Stephanie Tyler - Vipers Run

I was better here. I wiped down the bar, served drinks, managed the crowds with a little help from the bouncers.

I was back in my element. I’d done this regularly during the summers when I could escape from the boarding schools. I’d grown up watching Mom and Grams do it. I’d spent summers learning to bartend when I was much too little to even think about it.

Last time, I’d been too focused on Cage and fitting in to appreciate being back behind the bar. This time, all the memories flooded back to me. I inhaled the scent of oiled wood and stale beer and good whiskey. Smoke mixed with the leather and I swore I could hear the conversations that had happened here, like ghosts in the wind, whispering in my ear, telling me about the good old days.

After Amelia closed up, she shooed me away. “I’ve got guys to help clean up. Your man’s waiting for you.”

He was, and he’d been very patient all night, especially because I’d been too busy to do much but serve drinks. I walked out with him and he put his arms around me. “Let’s take a ride.”

“In bed or on your bike?”

He grinned. “Bike first.”

He handed me the helmet and I got on behind him, but before we could go, I heard Vipers bikes circling back toward us.

“There’s trouble,” Preacher called.

I held on and Cage gunned the bike after him. We were headed to the clubhouse two blocks away, where Eli was left with Holly and plenty of other Vipers to guard them both. But as we pulled up, I saw a pile of men. Cage stopped the bike and we both got off quickly. He ran toward the group with Preacher and I saw Eli waiting in the alley.

“What’s going on?”

“Heathen Enforcers,” he said. “They came for me.”

I looked and watched the man whose hands—always so gentle on me—were now beating several Heathens senseless. Tals was pulling Cage away and the men were starting to separate, even as a police siren sounded.

“Shit, they had to be watching,” Eli muttered. It was true—the clubhouse was in a quiet area, especially with the tattoo shop being closed, which meant that the Vipers were under surveillance.

The Heathens and Cage and his guys stood across from each other, none of them moving as Detective Flores got out of the car. “What’s going on here?”

“Just a friendly discussion, Detective,” Preacher said.

None of the other men said a word.

“You look like you’ve been fighting,” she commented.

“No, ma’am,” Preacher said, and none of the Heathens argued. “They were just leaving.”

As Flores’s partner stepped in between the men to ensure that was happening, I looked down the alley and saw Holly there. Her cheek was bruised, her lip bleeding, and she held a metal pipe down by her side. She put the pipe down and came to join me, just as Detective Flores reached me.

“I’m sure this somehow ties back to you, Calla.” I didn’t say a word. Her eyes flicked over me, and then Holly. “What happened to you?”

“Nothing,” Holly said in that cool tone of hers. She put a hand on my shoulder and stared at Flores while I stared at her, wondering who the hell this pod was and what she’d done with Holly. And then I saw her eyes flicker over Flores’s shoulder and I followed her gaze to a man getting out of the back of Flores’s car. “Who’s that?”

Flores didn’t turn around, but gazed at me. “It’s the witness who saw Cage at Ned’s motel room door the night before he was murdered.”

“But not the night of, right?” I asked, and then I went mute, because he was here. Standing next to Detective Flores, taller and broader than he’d been back then.

But his eyes were still as dead as a shark’s. My hand was at my side and I reached for Holly’s wrist and squeezed, hoping that would somehow clue her in that I needed help. I glanced at her too for a second, and she looked back at me with fierceness in her gaze. She squeezed my shoulder and didn’t take her hand away.

“Calla, this is Agent Jeffrey Harris, with the FBI.”

“I don’t understand why he’s here,” I said to Flores, refusing to look at him.

“He was part of an undercover sting,” Flores told me.

Suddenly the pieces of the puzzle fell into place with a sickening clarity, made worse by the fact that I couldn’t tell her about any of it.

“Calla Benson?” he asked me, like he didn’t know. Because neither of us was supposed to admit to anything—that would break the rules of the confidentiality agreement.

I stared at him, unwavering and unashamed. He wouldn’t break me again. Let him sweat.

“Calla? We need to talk,” Flores told me.

“So talk.”

She grimaced a little and motioned to Jeffrey. “The FBI is involved, Calla. You need to tell us what you know, starting with what happened the other night at the tattoo shop.”

