Beyond the Cut (Sinner's Tribe Motorcycle Club #2)(48)
“Never thought you were a liability.” He pulled her against his chest. “Just wanted you to be safe.” And then, because he wanted to see her smile, he said. “But you can’t shoot for shit.”
“I’ll learn.”
“How ‘bout I take you somewhere we can warm you up first. Then you can tell me what happened in there, ’cause I’ve got a feeling Benson’s not gonna be too keen to let me inside. After that, we can do some shooting.”
She looked up at him and licked her lips. “Is there some hot sex in a bed involved?”
Cade rumbled his satisfaction. “Sweetheart, I don’t need a bed.”
“Dawn?” Benson came around the corner, his shiny deputy badge glinting under the streetlight. “Are you ready to go?”
Dawn turned to face him and Cade clamped an arm around her waist and pulled her tight against his chest, pleased when Benson’s smile faded.
Mine.
“Actually, um … I’m going with Cade. But thank you for the offer, and for coming out here tonight. You’ve been such a good friend to me.”
Benson’s lips thinned. “Friendship doesn’t seem to matter when there are bikers around who make a mockery of our laws and lure women into a violent world with promises they’ll never keep. Think about what you’re doing, Dawn.” His voice took on a sharp edge, and the hair on the back of Cade’s neck stood on end. “I’m certain Jimmy came here tonight because of your involvement with the Sinners. You tried so hard to get away from that world and make a good, stable life for you and your girls. Don’t throw it all away.”
“I appreciate your concern,” she said sharply. “But I can make my own choices.”
Cade drew in a deep breath and his hands clenched into fists. Only Dawn’s quiet “hush” stopped him from shoving his fist down Benson’s throat. Yes, the dude wanted her. But he was also trying to do his job and protect her. He just needed to understand that protecting Dawn was Cade’s job.
*
“A biker’s word is his bond.” Jagger folded his arms and leaned back in his chair in the boardroom. “I’m not about to go back on my word because Mad Dog broke into Dawn’s house.”
“He’s taking advantage of the fact he’s untouchable.” Cade could barely contain his ire. The early-morning meeting wasn’t going the way he’d hoped. In other words, Jagger wouldn’t back down.
“If we can’t keep him out of town, she’s in danger. He attacked her outside the bar, showed up at the police station … He thinks she belongs to him and he just won’t quit. By making him untouchable, we’ve taken away the only safety she had.”
Jagger held up a warning hand. “I know how many times he’s been here. And every time I have the same need as you to hunt him down, but we made a deal with Wolf and I’m not about to break my word. You agreed to this, Cade. We all did.”
Gunner, silent until now, along with the rest of the brothers at the table, exhaled a breath. “Wolf broke the deal when he sent us up north for weapons that weren’t there.”
“He says he doesn’t know what happened to the weapons. He’s looking into it.”
“And you f*cking believe him?” Cade stood abruptly, no longer able to contain his anger.
“Of course not. Dax is going to interrogate Matchstick today about what he knows, and you and Zane can do some investigating when you take a team up to Whitefish to deal with the Demon Spawn betrayal. But the Jacks are clearly stronger than we thought if they could launch the kind of attack they did last night. We have to retaliate but we have to be smart.”
“I’ll start asking questions about where the Jacks are drumming up their new supporters,” Zane said. “I didn’t recognize some of the patches on the guys who were in the raid last night.”
“How about we just tell the Brethren where to f*cking go?”
Jagger regarded Cade with a damn irritating calm, implacable expression. “Do you really want to risk sending the Brethren running into their arms? Wolf has another weapons shipment coming in and he’s arranged for it to be delivered straight to us. We can use those weapons in a new offensive. The election is coming up in three weeks. After Wolf’s presidency is secure, we patch the Brethren in and the deal no longer stands. That’s when we tell them where to f*cking go. Mad Dog dies that day, and no other.”
“I can’t sit by and let him harass her.” Cade shoved his chair against the table. “I can’t be with her every minute of the day, and he always shows up when I’m not there. And does anyone wonder how he knew to break into her house when we were all busy with the Jacks? I think he knew about the raid.”
“He’s the one pushing to join the Jacks,” Zane said. “Maybe he has a connection. Maybe he’s made the same kind of deal with Viper that Wolf has made with us: If he wins the election, he’ll patch the club over to the Jacks.”
Jagger shook his head. “Wolf says he doesn’t have that kind of support, and from what I’ve heard from other clubs, that’s true. He’d have to win over the senior patch or buy up a lot of votes to beat a ten-year president who rebuilt the club. And as Cade said, Mad Dog doesn’t want a patch-over. He’s young. He wants to lead. At best, he’ll have made a deal to be a support club. We’ll deal with that problem when the time comes, but for now, we don’t touch him.”