Chased by the Biker Shadow novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Gate

Roz rides back at dawn with Ronan behind her and finds Misty at the gate wearing the necklace. In front of the whole club she demands her father's ashes, and Bronco smiles and says to take them if she can win three laps.

I rode back into the Iron Saints lot at eleven-fifty with a torn sleeve and blood drying down my arm.

Ronan rode in behind me, close on my left rear, exactly where he had told me to stay.

The party had not stopped.

Bikes still lined the fence, and the whole club stood out front under the floodlights, drinking and waiting.

Everyone turned when my engine cut off.

The talking died down one table at a time.

I pulled off my helmet and shook out my braid.

My leg was shaking, and I locked my knee so nobody would see it.

Then I saw the front steps.

Misty stood on the top one, in a leather jacket two sizes too big, with one hand resting on her chest.

Around her neck hung a thin silver chain.

At the bottom, on the clasp, a small letter D caught the light.

It had been on the floor of the back room three hours ago.

Now it was hers.

Her smile was slow and enormous.

"You came back," she said. "That was quick."

My hands curled into fists on the grips.

Beside me, Ronan went completely still.

I felt it more than I saw it.

His hand had closed around his handlebar so hard that the leather creaked.

He was staring at Misty's throat.

I thought, he hates her more than I do.

I didn't have time to wonder why.

Bronco came down the steps with a beer in his hand and his shirt on inside out.

He did not look sorry.

He looked sure of how the night would end.

"Roz," he said. "Babe. There you are."

I swung off my bike.

My boots hit the gravel hard, and I let him see that I wasn't leaning on anything.

"Where is my father?"

"Inside. On the bar."

"I'm taking him."

"Sure you are." He took a slow sip. "Come inside, apologize to the club for making a scene, and put the necklace back on. Then you can take him anywhere you want."

Someone in the crowd snickered.

I looked at Misty's neck again.

"It looks better on her," I said. "It always looked like a leash."

The snicker stopped.

Misty's hand flew up to the chain.

Bronco's jaw worked.

"Don't do this in front of everybody."

"You did this in front of everybody."

"I told you, it's nothing."

"You told me she was a groupie. You told me you wouldn't waste a night on her. Then you let her sit on you with the door open and watched my face."

Nobody laughed now.

A few of the older bikers looked at their boots.

Bronco's eyes went cold.

He lifted one hand, and a prospect ran inside and came back out carrying the steel urn.

He set it on the hood of a truck under the lights.

My father's dates looked tiny and bright in the middle of all that gravel.

Then the prospect set down a red gas can beside it and unscrewed the cap.

The smell of fuel drifted across the lot.

"I wasn't kidding about midnight," Bronco said.

My throat locked.

I thought about every Sunday I had spent in this yard as a little girl, sitting on my father's boots while he fixed bikes.

I thought about his big dry hand around mine at the end, in the hospital bed, when he said look after the club.

"Touch that can," I said, "and I will put you in the ground myself."

"Big words from a girl with one arm."

"Pour it, Beau."

I had never called him Beau in front of the club.

Only my father used that name, and only when Bronco was in trouble.

A huge shape moved at the back of the crowd.

The bikers parted.

Cyrus Doyle, the president of the Iron Saints, walked out of the clubhouse with a white-streaked grey beard down to his chest and his vest hanging open.

He was fifty-eight years old and he had buried half his friends.

He was Bronco's uncle.

He had held my father's hand at the funeral.

"Beau," he said, quiet and deep. "Put the can down."

"Uncle Cyrus, this is a private matter."

"A man's ashes are not private. They belong to the club."

"They belong to his daughter," I said.

Cyrus looked at me for a long moment.

Then he looked at the can, and the urn, and the girl at the top of the steps with a stolen necklace around her neck.

His face did not change.

I could not tell what he saw.

"Roz asks for her father," he said. "Beau, give him to her."

Bronco turned and smiled at his uncle.

It was the exact smile he gave me when he was about to win.

"Of course. But she walked out of this club in front of sixty witnesses, and she shamed me doing it. A challenge in the lot is club law, right? So I challenge her."

A murmur ran through the bikers.

"To what?" Cyrus said.

"The old quarry track. Three laps. Her Sportster against my Fat Boy, in front of everybody."

He turned back to me, and his eyes went flat.

"You win, your daddy goes home with you and nobody touches you. I win, you come back on your knees and wear the necklace in front of the whole club."

The silence in the lot was complete.

Misty's smile had finally slipped.

"Don't," Ronan said next to me, very low.

I looked at the urn on the hood.

I looked at my father's name.

"Start the lights," I said.

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