I shrugged. “It was pretty boring. And Holly’s a class-A bitch.”

Beside me, Holly snorted. “She’s not the greatest employee.”

“You’re playing a very dangerous game, Miss Benson. I’d rethink your position, if I were you,” Jeffrey told me.

Before he could say anything else, I saw movement out of the corner of my eye, and Cage and Preacher and Rocco were heading our way. Jeffrey slid back toward the car and Detective Flores handed me her card.

“You need to get in touch, Calla, and soon.”

She walked away just as Cage got to me. Only then did Holly let go of my shoulder.

We didn’t stay outside. Instead, we went back into the clubhouse to regroup and then decided that we were safer going back to Cage’s building. We drove in different cars and bikes, took different routes and made sure there was no one tailing us.

I refused to go into a panic attack—it was only by sheer will that I didn’t. And when Cage tried to get me to take one of my pills, I said to him, “The FBI agent, Jeffrey . . .”

His eyes widened, jaw clenched with anger. There was no last name on the e-mails, but there was a first.

We didn’t talk about it any further on the ride back to the apartment. He held me tight as he brought me upstairs and just murmured for me to breathe, which was a surprisingly effective reminder.

In an hour, we’d regrouped in Cage’s apartment. Holly was there, with Preacher, Rocco, Tals and Eli. We had the usual guys guarding downstairs and several more at the clubhouse and the bar.

The bar. That part of the night seemed like it had happened years ago. I had held myself tight up until this point, but now, facing the reality that Jeffrey was somehow involved with the Heathens was too much for me.

Cage sat next to me, practically vibrating with anger. But when he put his hand on my shoulders, his touch was completely gentle.

I didn’t say anything, gnawed my bottom lip and nodded.

“What’s Jeffrey’s game?” he asked finally.

“He said he saw you at Ned’s motel the night before he was murdered. He’s working on some kind of undercover sting,” I said.

“He’s Flores’s witness?” Cage asked.

“He must’ve followed me here,” I said. He wouldn’t have to keep track of me to send me e-mails . . . and I never changed my e-mail address, because I didn’t want to encourage him to search me out. And it’s not like I’ve been hard to find. Until now.

“He’s the guy who met with the Heathens,” Eli said quietly.

“Someone want to fill me in?” Preacher asked.

“That man hurt Calla,” Holly said.

All I could do was nod.

“Is there a restraining order?” she continued.

“Yes, but it’s not . . . official. There was a binding agreement,” I said. “It’s all confidential.”

“You’re going to have to call your father, Calla,” Cage said.

I nodded. “Not right now, though. Please.”

“Why don’t we leave them alone,” Holly said. Holly had saved me tonight, more than she could’ve known. Or maybe she did. She and Preacher and Rocco left, taking Eli with them to Rocco’s apartment for the night.

Once they’d left and Cage locked up and came back into the kitchen, I told him, “You’re going through enough. You’ve gone through enough—I don’t need you fighting my battles.”

“It’s part of my battle now too.” His face darkened with anger, none of it directed at me, but I still hated seeing it there.

He strode over to me. Picked me up, put me on the counter and moved between my legs so we were nearly eye-to-eye. “I’m protecting you, Calla. I don’t give a shit if you don’t want it or not—you don’t have a choice in that. You’re mine. I’m going to make sure nothing ever happens to you.”

“He’ll stop at nothing. He’ll take away anyone I care about—and now that I was getting closer to my father, I had someone else to worry about. And Jeffrey Harris knows exactly how to find my father. Everyone does.”

“Your father has enough money to hire bodyguards. Yours are built in.”

“He’ll go after you.”

“He already has,” Cage pointed out.

“No one can stop him.”

“No one’s ever tried, babe,” was all he said. I shivered.

“You’re calling your father tomorrow. I’m sure he’s worried sick.”

“I know. But as good as he’s been the last two times I talked to him . . . there’s so much history there. Most of it is my mom’s fault. I’m seeing that now. But suppose I’m wrong?”

“Suppose you’re not?” he said. “Bernie wasn’t the type to do favors for assholes. If he thought your dad was trying to hurt you . . .”

“I hate it when you’re logical,” I told him, and he just got that look—I knew he wanted to laugh but he held back.

“Maybe you should hear him out.”