I'd heard the car coming from what seemed like a mile off, the bass of her metal cutting through the silence that I had been wrapped in for the better part of half an hour.
We'd been on the way back from a drop. Just a small one. One that didn't need more than two guys. Repo was driving the SUV loaded down with the goods, and I had been on my bike. He had maneuvered past a three-car pile-up before the cops shut down the road. I hadn't. So he had continued on, figuring that I was behind him. It wasn't until my bike sputtered and died that I realized letting him charge my phone in the SUV was a stupid as fuck idea.
It was only a matter of time before someone - likely Virgin - came looking for me.
I knew I was fine to camp out, lay low, play dumb if anyone came around.
Dumb.
As in not a real biker.
As in not a Henchmen.
In case whoever happened by worked for that bitch V.
That was the real reason we didn't wear our cuts outside of the compound much anymore. Just to cover our asses while everyone who had skills in such measures busted it to try to track down that woman before shit hit the fan in a big way.
Better to be a bunch of no one bikers than advertise that we were the people she wanted to get her greedy hands on.
If she even still planned on that.
It had been months since Reeve was taken, since he was beaten and left. Since Marco told us - after much persuasion - that she had some harebrained scheme to see her daughter and grandchildren.
There hadn't been a single word on her since then.
We had no idea if that was because she had left the area permanently, or was just handling her business on the down low.
If she were smart, it would be the former.
I couldn't claim to know Reign as well as a lot of the other guys did, but I knew a lot of angry men in my day. His rage took the cake.
No one threatened the people he loved most.
And he was feeling useless as fuck not knowing where he could point a gun and blow enormous holes in people.
His only course of action was to keep the women and children safe... and tell all of us to be more careful.
Which was what we had all been doing as winter moved on into the late stages of spring.
The club had to keep on keeping on.
Money needed to be made.
So drops had to keep happening.
And me, well, I was fucking tired of hanging around at the clubhouse, so I volunteered to do the drop, figuring if that crazy bitch wanted me, she'd have a fuck of a time getting me. Even if she did take me out, I'd go out in fucking style.
Virgin had volunteered too, but for reasons that weren't immediately clear to me, Reign rarely let us do deals together. Maybe he was worried about loyalty or some shit, though I was pretty sure we'd proven ourselves since we signed up. But we clearly had a ways to go.
"So I didn't get a name," Peyton, the chick with the runaway mouth, said from beside me, snapping me out of my thoughts, making me realize she had jacked down the ear-splitting music sometime after inviting me into her motherfucking hearse and peeling off into the night. "In case that wasn't blunt enough," she went on when I didn't immediately answer, "this is because you're rude and didn't give me one."
Poking at a biker.
Even with loansharks and robbers in her extended family, that was brave. I had a feeling it had nothing to do with them, either. That was all her.
And that, well, it was intriguing.
I shot her a smirk.
"Sugar."
"Suga," she repeated, dropping the 'r' as I always did. Then, I shit you not, this chick pulled to a stop right in the center of the goddamn road so she could turn to face me. "Suga?" she repeated. "As in how you get so fly?"
Clearly, there wasn't a single woman in this fucking town that wasn't up on their somewhat obscure early two-thousands one-hit-wonders. All I had heard since I signed up to prospect was that line. I had learned to even embrace it here and there.
"Yep."
"No shit!" she said, whacking me in the chest. "Ugh, I want a road name. Peyton is so lame," she added, putting the car back into drive, and peeling off again. "That can't be your real name though."
"Baby, you don't know me well enough to know my government name." Hell, most of the guys in the club didn't.
"I bet it is something lame. Like Bobby or James or something. Why else go by Sugar? That's about as gangsta as an Easter bonnet."