Chapter 6
“Have you thought about what you want to do?” Yeats asked Sebastian. “Maybe it’s time you think about joining another club, since you plan on being here for a while. You’re not going to stop keeping an eye on your family anytime soon, right?”
He had family back in Johnstown—the members of the Thunder Valley Riders were his brothers and sisters, even if it wasn’t by blood.
After all these years, moving to another club didn’t feel right.
Technically, Sebastian never withdrew his membership from Thunder Valley.
Transferring to another Christian Motorcycle Club seemed like a betrayal.
He was done with getting involved in motorcycle clubs and their business.
He took the rider coach gig for Yeats, swallowing his pride.
The pay wouldn’t equate to what he made as a cop, but a nest egg was a distant dream.
He hadn’t exactly been clocking in forty-hour weeks back on the force, not with the Sharks surrounding him day and night.
Working around another motorcycle club was a bitter pill, but quitting wasn’t an option.
“Is that why you insisted I help you with the range and offered me a place to stay?”
Yeats snorted, but Sebastian was unconvinced. He owed him a favor. He took the motorcycle safety coach position to fulfill it. “We had a deal to keep my location on the down low, especially from my parents and Sam, if I agreed to take the rider coach job.”
Once his family figured out where he was, his father would pull him into the family business, drawing in the wrong kind of attention and threatening their safety.
“We still need to complete the paperwork for you to become a partner in the landscaping business.”
“I told you I don’t need a partnership agreement to work for your family. No more extra paperwork to complicate things.”
“Because you’re trying to hide behind an alias.”
“I’m not hiding. I can’t risk anyone associating me with your business or my family.”
“Our business. No one is going to mess with you here. Didn’t you say the Sharks are back in Johnstown and the club is no longer running?”
“It doesn’t matter. Some of the members won’t stay in jail forever, and I’ll always be looking behind me.” Sebastian rolled his shoulders back. “If I go home, I could bring danger to their doorstep.”
His aching shoulder throbbed. The gunshot echoed from memory in his ears.
He closed his eyes briefly against the phantom twitch of his body as he relived it.
The nightmares still came regularly. Audra’s trust-filled eyes would haunt him for the rest of his life.
He never told his parents what happened, and he almost let the feds rope him into changing his identity, despite his old police chief assuring him it wouldn’t be forever.
Sebastian couldn’t allow his parents and twin to think him dead.
Nor did Sebastian have any right to come back to Adams County and invade his twin sister’s life.
He couldn’t protect her back then, just like he couldn’t protect Audra from Pike.
What would happen to his twin when his past caught up to him? To his family?
And it would.
The best thing for him to do was to keep his distance. He couldn’t risk anyone else getting hurt. “I’ll take you up on the offer of the place to stay, but I’m not getting involved with another club.”
“Fair enough.” Yeats shrugged off his leather jacket. “Sooner or later, you should let your family know you’re alive. How long has it been since you spoke to them?”
“I send emails.” He never gave them his phone number after he went undercover. Even the cell in his pocket was his third burner phone this month.
“My parents left for a cruise to Alaska last week. My mom will post pictures online when they get back.” The last time he got a phone call or text from his parents was when his last case went down the toilet, and he switched to using burner phones.
He hadn’t told his parents about getting shot or having to leave Johnstown.
His mother would still worry, even if he was thirty-two.
Yeats scratched his chin. “Sam will be upset if you don’t tell her you’re near.”
“You’ve been watching out for her?” Why should this surprise him?
Yeats grinned. “She’s dating some teacher that moved here last year. He goes to church with her on Sundays, and I hear he helps her out at the stables when your parents are gone.”
Sebastian went to the old teal-colored fridge and pulled out a bottle of water. There wasn’t much else inside besides a few takeout cartons of Chinese food and a half gallon of milk.
His sister deserved happiness after what happened to her in high school.
Seeing her wrapped in a man’s arms caused a mix of emotions, but it was relief that hit him the most. At first, it shocked him that his parents would take a cruise and leave Sammy to run the horseback tours during the busy season.
After witnessing her with this teacher guy she was dating, he understood his parents must have approved.
