THE OUTLAW’S BRIDE Read online

  He looked in the mirror at his face and the lines there. There was no epiphany that made him look at himself this way; he wasn't hit by anything that made him wonder about his life, how he got here, what he was going to do about it. He already knew what he was going to do about it once he found the bastard who’d tried to kill Victoria, he was going to slaughter them. She didn’t have to know that, though. He didn’t know how she'd take it.

  But it wasn't even about Victoria. This entire thing was about him. The only reason someone would bother with putting a hit out on Victoria would be to upset him. They must have thought that she was his girlfriend, and so that meant that someone – or several someones – was out to get him. That wasn't anything new.

  People had been trying to get at Darren Saylor since he was just a little boy. That came with being born into a club. You couldn’t really leave when your father was the head of the organization. If you did, that meant you wouldn’t really have anyone to go to. You could come back to the club if you wanted, but then you'd have to join back up again. From the bottom.

  Darren would know. That was exactly what had happened to him. It wasn't that he didn’t want this life. There were parts of it that were alright: the way the boys looked up to him, the way he could get any woman he wanted, the bikes, the money, and the late hours. There was a lot of it that was okay. But there were also parts of it that were fucked up, that he didn’t want to get into, that haunted his dreams at night.

  And another thing that sucked about being in any club at all, regardless of a man's position within it – there were no answers. He couldn’t just go looking for what he wanted to know and expect to find a neat solution to any question. No, of course it couldn’t work out that way.

  And so it followed that there was absolutely nothing he could do to figure out who was trying to harm Victoria. Not from here, anyway. His hands went to his hips where he’d usually wear jeans, searching for where his pistol would be tucked in the back of them. Of course it wasn't there; he was naked. Why had he forgotten that?

  And fuck, the way Victoria looked at him. There was nothing about this that could be easy, was there? But no. He was going to leave her alone, until she was begging for him. Until then, he might as well just work on this mystery. Finding a killer was easier than dealing with that type of woman, anyway.

  He finally picked up the towel. Dimly, he dried himself off, starting from his legs. He couldn’t stop thinking about Victoria. He had other things to think about, but they also involved her, so it wasn't like this was going to help him at all.

  There was only one way this path of thoughts could go, and he wasn't exactly looking forward to it. He ground his teeth at the thought of it. What kind of man could be around a woman 24/7 and not have anything happen between them? He brought his hand closer to his cock, nearly touching it…

  …before stopping. No. He wasn't going to masturbate to Victoria. She wouldn’t know that it happened, but it would still feel like giving into her. He refused to do that. He had to figure out what was going on between the gangs, between the Bloody Saints and the Broken Skulls.

  So maybe he was going to be forced into leaving Victoria alone, at least for a while. He couldn’t figure out anything about what was going on when he was all cooped up in here with her, anyway.

  He dried himself off and got dressed quickly, and then he stepped out into the hall.

  He was on his way towards the front door when he realized just how shitty his plan was. He couldn’t just leave her in this house by herself. And even if he called someone to come stay instead to rectify that issue, she probably wouldn’t be cool with it. He didn’t want to have to deal with an upset Victoria, and he didn’t want to deal with Victoria trying to start a fist fight with one of his men. She was way smaller than all of them, but he doubted that would stop her from trying anyway.

  So he had to stay. He gritted his teeth again. He didn’t want to stay, but as the time passed it looked like he had fewer and fewer choices. So he would have to figure out what was going on from here. His hands went to his jeans; he felt for his phone, his wallet, and his pistol. They were all there, but that didn’t really comfort him much.

  He looked behind him, over his shoulder towards the living room again. Victoria was sitting on the couch. She had her arms out towards the coffee table in front of her, a bunch of cards scattered all over the surface.

  It looked like she was playing cards with herself.

  He sighed. She must be lonely. But still, she would barely talk to him. What was wrong with her?

  What was wrong with him, for that matter?

  He felt a dull ache rise in his chest. There had to be a reason that this was bothering him so much, but he wasn't going to bother looking into that. It was better to push things like that away before there was any chance of them hurting him. Not that he could be hurt. He’d put aside what other people thought of him a long time ago, and nothing hurt him anymore. Even 20 punches to the face probably wouldn’t faze him that much, although he couldn’t deny that something like that would cause some pain.

  Yeah, he had to go back. His hand was at the doorknob before he realized it, though, and he let his hand fall away with hardly any sound at all. A soft sigh escaped his lips, gruff in its quietness. And then he turned back, getting ready to go down the hall and towards the living room. Back to Victoria. Back to where some part of him felt like he belonged.

  But he had something to do first.

