The Devil’s Viking (The Road Devils MC #3)

Chapter Five

Wolf, Scars, Ice and Viking stared down the hallway at the young woman eating a sandwich in Wolf’s office, then looked at each other. They’d left her alone in there so she’d feel less surrounded and overwhelmed, but they had left the door open: she was a stranger and they needed at least three sets of eyes on her at all times.

“OK, so,” Wolf said to Viking. “Any thoughts, man?”

“Yeah, and none of them are good,” Viking said. “You’re gonna be pissed, Prez.”

“Go on then.” Wolf sighed. “Hit us with it. How did a woman end up in the back of the club cage with a steel drum full of dead-body shit?”

“The last time that I had that back door open was… was last night at the place that I… I got rid of the evidence.” Viking swallowed hard. “After that, I was in the van driving for hours on end.”

“You stopped somewhere?”

“Yeah, once at a crappy roadside café place, but the van was locked. No way she snuck in there.”

“So,” Scars said. “She climbed in when you were –”

“Disposing of Brian Fielding,” Viking supplied. “Yeah. Exactly.”

“Where was this?” Ice spoke for the first time that whole morning. “I know we aren’t supposed to know your dump site secrets, but we’re long past that now, right?”

Wolf nodded. “Damn right.”

“Utah,” Viking said reluctantly. “In the woods around the Uinta Mountains, about five miles from Takoma Ridge.”

“Utah?” Wolf repeated, incredulous. “Fuckin’ Utah ? Fuckin’ Crusher Alcott’s stompin’ ground? Fuckin’ Crusher Alcott who knows that Brian Fieldin’ was here in Denver, lookin’ for Jo? Fuckin’ Crusher Alcott who we’re hopin’ hard doesn’t come lookin’ for answers where Jo’s ex is?”

“Yeah,” Viking said heavily. “Fucking Utah.”

“Jesus,” Scars said. “Utah and Crusher just keep popping up all over the damn place, like there’s some weird magnetic disruption that sucks us into their crap all the time. Why the actual hell would you go there ?”

“Well, first,” Viking replied. “I know that mountain area well – better than I know anyplace else, if you know what I mean. Deep forests, hard to navigate, no hikers. No reason for anyone to head out that way at all.”

The three men nodded. They might not have any clue where Viking had buried the bodies over the past decade, but they assumed that he had his best, favorite, safest spots. Apparently Utah was one such place.

“And second,” Viking continued. “I burned that motherfucker to ashes that all blew away in the wind, and buried the few small bone fragments deep, and threw the teeth out of the van window at a few different remote spots around Utah. But if anything turns up, I thought it would be helpful to have him dead in the very state where the one-percenter MC that he did some lawyering work for is located.”

“Huh.” Wolf cocked his dark head. “You were thinkin’ about the connection between Alcott’s Highway Hellions and Fieldin’ as somethin’ positive, not negative after all?”

“Yeah,” Viking said. “He did work for them once that we know of, but who says it wasn’t more often, maybe on some really illegal and dangerous shit? And don’t MC lawyers get knocked off all the time, once they know too much or become liabilities?”

“Hmmmm,” Wolf muttered. “I mean – yeah. That’s actually –”

“Damn smart,” Ice said with rare approval. “And we can work with that, if we have to.”

“We can,” Scars agreed. “But hopefully it never comes to any of that. In the meantime…” He looked back at the woman. “What do we do with her ? I mean, she had to have seen something, right? If she got in the van at the site, then he must have seen you doing – whatever you were doing.”

“Yeah,” Wolf said slowly. “But you said that the whole reason you like that place is because nobody has any reason to be out that way.”

“Mm-hmm.” Viking nodded.

“OK, so…” Wolf stared hard at the woman in his office. “Why the hell was she way out there in the woods middle of the night, in the mountains in February? In a nightgown and oversized clothes and boots that clearly belong to a man? No pants or socks, just scarves all wrapped around her?”