The fact Sammy trusted this guy enough to allow their parents to leave her alone with him spoke volumes.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Sebastian said.
“I know people,” Yeats said. “That’s what friends are for.”
Sebastian eased down into a chair at the kitchen table.
His legs and his lower back ached. He knew Yeats from high school, and even back then, Sebastian knew his friend had an eye for his sister.
Sebastian warned, not threatened, Yeats to steer clear of his twin, but it had been Yeats who found her violated the night of their senior prom.
And it had been Yeats who talked him down from killing the jock who hurt his sister.
Sebastian guzzled down the water, trying to flush the memories away.
Razek, his former chief of police in Johnstown, still held his badge and offered to help him relocate to another police force.
He refused to run, but he refused to be a sitting duck.
He knew someone from the Sharks put a hit on Tiger, the other undercover cop working the case, and took him out.
What would stop them from ordering one on Sebastian?
He touched his shoulder—the ache was mental more than physical.
“Your shoulder still bothering you?” Yeats spun a chair around, took a seat, and leaned against the back of it with his arms propped on top. “Maybe I shouldn’t have talked Davis into switching sites and given you more time to heal.”
“It’s not the shoulder.” Sebastian had a hole inside him, so big, gaping, and painful that he doubted it would ever heal.
He stuffed it with regrets for the past year.
Crawling into that hole and hiding away, just like he said he wouldn’t.
He lied. Nothing would ever fill the huge, hollow emptiness inside him.
He wasn’t a cop anymore, nor did he deserve to get involved in other people’s lives. He could endanger them all.
This is why Chief Razek urged him to accept the alias they had given him.
Daniel Jones didn’t fit him, but Razek assured him it wasn’t forever.
That stubborn streak his mother claimed he got from her would get him killed.
He needed to go far away and stay there.
Instead, after almost a half-year of roaming and sulking, he called Yeats, his old buddy from high school, and hauled his butt farther away from the Sharks and the haunting memories of the woman he couldn’t save.
Why? Every night, he asked that question. Why did Audra have to die? His mind reminded him that every time he closed his eyes to replay the nightmare and analyze everything he should have done differently. Where was God when he needed Him?
His mother taught him to believe in God. To trust in God’s purpose and plan for his life. Yeats wanted him to transfer to another Christian motorcycle club, but how could he? Leaving the Thunder Valley MC stabbed at him like a betrayal.
“Listen, man. I figured this was a good fit for you, but if the job is too much, then say the word. I’ll find someone else.”
“It’s not the job.” Sebastian twisted his empty water bottle. Spilling his guts to Yeats would get his old friend in trouble. Haden, his friend and club brother back in Johnstown, knew too much, and Sebastian hated cutting ties with him.
He couldn’t get close to people. Not anymore, or they would get hurt. He fisted his hand around the crushed plastic. No one else was going to watch over them. The responsibility was his alone. Because of Sebastian’s part in the takedown of the Sharks, his family was in danger.
“Is it Caitlyn?”
Sebastian dropped the crumpled bottle on the table. “Cortés?”
Yeats grinned. “I should have known she would call to verify you.”
Sebastian’s chest tightened. “She calls you ‘Thomas,’ you know that?”
“Yep.” Yeats’ grin broadened.
“What did you tell her?” He tried not to eavesdrop during her call.
“The truth.” Yeats lifted a shoulder. “I told her Davis took another job and moved too far to return on weekends.”
“That’s it?” Sebastian asked.
“Don’t fall for the good looks. Caitlyn’s pretty, but she’s not worth taking a bullet to the head. You got by with a shoulder wound, but her old man, Silas, will go for the kill.”
“She’s married?” Sebastian got up and started pacing. What was he doing, asking about her, anyway? She wasn’t his business. The fact she had an old man should have come as a relief. The Ghost had made it known she was one of them, and he didn’t need to get involved—not again.
“Divorced, but the Ghosts don’t believe in divorce. They’re not the worst club in the county, but Welder holds his beliefs as law.”
“Welder?”
“Cat’s father. He’s the former president of the Ghosts.”
“Former?”
“You’re not the only one who had stuff go down,” Yeats said.