"All three of us were supposed to be finished off," I realized.

"We all dissented on the cartel thing," Crunch said.

s.h.i.t. I knew it was a big deal when I didn't vote with him on the cartel alliance, but p.i.s.sed off enough to f.u.c.king kill me? Kill all three of us? It was crazy, even for Mad Dog. "Blaze didn't vote for it either."

"Yeah, but he's off traveling with the Old Lady," Crunch said.

Blaze was the Vice President of the MC, and had no qualms about disagreeing with Mad Dog, on the cartel deal or on anything else.

"Do we even know where they are?" I asked.

Blaze and I weren't exactly on speaking terms when he left. In fact, the last time I saw him had been at the club vote, when I'd voted against Mad Dog. Blaze had tried to talk to me, but I wasn't in the mood for talking, not at that point. Not after an all night bender. I'd known Mad Dog was going to bring it up for vote, and I'd gone all out. I was still s.h.i.thoused at the vote. Blaze had followed me home. The last time I saw him was as he sped away as I threw a bottle at his bike, gla.s.s shattering on the ground.

I felt a flush of shame just thinking about it, about how our friendship had spiraled. About how I had spiraled down. f.u.c.k him, though - he was the one who had been so detached from the club the past year. If he'd have been more involved, none of this s.h.i.t would be going down. Tank would still be alive.

Tank was dead because of Blaze's lack of involvement. So screw guilt. Blaze was the one who should feel guilty.

"Blaze and Dani made a big deal about keeping it a secret," Crunch said. That was a good thing. Otherwise, they would probably be dead.

I stood there, while Crunch dialed Blaze. "His phone is off. I'll keep trying the cell. And I'll track down where they are. If they haven't taken any precautions to lie low, it shouldn't take me that long."

"What we need to do is hole up somewhere and wait for April and Mac."

Inferno Motorcycle Club Los Angeles, California "Shut the door behind you," Mad Dog said. The three men stood just inside the back room, Mad Dog's office area. Office was a loose term for what it was. It was a small room in the back of the clubhouse, a converted empty warehouse in an area of town that consisted of industrial buildings with dubious reputations.

"It went good, Boss," Mud said. Mud was an imposing man, a solid block of muscle, his bald head covered in tattoos.

"Everything went down as planned, then."

"Yeah, Prez," Mud said. "You don't have to worry about anything. Like we said on the phone, it was done. Burned that b.i.t.c.h to the ground."

"Did you actually see the three of them go down?" Mad Dog asked.

"No," Tink said, looking at Mud then back at Mad Dog. "We had to get the h.e.l.l out of there before the fire department showed up. But you don't have to worry about it, Boss. We sprayed the place with gunfire before the whole thing went up in flames. There was no movement, nothing. No way anyone walked out of there."

Mad Dog grunted. "You better be f.u.c.king certain about that."

"A hundred percent sure, boss," Tink said. He shifted his wiry frame uncomfortably under Mad Dog's intent gaze. Tink had the twitchiness of someone who was indulging in too much meth, but Mad Dog ignored it.

"That's for f.u.c.king sure," Mad Dog said. "All right. We're going to need some new non-dissenting voters on the cartel deal. I know I don't have to make sure you keep this s.h.i.t under wraps. We don't need any bad blood in the club, not when another re-vote will have to go down."

"You got it, Boss," said Fats. Standing up and adjusting his girth, he added, "We're backing you a hundred percent."

"That's good to hear," Mad Dog said. "We're done. Mud, hang back for a minute."

He waited until the others were gone before he spoke. "You've got my back, Mud," he said. "I'll see you put up for sergeant-at-arms."

"That going to go over all right?" Mud asked. "I haven't been patched in as long as some of the other brothers."

"They'll have to f.u.c.king deal with it," Mad Dog said. "I need someone I can trust. Someone who's proved himself to me. The other brothers havent f.u.c.king proved s.h.i.t to me. I need loyalty."