  He’d just checked it a few moments ago, but that didn’t comfort him any. His hands went back to the back of his jeans, making sure he felt the familiar coldness of his gun there. Content that everything was where it should be, he continued on his way.

  But he didn’t start back off through the hall and all the way into the living room, as he’d originally intended. He could always go back to Victoria, or so he hoped. Even if she wanted nothing to do with him after all of this was through, she was still here right now.

  Being around her could come later. Everything that he had to do had to do with her anyway, so it wasn't like he was neglecting her just because he wasn't spending time with her. Part of him didn’t even think that she wanted him to spend time with her, anyway. If she did, she could come to him.

  But not right now. He made his way down the hallway and turned off to his left, before he got anywhere near Victoria. Yeah, she couldn’t even see him from here. He was safe.

  He kept going. Victoria wouldn’t know that this second hallway was here. Not yet, at least, and it didn’t matter anyway. Maybe eventually, if the two of them were stuck here long enough, he would have to show her around. Until then, he was more than happy enough to keep the safe house's secrets.

  The second hallway was small and couldn’t even be considered a hallway, really. Not unless you knew where the other entrance to it was. He made his choice and went a few feet traveling in one direction, looking for the door that was end of this hallway.

  He found it quickly. He didn’t even have to put his hands out and go searching for it in the half-dark. Not all of the lights in the house were on. He could see the shimmer of a few behind him, as well as all the lights Victoria had turned on: the one in the living room, the one in the kitchen. He couldn’t see what else, but it was easy to guess that there were a few more on he wasn't naming.

  It was difficult to ignore the fact that she was there, that she existed. That he was the one who was going to have to take care of her, regardless of how she felt about it. That was okay, though; he didn’t have to ignore it. He just didn’t need to think about it right now.

  He pushed the door open.

  There were a lot of places in the safe house that were invisible to the naked eye. Nearly invisible, anyway, so much so that the average person wouldn’t be able to figure out they were there without having someone like him to explain it to them. That was the point. He briefly wondered if maybe he should let Victoria know about any of these places, but he figured there would always be time to do t
hat later. Besides, it wasn't like she needed another place to hide right now – she was already hiding.

  The room the door opened into was more of a closet than a room. It wasn't the tiny size that Darren had gotten accustomed to when he hid over at his friends' apartments, but it was still a closet nonetheless. His hand dragged along the wall, looking for the light switch he knew was there.

  He found it. Instantly, a light went up on the ceiling of the room, the only source of light being the dull light bulb hanging from the ceiling on a string. It didn’t look the best, especially not in comparison to the rest of the house. People didn’t usually go in here anyway, though.

  Across from where he stood, the light illuminated a low bench. The bench was built into the wall, so that if someone wanted to sit on it and wait in this room without being seen they could. To the left of the bench was another small door. When it was opened, it would reveal a small cabinet that held boxes he hadn’t opened in God knows how long.

  He didn’t bother thinking about what was in there, though. That wasn't what he was interested in dealing with. He walked over to the bench, sitting down on it as quietly as he could. The room was soundproofed so that Victoria wouldn’t hear him from where she was, and probably not from anywhere, unless he was being really loud and a door or two was open, but it was habit. Darren wasn't used to being the type that could just exist as he wished; he had to hide, sometimes.

  Not that he liked it. But when he didn’t hide, things like this happened. He sighed. He could remember this for later and change so it didn’t happen again, but he probably wouldn’t. That wasn't the type of thing for him to do.

  His hand reached to the right of where he sat. He dragged his hand over the wall, looking for the lines he knew would be there. Finally, he found it. There were a bunch of lines etched into the wall. Some of them were just lines, but others were something more.

  Pressing against the wall lightly with his fingers, he added more pressure to the wall until he heard that familiar click he was looking for. The wall opened, revealing a little hollow. It looked like an average drawer that had been unlatched, never mind that the latch there wasn't visible and it was hard enough to find even in the light.

  He probably wasn't going to be able to look through all of it just sitting here, though. He leaned over, so it was easier for him to get what he was looking for out of the spot in the wall. He crouched down, holding his weight on knee with the other up while he rifled through the little space.

  He found what he was looking for almost immediately. The paper in his hands couldn’t really do much to keep Victoria safe, but it had to be a start on some clues. Maybe something here would tell him what was going on.

  It had to be the Broken Skulls. There was no way it was anyone in the Bloody Saints; he’d already been over that, even though Victoria didn’t believe him. And although her doubt made a small little spot of it dot his mind as well, he still didn’t even consider the option.

  Still. While he had his suspicions that this was about the RS thinking his club had outed them to the police, he couldn’t be sure. And that hadn’t even come up in a while. But if that was the issue, it wouldn’t come up; that's how things were there, everything was kept on the down low. It was subtle until someone was being stabbed – or, in the case of Victoria and a few others in the past year that Darren could think of, shot at.

