I’m pretty sure I came close to stroking out.

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” I said, glancing back at the house, heart hammering. Jeff wouldn’t like it. Horse was dangerous. I could smell it on him. Seriously. Under the delicious scent of leather, light sweat and man was a pungent strain of pure trouble. “I mean, everyone is waiting for you, right? I can just go, let’s just forget this, okay?”

He didn’t say anything, just studying me with that cool, expressionless face of his.

“That how you gonna play it, sweet butt?”

“I’m not your sweet butt,” I snapped, narrowing my eyes. I hated getting called things like that. Gary did it all the time. Why did they keep calling me that?

To hell with him and to hell with Gary too.

Men.

“Fuck off,” I said, glaring at him.

Horse gave a bark of laughter, the sound sudden and loud in the silence, which pulled me back to reality. His hands tucked around my waist, jerking me into his body where my crotch immediately came up against what had to be a pretty healthy erection.

He swiveled his hips into mine, slowly dragging it up and across my clit. I’m ashamed to admit that I creamed my pants right then and there instead of kicking him in the nuts like a sensible girl. He leaned over and I held my breath, waiting for him to kiss me. Instead he whispered in my ear.

“Nice ass. Sweet. Butt.”

I didn’t like his tone, so I bit his ear. Hard.

He jumped back, and I wondered if he was going to kill me. Instead he started laughing so hard I thought he might pull a muscle. I scowled, and he held up his arms to each side in pointed surrender.

“I get it, hands off,” he said, shaking his head, bemused. “Play it the way you like. And you’re right, we’ve got business. Go drive for an hour, that should be enough time.”

I slid off the table and darted around him. He trailed me as I went to my car. I opened the door and almost got in, then the same stupid streak of curiosity that’d caused me trouble all my life drowned out my sense of self-preservation. I stopped in the doorway, looking at him across the roof.

“Horse isn’t your real name, is it?”

He smiled at me, his teeth white in the darkness, like a wolf’s.

“Road name,” he replied, leaning against the roof of my car. “That’s the way things work in my world. Citizens have names. We have road names.”

“What does that mean?”

“People give them to you when you start riding,” he said casually. “They can mean all kinds of things. Picnic got his name because he went all out planning some pansy-assed picnic for a bitch who had him twisted up in knots. She ate his food and drank his booze, then called her fuckwad boyfriend to come and pick her up while he took a leak.”

I grimaced at his crudity, trying to understand.

“That seems…unpleasant. Why would he want to remember that?”

“Because when the fuckwad showed up, Picnic shoved his head through a picnic table.”

I caught my breath. That didn’t sound good. I wanted to ask if the guy had been all right but decided I probably didn’t want to know the answer.

“And Max?”

“When he gets drunk, sometimes his eyes go all wide and he looks fuckin’ crazy, like Mad Max.”

“I see,” I replied, thinking about the man. I guess he did look sort of like Mad Max… I decided I didn’t want to see him drunk.

Silence hung heavy between us.

“So aren’t you gonna ask?”

I studied him, narrowing my eyes. I had a bad feeling about this. But the words came out of my mouth, completely beyond my control.

“So why are you called Horse?”

“’Cause I’m hung like one,” he replied, smirking.

I dropped down into my car and slammed the door shut. I heard him laughing through the open window as I peeled out of the driveway.

Chapter Two

Sept. 17—Present Day

“I’m so sorry, sis,” Jeff said, the words muffled from his bloody, swollen lips. Was he missing a tooth? I looked around the room, unable to believe that these men—two of whom I’d cooked for, one of whom I’d done a lot more than cooking for—were actually threatening to kill my brother. Could this really be happening?

Picnic looked right at me and winked.

“Little brother’s been a bad boy,” he said. “He’s been stealing from us. You know anything about that?”

I shook my head quickly. A bag fell off my arm, apples bouncing out and rolling across the floor. One of them hit Horse’s foot. He didn’t glance down, just maintained that cool, thoughtful expression I’d seen on his face so many times. It frustrated me—I wanted to scream at him to show some fucking emotions. I knew he had them. Unless that had been a lie too.

Oh. My. God.

My brother knelt in the middle of our crappy living room, bleeding and awaiting execution, and all I could think about was me and Horse. What the hell was wrong with me?

