Breaking His Exile (Valor Ridge #5)

Chapter 1

one

Once, there’d been a plan.

Not a good one.

Okay, maybe not even a plan at all, but at least an order of operations: get the hell clear of California, keep moving, use cash only, and absolutely, under no circumstances, contact her brother until she had no choice.

At eleven p.m., forty miles outside Solace, Montana, Rainey Beckett ran out of choices when her ancient Ford truck ran out of gas.

Damn faulty gauge still showed a quarter of a tank, but the truck sputtered to a halt on the shoulder of a dark mountain road and died.

The only thing she could do was laugh.

Because the alternative was to start screaming and maybe never stop.

She slouched back, found her backpack on the passenger seat, and did a quick census: a crushed pack of gum, cherry ChapStick, five blue guitar picks, her phone with a cracked screen and precisely zero bars of service.

A crumpled Black Flag T-shirt and a note—folded so many times the creases had gone white—buried at the bottom. She left the note where it was.

She glanced in the rearview mirror, but the road behind her was as empty as it was in front of her. Not that she’d accept a ride from a stranger anyway.

She leaned her forehead against the steering wheel and muttered, “Fuck.”

Now what?

God, that had always been her life, hadn’t it? A series of misfortunes and bad luck followed by now what?

Well, she’d found her way out of situations worse than this. She’d figure this one out, too. She just had to stop wallowing and think.

There was a bar a few miles back. The Dead Marshall. She remembered it because of the bikes out front. A chill had scraped down her spine when she saw them, and she’d thanked her lucky stars she hadn’t needed to stop.

She could walk there and use their phone to call River.

“Hey, Riv. I know we haven’t talked in like nine years, but I’m stranded. I’m forty miles out. Come get me.”

Almost a decade of silence and that was the sentence that would break it— not “how dare you?” or “I love you” or “I hate you” or “I missed you” or any of the other things she’d imagined when she saw him again. Just “I need you,” which was the one thing she’d sworn she’d never say to him again.

No.

She couldn’t do it.

She couldn’t call him.

Not yet.

She’d make gas money the way she’d done everything since she was sixteen — by herself, owing nobody — then she’d drive into Solace and figure out the rest when she got there.

She grabbed her guitar from the backseat and stepped out into the night. She left her backpack. The fewer things she had to carry, the better. She shut the door, took one more look up and down the road, and started walking.

It was colder than she expected for early July. The Dead Marshall was three miles back, maybe four, and she didn’t see another car for the entire walk. When she finally rounded the last bend and saw the sign burning like a lighthouse through the trees, her stomach cramped with dread.

Was this a good idea?

Probably not, but she didn’t have any others.

But this was going to be the last one. The last roadhouse, the last set played for gas money and a warm meal, the last night sleeping in the truck with the doors locked and the guitar case wedged against the passenger door like it could stop anything.

Solace was close. River was close. She just had to get there.

Inside, the place smelled like every bar she’d played since she was sixteen — spilled beer and old wood and a sad desperation underneath it that no amount of scrubbing ever got out.

Low ceiling. Dark beams. A neon sign throwing purple across the far corner, and a jukebox grinding out something about a woman who left and a man who should’ve known better.

She scanned the room on the way to the bar, because that was who she was now — a woman who clocked threats and knew every exit before she sat down.

It was surprisingly busy for a roadhouse.

Men in cowboy hats mingled with flirty women in too-tight halter tops and jeans.

It all looked safe enough. The only people to give her pause were the men at the pool table, who appeared to be the owners of the bikes out front, but they weren’t wearing cuts and paid her no attention.

Still, she’d avoid them.

Then there was the man at the end of the bar, nursing a beer.

He sat alone and gave off major don’t-fuck-with-me-vibes.

Long dark hair, dark beard, and a stillness to him that should have felt threatening but didn’t.

A huge black dog that looked like it bench-pressed small cars for fun stretched out under his stool, chin on its paws, dark eyes moving over the room in slow sweeps.

Both looked semi-feral, and the fact that he was allowed in here with the dog without anyone harassing him said a lot about the kind of man he was.

Yeah, she’d avoid him. The dog, too.

The bartender was a skinny man with a grizzled beard, who looked as if nothing surprised him anymore.

