“I’m not on the run,” Rory told him.
“I found that out five days ago.”
The sudden blaring of the semi’s horn had everyone in the parking lot jumping.
Rogue used the side of his fist to hit the door of his cab. “Cut it out!” he shouted. “I’m talking. I’m almost done.”
Rory had assumed Rogue had ditched his woman. Instead, he had brought her along for the ride?
“What happened five days ago?” Viper asked, coming up from behind Rogue.
Rogue kept his gaze on Rory. “I saw a car following me, the same one I had seen the day before. Made a pit stop at a rest stop. Me and a few of my buddies blocked him in, and I introduced myself.”
Rory got excited at the disclosure. “Please tell me you got his name and license plate?”
“I did.”
“We need it. What—”
“Why in the fuck should I give it to you? You wanna answer my questions?”
Rory nodded, left with no choice.
“Was the driver following me the one trying to track you?” Rogue asked.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because the man following you is a sick son of a bitch, and we thought he had a woman with him who had been kidnapped.”
Rogue’s penetrating gaze bore down on him. “She wasn’t?”
“We don’t know. I stream live, and he had contacted me several times. I had agreed to meet him when we found he had the woman. The bastard was a no-show. After we left our meeting place, we realized he must have put an air tag on our car.”
“So, you passed it along to me? Any particular reason you chose me?”
“My dad was a trucker until he died,” Rory explained. “I knew you would be able to handle yourself if he was brave enough to talk to you, which we didn’t think he would do. Once he saw you, he would have known the air tag he was tracking wasn’t me. We’ve been waiting for him to contact me again when the air tag didn’t work.”
“You put a lot of faith in my ability to handle myself, for a man that doesn’t know shit about me.”
Rory knew he was about to embarrass himself, but he didn’t care. He wanted Incog’s license plate. “Dude, you scared the fuck out of me, and I have fought several mean fuckers. I would hand you the keys to my car if you asked for them.”
Rogue’s lips twitched. “How about sweet cheeks?”
Rory dropped his affable attitude. “For her, I’d kick your ass.”
Giving him a lopsided grin, Rogue reached into his pocket to take out a pair of keys. Turning, he strode through The Last Riders behind him to the back of his truck.
As he did, Rory was given a view of Cash turning into the parking lot on his bike, just as Knox arrived in his squad car. Knox got out of the car, dressed in his uniform, as another uniformed man got out the passenger side to pull his saggy pants up.
Rogue only stared at the arriving men.
“Thanks for the compliment.” This time, he stared pointedly at Viper.
Viper’s expression went hard. “I don’t take any chances with a brother’s safety.”
“I didn’t take him for a brother.”
“We haven’t decided yet.”
Rory didn’t think this was the time to inform Viper that he would never be a Last Rider.
“What’s the name of your club?”
“The Last Riders.”
“I’ve carried loads to Ohio; heard of them. What the fuck are you doing here?”
“We own a factory here.”
Curiosity filled Rogue’s face. “You’re not one of them?”
Rory shook his head. “No.”
“I bet sweet cheeks is making it hard.” Rogue gave a regretful sigh, staring at Jewell, then turned back to Viper. “You can all chill out. Soon as he told me he was a trucker’s kid, feeding him his nuts was off my to-do list.”
Rogue grabbed the chain hanging from his pocket, and all The Last Riders tensed, but Rory moved forward, waiting to see what he pulled out. Rogue took out a set of keys. Separating them, he positioned one into a heavy metal lock then removed the padlock and pushed the sliding door open.
Dismayed, they stood around, trying to take in what they were staring at.
“You want the fucker who was trying to trail you? You’re welcome to introduce yourself. There isn’t much left, but you can have the whiny bastard. You can have her, too. Be glad to get both out of my hair. She claims to have been kidnapped. Couldn’t decide who to believe …”
The man and woman in the back of the truck had been tied up and had gags placed over their mouths.
“She was sitting in the front seat with him, with a cell phone in her hand, talking to someone when I walked up to their car. Fucking didn’t look scared, either, until she saw me. But what makes me think she’s lying through her teeth is, when I loaded them in the truck, neither of them told me there had been someone else with them. Only found the other woman when I checked out their car and found her in the trunk. No telling how long the woman would have been there if I hadn’t found her. They had her duct-taped like a fucking mummy, except for a small part of her nose and her mouth that she had been able to scrape off using something in the trunk. Had been feeling bad I had tied them up until I saw the shit they had pulled on the woman.”