Epilogue
Four months later
I exhale an impatient breath, causing a cloud of icy vapour to fill the front of the car. Closing time was hours ago. Ever since, I’ve been waiting for the biker bar across the street to go dark. For the lights on the second floor to extinguish.
When a shiver racks my body, I hug my torso, pulling my leather jacket tighter, trying to shake the chill that’s worked its way into my bones. It’s gotta be at least twenty below, and with each moment that ticks by, it’s only getting colder.
I need heat. Just for a second. A quick little blast to thaw my stiff, icy fingers.
“Fuck this.” I reach for the keys dangling from the ignition, but as I find the icy metal, I pause.
Bad idea. I draw the wrong person’s attention, this whole thing blows up in my face. And then I’m back to running again. I can’t have that. It’s not just my life I have to think about.
The passenger side door flies open, scaring the shit out of me. Heart jumping into my throat, I lunge for the gun hidden in the glove compartment.
A warm hand wraps around my wrist, thwarting my attempt to grab my weapon. When the interloper ducks, his face coming into focus, I release another icy breath. Dark hair. Amber eyes. Puckered scar slashing across his right cheek.
“Jesus, Linc,” I say as he slides into the passenger seat and closes the door. “You scared the hell out of me. What took you so long?”
Rather than release my wrist, he pulls my hand to his warm lips, breathing a little life back into my frigid fingers. “Better question, Grace, is where the hell did you get this car?”
“Oh. Um. Well… super funny story.”
He sighs, and the heat of his breath sends a shiver through my body. “You stole it.”
“ Borrowed it,” I correct. “I’ll bring it back when we’re done.”
Linc shakes his head. “Babe, when I tell you to stick to the plan, I mean the whole plan. That includes the getaway car.”
“It’s so damn cold that plan wouldn’t start. I had to improvise. And this looked… fast. And fun.”
“It’s a mustang.” He releases my hand and shifts his focus to the building across the street, where the last light has finally gone out. “Not exactly inconspicuous.”
“Well, it’s what we’ve got. We all set?”
“Everything’s in place.”
“How many inside?”
He pulls a gun from the back of his pants and checks the magazine. “Does it matter?”
“Of course it matters.”
He exhales, his breath creating its own white cloud, and then he falls quiet as he fidgets with his weapon.
I narrow my eyes. “What aren’t you saying?”
“There’s six,” he mutters. “Seven if you count the woman.”
My blood turns a few degrees colder. I glare at the side of his head. “ Obviously I count the woman.”
He rolls his eyes. “I just mean we’ve got six targets. The seventh is just?—”
“A casualty?”
It’s one of those terms all these men throw around. An excuse for their violence, for all the bodies left after the smoke clears.
“Yeah,” he says. “Sometimes there has to be a sacrifice. God fucking knows we’ve done our fair share of that. And these last few months? All that’s happened back home? This is one more sacrifice I’m willing to make. It’s justice, Grace. And it’s our responsibility to serve it.”
He finally looks at me, his face etched with bone-deep guilt. He can’t help but feel it. Serve and protect. It’s been bred into him. A deep need to claim something as his own and protect it with his life. And when it’s threatened? There’s no forgiveness. Only retribution. Justice, as he calls it.
I cup his cheek, relishing his body heat. “None of this is your fault.”
“It is. We left South Bay, and then…”
And then there was blood. And bodies. Casualties of war . We left, and South Bay became a battlefield. We weren’t there to fight. And Linc will never forgive himself for that, for not protecting our town, what he lost in that fight. What we lost.
“This isn’t just about squaring off with Axe,” he says to me, “this is about doing what’s right. About taking out these Raider fucks for what they did. Not a single one of them gets to live. Not after…”
Neither of us can say it, so we both fall silent.
I wish I could welcome the coldness into my soul the way Linc does.
Turn off the hurt, the heaviness pressing down on my chest, and let my anger consume me.
It’s who Jimmy raised me to be. Cold. Cutthroat.
A person who wouldn’t think twice about what we’re about to do. The lives we’re about to take.
With a breath, I run my thumb over his scar and stare into his gorgeous, hate-filled eyes.
“Linc,” I say softly. “I want to end this just as badly as you do, but I won’t be like them.
I will not do this with an innocent still sitting in that building.
I know you don’t want that either.” I pull him closer and press my forehead to his. “Please don’t do this.”
Another body, another death on his hands. I don’t want him carrying this. When the dust finally settles, I don’t want him to have another thing to feel guilty about.
