Chapter One

Present day

Carl ‘Tex’ Sinclair and Clarice ‘Honey’ Potts pulled up outside The Web Café, and parked the dark SUV. They squinted through the early-February gloom, stared grimly at the brightly-lit, bustling café.

“Jeeeeesus,” Tex said, his Texan drawl giving the word an especially-disgusted edge. “I do not want to do this.”

“Right?” Honey replied, her baby-blue eyes narrowing as she scoped the busy street outside. “I wish to hell that I was with King and Jack right now. Body-disposal duty in the middle of a goddamn snow storm would be way better than this. Hands-frickin’-down.”

“Mmmm-hmmmm.” Tex checked his gun, checked the sidewalk in the driver’s side mirror. “I’d actually give a lot to be helping to put Kirk Fuckin’ Jensen in the ground once and for all. Never thought I’d see the day that the man kicked the bucket, and the fact that Ace Cuddy of all damn people was the one to pull the trigger gives me nothing but the happy feels, I swear to Christ.”

“Yeah, well.” Honey checked her own weapon, checked her own mirror. “Cuddy has started a damn war now, and we’d better start making sure that certain individuals are out of the direct line of fire.”

“Yeah.” Tex opened his door, lifted his collar against the wind. “Let’s go get him. What are the chances that he’ll come quietly and happily?”

“Uh, I’d say slim-to-none.”

“I’m with you.” Tex sighed. “I’d say that you’re even being wildly optimistic.”

“Yeah,” Honey agreed, her high-heeled boots clicking on the sidewalk as they headed for the café door. “I’m undoubtedly doing just that, cowboy.”

They walked into The Web, and spotted Liam ‘Spider’ Valance right away. They’d never met the man before, but that hardly mattered in identifying him, of course. The spider web tattooed across his face, the spiders tattooed around his neck – they were visible at two hundred paces, and no way anybody else in the whole of Denver had these distinctive tattoos. Hell, possibly nobody else in the whole state had them.

“Ready?” Tex muttered to Honey. “You want me to do the talking?”

“I’d love for you to do the talking,” she said. “I got your back.”

“Thanks, girl,” Tex said as he sauntered over to the counter. “Coffees are on you.”

“Deal.”

Spider looked up as a tall, broad, blond man approached the counter, looking like he meant business. Spider didn’t know why he thought that, but something about the way that the man was moving just made Spider want to back right up. The guy was clearly physically commanding and intimidating as hell… and those icy-cold green eyes didn’t help matters even slightly.

“Hello,” Spider said cautiously to the gorgeous scary man, as he just stood there looking equal parts insanely-hot and -terrifying. “Can I help you?”

“Two black coffees to go,” the guy said in a delicious southern drawl. “And is there someplace that we can have a word privately?”

Now Spider did take that step back. “Uh – why?”

“Because we need to talk,” the man said. “All three of us.”

That was when Spider saw the tiny blonde woman behind the hulking sex-god. He might have had his eyes nailed on Spider, but the woman was looking around the room, really clocking every single customer, and nothing seemed to escape her notice. She looked just as intense, just as in-control as the blond man, and it suddenly occurred to Spider that he’d only ever seen that level of focus and smarts in two other men: Matt ‘King’ Kingston and Jackson ‘Jack’ Taylor.

Both badass ex-military, and secretive black ops experts, and highly-trained members of King’s Men.

That was when he knew that these two people weren’t customers on a much-needed coffee-run from the Hot People In Black office. They also weren’t standing in his café by accident.

“What’s happened?” Spider said, already thinking pretty seriously about panicking. “Why are you here?”

“You know who sent us?” the man asked.

Spider nodded. “King.”

“We need to talk,” the guy said brusquely. “Now. No bullshit, man.”

“I wasn’t even thinking of protesting,” Spider said, a bit taken aback at the stranger’s insistence. “I know that if you’re here, there’s a good reason.”

The man and woman nodded, and Spider felt fear clenching up in his flat stomach. Now what? It’s not like life hadn’t been eventful lately, and it’s not like Spider hadn’t been expecting the other shoe to drop but now that it was here, he realized that actually, he hadn’t been as prepared as he’d thought he was.

After all, if two of King’s Men were in front of him, then King clearly felt that there was danger on the horizon – immediate danger. Or maybe the danger was already on Spider, and he’d been blissfully serving coffee and baking cookies all day, blithely unaware that he was a man dancing on a cliff’s edge.

Worse, anything that involved King’s Men and himself meant – almost definitely – that The Fallen Angels MC was also involved.

And that meant that Ace Cuddy was either in trouble, or causing trouble.

Or possibly both.