirely dependent on his level of bloodlust that particular hour.
 

“Let him go,” Pete ordered.
 

Max shoved the biker aside.

“This ain’t over,” Hatchet snarled.

Max laughed. “Yeah, it is.” He walked over to the girl and held his hand out as he nodded toward the knife. She studied him for a long moment before setting it in his palm. He retracted the blade, then stood in front of her, blocking her from Hatchet. The biker snatched the blade from him and shoved it into his pocket as he shouldered his way out of the building. A handful of his cronies followed him.
 

Max made a mental note of each of them.

Pete hoisted himself to his feet on the bar counter. He held his hands up, and the room grew silent. “You fought the club’s sergeant-at-arms, Mad Dog. Over a
girl
.” He shook his head, as if no greater shame could befall a member.

Max shook his head. “Wrong, Pete. I fought him because I don’t like weasels.” He looked at the two guys who’d been gouged by the biker’s knife. “There are a few other pests I’ll be getting rid of soon, too.” He looked at Pete. “Let the girl go.”

Pete lifted a hand and waved toward the door in a regal motion. “She can go if she wants. But she doesn’t. You interrupted her initiation.”
 

Max glanced at the girl. “What ‘initiation’?”

“She wants to be our wrench, wants to fill the opening Flathead Charlie left.”

“No.” Max fixed his eyes on Pete. “No females are allowed in the club.”

“She won’t be a member. She’ll just work for us.”

“You don’t know anything about her.”

“Which is why I called for her initiation. If she survives that, she’ll have earned a spot with us.”

“She won’t survive it.”

Pete’s focus honed in on Max. “Take her as yours, then.”

Max met his eyes. “I don’t want her. I’m not staying. I got a job in Alaska I have to get back to, remember?”

“After the rumble in town last week—and now this—your club needs you.”

“In what capacity?”

Pete glanced at the club’s other officers. “You beat the sergeant-at-arms. Take his role.” The other officers didn’t argue. “Hatchet obviously wasn’t strong enough to hold the post.”
 

Max didn’t answer immediately. He was weighing the pros and cons of the new opportunity.
 

In the wake of his silence, Pete turned his attention to the girl, whose pallor had deepened. “Two club brothers have fought for you, girl. Mad Dog’s win gives you a choice.” Pete nodded toward Max. “Take him as your protector, or take all of them,” he said, waving his arm to indicate the crowd.
 

Max looked around at the club members. He met the girl’s gaze again. Her brown eyes, fringed in thick dark lashes were big and doe-like. Dark eyes and wheat-gold hair were an unusual combination, and made him wonder what else about her wasn’t as it seemed.

The fear in her eyes looked real, but she met Pete’s challenge with more courage than Max had seen in many of the bikers.
 

“I choose Mad Dog,” she said. Without hesitation.

Max’s eyes narrowed. Had she merely chosen the lesser of two evils just now? Or had she come for him?
 

Greer was seeing everything he was seeing. Hopefully, he’d get a start on finding out who she was and what she was really after in breaching the WKB compound as she had. Why would a sane female subject herself to the ugliness of the WKB world? Unless she wanted something.
 

Desperately.

“So be it,” Pete announced. “Do you accept her, Mad Dog? Or do we all take her?”

Max made a disgusted face. This situation offered him the cover he needed to stay until he completed his mission. “I’ll be your sergeant-at-arms. And I’ll take the girl.”
 

CHAPTER TWO

Hope watched the wary gaze of her reluctant rescuer. His shaggy, dark brown hair was capped in a red kerchief, tied backward like a pirate's cover. Black onyx filled his earlobes. She doubted he owned a razor; he probably trimmed his beard with a knife now and then, when he thought about it.

Her nails dug into the bare skin at her sides. He ripped off his vest and handed it to one of the bikers—the only one standing near him. He removed his sunglasses, then pulled the collar of his white T-shirt over his head, revealing a broad chest furred with dark hair that funneled into a line over his lean stomach before disappearing beneath the low hem of his jeans.
 

That streak was the only orderly thing about him.
 

He had a metal ring in his brow and another in his lip. Bars pierced his nipples. Some kind of Celtic-looking tattoos covered his upper arms and shoulders, with tendrils that spun over part of his chest.

He closed the space between them, then yanked his tee over her head, pulling it over her folded arms, covering the remnants of her T-shirt and bra. The man was huge—his shirt was like a minidress on her. She unfolded her arms and shoved them through the sleeves. Some unknown instinct caused her to lift the fabric to her nose so she could breathe in the earthy scent of him. Leather and soap. Dust and sun. A faint tang of fuel. All mixed with the musk of his skin.

It should not have been so reassuring.

He watched her hold his shirt to her nose. Friend or foe, she couldn’t tell. And really, did it matter? She was neck deep in this now.

Mad Dog put his vest back on and slipped his sunglasses on as he turned toward the entrance, plowing through the few bikers who didn’t move out of his way fast enough. His skinny biker friend waved her forward. Not wanting to be left alone to the shifty devices of the club, she followed them. Clumps of bikers lingered outside the clubhouse. She didn’t avoid their eyes as she moved through them; if they sensed her fear, they’d make short work of her.