Maverick (Hell's Handlers MC 2)

“Said you’re fucking pussy-whipped.” He blew out a stream of smoke and tilted his head. A loud crack came from his neck. Rocket might hold it in better than Mav, but he was anxious as well.

Rocket shouldn’t even be there. It was too damn risky to have him lurking down the block from Chloe’s house. She was the twenty-seven-year-old redhead Rocket had driven to the hospital the week before. True to his word, Copper had asked Stephanie to pay her a visit today, a check-in to make sure she wasn’t running her mouth or losing her shit.

Not that anyone would have blamed her for it if she was coming apart at the seams. The situation was fucked all around.

Mav refused to let Steph go unless he tagged along for protection. Copper wasn’t thrilled with the idea but understood, so he’d okayed it as long as Mav stayed out of sight. Down the block. Last thing they needed was for Chloe to freak if she saw a biker, and it took her back to her captivity.

For some reason, Rocket had demanded to go as well. When Copper refused, Rocket did something Mav had never seen one of his brothers do before. Ever. Rocket got right the fuck in Copper’s face, toe to toe, chest to chest, and told him to fuck off. That he was going. Period. Prez could have made a thing of it, but something in Rocket’s expression must have changed his mind. Rocket had been strange, even quieter and more standoffish than usual, since that night. Whatever happened between him and Chloe, whatever he saw when he rode her from the hotel to the hospital, it had affected the bastard.

So there he was with express orders to “stay far the fuck away from her.” Copper told Rocket he’d have his patch if Chloe so much as caught a whiff of him, and he’d put Rocket six feet under if she recognized him as the biker who rescued her.

“I ain’t fuckin pussy-whipped,” Mav spat out. “This shit just makes me twitchy. We don’t know jack about this chick. She could be going off the rails, and we sent Steph in there blind. Plus, we don’t know if Lefty’s got eyes on this place.”

“You’re the security guy,” Rocket countered. “No one followed us, you scanned for cameras and saw nothing, we’ve had eyes on her place since I got her from the hotel, and no one has been lurking around. It’s all good.”

Mav grunted and resumed his watch on the house. What the fuck was taking so long?

“Your girl’s smart,” Rocket said then. “And observant. I think she sees a lot more than any of us realize. She’ll be fine.”

Mav cast a side-eyed look at Rocket. “What do you mean by that?”

He shrugged and tossed his cigarette into the road. “Not totally sure, to be honest with you. Just think there is more to her than meets the eye.”

There are people in my life and things in my life that you do not know about.

Shit. Maybe he needed to start finding out a little more about Stephanie’s life. Her shit was her shit, so he hadn’t pried much, but she’d been at the clubhouse nearly two weeks now. Maybe it was time to talk. Find out if she planned on sticking around and what exactly her life was like in DC. Hell, he barely knew what she did for a living. All she’d said was that she had a tedious government job and had quit after the kidnapping.

“Here she comes.” Rocket stuffed his hands in his leather gloves and waited. The air was nippy and keeping a grip on the handlebars with frozen, aching knuckles was a bitch and a half.

Steph had borrowed a leather jacket from Shell, but even with it on, she’d burrowed into his back to escape the wind on the thirty-minute ride to Chloe’s sleepy neighborhood.

He tracked Steph as she strode toward them, jacket open despite the chill and flapping with each step. Once again, she’d worn a Handlers’ shirt, this one long sleeved with a shallow V-neck and the logo on the front. He’d like to think she wore it because she knew what it did to him, but it could be that she just liked the clothes.

“Well?” Rocket’s impatient voice cut through the intimate eye-connection he had going on with Steph.

She glanced between the two of them before zipping up her jacket and stuffing her hands in the pockets. “Well, first off I’ll say that you’re good. She doesn’t know your name or what you look like. Only that you’re a Hell’s Handler. She stuck to the story that you came up with for the cops and hasn’t talked about it with anyone else in her life. She hasn’t seen a psychologist. Said she wouldn’t even if she could tell the whole world what happened. Just isn’t her thing. And she has absolutely no intention of changing the story with the cops now or in the future.”