“I don’t know,” Viking said. “She looks like someone on the run to me.”

“Me too.” Wolf looked at Ice. “Thoughts, man?”

“Yep. Good and bad.”

“Go on.”

“OK, well.” Ice paused. “Starting with the good thoughts: in terms of all the shit with Jo’s ex, I’m actually not worried about Crusher Alcott and his Hellions. I’m not even worried that Fielding was actually staying here in Denver with Dawson Kinney and his Blood Crew, and that there’s a connection closer to us through them. Yeah, by now they’ll all have noticed that Fielding is gone, and yeah, they’ll wonder why. For about ten minutes. Then they’ll either figure that he fled the country to get away from the federal investigation into him, or that he’s dead, maybe courtesy of us. Either way, they won’t worry about any of it too much.”

“But blackmail?” Scars asked. “Isn’t this something they could hold over our heads, that Fielding went missing right at the time he was looking to hurt Jo?”

“Why would they?” Ice said sensibly. “Blackmail is useless without leverage and whatever leverage that exists is scattered all over fucking Utah. Viking is a damn good body man – how many people did we disappear over the years and everyone in the MC world knew it was us, and nothing happened because there was nothing to be found? I think this whole thing will just blow over with Alcott and Kinney. Suspicions about what happened to Fielding are fine and good, but proof is impossible to get their hands on. Viking is too good for that.”

“OK,” Wolf said. “And the bad thoughts?”

“Her. All about her.” Ice nodded down the hallway. “She’s a puzzle and a problem. You’re bang-on, Wolf: what the fuck was she doing out there and why did she get in the van of a shady stranger? If she saw Viking burning a dead body, why would she voluntarily put herself anywhere near him instead of going to the cops?”

“Huh.” Viking stared at the club Enforcer. “So you think that the fact that she got in the van is a good thing? You think it means that she didn’t see me doing anything that scared her?”

“What I think is that a woman all alone in the woods, wearing a nightgown in the dead of winter, is desperate. The question that worries me more than what she might have seen is this: what was she getting away from that was so bad, that getting into a stranger’s van seemed like the better option?”

“Fuck,” Scars muttered. “I think I hate that question.”

“Also,” Ice continued mercilessly. “She has to have come from somewhere , so that means that not only is she a potential witness to Viking covering up a murder, she’s also a possible missing person. What if someone comes looking for her, and in doing so, retraces her steps to where Fielding’s few remains are? Right now, there’s zero direct connection between us and what’s in those Utah mountains – but what if some husband or boyfriend playing Sherlock Holmes blunders into the woods and sees the disturbed earth and gets all curious?”

“Goddammit,” Wolf said darkly. “I fuckin’ hate your bad thoughts.”

“I do have one more good one.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. It’s totally possible, even probable, that this woman is some fucked up random event that just fell into our orbit, and she won’t want to stay here. Maybe she was high and wandered out of the house, then climbed into the van for warmth and passed out. Maybe she ran from an abusive husband with just the nightgown on her back, and managed to grab some of his warm clothes on her way out the door. Now she’s cooled off, she might want to go back and make up or go stay with her Mom for a while.” Ice shrugged. “If it’s anything like any of that – and I really think that it is – then I suspect that she’ll crack after a few days and tell us that she’s someone really average and deadly dull, then she’ll beg to get out of here.”

“Wait,” Scars said, startled. “You said a few days ?”

“Uh-huh, he’s right,” Wolf said. “We can’t let her leave until we know exactly who she is and where she comes from, and what she saw and what she knows, and what she’s gonna say and to who. There are too many questions still, so she’s stayin’ for the foreseeable future."

Scars was thunderstruck. “But that means that we’re kidnapping her.”

“No, we ain’t,” Wolf said. “We’re just enjoyin’ the pleasure of her company until she tells us what we need to know. She got into that van all on her own, man, we didn’t grab her up against her will.”

“Fine. So we’re holding her hostage then,” Scars said. “Ask Jinx if this is all above-board.”

