Rough Ride (Chaos #5)(17)

“You got a weapon in your hand, you got the power to do that,” Snapper said, tapping a finger sharply on the right-side picture. “You good with that?”

I tore my eyes away and looked to him to see him facing the binder with his gaze aimed over his leather-clad shoulder at me.

Taking him in, for a second, I was thrown off kilter.

When the whole thing started with me informing on Bounty to Chaos, and Snapper was assigned as my Chaos handler, we’d always met in person. I preferred it that way because I knew he’d never approach if he hadn’t checked to make sure he could. Telephone conversations could be overheard. Beck had my phone password, so if he got any suspicions and was sneaky about it, without me noticing, texts could be checked.

I didn’t want a record. I didn’t want evidence easily available. I didn’t want to have to hide what I was doing in my everyday life. I wanted Chaos to handle all that for me by casing the area to make sure it was safe to approach.

Okay, so now I realized I also wanted an excuse to see Snapper on a regular occasion. But also it had to do with feeling safe while I was informing on the criminal activities of a motorcycle club.

For some reason, after a while of meeting face to face, Snap decided it would be better if he didn’t approach and he gave me a burner. I didn’t like it but I figured the Chaos men knew how to do this better to keep it safer for me.

This turned out not to be the case.

In the end, I didn’t know how Beck found out. During the tense ride we took before he delivered me to withstand Bounty justice, he didn’t share.

But my guess was, since he had that burner, and it didn’t have password protection, that was how he’d found out, even though I kept it in my purse, which had been secured in the little staff room at Colombo’s.

Snap didn’t text. He called. So I couldn’t imagine even after Beck found it, he’d know.

Unless he did what I’d guessed he’d done. After they’d been taken down by the cops during one of their runs, Beck somehow started suspecting me, so he’d broken into the staff room, found the burner in my purse, called the only number stored in it, and Snap had answered.

I was curious about this as well as curious about how Snap and Roscoe had known where to find me.

This wasn’t what was on my mind at that time, standing in Zip’s Gun Emporium with Zip and Snap.

What was on my mind was that it had ended up where Snap and I had a lot of phone conversations that had nothing to do with what was going down with Chaos and Bounty.

We just talked, about everything.

He knew about my mom and dad. He knew I liked my job but mostly the people I worked for. He knew my favorite pastime was shopping but I also liked going to movies and reading.

I knew he got along with his folks, was still tight with his brother and sister, even if he’d found another family in Chaos. I knew he spent a lot of time reading, mostly thrillers (I even knew Steve Berry was his favorite author, he was a Cotton fiend). Having that knowledge, it wasn’t a big jump to the fact Snap was also a history buff. So if he wasn’t reading, doing Chaos stuff, out on a ride (a lot of the time solitary, even if he found the brotherhood, it was just his way), he watched documentaries.

And we were both X-Files fans.

But before we got into the marathon phone conversation drill, we’d met up and he was Snapper. The boy-next-door biker with the easy-to-be-with nature and even easier grin.

He was Chaos so the badass was inherent.

It just had never been apparent.

Right then, the way he held my gaze steady, looking over his leather-clad shoulder, the Chaos patch on the back of his cut, his face set, making a point, the badass was out.

And damn it…

I liked it.

“I would aim to maim,” I shared shakily, not feeling very happy about this new way Snap Kavanaugh could affect me.

“Do you have even a little clue how good a marksman you gotta be to aim to maim and do that shit successfully in an uncertain or tense situation?” he asked.

“Marksperson,” I muttered.

He turned slowly to me, the badass still brimming from him, vibrating against me, and my determination not to get involved with another biker ever (and definitely imminently) took a hit.

God, why did my dad have to be so awesome?

Why couldn’t I be attracted to geeks, metrosexuals, or hipsters?

“Rosalie, this shit is serious,” he stated, all steely.

Snapper, easy-to-be-with was great.

Snapper being steely in a gun shop was fantastic.

Time to escape.

“I think I need to go home,” I mumbled.

“We’re goin’ for coffee,” Snap declared.

“We’re not going for coffee,” I returned.

“You in a gun shop lookin’ to get armed, time I give you space to regroup is done. We need to talk,” he told me.

“We don’t have anything to talk about anymore.”

Steely gone, gentle and sweet in its place, Snap said, “Rosie, there will never be a time when you and me don’t have shit to talk about.”

Whoa, that was crazy-sweet.

I decided to get mad instead of scared.

Or excited.

“I just got beat to hell by my boyfriend and his brothers,” I reminded him.

“You got beat to hell six days ago by an asshole I always knew was an asshole but now you know is an asshole, though you already knew it, you just weren’t admitting it. And in those six days you’ve also figured out why you were with him but you still had all the time in the world to have a lotta phone conversations with me.”