“I’m acting the way you should when you care about someone,” I corrected. But I still smiled at the “old lady” thing. “Am I allowed to ask questions?”

He motioned to the bed and I climbed in. He followed, tucked in next to me, then said, “They’re bringing drugs right into Skulls. To the fucking high school—and tonight we stopped them.”

“The Heathens?”

“Gotta be. They’re using some low-level dealers to do their dirty work.”

“Do the Heathens know you’re back here?”

“Yeah. And word will spread more after tonight.” He paused. “I’m sorry, Calla, but I can’t hide forever.”

“I don’t want you to.”

He shook his head. “If they succeed in getting the drugs in here, Skulls won’t survive. I won’t let that happen.”

He sounded so fierce. So protective. Because he’d grown up here. Preacher had too, and although the town didn’t love the Vipers MC, tonight Cage had stopped the Heathens from selling meth to a group of high school kids. He’d saved lives tonight, and I wished the town could know that.

“Go off to war. Come home . . . still a war. Same goddamned war I’ve been fighting for what feels like forever.”

I knew all about those kinds of wars. “I wish I could fix it for you.”

“You are, babe. Just coming home to you like this . . . you have no idea what it helps to fix.”

The MC men weren’t angels. I was pretty sure that the Vipers garage was a front for a chop shop—one of my mom’s boyfriends stole cars, so I was pretty familiar. No, none of these guys would ever be accused of being an angel.

But tonight, it appeared they’d won a battle.

* * *

Several days later, we’d fallen into a predictable, if not comfortable, pattern. Often I’d stay in while Cage conducted club business, and then we’d go out—sometimes to dinner and sometimes to the bar—and I gradually began to meet all the men and women of Vipers.

But even though Cage had claimed me, I didn’t have true “old lady” status. Because even though we’d given up the whole pretense of me not owning him and him not owning me, the fact was, I was in hiding here.

I’d planned on calling Tenn that afternoon, because I needed to hear a familiar voice from someone who semiknew me. But Cage and I ended up heading to the clubhouse for an afternoon barbecue, which stretched out to early evening. The men were fixing their bikes and running around after small kids, and the women were handing out plates of food, and it all looked so normal, like we could be anywhere in America. Anywhere where there were lots of leather jackets. And patches. And tattoos of snakes and reapers and skulls with knives through them.

Still, this gave me a chance to see a different side of the club, to see the guys being gentle with their kids and their women—everything was softer, albeit still rowdy.

I was sitting on the back steps with Cage standing next to me when an olive-skinned woman dressed in black pants and a crisp white shirt under her blazer jacket came around the corner. It was warm out for such an outfit, but I noticed the holster that ran along her side when she moved.

“Cop,” Cage said under his breath at the same moment she chose to focus directly on me.

“How can I help you, Detective Flores?” Cage asked.

“You’re just the man I was looking for. You, and Calla Bradley.”

How did she know me? And by that last name? It’s not like I’d registered at the post office, and I was pretty sure the MC hadn’t announced my name in the local police blotter.

Cage stared steadily at Detective Flores, and I told her, “It’s Benson, not Bradley.”

“But your father is Jameson Bradley, correct?”

“What’s this about?” I asked, and Cage’s hand went to my shoulder.

She made a note on her open pad as a tall black man came around behind her. “My partner and I need to speak with you. We could do it here or down at the precinct, if that would be more comfortable for you.”

“I thought you needed to speak with me,” Cage said.

“I’ll get to you,” she said with a curt smile.

“She being charged with something?” Preacher asked. I hadn’t seen him come up to her.

She looked up at him, unsurprised, and said, “No.”

“Then you can ask her the questions here and she can decide if she wants to answer them or not. All within her rights, correct? Or did you forget about that whole innocent-until-proven-guilty rule?” Cage said.

Flores’s mouth jerked to the left in a vicious smirk. “Right. I’m supposed to believe that anyone associated with this MC can have the word ‘innocent’ attached to their name.”

“Calla’s not attached to the MC,” Cage said, and although I knew why he was saying so, it still made me wither. He stood next to me, not touching me, and God, I wanted this over with.

“How do you even know who I am?” I asked.

