Ride Me Hard (Kentucky Skulls MC #1)

Chapter 1

CAL

The lights went out while I was standing at the kitchen counter, pouring coffee I didn’t need.

One second, I was home. The next, Kentucky disappeared.

The mug slipped from my hand and shattered. Tommy barked as I backed into the counter hard enough to rattle the cabinets.

I knew where I was. I knew the front door was twelve feet to my left. None of that mattered.

The room shrank around me.

Hot, stale air filled my lungs. Dirt scraped my palms. Somewhere close, a man screamed in a language I didn’t understand.

I couldn’t get enough air.

“Stop.” My voice sounded wrong. “Fuck. Stop.”

Tommy pressed against my leg, but I shoved past him and hit something solid. Pain tore through my shoulder. I reached for the wall, trying to find the door, a window, anything.

There were no windows.

Not there.

Not in that place.

Tommy started barking like he’d lost his mind.

A fist pounded against my front door.

“Cal!”

TK.

I tried to answer, but all that came out was a strangled breath.

The door shook once, then flew open. A beam of light swept across the room and caught me crouched beside the table with one hand around my own throat.

“Don’t touch him,” TK ordered.

Two of my brothers stopped behind him.

Nobody spoke or needed to. They’d seen me beat men bloody without raising my pulse. Now they were watching me shake on my kitchen floor because a transformer had blown.

TK lowered the flashlight so it wasn’t in my face.

“You’re home,” he said. “You’re on club property. Tommy’s right beside you.”

I felt the dog’s body against my hip.

I dragged air into my lungs.

“That’s it,” TK said. “Again.”

“I know how to fucking breathe.”

“Then do it.”

The emergency lights outside kicked on, sending a weak yellow glow through the open door. The room came back piece by piece. Table, couch, broken coffee mug.

No dirt walls or locked steel door.

I pushed myself upright before anybody could offer a hand.

“I’m fine.”

One of the brothers looked at the blood running across my knuckles. I didn’t remember hitting anything.

TK stood and folded his arms.

“You’re not fine.”

“It was a power outage.”

“It was ninety seconds.”

Heat crawled up the back of my neck. I stepped around him and grabbed the broom.

TK took it out of my hand.

“You need to talk to somebody.”

“No.”

“That wasn’t a suggestion, brother.”

The lights flickered back on, bright enough to make me squint.

Three men stood in my wrecked kitchen, trying not to look at me like I was broken.

I almost wished the room had stayed dark.

The others left after I promised I wasn’t going to put my fist through anything else.

TK stayed.

He sat across from me at the kitchen table and dropped a first-aid kit between us. Tommy settled against my leg while I cleaned the cuts across my knuckles.

“You want to tell me what happened?” TK asked.

“You saw what happened.”

“I saw the end of it.”

I wrapped gauze around my hand. “Power went out. My head went somewhere else.”

“Afghanistan?”

I nodded.

I’d been thirty years old and halfway through my third deployment when our vehicle was hit outside a village. I woke with my hands tied behind me and a hood over my head.

“They kept me in a hole under an old farmhouse,” I said. “Storage room or cellar. I never knew which.”

TK didn’t interrupt.

“There weren’t any windows. No light unless they opened the door. Half the time, I couldn’t tell if I’d been asleep for ten minutes or ten hours.”

I’d counted the days by the bottles of water they gave me and the times they dragged me out for questions.

Eventually, my unit found me.

I’d come home in one piece, collected a medal I didn’t want and learned how to make sure I was never trapped in the dark again.

I kept flashlights in every room. My bedroom door stayed open. I had a generator out back and battery lights in the hall.

Tonight, none of it had worked fast enough.

“I’m forty-two years old,” I said. “I know I’m not back there.”

“Your mind doesn’t.”

“That sounds like something printed on a therapist’s coffee mug.”

TK leaned back. “Maybe you should talk to one anyway.”

“I did that when I got home.”

“And?”

“They gave it a name. Knowing the name didn’t make closed rooms any bigger.”

I could ride alone through the hills at midnight without a problem. Darkness wasn’t the whole trigger. It was darkness with walls around me and no way to see the exit.

TK glanced toward the spot where I’d hit the wall.

“You’ve been managing it,” he said. “That’s not the same as dealing with it.”

“I don’t need you treating me like I’m fragile.”

“I’ve seen you take a knife out of a man’s hand with your bare fingers. I know exactly what you are.”

“Good.”

“I also saw you on that floor tonight.”

I tightened the bandage around my knuckles.

That made it damned hard to argue.

The next morning, TK sent two brothers on a run I’d been scheduled to handle.

I found him in his office at the clubhouse, drinking coffee and pretending he hadn’t expected me.

“You benching me?”

He put down the paperwork he was reading. “I’m moving things around.”

“Bullshit.”

“Close the door.”

I kicked it shut behind me.

TK leaned back in his chair. “You had a rough night.”

“And now everybody thinks I might fall apart if somebody turns off a lamp.”

“Nobody thinks that.”

“You replaced me on the Louisville run.”

“Because I need my enforcer focused.”

“I am focused.”

His eyes dropped to my bandaged hand.

I pulled out the chair across from him and sat. Getting pissed wasn’t helping my case.

“I need a few days,” I said.

TK’s expression changed. “To do what?”

“Be alone. Get my head straight without a dozen brothers checking on me every five minutes.”