“Jinx will tell us to cover our asses, like any good lawyer would,” Wolf said abruptly. “He’ll have Jo’s and the club’s best interests at heart, and that means findin’ out as much as we can about our uninvited guest from Utah before we even think about settin’ her loose. Ice?”

“Already on it, Prez,” Ice said, taking his cell out of his pocket. “I’ll make a call. I know exactly who can help.”

“Can you go and get Zee from the parlour?” Wolf asked Viking. “She must have a change of clothes over there that we can give our mystery guest.”

“Got it, boss.”

Viking followed Ice down the hall into the bar, shaking his head at Rebel’s question about the toast and omelette, nodded at the coffee in a to-go cup. Yeah, he was starving and dragging his ass with exhaustion, but he wasn’t going home yet, probably not for a good long while. So he’d get by on caffeine and adrenalin for the moment.

Scars cleared his throat. “Wolf, what about Silver and Jo?” he said. “Should we tell them any of this? I mean, if this woman saw Viking getting rid of Fielding’s body…”

“Fuck.” Wolf briefly shut his eyes, wished hard for just one damn day of zero crises. “Didn’t think about that angle.”

“Yeah.” Scars ran his hand over the back of his neck. “I know that Jo is still recovering at Silver’s place, and he’ll be taking her up to Open Skies Ranch this afternoon. He told me that he wants to get her away from things and heal in a quiet, peaceful place. This would only upset her, I know, but should we say something?”

“No,” Wolf said definitively. “We don’t know what we’re dealin’ with, so let’s not tell her or Silver any of this. Not yet, not until we get some answers. If this woman saw somethin’ or we get even a hint from Ice that someone’s come lookin’ for her, then we’ll tell them.”

“OK.” Scars looked back at the woman. “ So we’ll try to talk to her?”

“That’s the plan.”

Wolf strode down the hall to his office, then slowed his roll as it occurred to him that having his six-foot-two, heavily-muscled and -tattooed self barrel towards the woman at speed was probably not the best way to approach this situation. He was at an utter loss where and even how to begin, and the last thing he wanted was to scare her, but he had to open the conversation somehow. He took a deep breath and called on his softer side, such as it was.

“ So ,” he said gruffly, then took it down a notch when she shrank back into the leather chair. “So. I’m Wolf. You got a name?”

She looked up at him with eyes of the deepest purple, so deep they looked almost black in the dim winter light. They were beautiful for sure, but they aged her. When he’d seen her standing there in the van in that child-like white nightgown, Wolf had assumed that she was a teenaged girl and a tiny one at that – but then he’d seen her eyes.

They were bottomless wells of something that he couldn’t name yet; they spoke volumes but Wolf couldn’t decipher the language. Whatever this woman had been through, however she’d ended up in the back of the van, it was all due to something that Wolf hadn’t come across in his life.

And seeing as he’d been through almost everything that could be unleashed upon mere mortals, that left very few versions of hell for this woman to have dragged herself out from, in the dead of night, in the dead of winter. That alone told him that Ice was most likely right: this woman had probably escaped an abusive relationship by the skin of her teeth and if that was the case, there might well be a violent, asshole husband coming looking for her.

Unlucky for said asshole, the Road Devils knew exactly how to handle men who beat on women. Just ask Brian Fielding.

Wolf cocked his dark head at her, tried a smile without too many teeth. “You wanna tell me your name?”

She shook her head, a look of pure terror on her pale face.

“OK, no rush.” He gestured at Scars. “This is my right-hand-man, Scars.”

“Hi,” Scars said.

She nodded, her long dark hair falling over her slim shoulders. She was shaking again and seeing as she was less than four feet away from the radiator cranked up to maximum, it had to be from fear. That made the men back up, back off. At least for now.

“You still hungry?” Wolf said. “Rebel can make you somethin’ hot if you want. A burger? Soup?”

She shook her head again, now biting her full lower lip hard enough to draw blood.

