Prologue 2

Privately, Jack thought that was pretty sad. But then again, it’s not like he’d spent Christmas trimming the tree and opening presents with a smiling wife and a few overexcited kids. Maybe he needed to dial down the judgment just a bit.

“The second you can, you call me,” Jack said now. “Tell me what the hell.”

“I will.”

“And as soon as you move her, you leave Warren with her as guard, OK? Alone, if you can. Just like we discussed.”

“Yeah. Just like we discussed.”

Without another word, Jack disconnected the call, as far from sleep now as it was possible to be. The thought that an innocent woman had gotten caught up in all this shit made his stomach clench up, hard.

Shay was taking the fall for something that she’d had nothing to do with: she’d been taken because Ace had been passing intel on to Jack, who’d in turn passed it on to King. From there, King had mobilized his team of ex-special-ops types, known collectively as King’s Men. With the local cops and the feds, they’d busted several of Kirk Jensen’s businesses wide open, burned others to the ground, and killed anyone who’d opened fire on them.

It had been a bloody, brutal, and violent few months, and Jensen had just recently shut down and dug in. Started to look at his lieutenants, and associates, and contacts; he’d started to look damn hard. He was utterly convinced that the reason for so many successful police and fed busts was because of a rat… and of course, he was right.

The problem was that Kirk was sure the big-mouth was Crusher Alcott, the President of the Highway Hellions MC over in Utah. According to Ace, Crusher was the middle man in one of Kirk’s most profitable drug corridors, the one running from Colorado to Nevada. Ace and his MC got the drugs as far as Utah, where Crusher and his boys picked things up and made all the final drop-offs, as instructed.

It was a good arrangement, but the word on the street was that Crusher was fed up with being Jensen’s delivery boy. He had aspirations and ambitions of his own, apparently, and he wanted to start up his own drugs operation, with his MC pocketing all the profits. No way to do that with Jensen in the picture, though, so the tension and mistrust between the two men was off-the-charts.

Jensen’s thinking was logical and clear: he’d come to believe that Crusher was setting him up to fail. Kirk thought that Crusher was looking to shake and shatter Jensen’s infrastructure, and damage his credibility with suppliers and customers alike. Once Jensen had lost his supreme position, maybe even gone to jail at long last, then Crusher could just sweep on in and take over.

Taking Shay Alcott was a typical Jensen move – using family and other loved ones to get people to do what he wanted. It wasn’t a shock that he’d gone this way, but the issue was that Crusher Alcott wasn’t the one who was helping to destroy Kirk’s empire from the inside.

No, that was Ace, all the way. Ace and King’s Men. And now this young woman was collateral damage, and Jack was having a hard time getting square with that.

He sighed, picked up his work cell, punched in King’s number.

“Taylor?” King’s guttural rasp was in his ear. “What?”

“Shay Alcott. She’s on her way here now.”

“But not with Ace,” King said. The man hadn’t missed a beat, and he wasn’t asking a question.

“No. Some Vegas outfit that does outsourcing work for Jensen.”

“Damn. When does she arrive?”

“In less than seven hours.”

“Ace will take control of her?”

“Yeah. She’ll be brought to the clubhouse, then moved and kept under Fallen Angels supervision. He says that Warren gets the babysitting job.”

“Good.” King thought for a few seconds, and Jack waited. “Is she alright?”

“Ace said he thought so. But, I mean, she has to be terrified, King.”

“No, I know. Hopefully, Warren will be a friendly face until all this mess gets sorted.”

“You think it will get sorted?” Jack asked, all healthy scepticism. “Jensen’s going to accuse Crusher of working against him, Crusher’s going to deny it, and then – what? Jensen’s going to say, ‘Oh, my bad. Here’s your sister back?’”

“Not a chance.”

“So?”

“I have a plan, man. Don’t worry.”

Right away, Jack felt much, much better. Yeah, of course King had a plan; the man always had a plan. And a Plan ‘B’, as well as Plans ‘C’ through ‘R’. No way he was leaving an innocent woman in the hands of a bunch of MC assholes. Not while he was drawing breath.

“You gonna share?” Jack said, already knowing the answer.

“Nope.”

Jack laughed. “I figured.”

“So why’d you ask?”

“Because I live in the hope that someday, you’ll actually voluntarily offer information long before it’s necessary to relinquish your death-grip on it.”

“Yeah?” King said, his voice a ferocious growl. “Dream on, Taylor.”

“Yeah.” Jack shook his head, his worry for Shay settling into his chest now. It’d stay there, he knew, until whatever King had in mind had unfolded and then wrapped up. Hopefully without complications. “I’ll do that, man. I’ll just keep dreaming.”

“Speaking of which… goodnight.”

“Goodnight. I’ll call you as soon as I hear from Ace.”

“Uh-huh.” Now it was King who sighed, and Jack knew that the other man’s chest was also full of hope, worry, and care for Shay Alcott. “You do that.”