Warrior (Forgotten Rebels MC Book 4) Read online

  EVERNIGHT PUBLISHING ®

  www.evernightpublishing.com

  Copyright© 2018 Beth D. Carter

  ISBN: 978-1-77339-802-0

  Cover Artist: Jay Aheer

  Editor: Audrey Bobak

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  DEDICATION

  Many thanks to Stacey, Audrey, everyone at Evernight, and CR Moss, a terrific friend I’m glad to have on my side.

  For Mike, my real life warrior and hero.

  WARRIOR

  Forgotten Rebels MC, 4

  Beth D. Carter

  Copyright © 2018

  Prologue

  Charles Lawrence had just hit the SAVE button on his laptop when the telephone intercom system buzzed.

  “Sir, Miss Farlander is here to see you.”

  Charlies sighed and closed the lid of his computer. “Send her in.”

  The young woman who walked into his office looked more like a cancer patient than a soon-to-be wealthy young lady. Her blonde hair had been dyed black, a color that harshly contrasted with her pale features, giving her already thin face a death-like appearance. Her black tank top displayed a tattoo inked on her left shoulder, three ravens taking flight. Skinny jeans and clunky black motorcycle boots completed the outfit, showing she clearly didn’t care about trying to appear professional in his high-priced office.

  “Thanks for seeing me, Mr. Lawrence,” Church Farlander murmured.

  He gestured to the leather wingback chair placed strategically in front of his desk. She sat, although she perched on the end as if she were preparing to run quickly away.

  “Of course,” he replied. “I’m happy to report that you got a sizeable offer for the garage.”

  He opened a folder and slid it in front of her. As Church picked up the offer and read through the details, he couldn’t help but notice the signs of fragility she tried hiding behind the tough façade she had long ago adopted. The dark circles under her eyes and the wariness shining from the deep-blue depths, however, bespoke of many sleepless nights. As a friend of her grandfather, he’d known Church and her twin sister Cherry since they were little kids, and he’d never seen two more opposite people. He didn’t know Church’s story, didn’t know what had imprinted the mistrust onto her skin like a bad tattoo, but it made him want to hug her and assure her that she was going to be okay.

  Which startled him because compassion wasn’t part of his make-up. In his profession, it was wise to keep an emotional distance from his clients, but there was something about Church that evoked a sense of sympathy.

  “This is twenty thousand above what I’m asking for.” She frowned. “Is that legal?”

  “Of course,” Charles replied, amused. He wasn’t used to people questioning the validity of his legal recourse. “There’s a counter-offer on the table, so this is a way to entice you to choose the higher one. I guess this other buyer sees potential in the garage.”

  “I guess,” she murmured, still reading. “Do you know who this higher bid is from?”

  Charles looked at the paperwork. “Some LLC. I can look into it further if you want me to.”

  Church nibbled on her bottom lip as she seemed to think the offer over and eventually closed the folder to slide it back over the desk. “No, that’s okay. It doesn’t really matter, I guess. I’ll accept the larger offer. Can I roll the payment over to the title transfer of the cabin into my name and the purchase of the garage in Stevens all at one time?”

  Charles opened his laptop again and punched a few buttons. “The death certificate on Richard Latorre came through, so no problem there, and the city of Stevens has granted your business license. All that’s left is crossing our t’s and dotting our i’s until the sale of the garage is complete.”

  “Perfect.” She held up the papers. “These mine?”

  “Yes. You know, once this is over, you’ll have a nice nest egg. Maybe you should think about investing it.”

  Church didn’t answer, instead standing to gather her paperwork, stuffing it all haphazardly into a backpack. She didn’t look at him and he sighed at her obstinance.

  “I think your grandfather would be happy to see you getting out of Springfield,” Charles continued, wanting to break the heavy silence that had descended.

  “He would be happy to know Cherry is taken care of,” she replied, correcting him.

  “What about you, Church? Your grandfather loved you as well.”

  She shrugged. “I can take care of myself. Always have.”

  “There’s no shame in letting someone help you.”

  Church raised an eyebrow. “I let you help me. For a fee. Email your bill and I’ll send payment right away.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Thanks again, Mr. Lawrence, for taking this on,” she said, completely ignoring his words. “I know this isn’t the type of law you practice.”

  “How many times have I told you to call me Charles? Your grandfather was a friend of mine.”

  She didn’t answer, but he expected that. She wasn’t the type of woman to talk just for the sake of talking. Clutching her backpack, she gave him a wave and walked out of his office without once looking back. Charles stared at the door for a few moments before he picked up the phone and dialed a number he knew by heart.

  A man on the other end picked up immediately. “Yes?”

  “She accepted your offer.”

  “Any questions?”

  “No. I played you off as an LLC.”

  “And she’s moving to Stevens?”

  “Yes, I believe so. She applied for a business license within the town limits.”

  The man on the other end sighed. “Good. Time to end this ugly chapter.”

