Dauntless (Sons of Templar MC #5)(117)

I’d gotten all smug thinking I’d won. Or at least wasn’t about to be beaten anytime soon.

Then it turned out that one mysterious player could indeed f*ck it all up.

“You don’t have to keep trailing me, you know,” I informed Scott as we walked across the parking lot of the clubhouse. It was pretty deserted considering it was a Sunday and most of the big bad bikers were all whipped, having Sunday brunches or whatever.

“I do, and not just because Lucky tells me to and threatens my manhood if I don’t,” he replied. “And not just because I kind of enjoy the perks of hanging out at a strip club.” He grinned and I rolled my eyes. “But ’cause Devlin’s still out there. We might have eliminated all of his partners, and since you snipped our last loose end”—he grinned at me—“he’s most likely crawled back into his cave by now, but there’s still a risk. So I’m here.”

I shrugged. “Your funeral when you die of boredom now that I’m not a junkie or stripper. My life is dangerously monotonous now.”

He barked out a laugh. “Yeah. I doubt you’ll be living anything close to a monotonous life when you’re eighty.”

He may just be right.

I was meeting Gabriel after work, as we planned on heading up to the cottage and escaping all the chaos on the outside to embrace our own.

Peace, for us, was a fantasy.

Who needed peace? It was far too boring.

On that note, there was a weird popping sound followed by a splattering of warm liquid on my cheek.

I turned, frowning.

“Scott, if you just—” I sucked in my words when my eyes landed on the air where Scott used to be. It was empty.

Because at my feet was Scott’s body. Half of his head was gone.

I blinked down at it, frozen as I watched the blood spread from his skull to the edges of my boots.

These are new, I thought distractedly.

After a blinding white pain in my temple, I didn’t think anything.



I didn’t wake slowly, or groggily. It was a snap, and then I was conscious. With a really bad headache.

My head lolled around a bit before I could make it stay in one place.

“Becky.”

The voice snapped me back into the land of reality. The urgency in it. The panic.

I blinked. I was on a chair in the clubhouse, my hands bound behind my back uncomfortably.

That didn’t matter.

What mattered was that Gabriel was in front of me, blood running down his head and gushing from a hole in shoulder. Yeah, a hole. A big one. The leather of his cut had been ripped through and the black was now maroon.

“Someone shot you,” I exclaimed, my voice shaking. I glanced down at my boots. “Someone shot Scott too,” I added, my voice small. My stomach roiled. “He’s dead, though.” I said the words, but I didn’t believe them. He wasn’t dead. Couldn’t be. I just got hit on the head too hard. He’d be fine.

Gabriel’s eyes hardened. “Becky,” he clipped urgently. “Are you okay?”

I gaped at him. “You’re shot, and you’re asking me if I’m okay? Are you f*cking insane? Wait, I know you are, and you’re a tough man, but that”—I nodded to the wound—“is a bullet hole. You can’t just rub some dirt on it.”

He smiled weakly. “Yeah, you’re okay.”

“Why are we tied up?” I asked, slightly delayed.

His face went hard.

“I can answer that,” a smooth voice exclaimed as a very expensive-looking loafer stepped in front of me. I gazed up at its owner, wearing an equally expensive-looking suit. A white suit.

“Let me guess: John Travolta, Saturday Night Fever?” I asked.

An alligator grin, all teeth and no humor. And promises to rip me apart. “I see the little three-week stay you had with my boys didn’t do much good shutting that mouth.” He shook his head. “You can’t hire good goons these days. Can’t even break a white-trash junkie.”

“I’m going to f*ckin’ kill you,” Gabriel roared, struggling against his bounds like a wild thing.

The man in front of me with the small beady eyes and a slick comb-over grinned but didn’t look his way. “Oh no, I think I’m going to be the one to do that, considering I’m the one holding this.” He waved a gun. “But first I’ll make you watch while I kill this one.” He lifted the gun to stroke my cheek. I flinched away from the cold steel but didn’t lower my gaze. No way was I going to give in to the terror creeping up my throat. That’s exactly what he wanted.

“I thought it would be poetic, to start with the couple I began this whole campaign with,” he drawled, glancing to Gabriel, whose eyes were wild as he continued to struggle against his binds despite the fact blood was flowing freely from his shoulder. “I had wanted to start with the biker scum and his slut who killed my father, but I thought that’d be much too obvious. I needed you to think it was because of this particular junkie.” He nodded at me.

“Ex-junkie,” I corrected on a hiss.

He smiled at me. “My mistake.” He tilted his head at me. “I didn’t expect you to manage to get clean. To not overdose in some tragic end. That had been the plan.” He reached into his pocket and before I even saw it, I knew what it was. It was like I could f*cking smell it.