  He looked down at the paper again. Anyone else who looked at it probably would have no idea what was going on. While the paper was well-hidden and anyone who saw it would be hard-pressed to figure out what was written on the page. There was no such thing as being too careful.

  Instead of being written out in English, the page had a series of abbreviations on it. Some of the words were identified only by their first two or so letters. It wasn't made any easier by the fact that all these letters (and some of them numbers) were placed in small cells. The paper was almost like a spreadsheet. Where the letters ended was where the numbers began, and it all stood for something most people would blanch at the sight of.

  Debts. His eyes roamed, looking at it. The page kept tally of who owed who what, but it wasn’t like someone would forget just because it wasn’t written down on a piece of paper. And there was no way it was anyone in the Bloody Saints club, but this piece of paper didn’t just have debts by boys in his squad.

  No, this kept track of damn near everything that happened in this town. Everything he knew about, which was probably everything that happened. While other people, the Broken Skulls especially, would try to keep secrets, it wasn't that hard to figure them out. If need be.

  So maybe they’d figured out something about him, or something about another one of the boys. Debts and favors owed were hard to keep secret, but someone could still try. And just like that, someone could still figure it out.

  His mind flashed back to all of the things that might make someone want to harm him. The list was easy: they probably didn’t even need a reason besides him being who he was. Power was attractive to people, and taking him out would be an easy enough way to get power – before his friends freaked out, if someone wasn't actively trying to freak out on them too.

  He reached for his phone in his back pocket. Maybe asking someone what was going on would help. He couldn’t be direct about it, though. If he was the only one having issues like this, then it might signal him out as weak and then he’d have even more to deal with. But if he wasn’t the only one having issues like this, then this might tip someone off that he was trying to figure out what was going on.

  This entire thing made no sense. And it would make even less sense if he talked to Victoria about it, so no wonder he wasn’t going to her. Even if she wasn’t a stranger, he wouldn’t have gone to her about it. He’d been in a relationship for nearly two years until fairly recently, and still had told the girl almost nothing about what was going on in his life.

  This wasn’t his normal phone. This was a burner phone, a flip phone he could use and then throw away at any needed time. He opened it, running his thumb over the buttons and trying to think of who he could call.

  But he needed to figure this out first, even though he already knew what he’d see. His eyes flitted from the phone to the paper, until finally he just gave up looking at the phone and stared absentmindedly at the sheet in his hand. He lifted it up, closer to his face. His eyes roamed over the page, seeing:

  J | p. to K, MNH | $6k

  M | (some scribbled out letters he couldn’t make out) | (a number that had been scratched out.)

  M that must be Marcus – had a debt to someone. Darren couldn’t think of who it was, since everything had been uniformly crossed out and then written over. He couldn’t tell where the debt had been enacted either. Marcus must have paid it off.

  But J. That must be Jeremy. He owed something to K (Darren couldn’t think of who that could be immediately; he only knew one person whose name started with a K, and she was a woman, so it couldn’t be her), and the deal had taken place in the city. MNH signified that.

  It made no sense to the naked eye, unless you knew what to look for. Darren looked for an initial signifying his name: D. But he knew he’d find nothing. Even though he carried debts and owed favors, his name had never been put down in the ledger. He hadn’t gone to anyone in the Bloody Saints about it, after all.

  Or any of their friends.

  Fuck.

  Why had he done this?

  He didn’t want to think about it. His eyes went to the ceiling again, looking up there like it’d help him figure out a solution to his problems. It wouldn’t. It wouldn’t even help him avoid them; looking up like this just made him think of God and of everything that had gone wrong with his life. But he wasn’t the praying type. So why was he staring up at the ceiling like an idiot?

  As a distraction. From everything. From Victoria. From the paper in his hand. He let go of the sheet of paper. It fell, slowly and then even slower, but he didn’t care. He just didn’t want to hold it anymore. If he d
id, he’d probably end up crumpling it up in his hand and then he’d really be in deep shit; that piece of paper, and the other, similar ones in the drawer he’d taken it from, had been used to keep track of things for years. So there was no use in getting rid of it.

  Besides, he wasn't even on the list. So why did it bother him so much?

  Chapter Twelve

  Darren

  Not a lot of time had passed before he finally decided to get over himself and use his phone again. He’d never put the thing away. It’d just been sitting there in his hand, waiting for him to actually do something while he just ran his fingers over it, over and over again.

  He tried to tell himself that he didn’t know who to call, but the fact of the matter was that he did. He just didn’t like going to people for things. Sullivan's number was so easy to remember. He didn’t even have to look it up before he keyed it in.