Sinner's Steel (Sinner's Tribe Motorcycle Club #3)(3)

He gave himself a mental shake. Memories of Evie were a distraction he couldn’t afford. Especially now, at the culmination of their hunt.

“Fuck.” Jagger lowered his weapon. “Too many witnesses. We’ll have to wait until he’s outside.”

“We don’t have time.” Zane pointed to the sea of headlights coming down the mountain pass. “Black Jacks. Same number of bikes we saw at the bar in Columbus last night. We need to get in and out before they arrive.”

“You and I’ll go in, grab him, and pull him outside,” Jagger said. “Gunner can deal with the civilians. T-Rex and the brothers can keep the Jacks distracted if they get here before we’re done. Keep your face clear of the camera.”

Jagger pulled a ball cap from inside his cut and tugged it low over his face. Zane followed suit, although with his dark hair just brushing his shoulders and his skin deeply tanned, he was more readily identifiable than his clean-cut friends. Sure, the cops would know from the cuts they wore that Axle had been offed by the Sinners—the Sinner patch, a skull with wings and stars, was emblazoned across the back of every cut. But if the authorities couldn’t make a positive ID, they’d be less inclined to come banging on the Sinner clubhouse door, especially now that the Sinners had a friend inside the Conundrum sheriff’s office.

Jagger pushed open the glass door and Zane followed him inside, skirting the rows of shiny new motorcycles dominating the shop floor and staying out of the direct line of the camera.

“Nobody move.” Zane raised his gun to Axle’s back and then caught the gaze of the redhead behind the counter.

In that moment, his thoughts crystallized and shattered.

All but one.

Evie.

Except for a new softness in her face, and a rounding of her curves, she looked exactly as she had the night he left Stanton. From her long, thick, red-gold hair, to her perfectly proportioned oval face, and the full sensuous lips he had dreamed about kissing night after night. Her delicate nose turned up slightly at the end, accentuating her softly angled cheekbones, and her lush body was meant to fill a man’s palms. Her eyes, now wide with fear and confusion, sparkled with the same emerald green. Her beauty hit him like a fist to the gut, stealing his breath and rendering him incapable of speech.

And unable to pull the trigger.

Unfortunately, Jagger appeared to be having the same reaction. Evie had been his friend, too. The three school friends had bonded over broken families, childhood disasters, and teenage woes until the night Jagger held a good-bye party and Zane ran away.

“Evie.” Jagger spoke first, recovering fast as yappers always did, using the nickname he and Zane had given her when they first met on the school playground.

She frowned, little creases forming between her brows. “My name is Evangeline.”

Jagger touched his cap as if to remove it, and Zane hissed a warning. “Camera.”

Her gaze snapped to him and Zane pulled his hat lower as nine years’ worth of longing turned into nine years of pain. After fleeing their hometown of Stanton, Montana, wanted for a murder he didn’t commit, he had gone back for Evie—albeit three years later—only to find her with a child and another man: Mark, the two-bit loser who had panted after her in high school. As he watched her with her new family in the school playground, where he’d first fallen in love, bit by bit and day by day, his heart hardened, and he promised himself he would never think of her again.

A promise he had yet to keep.

“It’s me.” Jagger turned his back to the camera at the till and lifted the visor of his cap.

A tumult of emotions crossed Evie’s face, from shock to disbelief, and then her hand flew to her mouth.

“Oh my God. I thought you died in service. I heard about the grenade and the shrapnel—”

“Takes more than a little shrapnel in the heart to kill me.” He glanced over at Zane, no doubt puzzled by the fact Zane hadn’t spoken up. But Zane simply wasn’t ready for this. He didn’t deal well with change or surprises. His life had been utterly out of control until he joined the Sinners. Now, control held him together. Control over his world. Control over his life. Control over his emotions. And right now, those emotions were threatening to overwhelm him and distract him from the task at hand.

Zane raised his gun, only to discover that Axle had taken advantage of the distraction to sneak through a sliding metal door at the back of the store.

“Fuck. He’s getting away.” Zane ran, slamming the door aside as he shouted a warning to T-Rex out back. He chased Axle through a large workshop filled with half-painted motorcycle fairings and gas tanks on stands, partially dismantled bikes, and empty bike lifts. The shop smelled of grease, paint, turpentine and the distinctive scent of fear.

The door at the far end of the workshop thudded closed and Zane’s feet pounded on the concrete floor.

“T-Rex!” He yanked the door open and almost tripped over the body on the ground.

Damn.

“You okay, brother?” He knelt beside T-Rex and felt for a pulse. T-Rex groaned and Zane whipped out his phone just as Jagger opened the door behind him.

Jagger caught sight of T-Rex and let loose a volley of curses. “How bad?”

“No bullet or knife wounds,” Zane replied. “I think he just took a hard knock to the head. I’ll call Shooter and tell him to bring a cage to take him to the clubhouse. Doc Hegel will look after him.”