Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
ROWAN
S omeone cleared their throat, the sound echoing around my small garage.
All I wanted was some peace and fucking quiet.
If it wasn’t the club with their endless bullshit, or Sadie with her impossible demands, it was someone else creeping up on me.
I was always in high demand, whether or not I liked it.
I pulled my arms out from the car engine I’d been using to distract myself from all thoughts of Sadie and turned the dial down on the old beaten-up battery radio by my feet.
“John.” I wiped my grease-covered hands on the rag tucked into the waistband of my jeans. His eyes were sharp, his mouth set into a hard line. That cop poker face hadn’t aged a day. “You got news for me about the stolen parts?”
It wasn’t every day I got a personal visit from the chief of police.
His visits were usually last resorts, reaching out when everything else was falling apart at the seams. Or, when he needed a favour, and the Riders were the easiest pick.
It went both ways, though, and if he was showing up here empty-handed, then we were going to have a problem .
He shook his head, his eyes darting around the garage like he was waiting for an ambush.
“Afraid not,” he said, lowering his voice as he stepped closer, his hand resting on the gun in his holster.
The dust on the concrete floor rose up around his worn black boots, then settled again as he remained in place.
Did he think he was going to need that gun?
Barrenridge wasn’t the fucking Wild West, no matter how much he liked to pretend otherwise.
Fucking hilarious, if he didn’t look so serious about it. “We have a bigger problem.”
A bigger problem? If he was referring to his daughter, then he would have been correct—she was a right thorn in my side.
I just hadn’t worked up the nerve to yank her free yet.
Wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to. She’d left a hole in me before, and that sort of pain didn’t just disappear. It grew teeth and bled you dry.
“Oh yeah? And what’s that?” I shoved a crate into place with my boot and snatched up a half-empty water bottle from the workbench. I lifted an eyebrow as I finished the contents and swiped my wrist across my mouth.
My gaze flicked past him for a second, my focus landing on the empty driveway in front of his house.
Sadie’s car was still missing. She’d left about two hours prior.
I’d been hidden behind the engine for her to notice me.
Still, she never even glanced over as she hopped into her car and sped off, kicking up red dirt behind her.
She’d obviously still been pissed at me for kicking her out of my room the previous night.
Suppose I couldn’t blame her. But hell if I could stop thinking about her.
If I hadn’t asked her to leave when I had, God knows what would’ve happened.
She was pushing me to the edge, and I bet she wouldn’t have looked back when I finally slipped.
John sighed, dust motes swirling between us as he hooked his thumbs into the top of his black belt. “Is it safe to talk here?” He almost whispered the words.
I didn’t much trust the quiet, either. Or maybe John just didn’t trust me.
“Do you see anyone else here?” I said, throwing my arms up. “Just get to the point, John. There are no ears here. Only mine and yours.”
Jaw tight, he glanced over his shoulder once again, then cleared his throat. “Right.” He rubbed at his forehead. “Well, we found a partial fingerprint on the murder weapon from the Stone and Hughes case. One belonging to a club member.”
His words landed like a wrench to the temple—blunt, messy, and impossible to ignore. “The cult murders?” My frown deepened, unease crawling down my spine. John nodded, slow and deliberate. “Who?”
“Anthony Robinson.”
My eyebrows shot up, the weight of that information sinking onto my chest. “Snake?” At first, it was shock that had me scrubbing a hand down my face, but then I realised I could use this situation to my advantage.
John had just made my day, and he didn’t even know it.
“And why are you telling me? Aren’t you Iron’s little lapdog? ”
Why had John come to me? That was Iron’s territory and John was risking everything he’d built with the President of the Ridge Riders by keeping this from him.
John gave me a look, the kind that said he knew exactly what kind of reaction he was about to get. My words had hit him where I intended.
He stepped closer again, invading my space with a quiet urgency. “You’re the only one I trust with this right now. But you know what this means, Rowan.” His voice was a harsh whisper. “I’m going to have to bring him in for questioning. If the club is selling weapons to the cult?— ”
I cut him off with a sharp wave, my chest tightening. “It’s not. I would know if that were the case. Could you have made a mistake?”
Or Snake, the filthy bastard, was, in fact, doing us dirty. He always had a smug grin and too many secrets. Wouldn’t surprise me if he’d been hustling behind our backs for years. He just finally left a damn fingerprint.