She crossed to him and plastered on a smile. “Hi, I ran out of gas a few miles back—”

“Need a phone?” He pulled an old wireless phone from under the bar and slid it across the bar. It came to a spinning stop in front of her.

She stared at it.

She could still call River. She knew his number by heart from all the other times she’d almost called him over the years.

“Uh, no.” She lifted her guitar. “I was hoping I could play a set for tip money? I’m good. I even had a record deal.”

It wasn’t much of one. One album that did well on the indie pop charts, a few shows, and then Mal got jealous and shut it all down.

That should’ve been her first red flag.

No, not even the first. The hundredth. But she’d ignored it just like all the others, until the day she finally saw something that she couldn’t ignore.

The bartender eyed the case, then her, and grunted. “Won’t do you a lick of good. Nearest gas station is another fifteen-mile hike down the mountain.”

“Oh, shit.” She hadn’t thought that far ahead. She’d just been so focused on earning money for gas, she hadn’t considered how she’d actually get the stuff to her truck.

“Okay, listen.” He leaned on the bar and nodded toward the small raised platform across the room that served as a stage.

“You’re too pretty to be out here wandering these mountains alone.

Something happened to you, I’d have to live with that, and I don’t want to.

So you play your set, and I’ll give you the can of gas I keep for the generator out back. And you can keep any tips.”

She wanted to reach across the bar, grab his skinny face, and plant one on him. “Thank you! You’re an angel.”

He barked out a laugh that drew the guy at the end of the bar’s attention. “Far from it. Want a drink? On the house.”

She ordered a whiskey neat and, even though he said it was on the house, she still slid her last bill across before he finished pouring, because paying up front meant she owed nobody anything and could leave whenever she wanted. She threw it back. It burned going down, and she was glad for it.

Then she carried her case to the stage. A few people watched her as she set up, but it was the man at the end of the bar’s gaze she felt the most. She avoided looking in his direction.

She settled the guitar in her lap, dropped the mic stand two inches, and checked the tuning by ear. Three small turns of the pegs. Checked it again. The room went a little quieter in front of her, the way rooms did when they figured out something was about to happen.

She opened with the song that had landed her on several one-hit-wonder lists. Four bars of finger picking, spare, letting the notes fall into the quiet. Her voice came in on the fifth bar, and she let it come rough, the way it wanted to.

I’ve chased neon halos down empty highways,

Drank from bottles that never filled the ache.

Tried to find a home in a stranger’s arms,

But it burned out fast as a paper flame…

Easy song. Safe song. The one she could play in her sleep, in any bar, for any audience.

Maybe what I’m running from

Is what I’m searching for…

She closed her eyes for the last line. Dropped it to almost nothing. When she opened them, the pool players were watching, the women had stopped flirting, and the cowboys stared. The bartender had set down his rag, and somebody let out a single sharp whistle into the silence.

She let herself enjoy it for one breath, then she went into the next one, the one with more drive, more teeth, because she needed an outlet for her frustration.

You got to leave

And somebody had to stay…

Her voice cracked on stay, and she leaned into the crack instead of hiding it, because the room liked it better broken. And because she was only forty miles up the road from the only person who’d know exactly what the line meant, and he didn’t know she was coming.

She was halfway through the second verse when the door hit the wall hard enough to shake the building. Her hand jerked off the strings, breath catching, but her mind lagged a half-beat behind.

Then everything came rushing in, every nerve awake, adrenaline flooding her system.

She knew what that sound meant.

They’d found her.

Three men in leather cuts walked in, Sons of Sin, California in an arc across their backs. But the man in front wasn’t the one she’d expected to see. Broad through the shoulders, shaved head, gray coming into his beard, he was an older, more grizzled version of her ex.

Mal’s father.

Rux Granger.

She didn’t recognize the younger of the two men behind him, but his cut told her he was from the Montana chapter, not California. He spread wide toward the pool tables without being told, trapping her on the stage.

But the other man—leaner, older, meaner—she knew all too well. Hobbs. He was the one the SoS called in for dirty work. He drifted to the door, blocking that exit, and waited.

Rainey’s fingers curled around the neck of her guitar. Her heart slammed against her ribs, a frantic, trapped rhythm.

Get up. Move.

But her legs wouldn’t listen.

Oh, God. This was it. She was dead.