  “And what of Masterson?”

  “I’ll deal with him. I have one more job for him.”

  “Very well.”

  Charles hung up, neatly stacked the paperwork on Church Hallelujah Farlander, and placed it in a folder before he took out a set of keys to lock the information away. He was finally free of the obligation he had for being her grandfather’s friend and it felt good to wash his hands of the twins.

  Chapter One

  Church leaned on the ratchet until the bolt gave way, just a fraction, but enough to let her exhale the breath she’d been holding. The damn thing had been stubbornly refusing to budge and she’d been afraid she’d have to blowtorch it off.

  “Are you having fun yet, shifting that tranny?”

  Church blew out of a piece of hair that had fallen in her eyes and squinted at the old man, Joe-Joe, who seemed to enjoy pointing out all the obvious things as he watched her work. It was a hobby he had taken up, and one for the life of her she couldn’t seem to understand. Like watching YouTube videos of people playing online games.

  “Having a blast,” she said patiently. “Had Darrell been riding an Evo or a Twin Cam, I don’t think I could do this.”

  “Eh, I don’t know,” Joe-Joe said, scratching his chin through the long gray beard that hung in a scraggy mess down his torso. “You seem to know what you’re doing.”

  “Thanks, I think.” Church unscrewed the bolt and placed it on top of her tool chest.

  “Well, I knew he had to do something soon about the suicide clutch on his daddy’s
bike. Can’t shift if you don’t have a leg to shift with. The Panhead is a beauty, though, and I don’t blame him for wanting to keep it.”

  He wolf whistled as he admired the bike. Church rolled her eyes and went to work on the next bolt. She firmly believed the old Forgotten Rebels Brother had been around when the dinosaurs roamed the Earth. He had more wrinkles than a Shar-Pei dog and the indents on his forehead bespoke of a tragedy he never talked about. From listening to the other bikers who stopped by, she knew the accident had happened during his fifty-three months stationed in Korea during and after the war, but since she wasn’t one who liked gossip, she’d left well enough alone.

  Yet every day since she’d opened the garage across the street from the motorcycle club’s compound, he’d come and sit on the old sofa she’d confiscated from the Rebel’s garage, the one she used for her bed, to talk. Most of what he said was a rambling monologue, but she didn’t mind. In fact, she quite liked having his rolling commentary on everything and nothing. It helped quiet her own inner demons screaming in her head.

  “You making it a push button?” he asked.

  “I think that’s the best way to go.”

  He harrumphed. “Everything is push button now. The phone. The laptop. Even my damn penis pump is a push button.”

  She blinked, not sure she heard him correctly. The last thing she wanted to do, however, was ask him to clarify since the initial mental visual was too horrible to contemplate.

  Church cleared her throat. “Yeah, well, shouldn’t be too hard.”

  “That’s why I got the penis pump, because it was never hard.”

  She bit her lip to keep from laughing. “I meant the clutch.”

  “Oh. I was thinking of something else.”

  “Clearly.” She placed the next bolt next to the first.

  “I have to go to the VA on Tuesday,” Joe-Joe continued, changing the conversation as if it hadn’t veered into bizarre territory. “Need my heart medicine refilled. Can you take me?”

  The abrupt switch in topic had Church blinking in confusion. “Me? What about one of the club brothers?”

  “Meh.” He waved his hand dismissively. “They’re busy nowadays with one damn thing or another. This club was founded for us veterans to depend on one another but now they’re running around like chickens with their heads chopped off, trying to come up with a new business venture since their last one went kaput.”

  “You mean since my sister pulled the plug on their drug source,” she said dryly.

  He pointed at her. “Bingo. Your family owes the club.”

  “My family is married to a Forgotten Rebel’s member,” she reminded him. “So why don’t you ask her? Or him, for that matter.”

  “You try getting them out of the bedroom once in a while.” He snorted. “My room is below theirs. I’ve been pushing the button a lot on my penis pump since they’ve been humping like rabbits.”

  “Oh my God,” she muttered, holding up a hand. “Please stop. That’s another visual I don’t need in my head.”

  “I’d like a visual.” Joe-Joe cracked up laughing and after a stupefied moment, she smiled. Not so much from his off-colored joke but from how much he enjoyed his own humor.

  “Then you’ll take me?” he asked as soon as he’d gotten himself under control.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because there are dozens of people hanging out in that compound across the street who can take you.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “What’s your point?”

  His stubbornness made her back teeth grind together. “I thought I made it.”

  “You made a bunch of noise I couldn’t really hear. I’m half deaf, remember? Anyway, I think I’ll mosey on back home. My bowels are starting to give me grief. See you tomorrow. And thanks for taking me Tuesday.”

  “But I—”

  Church stopped talking, not quite sure what to say to him, which surprised her since she’d never been in such a situation. First with not knowing what to say and second where someone she barely knew asked her for her help. Sure, Cherry always ran to her whenever and wherever, but this was different. They were sisters. With Joe-Joe, she wasn’t quite sure how to react.