He closes his eyes and releases a long breath. “I’ll get her out. But you stay here, understand? I won’t be able to think straight if you’re in there and shots start popping off.”
Reaching over him, I grab my gun from the glove compartment. Then I sit back in my seat. “I’ll be your lookout.”
He narrows his eyes. “Since when are you okay with sitting on the sidelines?”
“Relax. I’ll be here with my right hook and my big gun if you need a rescue,” I say with a wink.
Smile splitting his face, he pulls me into a kiss.
It’s rough, passionate, dominant. All-consuming.
Hand tangling in my hair, another at my throat.
It’s how he kisses me every time he leaves.
Like it’s the last one we might ever have.
And then again every time he comes back.
A promise that he’ll never leave me behind.
“Stick to the plan,” he murmurs against my mouth. “Promise me.”
I sink my teeth into my lip to stop myself from arguing.
Justice. We need it. The Sinners need it. There’s no turning back from this. But that doesn’t mean I like this plan , or rather, the promise he forced me to make.
“Grace,” he sighs. “I need you to say it.”
“Yes. Okay,” I whisper, my stomach churning. “But it won’t come to that.”
Without another word, he grabs the backpack from the seat behind him and pushes out of the car.
“Don’t die,” I call to him.
He merely smiles as he shuts the door.
He slinks through the mostly empty parking lot and then across the dark, deserted street. The moment he disappears from sight, the unease in my stomach turns painful.
I set the timer on my phone. Ten minutes, and then I have to do what I promised. The thing he said he’d never do to me. I have to leave him behind.
There was a time when that might have been easy for me.
Since the second I was ripped from South Bay at sixteen, the only person I depended on was me. The only person I needed was me. Jimmy taught me that.
Cut and run.
But Linc is part of me now. Woven deep within the threads of my being. Etched into my bones. He’s my heart. My breath. My ride or fucking die.
It’s not all dive bars and fast bikes and fucking in truck stop bathrooms. Don’t get me wrong, my nomadic heart lives for those days, and we’ve been on one hell of a ride for the past couple of months.
But it’s the slow days that really feed my soul.
Days where we hole up in some mountain cabin in the Rockies and sleep away the sunlight.
Days where I get to touch him, feel him, drink him in, map every inch of his skin, trace over his scars.
Skin on skin, hand at my throat, breathing in my breath.
There’s no leaving that.
I hate that he keeps asking me to.
Four minutes left.
The cold no longer registers. My limbs warm, my skin prickling as my blood pumps a little faster with the beat of my heart.
I stare at the timer.
Two minutes.
I check my gun. Count the bullets. Attach the suppressor to the end of the barrel. My pulse kicks up another notch.
Thirty seconds.
When the timer hits zero, I glance up at the street.
There’s no movement. No Decker.
I don’t even have to think about it. Like I didn’t have to think when my brother called.
The Sinner prez cashed in on his favour.
He had a job for me. Ride into enemy territory and hunt down the men who took out our own, our family.
Axe didn’t have to ask. I would have done this anyway, without hesitation.
The Raiders took something from us, from me, and now they pay with their lives.
I open the door and push out into the icy night.
Linc isn’t the only one who gets to play hero, to make sacrifices. Somehow through all of this, he still doesn’t get that.
I stride towards the bar, ducking low as I pass the front entrance, then I skirt around the side into a dark alleyway. Heart thrashing in my chest, I press a calming hand to my stomach and take a deep breath.
Inhale, exhale.
Inhale, exhale.
“We’re okay. We’ll be okay.”
Halfway down the alley, a partially open door. Still low to the wall, I creep forward and then nudge it open, poking the barrel of my gun through first, then my head.
“Linc?” I whisper-shout. I strain my ears, listening. Nothing. “Decker!”
The heavy smell of gasoline assaults my nostrils as I step inside, telling me our plan is in motion. I pause again. It’s all dark, all silent, and then?—
Glass smashes. There’s a low grunt. And then another.
Shit. Shit.
Keeping my feet light, I follow the noise.
In the main area, a neon glow streams from a green Heineken sign still lit up behind the bar top.
My focus slices across the room—past the pool tables, the booths lining the walls—and locks on a huge, shirtless, tattooed biker just as he slams his fist into my boyfriend’s jaw.
Decker hits the ground, and all my muscles lock up. He spider crawls back, away from the massive man who’s quickly advancing. Ready to hurt him. Kill him.