“Yeah,” I agreed. “So why merge the two now?”
The truth was, I didn’t give a shit about people unless they were inside the club, and even then, some of them I ignored completely.
I was not like them, but I could pretend.
I’d been pretending my whole life.
The way they talked, the lopsided swagger, the cursing, and the biker uniform.
I got it all down.
It was the best costume I’d ever wear.
Couldn’t say it was me, though, not to the bone.
I was still haunted by the affliction of the Irish brogue in the corners of my speech, and I woke up each morning with a prayer burned into my tongue waiting to be said even though it had been decades since I believed in an Almighty.
I was a collection of masks, perfectly presented. They hid nothing because I was nothing. Simply, I gave people what they wanted to see.
And they liked it.
Those closest to me might’ve guessed the truth, that I was a highly functioning psychopath, but even they did not hold it against me.
This was the magic of being what people want you to be while otherwise fading into the background.
They do not invade your privacy, and they do not judge you as the alien creature you are.
* * *
Bat’s lips compressed, jaw tight. “Someone murdered one’a their women, a mother of three, in cold blood.”
I looked at Kodiak, wondering idly if he felt any sympathy for the First Nations group even though it wasn’t his own. He never said shit all about his upbringing on a small rez in Alaska, but he had tribal ink he took seriously and a set of customs we were sometimes witness to that spoke to his heritage. Of all the brothers, he was probably the most shrouded in mystery. He didn’t talk much, and he kept mostly to himself.
It wasn’t surprising I liked him a hell of a lot.
“Someone fed her to the wolves,” Curtains confirmed, looking shaky and pale. He was a fellow redhead, but pasty as hell like he’d never seen the sun. Even on rides out, he wore his helmet or a beat-up Hephaestus Auto ball cap to keep that pallor from the fiery kiss of the sun. He was bleached white as bone now as he called up some photos on his computer and flipped it around to show us all. “He pinned a typed-up Bible verse to a tree beside the remains of her body. ‘What peace can there be, so long as the whorings and the sorceries of your mother Jezebel are so many?’”
One of Zeus’s hands clenched into a fist, then released, flexing so hard the veins and tendons stood out in stark relief.
“We got a murderer out there killing mothers, I got a problem with that,” he growled. “Don’t give a shit it’s not one’a our women. When I took this club over from that piece’a shit Crux, I fuckin’ vowed I’d keep Entrance safe for everyone.”
“They don’t live in Entrance,” Heckler groused. “We just fuckin’ established that.”
“What if it was Hannah?” King asked, as always, hitting at the heart of these men. He looked next to Skell, to Bat, to Axe-Man and Cyclops, to every single brother with family outside of these four walls. “What if it was Winona, Mary, or Cleo and Tayline? We don’t let shit like this stand.”
“We just got some peace,” Kodiak spoke up uncharacteristically, his voice husky with disuse but flat with reason. “We start signin’ up for every war in the province, we’re gonna burn out.”
“Live free, die hard,” Zeus reminded him of the club motto, but it wasn’t in the voice of absolute power. He wanted the discussion, and we were used to giving him our opinions. We wouldn’t leave here until it was settled and agreed on by the majority. That was just the way Z worked, even if it wasn’t the MC standard.
This was why I’d stayed twelve years ago when I got off that godforsaken freighter and encountered Zeus in a narrow corridor between shipping crates. He’d taken one look at me and offered me a coffee. Didn’t even wait to see if I’d follow, just turned on his heel and gone ahead, knowing somehow I’d follow.
The kinda man he was, he led like a general, not a king. First into battle, leading any kinda charge as the point of the knife.
“Let’s vote it out, brothers,” he suggested. “But I’ll say right now, I’m inclined to help ’em. Somethin’ happened to my family, I’d take any help I could get and make damn sure to reward the giver, yeah?”
There were some murmurings and nods, but a commotion outside the closed Chapel doors roused us all to something bigger.
Instantly, the hair on the back of my neck stood on end.
Because I could hear her.
Bea.
No one had a voice like that, so sweet and smooth like honey poured from a jar.