  “I’m going to be busy Tuesday,” she finally said, using the easiest excuse she could think of. Although it sounded lame even to her own ears.

  “Doing what?”

  She twirled her finger around the garage. “This shop, for one thing.”

  “Why? You ain’t got no customers.”

  Irritation sluiced through her. “I could have a customer on Tuesday but I wouldn’t know if I close shop to take you to the VA.”

  “What’s two?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You said for one, so what’s the second reason you can’t take me?”

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “Like I’ve stated several times already, because you have a dozen people in that compound over there who can take you. I’m not part of The Forgotten Rebels.”

  Joe-Joe shrugged and stood up. “Okay, okay. No need to get snippy. I know when no means no. So I’ll see you tomorrow and thanks for taking me on Tuesday.”

  Oh, for fuck’s sake! “No, Joe-Joe.”

  He gave her two thumbs up and she shook her head as she watched him leave her garage and walk across the street to The Forgotten Rebels property, unable to make heads or tails of the ancient man. Why did he keep coming over? She was quite aware her sterling personality wasn’t very shiny, but she liked it that way. She’d learned the hard way men took advantage of women who looked like her, and she’d be damned if she went back to being a victim.

  Just as Joe-Joe entered through the door, another man walked out. Darrell. He let Joe-Joe in first before he pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one. After he’d sucked in a lungful of smoke, their eyes met. Church didn’t like the way the butterflies took flight in her belly. Long ago, she’d realized sex wasn’t for her. She didn’t like how the man had all the control and she had none, and over the years, she’d done her best to maintain independence from the perceptions that people placed on how a woman was supposed to look and act. Everything was blamed on a woman, even if she was raped repeatedly by a man who claimed to be an adopted brother, and she was sick of the double standards. She didn’t need a man to place value on her own self-worth.

  Darrell let the smoke out from his lungs then dropped the barely used cigarette to crush under his boot. He waved at her but she didn’t return it, turning away to concentrate on his bike. He’d offered her a lot of money to fix the machine in a way he could ride it, and she was determined to earn every penny. He’d lost the lower part of his leg in an IED attack and his father’s old bike had a shifter that relied on using that foot as the clutch to change gears.

  “How’s it going?” Darrell asked, his deep baritone voice once again sending unwanted shivers over her skin.

  “Slowly.”

  “I figured,” he said. “I understand that I’ve asked for a lot.”

  “You could just buy a newer bike, one that doesn’t have a suicide clutch. Like … anything past the year nineteen fifty-two.”

  “Where’s the beauty in that?” He walked over to the fender of his motorcycle that rested on her workbench. “My father rode that bike. I don’t want a new one. I just want things to go back to the way they were.”

  Church plopped down another bolt and wiped her greasy hand on her jean-clad leg as she debated with herself on whether or not to delve deeper into his statement. She glanced at Darrell out of the corner of her eye. He seemed a little restless.

  “Do you mean your leg?”

  He was silent for a moment, staring intently at the fender, and Church knew he was lost in his own thoughts so she let him have his space.

  “This town is a crapshoot, you know? You’re either well off enough to float comfortably through life or you’re digging in the couch cushions looking for enough money to buy a fast food cheeseburger. Majority of kids
around here don’t think about careers so the only way for them to have any type of future is through the military. That’s why a lot of us join.” He turned away from the fender and stuck his hands in his front pockets. His eyes were full of conflict. “What do you do when the path you thought was your future suddenly ends? I’m trying to fit in but … they’ve all changed.”

  He waved his hand toward The Forgotten Rebels property and she knew exactly how he felt. It was why she liked him in an abstract way, because he seemed as much as an outsider as she was. Although she would never say she was part of The Forbidden Rebels, the truth of the matter was she did have a connection.

  “Do you know what they’re talking about right now? What other drug racket they can get into since they don’t have the meth anymore.” He shook his head. “Most of them only served one tour, state-side, or in some groovy country like Germany. No one’s had their fucking leg blown off, stayed awake through rehab listening to the cries of soldiers begging for pain pills. They get us hooked on the shit and then expect us to quit cold turkey.”

  The thought he could be hooked on opioids momentarily knocked her for a loop. The first time Ricky had raped her, he’d been high on a cocktail of things that had turned him from the boy she thought of as a brother into a monster that ruined her life forever. She took a step back.

  “You talk like you’ve walked the walk. You a junkie as well?” she asked sharply.

  He narrowed his eyes. “Just when I think you might be a good friend who’ll listen to me, you go and say something bitchy.”

  “I wasn’t trying to be bitchy,” she said defensively. “Just trying to understand who I’m dealing with.”

  He snorted and ran a hand through his hair. “I think you know exactly who you’re dealing with since you set up shop across the street from an MC.”