“I don’t understand,” I said quickly, looking at Jeff’s puffy, bruising face, silently pleading with him to burst out laughing at the big joke they were playing on me.

Jeff didn’t start laughing. In fact, his breath rattled through the room like a movie sound effect. How badly was he hurt?

“He’s supposed to be working for us,” Picnic said. “He’s pretty good with that little laptop of his. But instead of working he’s been playing at the casino with our fucking money. Now he has the balls to tell me that he’s lost the money and can’t pay us back.”

He punctuated the last four words with jabs of his pistol’s thick, round barrel into the back of Jeff’s neck.

“You got fifty grand on you?” Horse asked me, his voice cool and casual. I shook my head, feeling dizzy. Oh, shit, this was why Jeff had tried to get me to ask Gary for money… But fifty grand? Fifty grand? I couldn’t believe it.

“He stole fifty thousand dollars?”

“Yup,” Horse said. “And if it doesn’t get paid back right now, his options are limited.”

“I thought you were friends,” I whispered, looking from him to Jeff.

“You’re a sweet kid,” Picnic said. “But you don’t get who we are. There’s the club and everyone else, and this stupid fucker is not part of the club. You fuck with us, we will fuck you back. Harder. Always.”

Jeff’s mouth trembled and I saw tears well up in his eyes. Then he wet his pants, a dark stain spreading between his legs pitifully.

“Shit,” said the guy with the mohawk and skull tats. “I fucking hate it when they piss themselves.”

He looked down at Jeff and shook his head.

“You don’t see your sister pissing herself, do you? What a little bitch,” he said, disgusted.

“Are you going to kill us?” I asked Picnic, trying to think. I needed to make him see me as human, they said that on all the TV shows about serial killers. He had two girls, I’d even seen their pictures. I needed to remind him of his family, of the fact that he was human and not some kind of Reaper monster. “I mean, would you really kill people you shared pictures of your daughters with? One of them is about my age, isn’t she? Can’t we work something out? Maybe we can make payments or something.”

Horse snorted and shook his head.

“You don’t get it, sweetie, this isn’t just about money,” he said. “We could give a shit about the money. This is about respect and stealing from the club. We let this pissant fuck get away with it, they’ll all start doing it. We don’t let stuff like this slide. Ever. He pays with blood.”

I closed my eyes, feeling my own tears well up.

“Jeff, why?” I whispered, shivering.

“I wasn’t planning to lose it,” he replied, his voice cracked and hopeless. “I thought I could win it back, make it up somehow. Or that maybe I could hide it in the wire transfers…”

“Shut the fuck up,” Picnic said, smacking the side of his head with his free hand. “You don’t talk club business. Even when you’re about to die.”

I whimpered, feeling myself start to tremble.

“There’s another way,” Horse said to me, still casual. “Paying in blood can mean different things.”

“He doesn’t need to die for that to happen,” I said, thinking quickly. “Maybe you could burn down our trailer!”

I smiled at him encouragingly. Fuck the trailer, I wanted Jeff safe. And me. Oh shit, if they killed Jeff they’d have to kill me too.

I was a witness. Fuckity fuck fuck fuck!

“Oh, we’re gonna do that no matter what,” he drawled. “But that’s not blood. I can think of something that is though.”

“What?” Jeff asked, his voice full of desperate hope. “I’ll do anything, I swear. If you give me a chance I’ll crack so many accounts for you, you won’t believe what we can accomplish. I’ll stop smoking, that’ll clear my head, I’ll do a better job…”

His voice trailed off as Horse laughed, and the mohawk guy shook his head and grinned at Picnic.

“You believe this asshole?” he asked. “Seriously, douche, you aren’t making a very good case for yourself, telling us just how much you been slacking.”

Jeff whimpered. I wanted to go to him, to hold him and comfort him, but I was too scared.

Horse stretched his neck, dipping his head to each side, and then cracked his knuckles like he was warming up for a fight. Kind of made me think of an episode of The Sopranos, which would have been funny as hell if I didn’t happen to know how that episode ended.

“Let’s get a couple of things clear,” Horse said after a pause that lasted approximately ten years. “We’re not going to hurt you, Marie.”