Property of Drex (Death Chasers MC 2)

Clearing my throat, I shut the door to my upstairs place, and turn to lean over the railing as he joins my side.

“I’m still figuring out what to do. It’s not like I can keep her, but she’s not safe on her own. Did you get the money and place for her mom?”

He nods. “Dreading that conversation. I don’t see her mom being willing to move to Colorado just because we tell her she needs to get far away from Texas.”

“Eve can handle her. We need her out of here within a few days, just to be safe. Her mother is fucking terrified right now, so she’d trust Eve if she let her know there was too much danger for her here.”

“Or her mom might go to the cops,” he points out.

“She doesn’t want to risk Eve’s safety, and I’m fairly positive she’s fucking terrified of me. She was ghostly white that day I told her where Eve had been. Pretty sure she did the math on what I’ve been doing with her daughter. You should have seen the look she gave me. No doubt she was disgusted, horrified, and sick.”

“And you give a damn?” he muses.

My eyes run over the floor beneath us, watching as everyone relaxes, acting like a war isn’t on the horizon.

“I don’t care what that woman thinks. But Eve does. She probably wants someone she can take home and cuddle with in front of her family… Someone who’s going to have boring jokes and idle chitchat that doesn’t involve anything illegal. That’s not me. Never will be. And she’ll never have that. Even if I can’t have her, it’s not like I’ll ever let anyone else touch her.”

“That’s fucked up. You realize that, right?”

I shrug while pushing away from the railing. “That’s because I’m fucked up. I quit apologizing for it a long time ago.”

He laughs under his breath while following me down the stairs, but we both stumble to a halt just as Isaac yelps and lands hard on his ass right in front of the staircase. Snake storms out of his room, and Isaac covers his face.

“The fuck is going on?” I ask, watching as Snake throws a fucking tantrum. He’s yelling at everyone, and I can’t understand a word coming out of his mouth. His veins are pulsing visibly, and he’s blood red, almost as though he’s about to erupt.

Is he high?

My eyes move to Isaac as he crawls up to his feet, wiping blood away from his face.

“The hell?” I prompt.

“That whole fucking ‘shoot the messenger’ shit is real, man,” Isaac mumbles, cursing when he wipes more blood from his face. “But I think I know how the feds fit into the equation now.”

Something crashes, and I look over as Snake beats the hell out of the coffee table with a fucking baseball bat. When did he grab a bat? He’s lost his motherfucking mind.

“Snake!” I yell, but he doesn’t even slow down. The bat crashes against the bar now, slamming into all the liquor bottles and shattering them.

He finally gets tackled to the ground by a couple of our guys, and I cut my eyes back to Isaac as they wrestle to keep Snake from breaking free.

“Explain,” I growl.

“Fuck you!” Snake barks, struggling harder as a third guy joins in on holding him back. “Fuck you! You’re full of shit!”

Isaac eyes Snake warily, making sure he’s fully restrained before he turns his attention back to me.

“Sarah’s gone. Feds showed up with a warrant for her arrest, man. Sarah Burrows died last week in a car accident. She lived in some Ohio town, had a fiancé, and even worked at a coffee shop. Yet she’s been living with us for however many months. See the problem?”

It’s too confusing to understand what he’s saying, until it’s suddenly really fucking clear.

“What the hell is Sarah’s real name then?” I ask him.

“Fuck you, Drex!” Snake roars, cursing the guys holding him. “How fucking dare you believe that shit! Can’t you see they’re setting her up?”

I slide my gaze back to Isaac, hoping he damn well has some serious proof. He frowns over at Snake before picking up a piece of paper from the floor that must have fallen during the fall he took.

When he hands it to me, it almost feels like the wind is knocked out of me. We really fucking suck worse than I realized about checking people out. We need a better hacker, one who can dig deeper than the surface value of shit.

I actually feel pretty damn sorry for Snake. It’s all there. Everything he’s saying is right. Sarah Burrows is definitely not the same person who has been living with us, even though they have a strong resemblance. It would’ve been close enough for our Sarah to pass as the real Sarah on a standard background check from one of our guys doing a quick check on girls coming in to work with us.