Repo (The Henchmen MC 4)

Then when handing me tools one afternoon and I had commented on how much she knew about them, she'd laughed humorlessly and shook her head. "I dated a guy once who I thought was a mechanic."

"Thought?" I asked, turning my head from under the hood of the car to look at her.

"Yeah... he actually ran a chop shop. It was a bit of an ugly surprise when the cops informed me of that. But, before then, I had spent some time around the so-called mechanics and they taught me some stuff. They said it was important for people to know at least a little bit about how to take care of a car. They'd actually been pretty nice guys. Who'da thunk they'd be big criminals?"

"Honey..." I said, giving her a smile.

"What?"

"I'm a fucking one-percenter here..."

"Oh, ha," she'd said, shaking her head at herself like she had genuinely forgotten how The Henchmen made their money. "Yeah, I guess. I must just... have a thing for the bad boys then."

"So he never told you he wasn't working above-board?" I'd asked. "He got you wrapped up in his shit without you knowing what you were getting wrapped up in?" She'd shrugged, nodding. "Dick."

"Well, I mean. I can't be considered faultless there. I was naive."

"You liked the guy. You trusted him to be honest."

"Yeah, therein lied my mistake."

There was a kind of sadness in her tone that I didn't like, like she had convinced herself that trust was some kind of fault instead of a virtue. Only a real asshole made a woman feel that way. "Hey," I'd said, dropping the wrench I was holding and turning to look at her fully. "You can't just assume that everyone you meet is trying to fuck you over. You trusted, you had that shit thrown in your face. But that's on him, not you. You didn't do anything wrong."

"I don't think everyone is trying to fuck me over," she'd objected, but only half-heartedly. "It's just... it's easier to make people prove they are trustworthy than just... automatically trust them without question."

"That's a pretty cynical way to live, Maze."

"Do you just... trust people?"

"I trust my brothers here. That's all I got."

"Even after the people who you and your uncle saw as brothers screwed you guys over?" she'd asked bluntly, surprising me. It was a topic I expected her to pussyfoot around like everyone else did. I appreciated that she didn't.

"They were disloyal. The men here, they've proved time and time again that brotherhood and the old ladies and the kids, they're more important than anything else."

"But did you trust them immediately when you came here?" At my sigh, she'd smiled. "So this is a 'do as I say, not as I do' kinda thing?"

"Maybe it's a 'because I fucking said so' thing."

"Oh, you think you can boss me around, huh?" she'd asked, head tilted, eyes challenging.

"Think I've done a pretty good job of that so far, don't you? Now why don't you be a good girl and hand me that ultra short gear wrench?" I'd asked, ducking under the hood again.

It didn't surprise me in the least when the God damn thing went sailing past my head, landing with a loud clank against the engine.

Nor did it surprise me that as I reached for it, I was smiling.

But that was the most she had ever really given me all at once. She hinted at other things, she gave me bits and pieces. She hated cologne. She liked watching documentaries. She once broke her leg in three places falling out of those trees she liked to hide in. And, apparently, she maneuvered crutches the way a newborn foal maneuvered their legs, meaning not well at all and with a lot of falling.

We parked the bikes outside the fence and Reign threw the keys at two of the guys standing around. "You two go to the train station. The Explorer is there. Clean it out and get it back here," he instructed, moving across the yard toward the door to a waiting Cash. "She paid for parking with a car full of groceries," he said, shaking his head.

"Well shit," Cash said, sighing.

"Renny, Duke, get your asses out here," Reign called into the door and all of ten seconds later, both men moved outside. "We need to know what you know about Maze that we might not."

"Is Ace alright?" was Duke's immediate question and I was reminded again why I was happy to have him on the team. He didn't immediately condemn Maze. And his knee-jerk reaction was to ask after her well-being.

"Fuck if we know. She's gone," Reign said, his tone a little dismissive, but his shoulders were tense.

"Gone?" Duke repeated, brows drawn together. "No fucking way. She wanted this more than the whole lot of us. And I can't speak for Renny or the recently excommunicated Moose and Fox, but I want this a whole fuckuva lot."