Property of Derby (Kings of Anarchy MC: Kentucky #4)

Chapter One

Derby

Hell Road is the kind of back Kentucky road that makes a man believe the devil got bored and started designing shortcuts.

It cuts through the dark outside Hell, Kentucky, narrow and mean, with trees leaning over the blacktop like they’re waiting to snatch handlebars.

The curves come too sharp. The shoulders drop too fast. The ditches hold fog even when the rest of the county is dry.

Locals say you don’t take Hell Road after midnight unless you’re drunk, desperate, running from somebody, or too stupid to know better.

I ain’t drunk.

Desperate is debatable.

Stupid depends who’s asking.

Widowmaker eats the blacktop beneath me, her engine snarling through the night like she’s got her own grudges to settle.

She’s all steel, black paint, chrome, and attitude, built for men who know better and ride anyway.

The headlight cuts a mean tunnel through the dark, catching flashes of barbed wire, slick ditch grass, and pastureland rolling black beyond the fence line.

Dead Man’s Curve waits ahead.

Worst bend on the whole damned road.

I know this stretch. I’ve ridden it more times than I can count, usually too fast and usually with somebody in my ear telling me I’m going to die young if the law, women, or my mouth don’t get me first. The curve drops hard to the left, then snaps back right where the trees crowd so close they look like they’re whispering secrets over the asphalt.

Damn thing’s littered with so many crosses…

Nobody with sense trusts Hell Road.

That’s the first rule.

The second is older and dumber, which means it gets repeated more.

There’s a woman out here.

The Widow.

Men swear they see her near Dead Man’s Curve right before a wreck.

Pale dress. Long hair. Face like moonlight under water.

Folks say she was a bride who died on her way to a wedding that never happened.

Some say she was a woman running from a husband who swore he loved her right up until he drove her off this bend.

They say she was one of the girls Pearly Gates overlooked, and if you talk to the old-timers, they get quiet fast like there’s real dirt behind that story.

Me?

I believe roads remember things.

That don’t mean I believe every drunk bastard who sees fog and calls it a ghost. It means I’ve ridden enough blacktop in this county to know some places carry more than tire marks.

Hell Road has teeth. Dead Man’s Curve is hungry.

If the Widow is real, she ain’t got much use for men who behave themselves.

Lucky for me, behaving ain’t my best skill.

I lean into the bend, wind beating at my cut, Widowmaker roaring under me.

I don’t see a woman in white.

I see cotton.

Big, pale, granny-looking cotton.

Right before it slaps me in the face.

At first, I think it’s a bird.

Something pale whips out of the night, smacks across my visor, and tries to smother me at seventy miles an hour. I jerk one hand off the bars, cuss loud enough to scare Jesus out of the ditch weeds, and damn near kiss the yellow line before I get Widowmaker back under me.

“Son of a bitch.”

The thing sticks to my face like a surrender flag from hell.

I get it peeled off one eye, then the other, fighting wind and fabric while the bike wobbles under me.

For one hot second, I figure it has to be the Depraved Sinners MC.

Those dumb bastards have been circling our county line like buzzards with tattoos, still licking wounds after the last mess and too stupid to understand that the Kings of Anarchy don’t forget a slight, a threat, or a debt.

I can already picture one of them bastards hiding in the trees with a slingshot and a death wish.

That thought almost makes me smile.

Almost.

Then the fabric slaps my mouth, and I taste fancy laundry soap.

I slow hard, gravel spitting under my tires as I pull onto the shoulder just past Dead Man’s Curve. My boots hit pavement. Widowmaker settles into a rough idle, shaking through my bones while I snatch the offensive weapon off my helmet and hold it out in the headlight.

A pair of panties dangles from my fist.

Big ones.

White ones.

The kind of drawers a woman wears when she’s either given up on men entirely or decided comfort matters more than seduction, which is a respectable choice in theory and a tragic waste in practice.

I stare at them.

They stare back, limp and innocent.

“Well, I’ll be damned.”

A laugh comes out of me before I can stop it. Not a pleasant one. Not the sort that invites anyone close. It’s the rough bark of a man ready to commit violence who instead finds himself holding some woman’s drawers on the side of a cursed road.

I look around, half expecting phones pointed my way, club brothers hiding in the tree line, maybe Oaks wheezing himself stupid because somebody finally found a way to make me look foolish.

Nothing.

Just Hell Road.

Trees.

Fog low in the hollows.

My headlight painting the panties ghost-white.

For one second, the old Widow story crawls up the back of my neck.

