4-Bound By Danger (21 page)

“For all of this. You’re ready to bail at any second still—I can see it—and I’m not ready to give everything to someone who’s not all there.”

“Maybe you’ll never be ready, because I’ll always be second.”

“That’s not true.”

“Bullshit it’s not.” Sawyer yanked himself away and went down the stairs, finished pulling his jeans on. He walked out and was halfway to his car before he realized that Rex wasn’t going to follow him. Halfway home before he realized just how badly that hurt.

The fallout Clint had mentioned didn’t happen until two weeks after Clint left. The aftermath continued long after that, however, so much so that when Jace returned from a two-week mission, he found messages from Cools requesting him to come into the club immediately, that he needed to talk to Jace about possibly getting out of the club for his own safety.

He couldn’t deny Cools was right about that, but he highly doubted the MC’s president had Jace’s best interests at heart.

He hadn’t even had a chance to talk to Kenny—the guy wasn’t answering his phone and the texts had all been terse, and Jace gave up and figured they were monitoring Kenny’s phone.

He’d posted bail for Kenny through the bondsman when he’d been on his way to Afghanistan and got the text his cousin had been released about four hours later. Couldn’t let his cousin sit in jail indefinitely—there were too many other gang members on the inside, and that could be a far more vicious environment.

It was a smaller bust than Jace thought, or maybe it was just the CIA’s way of feeling things out.

“You got him out fast,” Cools said now.

Jace explained that Kenny couldn’t miss another night’s work or he’d be fired. The club still had him gun-running and cage fighting, but Jace figured he’d at least try to keep Kenny away as much as possible. “It’s a friend of mine who needed the help at his garage—I owe him a favor, so Kenny’s been making good on it for me.”

Cools got it. Times were tough everywhere, even in the extortion business.

“Glad you’re keeping your nose clean, kid. The last thing we need is for the military to be up our ass.”

Cools had been a Marine and gotten honorably discharged after taking shrapnel to the thigh and arm. The scars on both were bad, but he could still move and he was built like a bull. Jace thought he was probably the most mentally balanced of all the members, not that that was saying much.

Still, it could always be worse. He’d learned that a long time ago, and he realized it still held true when Cools ushered Jace into the main room where the others—including Kenny—were gathered for a meeting. Jace usually wasn’t privy to this, for his own safety, but today it looked like that didn’t matter.

Hopefully, he’d get some firsthand intel that would ultimately help the Feds help Kenny, because this was getting to be too dangerous.

You could always ask Clint…

He pushed that thought from his mind, refusing to let any of this blow back on Clint. The Feds thought Tomcat was dead and were using intel Kenny gave on him to take down the MC. Involving the dead man would prove too risky for Clint—because if the MC ever found out about him, forget it.

“We’ve got a rat,” Cools announced finally, after closing the door. “And I’m gonna snap his neck.”

Instinctively, Kenny moved closer to Jace. To an outsider, it would’ve looked like protectiveness, but in reality, it was the other way around.

Cools glared at Kenny, and Jace cursed silently, willing himself not to move a muscle.

“What happened?” one of the newer guys called, saving the situation, because Cools walked to him promptly and punched him out.

Yeah, regular question-and-answer sessions didn’t happen in a place like this. Here, arcane caveman law applied, where it was all about survival and climbing the ranks, drinking and fucking as much as possible while trying to kill more than the other guy.

Now, Jace waited, so tense he could break, for the other shoe to drop. From what he understood of Tomcat’s mission, it included a bit of backstabbing to confuse the men and turn them against one another. The CIA had wanted so much internal confusion that the MC didn’t notice the bust coming.

If they pulled this off, it would be the largest bust in DEA history, and it would send a huge message to the MCs, and it still wouldn’t make a dent, Clint had said.

“Then why bother?” Jace had asked.

“You have to try. You can’t let the bastards win.”

“Kenny, you look nervous,” Cools said now.

“I don’t like it when we don’t stick together.” And that was pure Kenny—his honesty had gotten him out of more than a few scrapes.

Cools snorted. “Think how much I don’t like it.”

Jace hoped it was enough to get Kenny off the hook. No matter what or who they were punishing, Jace wouldn’t be involved. But his cousin would have to see and hear everything in excruciating detail, and MC guys could get very creative in the ways they doled out pain and punishment, thanks to their military backgrounds.

“No offense, Jace, but this is where you exit. I think, for a while, you should probably keep your nose out of club business. It’d be better for you and for Kenny—but I wanted you to hear the reason in person. It’s a mutual club decision. We cool?”

“Yeah, got it.” Jace clamped a hand on Kenny’s shoulder, shook Cools’s hand and prayed Kenny didn’t fuck this up and remembered all the details discussed. It was too damned risky to wire his cousin under these circumstances, when they were already on edge and looking for a reason to hurt someone.

As he exited, he noted that Nacho and Shaz were missing from the meeting, which was unusual, especially since they weren’t on guard duty outside the building.

He found them in the alley outside the club when they jumped him. He held them off as best he could without fighting, because his hands were considered deadly weapons. So he took more shots than he should’ve before he finally subdued them.

“Did Cools send you to do this?” he demanded.

“We heard from a source that you were the rat,” Nacho moaned through his split lip. “Got a phone call that Shaz and I should take care of it ourselves.”

“Who called you?”

“Some dude—didn’t get his name. Fuck, Jace, we shouldn’t have jumped so quick, but you gotta understand, everything’s fucked around here.”

Yeah, it was. He took the pressure off Nacho’s neck and helped the man up. Shaz was starting to come to. “I won’t tell Cools if you won’t.”

“Deal.” Nacho stuck his hand out.

“And leave my cousin alone—he’s too stupid to be the rat.”

