“Need your cuffs.”
Benson handed them over without question. “I probably won’t need them again. This is my last week on the job. I gave in my notice after escaping the fire.”
“You did a good job with that truck.”
“Yeah about that,” Benson said. “Maybe next time you want to blow up a building with a truck you should drive.”
Zane made his way back to the house where Evie was waiting and shrugged at her questioning glance. “Had to talk to Benson before he started his search.” He stepped to the side, giving her a clear path to the door, but as she reached for the handle, he yanked the cuffs from his pocket and snapped one around her wrist.
“What the…?” She stared at him aghast. Before she could react, he dragged her over to the radiator and snapped the second cuff to the metal frame. Thank fuck for old houses and old-fashioned heating systems.
“No!” She yanked against the radiator and her face contorted in fury. “You can’t do this. Let me go.”
Nausea roiled in his belly and he took a step back. “I can’t let you sacrifice yourself for Ty. I can’t let you give yourself to Viper. He will never let you go, Evie. You must know that.”
“It’s my choice,” she shouted. “You can’t take that from me.”
“I can. And I will.” He reached for the door. “I made a mistake, Evie. We don’t choose the biker life. It chooses us. I thought I could give it up, but it won’t let me go. This is my world, and I need to deal with it my way. It’s the only way to keep you and Ty safe. I’ll bring him back to you. I swear.”
“You bastard.” She yanked on the cuffs so hard blood welled up on her skin. “Take these off.”
Zane pulled open the door and looked back over his shoulder. “I lost you once. It won’t happen again. I love you, Evie, and I will never let you go.”
TWENTY-FIVE
Repair and repair again. That’s the nature of the beast. So learn your skills well.
—SINNER’S TRIBE MOTORCYCLE REPAIR MANUAL
She was going to kill him. No doubt about it. The second she got these damn cuffs off she would hunt him down and then …
No. Death would be too good for him. She would make him suffer instead. Then she would kill him. Metaphorically speaking, of course.
But first, she needed to get to Ty.
A wave of nausea crashed over Evie at the thought of Ty running down the street, so distressed he’d left in his pajamas, only to be grabbed by strangers. He would have been so frightened and he didn’t even have his bear. Despair gripped her throat and she forced herself to take a breath. And then another. She couldn’t help Ty if she broke down now.
The handcuffs rattled as she pulled against the chain. Damn radiator refused to move and her wrist was raw and bleeding from trying to work her hand free; it looked so easy in the movies.
“Help!” She kneeled beside the window and shouted through the glass. But, of course, so early on a Saturday morning, no one was around.
She slumped against the wall and cursed Zane under her breath using every single bad word she’d ever learned. Damn him. Damn him for being protective and loving, and then railroading over her wishes when it mattered the most.
Her phone buzzed in her purse and Evie groaned. She’d already tried to reach her bag, but it was near the door and there was nothing close she could use to pull it toward her. But what about a push?
Her gaze fell on the toy box she’d emptied in her first attempt to reach her purse. Lego bricks, superhero figures, trucks and spaceships, and a remote-control car Zane had bought for Ty yesterday after the funeral. Evie picked up the remote and turned the car on. Ty had been impressed with her ability to maneuver the car around the furniture, but was it strong enough to push her purse? She cleared a path around her and steered it toward the door, the tiny taillights flashing as she drove it under the coffee table and into the tiled entrance way. So far so good. She turned it the vehicle around and aimed it at her purse. Go, car, go.
At first, the car drove over her purse sailing over the edge like a dune buggy in the desert. She reduced the speed and the back wheels whined as they spun against the carpet. Evie backed the car up and tried again, this time hitting the purse at just the right angle, and with enough speed to make it move. Sweat trickled between her breasts as the purse inched closer and closer until, finally, it was close enough to touch.
Score! Ty would have been proud. All those years hanging around with Zane and Jagger had come in useful, and not just for video game skills.
She called Connie first, telling her to come with something strong enough to break handcuffs. Although Deputy Benson was outside, she suspected he wouldn’t give her the key for fear of what Zane might do to him if he found out Benson let her go.
Connie arrived twenty minutes later with a pair of bolt cutters, borrowed from a neighbor, and twenty dollars for the swear jar so she could fully express her disdain for Zane without restraint or inhibition. The moment the cuffs slipped off her wrist, Evie raced to the bathroom, a minor detail Zane seemed to have forgotten in his haste to keep her away from Viper.
“Glad you were able to hold it,” Connie shouted through the bathroom door. “I wouldn’t have come over here as fast if I thought you’d pissed yourself, too.”
“Nice. Very nice.” Evie glared as she walked out of the bathroom a few minutes later. “I’m glad to know the limits of our friendship.”
“Piss is definitely one of them.” Connie looked Evie up and down and her smile faded. “So you’re still going through with it? You’re gonna go see Viper?”
“I don’t have a choice. The police aren’t going to be able to get to Ty, and I’m not leaving his life in the hands of a gang of outlaw bikers who live by a code that puts their club first, or a man who asked me to trust him, then showed his love by handcuffing me to the radiator. Ty needs someone who is there for him and only him, and the only person who can do that is me.”
“You can’t go in alone.” Connie reached into her purse and pulled out a .22. “I’ll go with you. I’ve even got a gun. Tank made me buy it. He said if I was hanging out with bikers, then I needed to be armed. He even taught me a few things about shooting.”
And get herself shot in the meantime. Evie placed a gentle hand on Connie’s arm. “I can’t let you come with me. Viper took Ty to get to me and not, as Zane seems to think, to get back at the club. I have to deal with him on my own.”
“Babe, you gotta have backup. We’ve watched enough movies together so you know what happens when someone decides to face the bad guy alone.” Connie shook Evie gently by the shoulders. “They never come out alive. And then you’re left wondering who the new main character’s gonna be.”
“He’s not going to kill me.”
“You don’t know that,” Connie said. “You think you know Viper. You think maybe he can be tamed. But really, he’s still a wild animal—the elephant who runs off into the jungle with tourists on his back, or the lion who bites off his trainer’s head after they’ve been together for twenty years. It’s like that story I read to Ty the other night … the one about the frog who carried the scorpion across the water because the scorpion promised not to sting him, and then they both died because the scorpion stung him anyway because it was in his nature.”
“I never knew about that morbid streak of yours,” Evie said, but Connie’s words gave her pause. Viper had seemed like a normal guy when he first came into her shop. They’d talked, laughed, discussed her art … Even when they’d gone for dinner he’d behaved like a regular guy. And then he’d killed Bill and burned down her shop and acted like nothing had happened. Like Connie said, violence was in his nature. Okay. She couldn’t go in without backup, or at least some kind of leverage. And she had to do it the biker way.