Page 55 of Ryder's War

Deep in thought, she didn’t notice she was home until Ryder’s house came into view. Staring at the house, she realized something was off. Try as she might, Tiffany was unable to put her finger on exactly what it was.

Thinking she was still jumpy from rushing out of the club and worrying herself sick during the drive, she decided to just keep driving and thinking for a bit. Instead of stopping, she passed the house and headed for the interstate. Figuring that Ryder might try to find her, she pulled the battery from her cell phone and from the old-fashioned GPS device attached to her dashboard.

Random thoughts rattled around in her brain for the better part of the night. The gentle hum of the engine and the clicking as she shifted gears turned into a kind of background noise. The thing was, the more she thought about her situation, the more convinced she became that drawing Ryder into her dangerous life had been a bad idea. Even an outlaw didn’t deserve to have to deal with everyone else’s shit constantly.

Running was familiar—a dance she'd perfected over years of practice. But this time felt different. She wasn't just running from danger; she was running from possibility, from a version of herself she wasn't sure she deserved to become.

He lived the life of a vigilante, doling out punishments and taking lives as he saw fit, with no oversight or sanction by the powers that be. Though she trusted that he did so with care, it washard to accept that at the same time he was an outlaw who played by his own set of rules. The man had blood on his hands, and there was no getting around that fact. That alone should have been enough to get her packing her stuff.

The icing on the cake was the loose morals inherent in the whole club scene. The women left standing after Darkness purged the worst of the worst were still whores as Alyssa so succinctly pointed out. Every single one of them was a woman happy to trade sex and companionship to bikers for room and board.

Though most of the brothers were single, there were a couple of married bikers who messed around with the whores behind their wives’ backs. It was something that everybody saw, and nobody spoke about. It rubbed her the wrong way that she was expected to keep their dirty little secrets. Then again, in what world was it okay to tell some lady you hardly knew that their husband was fucking whores behind their back? For all she knew, they were allowed to. One thing was for certain, it would kill her if Ryder cheated on her.

What had she been thinking hooking up with a biker?

Ven was the only man who consistently avoided whores like they were a plague. Maybe Ryder would take after his father in that regard,and then again maybe not. Hell, maybe Ven had just recently kicked his whore habit. In any event, Tiffany was no Lily, and Ryder had a strong history of playing the field. Something about Ryder fucking whores and then coming home to her, pretending everything was fine, made her chest hurt.

She’d already allowed herself to get sucked in and become way too close to the rough, slightly damaged man. Remembering how his arms felt around her and the way he joked with her when things got bumpy had her missing him like crazy. He was hot, sexy, and more thoughtful and giving than any man she’d ever known. Having sex with him felt like being reborn into a world where she actually mattered. Why the hell was everything in her life so complicated?

Shifting gears, she sped up. A dark thought popped into her head. Ryder didn’t know all her dirty little secrets. What would he think if he knew she’d been forced to eat her meals from a pretty pink, gemstone-encrusted dog bowl? Would he be so thrilled to have her in his bed if he knew all the truly perverted things Stuart had done to her over the years?

She imagined seeing the look Stuart always gave her on Ryder’s handsome face, and that was it. She knew she was never going back. Ryderdeserved a nice woman, not some fucked-up object who’d trained herself to disassociate from her surroundings at will.

Pressing her foot down on the gas pedal, Tiffany watched through blurry eyes as the road ahead sped by and faded in the rearview mirror. She'd spent years running from Stuart's cruelty, but maybe the harder escape was from the shadows he'd left inside her. Love wasn't enough if you couldn't love yourself first. And right now, speeding into another anonymous night, she wasn't sure she remembered how.

~ Ryder ~

The word “dead” hung in the air between them as Ryder fixed his gaze on the prospect's face. “What exactly do you mean by dead? Break that down for me.”

Cork stood beside his younger brother. His expression was blank, as usual, and his voice was calm. “When Peb called to say that your old lady had bolted, I went to your place to stand guard. She wasn’t there, but some military-type dude rushed me the moment I stepped into the house.” Waving one hand in a gesture of nonchalance, he sighed. “I shot, and you know I never miss.”

“Where’s my old lady?” Ryder demanded, panic swelling in his gut. Fear and fury warred in his chest—fear for what might have happened, fury at himself for not seeing it coming. A man in his position couldn't affordblind spots, especially not where protection was concerned.

“The tracker on her cell looks like she went to the house and just kept right on driving,” Cork said, much to Ryder’s relief. “Since she disabled both the cell phone and the GPS unit in her car, we know only that she was headed west.”

“I’ve a good idea why she left the club, but I’m at a loss to explain why she drove all the way to our house and then didn’t go in.” When he got his hands on her, Ryder had a good mind to turn her over his knee and give her a good, hard spanking.

Cork replied decisively, “My best guess is that something spooked her.”

Ryder took a step closer to the man. “Did anything look out of place when you arrived?”

Frowning, there was a pause as Cork concentrated for a brief moment. “Only a couple of things stood out to me. The first was that her vehicle wasn’t in the driveway. I thought it was because she put it in the garage. Second, I thought she was home because, though the light in the living room was off, the kitchen light was on.”

“Lights being on that we both turned off before leaving the house might have spooked her. Maybe she thought we couldn’t protect her,”Ryder guessed. “She’s been running from that asshole of an ex for a fucking long time.”

Peb’s timid voice cut in for the first time. “I ran her credit cards and ATM card. They haven’t been used, even for gas.”

“She keeps a full tank, but she’ll have to stop for gas, food, or a hotel soon,” Ryder surmised. “Stay on that shit, Peb.”

“I will, man. I’m really sorry—”

“Don’t bother. You can’t make a woman do shit in this world, my friend. We can only be there for them when it goes to hell and pull them through to the other side. Do we know anything about our John Doe?” Ryder asked, needing confirmation for what he was thinking.

Cork spoke up. “He didn’t have any identification on him, nor did I find a vehicle nearby. That makes me think he was either too stupid to keep up with his wallet or a professional who didn’t want anyone to identify him if things went bad.”

With the way things had been going lately, Ryder would bet on the latter being true. “No vehicle means one of two things. Either he parked farther away and walked to the house, or he was dropped off by cohorts. If it was the second, they’d still be after her. That means we have to find her first.”

“You’ve got a dozen of us on this situation,” Peb said. “We’ll figure it out.”

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