“You think isolation is a good idea after last night?”

“I think waking up to men staring at me like I’m about to break is worse.”

“They’re worried about you.”

“I know.”

That was the problem. If they’d been assholes, I could’ve told them to go to hell. Concern was harder to fight.

I rested my forearms on my knees. “Let me use the cabin.”

The club owned an old hunting cabin deep in the Kentucky hills, far enough from the nearest town that nobody wandered past by accident. We used it when a brother needed somewhere quiet or something needed to stay out of sight.

TK studied me for several seconds.

“No.”

“I wasn’t asking permission.”

“As your president, I’m telling you that you are.”

“Then as my president, give me the damn keys.”

He stood and walked to the metal cabinet behind his desk. “Generator was serviced in the spring. There’s canned food, bottled water and enough firewood to last a month.”

“I need a few days.”

“You’ll check in every morning and every night.”

“There’s barely a signal up there.”

“The club phone gets one near the ridge.”

He pulled a key ring from the cabinet but didn’t hand it over.

“If you miss a check-in, I’m coming after you.”

“Fine.”

“And take Tommy.”

“I wasn’t leaving him here.”

TK finally tossed me the keys.

“This isn’t because we think you’re fragile, Cal.”

I caught them with my good hand. “Could’ve fooled me.”

“You’re my brother. That means you don’t get to disappear without somebody noticing.”

I shoved the keys into my pocket.

“As long as it takes,” he said.

I nodded.

A few days with nobody watching me was exactly what I needed.

Tommy rode shotgun in my truck like he owned it.

He had his head out the open window and his tongue hanging sideways while my black Harley Road King followed us on the trailer. I’d packed enough food and clothes for a week, along with my gun, a case of beer and more flashlights than any sane man needed.

The farther I got from the clubhouse, the easier I breathed.

Nobody had tried to stop me from leaving, but several brothers had found reasons to be in the yard while I loaded the bike. One checked the trailer straps. Another looked under the hood of my truck. A third reminded me where the first-aid kit was.

I’d managed not to tell any of them to fuck off.

Barely.

The interstate gave way to a two-lane highway that curved through the eastern Kentucky hills. Thick green trees crowded both sides, broken occasionally by an old farmhouse or a rusted mailbox leaning toward the road.

Tommy pulled his head inside and looked at me.

“What?”

His tail thumped against the seat.

“I’m fine.”

He kept staring.

“You’re as bad as TK.”

At least the dog didn’t argue.

I stopped at the last gas station before the turnoff and filled the truck and two cans for the cabin generator. By the time I got back behind the wheel, my phone had lost most of its signal.

Perfect.

Only TK knew I was heading up that morning. Nobody would drop by to see how I was doing. Nobody would go quiet when I walked into a room or watch my hands for signs they were shaking.

If I lost my shit again, Tommy would see it.

He’d already seen worse.

The paved road narrowed until my tires hit gravel. Branches scraped the side of the truck as I climbed higher into the hills. The cabin sat another six miles beyond a gate on club-owned land, surrounded by enough forest to hide a small army.

I intended to unload the Harley, open the cabin windows and spend the next days riding roads with no names.

No work, questions or concerned faces.

Just me, my bike and my dog.

I reached the gate and climbed out to unlock it.

Being alone felt like freedom.

I was less than a mile from the cabin when Tommy growled.

He stood on the passenger seat, staring through the windshield at the trees ahead.

“What is it?”

A pale shape lay in the weeds beside the road.

I hit the brakes. The truck stopped hard enough to jerk the trailer, and Tommy barked as I threw it into park.

“Stay.”

I grabbed my gun from under the seat and climbed out.

Nothing moved in the trees. No engine or footsteps. Just wind stirring the leaves and Tommy barking from inside the truck.

I approached carefully, watching the woods until I was close enough to see a bare foot.

It was a woman.

She lay on her side with one arm twisted beneath her. Her jeans were torn at one knee, and her red top was streaked with dirt and blood. More blood had dried in her hair and down the side of her face.

I holstered my gun and crouched beside her.

“Ma’am?”

No response.

I pressed two fingers beneath her jaw and found a pulse. It was weak but steady.

She was breathing.

Bruises marked her throat and both wrists. One side of her face was swollen, and blood had dried beneath her nose. There were no shoes nearby. No purse, phone or camping gear.

I checked the road behind me.

The gate had been locked when I arrived. Only club members had keys, but there were old logging tracks and fire roads running through miles of hills. Somebody who knew the area could have reached the property without using the main entrance.

I looked at the soles of her feet. Dirty, but not torn up enough for her to have walked far on the gravel.

She hadn’t fallen there.

Two fresh tire tracks cut into the soft shoulder several feet away. The grass between them and the woman was flattened, and one of her bare heels had left a short drag mark in the dirt.

Somebody had pulled over, taken her out of a vehicle and driven away.

“Jesus Christ.”

I touched her shoulder carefully. “Can you hear me?”

Her lips parted, but no sound came out.

The nearest hospital was a long drive back down the mountain, and my phone had no signal. The cabin was less than a mile ahead. It had water, first-aid supplies and the club phone.

I returned my gun to its holster and slid one arm beneath her knees.

Whoever had done this hadn’t left her beside a private road hoping someone would find her.

They’d brought her up here as a warning.