Total pages in book: 59
Estimated words: 75754 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75754 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
She was prettier than she looked in the video feed.
Short brown hair, kissable lips. Honey brown eyes.
But behind those eyes, I could see instantly that she hated Ruthie.
Her gaze kept turning from Silas’ to Ruthie’s accusingly.
“You can’t hold me here,” the woman insisted, tugging at her arm again.
“You’ve got five seconds to tell me why you’d intentionally try to hurt one of my employees before I report this to the police and get you arrested. And trust me, I can pin shit on you that’ll make you wish you were never such a bitch,” Silas ordered her.
Ruthie’s grip turned painful as her nails started to dig into the skin under my arm.
“That’s the girl whose husband wanted to know all about why I was in prison. She was pissed that he was talking to me,” she whispered.
Silas’ eyes snapped to Ruthie’s, but other than that, outwardly he didn’t show that he’d even heard Ruthie’s comment.
“Let’s go,” I said.
Ruthie clutched onto my hand gratefully.
“We’re going to take off for the night, boss,” I said to Silas.
Silas nodded, but didn’t take his eyes off the woman in front of me.
“Tell her man to come back here as you leave,” he ordered.
I winced, knowing where this was going.
Ruthie didn’t ask what was going on until we’d made it to the entrance into the bar.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
I held up a finger to silence her for a moment as we made it up to the table that the woman’s man was sitting at, drinking a beer as if he didn’t have a care in the world that his woman was being questioned in the next room.
And I knew he’d had to have seen her push Ruthie.
It happened directly in front of him.
I stopped when the table was less than a foot from me, and stared at the man until he lifted his gaze up to me.
“What?” he asked, looking me up and down.
I smiled. “Silas would like to see you in his office, please.”
I said it nicely, but the man blanched.
“Knew she was going to get me in trouble when I saw her do that,” he grumbled, taking his beer with him and leaving without another word.
The man was biker material if I’d ever seen it.
Long beard, bald head. Leather vest and biker boots.
Three chains hanging from his belt loop and connecting to his wallet rounded out the outfit, making him jingle as he walked directly to Silas’ office without another backwards glance.
Ruthie didn’t say a word as I led her out, not even to Sawyer who was trying to catch her gaze from across the room to ascertain that she was okay.
Silas most likely threatened her to get her to stay where she was, otherwise she’d have been over here trying to get all the information out of Ruthie that she could.
It also helped that she was pinned in by Torren on one side and Cleo on the other.
Two more members of The Dixie Wardens MC who were beyond loyal to Silas and the MC just like I was.
“I drove,” Ruthie muttered as I started to lead her out to my bike.
I ignored her, and she didn’t protest again.
Instead, she just followed me all the way to my bike, waited for me to mount and hand her my helmet, then mounted directly behind me without another word.
When she wrapped her hands around my chest, all my demons that never seemed to take a hike silenced.
I didn’t think about what I had to do tomorrow.
Or what had just happened in the bar.
Not about killing people with my Glock when I saw them pop out of nowhere.
Nor did I freak out about the truck backfiring at the stop light twenty yards ahead of us.
No, with her arms around me, everything was right in my world.
Until some motherfucker in a beat up Toyota Corolla in dusty brown pulled up beside me, speeding next to me.
A flashback hit me, and I was no longer driving my bike.
I was in a beat up pickup truck in OD Green.
Parker, my right hand man and fellow BUD/S graduate was sitting beside me.
I looked over at Parker with a smile on my face, but out of my peripheral vision, I glanced a beige Corolla in my rear view mirror, speeding towards us with all the might the tiny piece of shit could muster.
In a split second decision, I decided to haul the wheel to the left just in time for the Corolla to explode.
The impact of the bomb exploding had my controlled turn bursting into a chaotic flip as the truck’s wheel slipped from my hand and was wrenched free, turning so hard that the entire steering column disintegrated before my eyes.
I looked over just in time to see Parker, on fire, pulled from the truck as what was left of the Corolla smashed into the side of the truck.
Fire flashed in front of my eyes, and the last thing I heard was the screams of my good friend being burned.
“Sterling!” a woman’s voice screamed in my ear.
My mind was my own again as I took stock of where I was.
I was pulled over on the side of the road, standing three feet away from my bike and staring at what I guessed was the taillights of the Corolla.
“Sterling?” the woman said again.
My gaze turned coldly to the woman on my bike, and I stared at her a long moment before I finally relaxed enough to say, “I’m sorry, Ruthie.”
“Are you okay? You stopped so fast that I thought you were hurt,” she asked softly.
I nodded sharply.
“That car,” I rasped. “The brown one that started to creep into our lane. It caused a flashback.”
She blinked, turning her head slightly to study me.
“That could’ve been bad,” she whispered.
I nodded sharply.
“Yeah, it could have,” I agreed.
“Do they happen often?” she continued.
I shook my head.
“Barely ever. It was just...” I shook my head. “About a month into my last deployment, the man I counted as one of my best friends in the world, nearly burned to death by a Corolla blowing up directly next to us. He pulled up next to us just like that one did just a few seconds ago. I can still smell the scent of his skin when it started to burn.”