Not wanting to push her anymore, Wolf indicated back to the hallway with a jerk of his head, and Scars followed him out.

“OK,” Wolf said. “Time for Plan B.”

“Which is?”

“She might feel more comfortable talkin’ to Zee. You know, woman-to-woman. You wanna fill her in when she gets over here with the clothes?”

“Yeah.” Scars stuck his hands in his jeans pockets. “Yeah, I’ll tell her the score.”

“OK.” Wolf sighed, feeling about a hundred years old. “Have Cole get the bedroom upstairs ready, the one at the end of the hall above my office. It’s got its own bathroom and the door locks from the outside only, so that’s the best place for her for now. I’ll have Zee take her up there, I won’t do it myself. It might scare the crap out of her for me to take her to a room with a bed.”

“Got it, boss,” Scars said, already moving down the hall. He’d just spotted his fiancée coming into Satan’s carrying a pile of clothes and he went to meet Zoe, wondering how the hell to even begin telling her any of this.

**

Iris sat on what was apparently her bed, in what was now apparently her bedroom. The dark-haired, dark-eyed bartender had handed her a bunch of towels as the tall, gorgeous, blonde woman named Zoe had led her through the bar and up some stairs under a large sign marked ‘Private’.

She’d followed Zoe and her sky-high legs to the very end of the hallway, then followed her into a small space, barely big enough for a bed and a dresser and an armchair. Despite it being cramped by normal standards, Iris was sitting staring around her, still astounded at the space, at the sheer luxury of having space of her own. She’d forgotten what it was like to be alone. For the past year, eyes had been on her all at almost all times; her skin had constantly prickled with the awareness that someone, somewhere, was watching her.

Zoe had given her some sweaters and leggings, and they were hanging off her all over the place. Zoe was slim, but Iris was tiny, and so she’d rolled the sleeves up three times and the leggings five times. She looked ridiculous, but at least she was out of the nightgown.

She’d have to burn the goddamn thing at the first opportunity.

Suddenly, Iris took a deep breath and let it out, and that was when she stopped feeling dazed and started to think. What she began thinking wasn’t very comforting, and puzzle pieces began to come together to form a picture that she didn’t like looking at.

So, the men downstairs were named Wolf and Scars, and there were at least another ten of them wandering around the parking lot, the garage, the bar. There was a tattoo parlour across the parking lot where Zoe said she worked. The men all wore matching black leather vests, and she’d noticed that there was a massive patch on the back of each one that said ‘The Road Devils’. The men were tall, ferocious-looking, tattooed, rough. Definitely terrifying.

And just like that, the oxygen from the deep breath hit her stupid, sleep-deprived brain, chasing off the last of her shock – and it dawned on her that she was sitting in the bedroom above a whole bar full of motorcycle club members.

Criminals. Animals. Rapists. Drug-runners. Surely they all had guns, if the scary blond one was any indication. They were barely one half-step above a fucking cult.

Which meant that she’d just taken one hundred massive steps backwards… and straight into the shit. Again.

You should have stayed where you were, you stupid, stupid fucking idiot. Better the devil you know, and at least I knew Gideon. The Road Devils are a whole new devil…

Probably a worse one.

**

Zoe went to Wolf’s office and stuck her head in. Sure enough, Wolf and Scars were sitting there, so she glared at them.

“What’s up, baby girl?” Wolf said, not even remotely fazed by the fury in her brilliant emerald-green gaze. They’d been friends for almost twenty-four years, since she was ten and Wolf thirteen, so he’d seen her icy glare directed at him way more than once.

Scars leaped to his feet and came over to her. “Hey, baby. What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong , you two oafs, is that nobody bothered to tell me that that woman upstairs is legitimately the size of a fairy. You should have had me bring some of Keira’s clothes over – I have a cute yellow onesie that might fit that poor girl better. She’s drowning in what I gave her.”

“Ohh-kaaay,” Wolf said slowly. “Sorry about that.”

“I’m not done,” Zoe snapped.