"And f.u.c.king get Tink under control," he said. "If he isn't f.u.c.king tweaking right now, he's coming down off something. Get him clean or we take him out. He needs to be reliable."

"Roger, Boss," Mud said. "We'll clean him up."

"There's about to be some good changes happening here. Once we get out from under Benicio and get ourselves attached to the cartel, I've got a sweet side deal with them that you're a part of now. There's going to be plenty of money for us, more than we're getting now."

"You going to have a problem with the Veep, Boss?" Mud asked.

"Don't worry about Blaze," Mad Dog said. "He's away right now, and I've got an idea for how to deal with him. He'll be out of the picture soon enough."

"f.u.c.kin' A, Prez," Mud said.

"f.u.c.kin' A, right," Mad Dog said. "This is going to be a new era for the MC."

June I sat on the front porch, shifting uncomfortably in the chair I'd pulled outside from the kitchen table, and made a mental note to get rocking chairs out here on the porch. I'd check in town tomorrow. I was on a loose timeline for starting the bed and breakfast, which really meant that when I decided I was done with my time off and finished with the repairs on the house, I'd hang out a shingle.

I needed time off anyhow. Going straight from the Navy into a civilian position in Chicago hadn't exactly left me any time to decompress. But it couldn't be helped; the offer was too good to pa.s.s up. The pay was insane, and it was a prestigious hospital. One of my former Navy supervisors, now a surgeon at the hospital in Chicago, had hand-picked me for the job - and would be my boss. We'd always gotten along well, so I figured having him in my corner would make the transition to civilian life a breeze.

Turns out, we'd gotten along too well.

Never get romantically involved with your boss.

It was a good life lesson.

It made things uncomfortable, when I ended it. But that's not why I left Chicago. And it didn't explain why I'd had the panic attacks there, a few months in. The job had started out great, what my therapist had referred to as a "honeymoon period". Then everything started spiraling out of control.

That was even before I started sleeping with my boss.

"Dr. Barton." One of the medical students who was supposed to observe me waved his hand in front of my face. "Dr. Barton? Are you okay?"

"Huh?" I asked. "Of course."

I'd just finished putting on a gown, gloves, and mask, and I was scheduled for surgery imminently. But my hands would not stop shaking. My heart raced, and I could feel tiny droplets of sweat collecting on my forehead, running down my temples to my cheeks.

"You don't look so good, Dr. Barton," he said. "Are you sure you're okay?"

I was having a hard time breathing. It felt like something was constricting my chest, and I wanted to rip my gown off so I could just breathe. "Is it really hot in here, or is it just me?"

"It feels all right to me, Dr. Barton," he said. "Do you want me to see if the temperature can be adjusted?"

"Please," I said.

Please let this stop, I prayed. Not here. Not now. This can't be happening.

I couldn't breathe. The room was spinning, and I felt so light-headed. Then everything went dark.

When I came to, Ben Jackson, my boss, was standing over me, and I was on a hospital bed in an empty room. "June," he said.

"What happened?" I knew full and well what had happened, but I couldn't admit it to myself. I had failed, and not just today.

"You fainted. How are you feeling?"

"Oh, I'm fine," I said, forcing a brightness into my tone that I didn't feel. "I was just dizzy. I forgot to eat breakfast this morning."

"Yes," he said. He sat down in a chair beside my bed, silent, his eyes on me. I knew what he was thinking. He'd been my supervisor years ago when I was in residency. He knew me fairly well, and he knew what happened during deployment- not the specifics exactly, but there weren't too many surgeons who had wound up involved in a blast on a humanitarian mission outside the base.

As big as it was, the Navy really was small. And the physicians' community, even smaller. Word got around.

"I did," I said. "Really." I don't know if I was trying to convince him or convince myself.

"June," he said. "This isn't the first time."

"No."

