Page 43 of Biker's Property
“It means mind your fucking business.”
“It’s a woman,”Ethan says, barely looking up from his phone.
“Shut the fuck up,”Ryder says. “I couldn’t get Ruger’s crazy ass to listen to me, anyway. He might listen to Gideon. Tanner could put him through a wall.”
“I could handle him,” Owen says. “But… Not without backup.”
“I’ll getTanner on the job,” I reply. “He needs to keep his mind busy.”
“I heard he has family trouble,” Ryder says. “Anything related to Midnight SS?”
“Not sure,”I reply, nervous as we get close to the subject of Avery, her identity, and the fact that the woman Don Hollingsworth screwed with might very well have a connection to these people…
Once I findout what that connection is exactly, I’ll take action and sort this problem out once and for all. No more bullshit, no more war, no more bodies in the desert.
I’m donewith this shit. I just want to go home to my wife and children, and settle into my life as a family man and my father. I’ll never stop riding, but I want to stop packing heat and living every goddamn month like it’s my last. It’s not good for me and it’s not good for my marriage or family.
In the end,that’s the only thing that matters – my family and the woman I love.
Chapter Twenty
JOSLIN
Ryder leaves me in a motel room in the middle of an Indian reservation with no cell phone and explicit, aggressive instructions so he can go off to this club meeting with his “boss”. He offers no explanation what the meeting is about – he just hands me the folders he took from my old house and tells me to go through them.
But I don’t thinkhe was expecting me to find what I did.
Since my ill-fated escape attempt,I haven’t exactly had time to throw on a podcast, but considering what I find in my dead husband’s papers, my podcasts clearly weren’t putting me on game the way they needed to. I just want Ryder to come back. I want him to make sense of what I’ve found…
Because even if I know the man I killed was capable of great evil… I didn’t know he was capable of something like this. And Ryder still won’t tell me how the hell he found those papers considering they weren’t exactly lying about when I poisoned Seth. There are too many questions, not enough answers, and now my desire to see Ryder again feels… crazy.
I separate and sort the papers from the folders as I review everything again. Sorting them into categories helps me paint a clear picture, but the documents don’t explain why. Documented communications in one stack, ledgers, financial statements and bank account information in another stack, then the birth certificates, faked documents, photographs and lists of names.
Ryder must not have seen the photographs when he packed this all up unless he looked through the documents first. They were all in a separate, smaller brown folder and each photograph has a name on the back. I don’t think the names are real, and they all come with accompanying numbers.
The most chilling part is that almost half the women are Native American. Black women make up the second largest demographic amongst the photos and then white women who share the distinct blond hair and blue eyed combination of Mormons out west.
I don’t recognize any of the women, but most of them look like they’re around my age or younger.
I don’t remember crawlinginto bed or falling asleep, but I wake up with a start.
“It’s just me.”
Ryder.
This man isas quiet as a stalker in the night but whenever the shadowy figure reveals himself with that deep country voice, his presence comforts me in the strangest way.
I yawn as he turns on one of the dim lights and I notice that he doesn’t have a shirt on. Does he just throw his clothes off the second he enters a room? I suppose I shouldn’t complain about his lack of a shirt. Ryder is downright gorgeous and what he did to me in that gas station bathroom appears to have permanently broken my brain.
My marriage has barely been legally over for a week and I know murder is such a big sin that letting Ryder into my bed should be the least of my concerns but… I don’t want to add anything to my plate of immorality too soon. I’m doing a terrible job the way I’m looking at him.
He is definitely hotter than guys on television I used to watch and lust over. It makes thinking a lot harder. And he saved my life, which gives me this strange feeling of indebtedness plastered over this attraction. I tried to get it over with. Instead of doing what I think most men would… he does that tongue thing.
“Good news,” Ryder says, smirking with the profound arrogance he normally has when he catches me staring. “Boss doesn’t have me working, so the two of us can skip town, do something crazy… whatever you want to do.”
He looks so happy to suggest it, but my heart immediately sinks. Not because I have anything better to do but…
“I don’t think we can.”