“I didn’t think you were, baby girl.”

“Then shut it, Wolf.”

He nodded, accepting that despite the fact that he was the fearsome, badass MC President who always called the shots, Zoe Parish was basically his bratty kid sister who didn’t give a fuck. He loved that about her, and he stifled an affectionate grin as she glowered harder.

“Jesus Christ, Wolf,” she said. “There is just never-ending drama around here – and may I remind you that this is the exact opposite of what you promised me when I agreed to come back and work for you?”

“Hey, Zee,” he said, stung and a bit hurt. “I ain’t doin’ it on purpose.”

“I know, and I also know that one of the dramas was my fault.”

“Nothin’ was your fault,” Wolf said, genuinely puzzled. “What are you talkin’ about?”

“You’re talking about the tattoo parlour being burned down, aren’t you?” Scars asked her quietly. “About Keira’s Dad trying to kidnap her, and him getting killed in the fire that he set.”

“You know it.” Her eyes were bright with tears now. “And I’m also talking about Jo blowing her dickhead ex’s face off in Silver’s house, and even though I’m all for that asshole being dead, it’s not exactly a calm situation, right? And now this strange woman just hides in Viking’s van wearing a nightgown and men’s boots, looking scared half to death and she won’t say a word to anyone. She said thank you to me and said she liked the green tea shampoo I brought her, but that was all I could get out of her. I mean, it just never stops , does it?”

The two men exchanged glances: Scars had told Zoe about seventy percent of the whole truth. She knew that the woman had hitched a ride without Viking having a clue, and she’d guessed that he’d been coming back from disposing of Jo’s husband’s body, though Scars couldn’t confirm that for her own safety and she understood that. What he hadn’t told her, however, was that their big fear was that the woman had seen far more than she should have. That part was staying between Wolf, Scars, Viking, and Ice for now.

“Zee,” Wolf said gently. “You know that I’d do anythin’ to keep you and Keira safe.”

She sighed as Scars took her in his arms; it was the safest place that she knew, and as always, she relaxed into his broad, muscular chest.

“I know, Wolf,” she said, her voice muffled against his shirt. “It just feels like a lot sometimes.”

“You want Scars to take you away from Denver? Maybe even out of Colorado?” Wolf asked her. “You and Keira can go somewhere for a few days, just until we sort this mess out.”

She lifted her head off Scars’ chest and now the glare was back; Wolf bit back another grin as she snapped back to form.

“As if I’d ever leave Scars!”

“As if I’d ever let you, baby,” Scars said. “I belong with you and Keira, so if you really want to go, we’ll figure something out together.”

“No,” she said. “Thank you anyway, babe, but this is my home and I won’t run away from it again. Besides, the safest place in the world for me and Keira is right here – you and your MC boys would take a bullet to protect us.”

“Or run into fire,” Wolf said quietly, and they all looked at each other, remembering Scars dashing into the burning tattoo parlour to get Keira. “No questions asked, no seconds wasted hesitatin’. You’re our priority, baby girl, you and that sweet daughter of yours.”

“OK.” Zoe sighed as Scars dropped a tiny kiss on the top of her head; she was a tall woman but her fiancé still towered over her, which always made her feel impossibly delicate. “I’d better get back to work. I have a client in twenty minutes.”

The men watched her go, then looked back at each other.

“Anything from Ice?” Scars said.

“Nope.” Wolf glanced at his cell again, checked the texts. “But I gotta tell you, I’m feelin’ a lot better about this whole situation right now, man.”

“You are?”

“Yeah. The more I think about it, the more I think Ice is right that this chick came from some bizarre mess, and she just ran like a headless panicked chicken into the night and caught a ride without thinkin’ it through. I think she’s more confused than we are, and she’ll just want to get out of here and go back to wherever the hell she came from.”

“You really think that?”

“Yeah.” Wolf picked up his coffee cup. “There’s no way that she or anyone else can connect us to Fieldin’. I mean, who’d even start lookin ’ at us?”