I can feel my stomach sink straight to the floor.
I lock eyes with Mack.
“God damn it. The truck,” I shout.
We race outside just as the motorcycles speed out of the parking lot and my eyes take in the gut-twisting sight of our cargo truck, full of bullet holes and letting loose a thick column of smoke from under the hood.
Violet’s just steps behind us, with her cell phone pressed tight to her ear and her bat in her free hand. “I need an ambulance and the police to the Timberline Tavern. Please hurry,” she says, kneeling over Teddy’s prone body.
“Teddy, Teddy, no,” the red -aired waitress says as she kneels over the body of the bleeding Teddy.
“Blaze, take care of him,” I say.
“On it,” he says, and the former firefighter puts some of his first aid training to work, gently pushing the waitress aside and kneeling over Teddy — who is bleeding knife wound to his gut — and putting heavy pressure on the wound.
“Mack, Snake, you two pop the hood and take a look at that truck. We need to get it running and get it the fuck out of here before the cops show up.”
The two run to the truck in start surveying the damage. I know I should join them,;the truck is a mess of holes and they could use all the help they can get, but I turn instead to Violet, who’s got a white knuckle grip on her baseball bat and is hovering over her wounded friend. Her green eyes are as wide as dinner plates, and her face is ashen white with fear.
I shouldn’t, but I put a hand on her shoulder.
Tonight was supposed to be low key. A few drinks after a hard day of riding and a little fun before another early wakeup and a day of more monotonous driving.
Instead, I find her.
And now I’m up to my neck in some local MC bullshit.
And, when I should be thinking about our cargo, I’m more concerned with this woman. This woman with steel in her spine and a don’t-fuck-with-me attitude.
And a whole hell of a lot of complications to go along with her sinfully-sweet body.
“Your friend is going to be OK.”
“What do you care?” She snaps.
I shrug. Deep down, I’m grateful she’s got such an icy attitude. With her looks, if she was anything other than a prickly bitch, I’d have a hard time saying ‘no’ to her.
“I don’t. Not really. I don’t know your friend,” I say. The screams of approaching sirens joins the whistle of the cold Colorado mountain wind. For one blissful moment, I pause as Mack and Snake try to start the cargo truck and the heavy engine turns over — and then dies with an ear-splitting screech of steel.
“You’re a dick,” she mutters.
“All I wanted was a few drinks and a quiet night. If that makes me a dick, then I guess I’m a dick.”
“You know, I wanted the same thing. And now I have my friend bleeding in my parking lot and the local motorcycle club is probably going to try to kill me. Guess we don’t always get what we want, do we?”
I laugh. “No, I guess not. And there’s a good chance your night is about to get even worse.”
Bright green eyes flash warily at me. She tightens her grip on the bat and worries the corner of one plump lip between her teeth; I see the calculus she’s working over in her mind — how many times could I bash this biker in the face before someone stops me?
“What do you mean?”
Sheriff’s cars and an ambulance pull into the parking lot. Flashing lights and wailing sirens. Some balding older dickhead in a rumpled brown uniform is the first out of one of the sheriff’s cars. He’s followed by two other younger men who have the fresh-faced look of deputies.
“There’s cargo in that truck. The kind of cargo that the sheriffs would just love to get their hands on,” I say.
She shrugs. “You’re talking like I care. I don’t.”
“That sheriff looks like he has a hard-on for showing how big a man he is in this town. Am I right?”
“Yes, Sheriff Cartwright is a bit of an asshole”
“How good do you think it’ll be for your business if it’s not only the site of a stabbing and a shooting, but if there’s a seizure of the kind of cargo that’ll make headlines all the way from here to fucking Denver? Do you think any of the richies in Aspen that you count on to come down and ‘slum it up’ will want to come spend their money here?”
She looks towards her bar. It’s a modest wood building, with faded paint and plenty of wear and tear from the hard winters they get here in the Rocky Mountains. It’s nothing special. But, from the way her eyes shine, I can tell this bar, with its hand-painted ‘Timberline Tavern’ sign, is her pride and joy.
“What do I need to do?”
“Simple. You either get this sheriff to fuck off without looking in my truck, or you lose your bar.”
Chapter Three
Violet
As a bartender, I deal with assholes on a near-daily basis. And Crash is raising the bar for all of them; he’s achieving new milestones in assholedom, and he’s doing it with this forcefully calm demeanor that just digs right under my skin; he’s telling me I could lose my bar — the place I’ve lovingly slaved at, night and day, for the last
