“Misdirection,” I found myself whispering.
Eric stared at me, his gaze unmoving; his eyes unblinking.
“And if they track you down?” I dared myself to ask him.
“You know the answer to that.”
I did. He’d told me enough. He’d promised me in the days of our midnight rides and our hell raising that if he had to prove to me that he was sorry, he’d take the fall to save me this time. He’d take the fall to pay his debt to the club for running out.
If they tracked him down, Eric was going to let them take him in.
And I had no fucking idea how I felt about that.
“Eric can take my bike,” I found myself telling Slater and Jedd suddenly. “Get it out of the yard. Ayda and I will take the repo truck.”
Ayda nodded in agreement before glancing back at me. “Let’s get this done before they roll in those gates. I’m not letting those assholes take anyone else from our family.”
My jaw twitched as I stared at her, but with one look, I knew she was right. “Get him the fuck up,” I ordered, before I turned, found my cut, and slid it over my shoulders.
Jedd and Slater worked quickly, pushing Owen to his feet without any tenderness at all. He groaned, cried out, hissed, and spat before he staggered and stumbled to the side. Slater caught him quickly, and Jedd left Slater, moving out of the training room at once without saying a word to any of us. After a few minutes, Slater had bound Owen’s hands together behind his back with his torn shirt, and Jedd was walking back into the room with a bunch of keys in his hand. He took one look at me and tossed them in the air, and I caught them swiftly, the skin stretching over my already swollen knuckles, reminding me how good it felt to inflict pain in the name of revenge.
“He’s all yours,” Slater said, pushing him towards me. I caught him hard, my fingers digging into the flesh of his flabby bicep and my face turning to his drooping eyes and weak body. I stared down at the keys in my hand, my thumb rubbing over them before I looked up and caught sight of Rubin standing just behind Ayda.
I’d forgotten the kid was there.
“You going to be okay?” I asked him.
He nodded once, his eyes showing more concern than the rest of his face would allow. “Yeah.”
“You stay near Jedd and Slate, okay? They’ll look after you, and if you need somewhere to stay after today… if you don’t feel like you can go home—”
“This is my home now,” Rubin interrupted boldly.
Fuck. That was a hell of a statement to make from a kid his age, but who the fuck was I to argue? I’d found my familyin these men at a much younger age, and there was something about the fire in Rubin’s eyes—a real fire, unlike Tate’s whose was still growing, unsure whether he was a boy or man, good guy or bad—that told me he wasn’t to be argued with.
“I hope it gives you what you need,” was all I added, before I watched Slater and Jedd move over to Rubin and guide him outside, leaving only me, Ayda, and the man I wanted to crush beneath the wheels of my bike. “You ready?” I asked Ayda.
“I’m always ready,” she said, backing toward the door. “I think I have an idea of where we could take him.”
Pushing the traitorous bastard forward, the three of us walked out of the room, Owen stumbling while Ayda and I marched with an urgency that only grew in speed as soon as we hit the air outside and heard the roar of bikes in the distance—bikes that no doubt belonged to my returning brothers.
“Lead us,” I told her sharply, putting every man’s fate in her hands without a flicker of doubt or worry.
She looked at me, then Owen, making a mental calculation before speaking. “I found what you asked me to look for. Harry said there were files missing. He searched Owen’s room, but there was nothing there. If you know where he lives…” She glanced at Owen again. “I bet we’d find enough shit to put some of you away for a long time. Harry wrote one word where he mentioned the missing files. Leverage. With lots of question marks.”
My frown was deep when I looked at her, pressing the fob on the keys in my hand, waiting to see which car lit up, beeped, or started fucking talking like it was KIT from Knight Rider. “Harry had all that in his room?” I asked, looking up tosee the lights on a white lifted Dodge Ram flashing in front of us. Perfect.
“It wasn’t complete, and he was still piecing shit together, but it looked like he’d only figured out it was Owen just before he was…” She trailed off and looked over at me again. “He left it somewhere only you would think to look for it. He wasn’t hiding it fromyou, Drew.”
I faced forward, my frown fixed in place as I thought about everything that had happened since I’d gotten out of prison.
All the things Harry had said to me I couldn’t make sense of.
All the subtle truths he’d whispered by my side that I didn’t understand.
All the times I brushed his ramblings off as the talk of an over-concerned old man who needed to give me room to breathe.
All the times I didn’t listen to him… and what I’d give to be able to listen to him now.