Pale thing in the road.

Men see her too late.

I look toward the ditch.

Nothing moves except fog and weeds.

“Real funny,” I mutter to no one, because talking to a haunted road feels less stupid when you’ve just been assaulted by underwear.

Then I see the truck.

It sits thirty yards ahead, angled crooked on the shoulder with the front end dipped low.

The right front tire is flat, shredded against the rim.

Cardboard boxes lie scattered behind it like the vehicle coughed up somebody’s whole life.

Clothes. A laundry basket. A busted lamp.

A plastic tub tipped sideways with shoes spilling out.

A cheap coffee maker cracked open in the gravel.

A small blue sock. A stack of paper plates fanned across the blacktop like somebody tried to host a picnic during a breakdown.

A stuffed dinosaur lies face-down near the ditch, one plastic eye looking up at my headlight like it died with questions.

Someone’s moving.

Or running.

On Hell Road, those are usually the same thing.

That makes the laugh die in my throat.

I cut the engine.

The sudden silence is thick enough to hear the ticking heat of Widowmaker, the distant pulse of frogs down in the ditch, and one small, muffled sound from inside the truck.

A kid.

Hell.

Nothing ruins a good strange night like a kid.

I tuck the panties in one fist and walk toward the mess, boots crunching over gravel. My other hand stays loose near the knife at my belt because I ain’t stupid. A broken-down truck on a backroad can be a woman in trouble, or it can be bait. Around Hell, Kentucky, sometimes it’s both.

Especially on Hell Road.

“Anybody bleeding?” I call out.

The driver’s door opens fast, then stops like whoever’s inside thinks better of showing herself. For one heartbeat, all I see is a hand gripping the door frame. Short polished nails. One chipped. No ring, but the pale mark is there, a naked little ghost around her finger.

Then a woman steps down.

One hand grips the door.

The other presses to her stomach like she’s trying to hold herself together.

My headlight catches her piece by piece.

Messy dark hair pulled back in a knot that used to be neat before the night got hold of her.

Pale face. Wide eyes that have cried too much and slept too little.

A T-shirt stretched over a body that has no damn business being wrapped in panic.

Jeans snug enough to make a better man look away and a worse man step closer.

She has the kind of face that tells me she knows the difference between good lighting and bad intentions.

Even scared half to death, she holds her chin like dignity’s the last thing she owns and she’ll scratch somebody bloody before she lets it go.

Pretty, but not soft.

Scared, but not weak.

Polished under the damage, like a woman who ironed her pride before the world set fire to the closet.

The difference matters.

“These yours?” I ask, holding up the panties.

For half a second, she just stares at me.

Then her face changes.

Not soft. Not grateful.

Mortified.

If Hell Road opened under her boots and swallowed her whole, I believe she’d dive in headfirst and thank the devil for the courtesy.

“Oh my God,” she whispers.

“I’m guessing yes.”

She snatches them from me so fast that I nearly lose a finger. “You could’ve just said you found them.”

“They found me first.”

Her eyes flick up to mine, wet and furious. “They hit you?”

“In the face.”

A flush climbs her throat. It shouldn’t interest me. It does anyway.

The kid inside the truck makes another noise. Small. Half-asleep. Unhappy.

The woman turns immediately, all embarrassment gone, and leans into the cab. “It’s okay, baby. It’s okay. Mama’s here.”

Mama.

Of course.

Because my night can never just be weird. It has to be weird with responsibilities.

I angle my head and see the kid in the back seat, strapped into a booster, hair stuck to his forehead, cheeks flushed from crying or sleeping too hard.

Little thing. Maybe four. Maybe five. I don’t know.

Kids all look like drunk tiny people to me until they get old enough to steal beer out of coolers.

He clutches another stuffed dinosaur against his chest and blinks at me.

I blink back.

Nope.

I don’t do kids.

I do engines. Fights. Club runs. Women who know better and want worse. I don’t do car seats, sticky fingers, bedtime stories, or little eyes that look at a man like he might know what the hell to do.

The kid’s gaze drops to my cut.

Then my boots.

Then my beard.

Then the bike behind me.

“Is that a dragon?” he whispers.

The woman stiffens.

I glance back at Widowmaker, black and mean in the dark, even with the engine off.

“Close,” I say. “She bites less.”

“Derby,” the woman snaps.

I look at her. “We’ve known each other thirty seconds, and you’re already scolding me. That’s quick.”

“I don’t know your name.”

I glance at it spelled out on my cut. “Derby.”