“He
is
kinda stupid, Jace,” Nacho said.

Yeah, and you’re a fucking brain trust.
“Just get inside and stay out of my way.”

The men slunk away, back to the door they were supposed to be guarding, and Jace walked to his bike, ignoring the pain of being rolled. His ribs were bruised, not broken—he knew from experience—but they still hurt like a bitch.

When his phone rang, he knew Jack’s number immediately. His gut tightened, and before he answered, he put a GPS on the guy’s number, because the guy wasn’t as good as he thought.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Jace said, not bothering to hear what Jack had to say.

“Clint’s been in my life a lot longer than yours. I already told you, he’s going to get sick of you. He always does. This is his MO—he always comes back to me. Always.”

As Jack spoke, Jace triangulated his location, a couple of blocks away. Even before Jack admitted it, Jace knew he’d been the one who’d sold him out to the club. And now the asshole was going to pay for fucking with him and his family.

Jack had to know Jace would be coming for him. It was probably what he wanted, but Jace was too goddamned angry to care.

The guy was fucking with him, taunting him. And halfway to Jack’s, Jace realized that confronting the asshole wasn’t the way to go, at least not tonight. He wouldn’t be able to control himself, and with Jace’s luck, Jack would get him arrested.

Instead, he backtracked to the MC to grab Kenny and realized that Jack had set his cousin up as effectively as he had Jace.

Cools had beat the shit out of Kenny and left him alone on the floor. Jace hauled him to the ER, where he’d stay overnight due to a concussion and broken ribs.

Two others in the MC had also been killed night before last, a deal gone bad. Part of Tomcat’s plan had been to plant intel that caused confusion among the ranks, forcing the men to turn on one another, while letting the CIA and DEA use the information gathered to make the larger bust. It was going along great, but not for Kenny or Jace, by extension, and Jack’s interference hadn’t helped.

Since the Feds were less than helpful, Jace made a few calls to some former team members doing black ops around the country and finally settled on sending Kenny to Montana instead of the Omaha group he’d originally considered. He didn’t want to involve anyone in his cousin’s stupidity, but there were two retired Marines who ran a snow removal business who could give Kenny room and board. There couldn’t be a lot of gangs there, right? It would be a long, harsh winter, and Kenny could hole up. Jace had been saving for that eventuality for the past year.

He double-checked his bank account, and he had enough for a while. He could sell his place, too, take quarters on base.

“Hey, Kenny, I made some calls,” he told his cousin, who was starting to stir.

“Jace, look…you’re causing more trouble this way. I think…I want to stay in, all right? You’re not in charge of me.” Kenny was mumbling through painkillers, but his words had the ring of truth to them.

“I won’t give up on you.”

“I don’t need you to watch me—I’m grown, man. Just go.”

Utterly defeated and wondering why he didn’t just give the hell up completely, Jace did as Kenny asked. Halfway to his bike, his phone buzzed—Clint’s text. Obviously, Clint was home from his mission and wanted to meet up tonight. The timing couldn’t have been goddamned worse, and so Jace typed with impatient, shaking fingers,
Can’t make it tonight. Need to be alone.

Harsh, but true. Even being tied down and fucked wouldn’t help him tonight. He wasn’t sure what would, but packing up and running away sounded really good right about now.

“Yeah, my cabin’s free. Come by and grab the keys,” Sawyer told him when he called. “I’d join you if Rex wasn’t riding me.”

“And not the way you want,” Jace managed, and the two shared a short laugh.

“Stay the week if you want.”

Right, the doc had insisted Jace take that much time, since he’d worked with the guys who’d died. He thought about Kenny—maybe he should hang around town for him and try to convince him to go to Montana ASAP, but he knew that would be an uphill battle. And Jace was tired of doing what he was supposed to.

Jace wasn’t home and he hadn’t been answering his texts for the past twenty-four hours. When he finally did with a brush-off, Clint knew something was really wrong. Confirmed it when he spoke with his CIA handler, who told him that there’d been a fight at the MC.

“They jumped your boy. Didn’t do much damage, but they beat the shit out of his cousin for good measure, just to make sure he’s scared enough not to think about ratting.”

“Why do they think either of them would?”

“No idea,” his handler said. “But I’m looking into it.”

Clint called Rex then, because he didn’t have Sawyer’s number. “Ask your boy where mine went.”

Rex sighed. “He’s not my goddamned boy, but I know where Jace is. I heard Sawyer telling him it was okay for him to use the cabin.”

“Directions.”

Rex rattled them off. It was only an hour’s drive, and Clint was already in the car when he hung up with Rex.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Jace got to the cabin before midnight and ignored calls from the Feds and texts from Clint that implied the man knew about the fights Jace had gotten into with the MC. Fuck it. He turned his cell phone off, put his stuff away and sat on the screened porch with a beer until his eyes got heavy.

He woke with a start. Hadn’t had this particular nightmare in ages, but being hit always brought it back.

Frankly, he was surprised the dream wasn’t worse. But still, he was on the porch of Sawyer’s cabin, breathing hard, covered in sweat and trembling. And the last person he expected to see when he opened his eyes was Clint, standing close enough for Jace to see the worry in his eyes.

“What the hell is going on?” Clint asked finally.

With the back of his hand, Jace wiped his brow and then his upper lip before downing the rest of the beer that had remained mercifully balanced and unspilled in his lap. He didn’t know if he’d cried out in his sleep, but now he was embarrassed and pissed. “I didn’t ask you to come here.”

He hoped the lack of light left Clint unable to see the bruising on his face, but he doubted it. Knowing the man, he already had the full story before arriving.

“I came anyway.”

“You can go.”

“I thought we had an understanding.”

Jace could see that Clint was trying to hold back his anger and not succeeding.