"I've witnessed it personally." He was reminding me of the time I scrubbed in to a.s.sist him, during my first month at the hospital. I'd had the same symptoms as I'd had today, but not on this scale. He was perceptive, though, and noticed my hands shaking immediately, pulling me off the surgery and relegating me to the role of observer. It was embarra.s.sing then, but not nearly as humiliating as this was today.

That time, I'd chalked it up to nerves related to the new job, and he had seemed to take that explanation. It wasn't much of one, I knew that. And I'd gotten myself into therapy immediately, worried this would derail my career. But as it turned out, therapy hadn't been the quick fix I was hoping for. In fact, I was beginning to think it was making things worse.

"I know, sir."

"Is there anything you'd like to tell me?"

"Nothing."

He was silent. "Fine. But I can't have you operating when this is happening. I have to pull you off surgery."

He'd pulled me from surgeries, and things got better. Temporarily. Then I was reinstated, and it was fine for a while. No panic attacks, at least. By the time things got worse, we were sleeping together and the lines were blurred. He should have pulled me from operating, should have noticed when I was going off the deep end.

I'd played G.o.d on the operating table, decided that a man should die - a bad man, but still.

When I turned in my resignation, Ben begged me to stay, said he was in love with me.

I didn't feel the same way.

I just wanted to get away from everything. Get back to my roots. Start a new life, a peaceful one. A life where I didn't get involved with the wrong guy. One that didn't involve hard choices.

And then Cade walked up the driveway.

Cade, the boy I'd loved once upon a time. Those early years stood out in my mind, the technicolor memories of my first love.

Before everything in my life went grey.

Cade certainly wasn't a boy anymore, though.

No, now he was a man. A biker, at that.

Axe.

Just thinking about him now sent heat rushing through my body. Standing there by his father's porch, his hair falling in pieces around his face, looking at me with his big blue eyes the same way he had looked at me in high school. Facing me, in that leather vest, the one with the emblem on the back, the sleeves of his shirt pushed up over his forearms. Forearms that were now covered in tattoos.

I wondered where else he had tattoos.

And felt my body respond to the thought, a visceral immediate reaction, the heat of arousal in my belly, spreading through me. Even though no one was outside with me, I could feel myself flush with embarra.s.sment.

I needed to get control of myself.

Reaching down to pick up my beer, I took a drag on my bottle, closed my eyes, and leaned back in the chair, inhaling deeply from the chilly Colorado evening air. The only sounds out here were the crickets and the wind gently rustling the trees. The air smelled like summertime and fresh sagebrush, the same way it did when I was growing up here. Back then, we'd tear through the neighborhood on our bikes, free of the responsibilities of school, wind blowing in our faces. There was nothing better in life than that feeling. I knew that then, and I knew it even more now.

Of course, seeing Cade dismount his bike and walk up that driveway might have been a close second.

When I opened my eyes and looked up, I saw a figure on the deck at Mr. Austin's house, and my heart skipped a beat.

Cade waved at me, and held up at bottle of some kind. I waved back, and watched as he hopped over the porch railing.

s.h.i.t. I didn't need him over here.

Not at one in the morning.

And certainly not when I'd just been thinking about where all of his tattoos might be.

He walked across the lawn, his steps uneven, and when he got to my porch, I could have smelled it on him even if he hadn't have been brandishing the bottle in his hand.

Cheap whiskey.

Bailey, guard dog that she wasn't, ran up to him, licked his fingers, and settled down beside him.

"Hey," he said, scratching Bailey behind the ears. "Don't you know you're supposed to be in bed?"

"She likes you," I said. "It looks like you're awake, having a little party of your own."

He held up the bottle. "Want some?"

I shrugged, and took it from him, taking a sip and nearly spitting it out. I wiped the back of my hand across my mouth. "G.o.d, that's awful."

Cade sat down on the step. "So what are you doing, sitting out here all by yourself?"

I couldn't tell if it was just late or his words were slurring.

"I couldn't sleep."

"That's what this is for," Cade said, shaking the bottle.

Yeah, he was definitely slurring.