“That shouldn’t matter, Grier. Not after all he’s done for you. Whatever happens personally, you need to show some professional gratitude. They’re good guys. If he wants to save you, he’s gonna save you, even if he does it with you kicking and screaming.” He looked at her seriously. “Do you need saving?”
“Yes,” she bit out, her tone completely pissed off, and that merited a grin from him.
“Ah, chère, it’s not so bad being cared about, you know. Give it a try.”
* * *
Grier went to search out Reid, went in through the back room to the main part of the tattoo shop when a dark shadow fell across the steps. She reached for a gun she no longer wore.
But Reid was there with a hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay—he’s with us.”
He walked over toward them quietly, but his swagger was unmistakable. He was tall, like Reid, well built. And on the back of the chair near him was a black leather vest with a rocker that proclaimed him part of the Outlaw Angels Motorcycle Club.
Inadvertently, she took a step back. He noticed, and maybe he even winced a little.
She’d dealt with the OA before—an unlucky girlfriend the DA turned in order to avoid a drug conviction. They were a particularly nasty group, who treated their women like property. One of the first cases she’d helped with was an OA witness. She’d been new, hadn’t been assigned anything yet. When the call came in, she’d ridden along with two other marshals.
The witness was being dragged around by her hair. Her body was already limp from the beating she’d taken. The coroner would later report that she would’ve died from the internal injuries alone. The bullet the OA had put in her head had been for effect. Done right in front of them.
“If I’m going to jail anyway, I might as well kill her” had been the OA member’s reasoning.
She tried to reconcile what she knew about the gang with the man standing near her. His hair was short. Blond. He was handsome and clean. He had on a T-shirt and jeans, black motorcycle boots like she’d seen Reid wear at times.
“Grier, this is Keegan,” Reid told her.
Keegan. The man partially responsible for saving her life, who nodded as if not wanting to make her any more uncomfortable. He stood almost stock-still.
She stuck her hand out and he shook it.
“Keegan’s getting out of the OA,” Reid explained.
“You didn’t get in trouble with the OA for helping me, did you?” she blurted out, and Keegan gave her a tight-lipped smile.
“Nah. It’s . . . bigger than that. It’s just time,” he explained. “Reid’s been offering to help me for years.”
“You’re going to help him disappear?” she asked, and Reid nodded.
“With Gunner’s help,” he added.
Talk about looking over your shoulder for the rest of your life, she thought. “How long have you been with the OA?”
“Since I was sixteen. Started out as a probie with them after they caught me sleeping in their clubhouse—on the roof, actually. I’d run away from home,” Keegan said, and she remembered what Reid told her about Gunner, not to ask questions and she felt guilty for asking about his life. Keegan didn’t seem to mind talking about it—maybe he even needed to.
And Reid didn’t say anything to her, instead telling Keegan, “Hiding people is Grier’s specialty with the marshals.”
“I’ll take all the help I can get.”
“So the OA just helped out a runaway?” she asked.
“I was safer on the streets than I was with my parents. These guys took me in, gave me a job when I had nowhere else to go. They didn’t pressure me to join at all, didn’t ask me to do anything illegal. But after years of working around them and helping them and getting to know them . . . they were my family.”
He laughed a little, like he had a hard time believing it himself. “They’re not bad guys—it’s just something about the power that makes them do stupid, horrible things. I didn’t see it then—all I wanted was to be allowed in, and they let me. I’d already proven myself loyal—I knew a lot working and living in the clubhouse. I saw everything and I kept my mouth shut. I knew how to ride, fix a bike. Shoot a gun.”
“I understand you still need an official initiation,” she said quietly.
“I made my first kill and got my rocker.” He paused. “A guy who’d raped an OA’s girlfriend. I remember feeling like I was avenging her. Now I know that violence just breeds more violence. I can’t do it anymore. And I’ll never be free otherwise.”
“Are you worried they’ll find you?”
“I’ll be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life. But it’s worth it,” he said. “I’m thirty years old. I want freedom. I’ll never have it with them.”
“What will you do?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I’ve got to avoid anything to do with my old life, so no bartending, fixing cars. No motorcycles. It’s starting over,” he said. “I’m thinking Alaska.”
Reid smiled at that and she remembered him telling her about being in foster care there with Kell, going on dangerous crab fishing boats.
She had a strong feeling that no matter what Keegan did, he’d be fine.
“Keegan, I’ve got something to show you,” Gunner called from the other room.
Keegan excused himself, leaving her alone with Reid. Reid, who wouldn’t even look at her, just leafed through one of the many tattoo magazines lying on the counter.
She’d been so completely selfish in all of this, thinking about right and wrong, black and white. In this situation, she was firmly in the gray. Meeting Keegan confirmed that. It was time to change her vantage point.
It was time to change everything.
“I’ve been horrible,” she said to him.
“Yes,” he agreed, meeting her gaze; he wasn’t going to give her an inch. She would have to take it back, bit by bit.
“I’m sorry.” It was all she could manage before the tears started and she realized just