John sniffed and shook his head. “I ran it three times, Rowan. It’s no mistake.”
I groaned, running a hand through my hair. “Fuck. Who else knows at the station?”
“Just me at the moment.” He levelled me with that cop stare. The kind that made it clear he didn’t say things twice. “Any chance Anthony was associated with the Stone girl?”
The plastic water bottle crumpled in my grip. “Not that I know of,” I said, dropping the item into the bin under the bench. “I’m not his keeper, John. How long can you sit on it for?”
He narrowed his eyes. “Why?”
“Just answer the goddamn question. How long?”
He gave a half-shrug, the weight of my question already too heavy.
“Twenty-four hours,” he said, glancing over the faded blue of the XY Falcon Logan had insisted on buying before he died—apparently the 1970 GT model was the best of all time.
“Maybe less. I’ve got Shane Elliot breathing down my neck on this one.
He suspects I’m hiding something. Little shit doesn’t give up.
” The bitterness in his tone didn’t go unnoticed, his resentment wafting from him like a foul smell.
Shane Elliot. John’s second-hand man and the very definition of a pain in my arse.
He had a chip on his shoulders when it came to the club.
His nose in my business wasn’t what I fucking needed.
We may have had a long-running understanding with John, but the fact a club member was potentially involved in a town murder, meant John had no choice but to investigate.
But if he didn’t play this right, Shane would blow the whole thing before I had my chance to take my shot at removing Snake for good. Shane saw us as nothing more than the town’s most wanted. Didn’t matter that we’d done our part keeping the outside shit out of Barrenridge.
“Give me forty-eight hours,” I said, attempting to keep my frustration from ramping up to full-blown anger.
I pushed off the crate, rising to my feet and lit up a cigarette. The smoke hovered between us like an unspoken threat, curling in the air.
“What the hell are you planning?” John cast another glance around. “I can’t cover your arse forever.”
I stared at Chief Cooper. Sadie was nothing like him—thank fuck. “Nothing you need to worry about just yet. All I’m asking for is a couple of days.”
He scrubbed his hands over his face, his frustration seeping into the air. “Jesus, Rowan. You realise what kind of shitstorm you’re asking me to hold back? Whatever Snake’s tied up in, it’s already bleeding.”
I laughed, but there was no humour in it.
“No shit, John. You think I want the likes of you and your little brown-noser, Elliot, breathing down my fucking neck.” I levelled him with a hard stare.
“Let me fucking deal with it.” I just needed time.
A crack in the wall. Because if Snake really was dirty—and this whole thing blew wide open—then the club, and maybe everything I’d built, was going up in smoke.
John clenched his jaw, jabbing a finger into my chest. Did he think I wouldn’t break it just because he was the chief? “Forty-eight hours. That’s all I can give you. ”
“Understood.” I shoved his hand away like swatting a fly. “Better go make the most of your forty-eight.”
For a long moment, John just stood there staring at me, his eyes fixed and unblinking. There was more he wanted to say, but he never voiced the words.
Instead, he gave me one last piercing glare before turning and stalking away, mumbling under his breath.
He jumped in his cruiser parked out front of his house, the door slamming shut with a hollow, metallic thud.
Seconds later, the engine roared to life, and the cruiser peeled off down the road, leaving a cloud of smoke behind it.
I reached for my phone, my fingers twitching with the weight of what I had to do.
Snake had always been a loose cannon, but this was beyond a joke.
If he’d really been involved with those cult murders, there was no telling what other shit he might’ve gotten mixed up in.
And now he was threatening to bring the whole club down with him.
Liabilities didn’t get second chances. Not in this world.
I fired off a quick text to Bear.
Me: Clubhouse. Tonight. Got a situation.
His reply came almost instantly.
Bear: On it. 8pm?
Me: Perfect.
I pocketed the phone and took a long drag of my cigarette, exhaling slowly as I considered my next move.
Bear had connections inside Long Bay. If Snake landed there, Bear’s contacts would handle him before he even opened his mouth. And if he somehow managed to slip through John’s fingers, well . . . accidents happened all the time in our line of work.
My mind drifted to Sadie. If Snake was gone, would she hate me a little less? Let me get close? I shook my head. I couldn’t go there. Not again. Not when I knew she’d leave . . . and take what remained of me.