“I’ll just stay out here,” Connie called after them. “Alone. Stocking the shelves. Just in case any of Jagger’s friends stop by.”
Evie bit her lip to suppress a grin. She looked back over her shoulder as she led Jagger to the shop. “I’ll send Gene out to help you.”
Bill’s mechanics worked in the front half of the garage Bill had built when he first purchased the shop. Bike parts, rags, lifts and jacks were scattered over the wide, concrete space. Evie waved to the grease-smudged mechanics as she skirted around a few bikes to get to her paint shop in the back, stopping to tell Gene he was needed in the store.
“Connie actually likes Gene,” she said to Jagger. “But in a brotherly love kinda way.”
“Like you, me, and Zane.”
“Yeah. Kinda like that.” She headed for the cupboard to gather her supplies. Bill had spared no expense fitting out the back end of the garage for her custom paintwork. He’d cut large windows on both sides and a skylight in the ceiling to fill the space with natural light. Long wooden benches ran along each wall, holding paints, supplies, her portfolio, and an assortment of fenders and gas tanks at various stages of design. She’d set up a few stands in the center to hold the tins while she worked, along with stools for any clients who wanted to watch.
“Amazing work.” Jagger pointed to three finished fenders waiting for pick-up. “I don’t know why I haven’t heard about you before. I thought I knew all the good detailers in Conundrum.”
“I’ve only been here a few years,” Evie said with a shrug. “If you have anything not stolen, I’d be happy to do a piece for you.”
“How ’bout my new bike outside?” He gave her a cheeky grin. “Someone defaced it with a Black Jack patch, but really I want it to have this.” Jagger spun around to show her the Sinner’s Tribe patch on the back of his cut, the top and bottom rockers proclaiming the name of his club and the Conundrum chapter.
“I hear outlaw bikers are very particular about their patches, especially if someone paints over them.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “You afraid of the Jacks?”
I’m dating a Jack. The words almost slipped out, but she bit her tongue. “I don’t like to piss off my customers. It’s bad for business.”
“Is that why Axle was here? Is he a customer?” He dropped the question almost casually as he examined a charcoal drawing she had tacked to the back wall, but the tension in his shoulders suggested it was anything but casual.
“No. It was personal.”
“I remember this.” Jagger pointed to the charcoal variation of the photograph Zane had given her the night he disappeared. “We’d just finished Grand Theft Auto and Zane had the highest score. Did you do the drawing?”
“Yeah. I still have the picture, but I wanted something larger.” Evie tilted her head to the side, considering. “We didn’t come out quite right in charcoal, though.”
“Zane looks exactly the same now, except for—” He cut himself off with an irritated grunt.
“You’ve seen him?”
Guilt flickered across his face, but it was so fleeting she thought she might have imagined it. “Yes.”
Her cheeks heated and she turned away, wanting and not wanting to know what had happened to Zane. She grabbed a soft cloth and rubbed it vigorously over the fairing she intended to paint that afternoon.
“Does he live around here?” She tried to sound nonchalant but the question came out sounding almost desperate.
“Yes.”
Puzzled by his abrupt, monosyllabic answers, she looked up, but Jagger had turned back to the drawing. She had the original picture in a frame beside her bed—the frame Zane had made for her—and she often wondered if she could ever be that girl again. Happy. Content. Secure in the knowledge that nothing and no one would ever hurt her while she had Zane and Jagger by her side.
“So … what does he do now?”
Silence.
“Jagger?” She gave the fairing a vicious rub, hating herself for wanting to know about the man who had broken her heart.
“Not sure what he’s doing right now.” He shifted his weight and the hair on the back of Evie’s neck prickled. Jagger had never been good at deception. Even when they’d played video games, he would send his characters headlong into danger, often winning simply through his brute force attacks. Zane, on the other hand, excelled at games that involved risk, stealth, and strategy. Evie was the one who took chances, or tried the crazy moves that no one thought would work. Together, they made the perfect team.
Stan, the senior mechanic, revved an engine near the door, and the familiar scents of paint and turpentine were overshadowed by gasoline fumes. When the noise dimmed to the usual clatter and bang, they chatted about their hometown and old school friends and her failed marriage to Mark.
“I was sorry to hear about your dad.” Jagger’s face softened. “He was a good man. A good sheriff. I know you two were close.”
Emotion welled up in Evie’s throat. Not a day went by that she didn’t mourn the loss of her father or wonder what had happened the night he caught Zane and her together by Stanton Creek. She’d waited all night for Zane to come and tell her what happened, to let her know he was okay. Instead, her father’s deputy showed up at her door to tell her that her dad and Zane’s father had been found dead outside Zane’s father’s trailer. Zane was missing. Suspected of murder. She never saw him again.
“My mom died, too,” she said softly. “She couldn’t handle life without him and her alcoholism became worse. She drank herself to death two years after the funeral.”
“Ah, Evie.” A pained expression crossed his face. “I wish I’d been there for you. I can’t imagine how hard it must have been for you to go through that alone.”
Not totally alone. Ty had given her a reason to go on. But she didn’t mention Ty for fear that Jagger would want to meet him, and once he did, he would know, without a doubt, the identity of Ty’s father.
“You had a good excuse.” She forced a smile and changed the subject. “So how did you come back from the dead?”
While she prepared the bike for painting, Jagger told her about his brief stint in the army, the shrapnel that had lodged in his heart, his miraculous recovery and honorable discharge, his new life as a biker, and the love of his life, Arianne.
“Evangeline. You have a client.” Connie’s voice echoed through the speaker system. Usually she piped in music depending on her mood, her tastes ranging from death metal to Buddy Holly, and the occasional polka.
“I’ll let you get to work.” Jagger took one last look at the picture before turning to Evie. “The boys will be round with a cage to pick up the bike, and I’ll be sending a few brothers to watch the shop in case Axle comes back since I get the feeling if he comes in you’re not gonna call.”
“Ratting on customers is bad for business.”
Jagger gave her a considered look. “Are you gonna warn him we’re around if he shows?”
She supposed that would be the right thing to do if Axle came with another message. Viper had stopped carrying a phone after the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) took a sudden interest in the biker war in Montana and set up camp in the Conundrum sheriff’s office. But she didn’t want to get on Jagger’s bad side either. “Also bad for business. I’m hoping to paint a few Sinner tins in the near future.”
“You don’t want to get involved with Axle or the Black Jacks,” he said. “They aren’t friendly guys.”
“And you are?” She pointed to the one percent patch on his cut that marked him as the one percent of bikers who didn’t follow civilian law.
“We’re nice outlaws.” His face softened again, and her tension eased.