“I have my sources,” she said, and I swore Cage growled next to me.

Was that source the Heathens? What the hell? “Can you tell me what you came here to say?”

Flores motioned to Cage. “We’d like to speak to her alone.”

“I’d like a lot of goddamned things, but that’s not happening,” he replied.

Preacher hadn’t made a move to leave either.

I put my hands under my thighs, because I wasn’t sure if they’d stop shaking or not.

Flores continued paging through her pad, no doubt trying to see how nervous I’d get while I was waiting. Bernie used to say that the most nervous people were often the most innocent. If that was the case, I was the most innocent person ever.

“Miss Benson, where were you on Wednesday night?”

“I was out with Cage.”

Flores’s gaze never left mine. “Where was that?”

“The bar—Wally’s.”

“Ah, the MC bar. Let me guess—you’ve got an alibi all night.”

She was being so sarcastic and Cage’s tone matched hers when he said, “That’s right.”

“What time did you arrive?”

“Why don’t you check with the owner?” Cage suggested. “She was at the door.”

“Why can’t Miss Benson answer the question?” Flores shot back.

Instinctively, I knew I was supposed to lie. Because we’d gotten there late. Because of the fight. Because I didn’t go home with Cage and there were hours unaccounted for. “We got there around eight. We left after ten. Maybe eleven.”

“And then?”

The MC must’ve been rubbing off on me, because I relaxed, glanced up at Cage and smiled. “We took a ride. And there were no witnesses to that.”

Flores’s expression grew tight, even more so when Cage said, “I’m sure we could find someone, babe. You were pretty loud.”

I bit back a laugh, because I really didn’t want to piss off the police. “What happened Wednesday night?”

Flores flipped her pad closed. “We’ll be checking your alibi with the bartenders, of course.”

My alibi? I went to say something but Cage’s stony look stopped me.

Flores smiled and then said to Preacher, “Why don’t you show me around your chop shop?”

“Shop’s not open to the public. Just where we fix our bikes, Detective,” Preacher said easily.

“I’ve never bought that bullshit, Preacher.”

Preacher shrugged. “Don’t know what to tell you. But all these bikes? They’re my club members’.”

“Your gang members’ bikes.”

“We’re not a gang. We’re a club. And I don’t see you producing a search warrant.” Preacher was unruffled, and I guessed this happened pretty regularly. Because even I didn’t believe what Preacher was selling, but I had to admit, there was zero hard, cold evidence to prove the existence of a chop shop. “If we’re done here, you’re interrupting a family barbecue.”

She snorted, and her partner, who’d been silent until then, simply said, “We’ll be back.”

“You always fucking are,” Cage muttered.

I let them walk away, waited for Cage to sit next to me. Waited for him to say something about my alibi, the fact that I’d lied to the police for him. But he didn’t.

Instead, he said, “They always hassle us.”

I glanced at him and his expression was guarded still. “I take it you don’t like the police.”

“I like them well enough when they’re not bothering us because of our club association,” he said. “The old detectives . . . they were good to us. My record’s clean, Calla. I even had to prove myself when I enlisted, because of my MC status, and the cop who vouched for me was a former gang member from LA turned police officer.”

“What did you do in the Army?”

He grinned a little. “I learned how to build bombs, but I can also disable them.”

“There’s a metaphor there.”

He relaxed against me. “I thought Flores might be asking questions about your brother,” he admitted.

I tensed up. “What about him?”

“I went to pay him a visit the night she’s talking about. He wasn’t there. I went back last night. Place looked like it’d been cleaned up—although his stuff’s still there. I figured maybe someone took care of him already, which is no loss to you.”

It wasn’t, but the fact that Detective Flores was sniffing around wasn’t good. “How did you know where to find him?”

Cage didn’t answer me. Wouldn’t or couldn’t—I guessed it didn’t matter. But my head started to throb a little bit. The party moved inside the clubhouse and I noticed that moms were taking their kids home. The majority of the women who stayed were old ladies, but there were a few mamas there with the single guys, as Amelia had pointed them out to me. They were nice enough, once they knew I was with Cage, but I knew not to trust them.

“Can we get out of here?” I asked him now.

“Sure. My jacket’s inside. Come on.”