Page 91 of Red's Peril: Part 1

Already gutted on her behalf, I wait outside the terminal, watching as the damaged woman and Pyro approach. My eyes widen as she draws closer, and I can read her expression. To my astonishment, she doesn’t look sad or destroyed, in fact she’s giggling.

“Christ. And I was led to expect a demure pregnant woman.” I’m relieved in many ways that the woman is smiling and joking, and notice the pair seem close. Very close. Fuck, but this situation is complicated. If Melissa and Pyro have paired up thinking her old man was dead, who could blame them? Now his reappearance opens a whole new can of worms as an old lady is off-limits to any other brother. But who could fucking blame them?

Melissa’s looking from me to Pyro and trying to control her laughter.

My eyes narrow. “Anything I should know, Brother?”

Pyro looks at Melissa who mouths something to him. My lips quirk when he shrugs. “Mel was just saying…” there’s a gasp from the woman at this point, and I suspect she thought Pyro was going to say something very different as he innocently adds, “…that she’s never been to Vegas.”

There’s something about her which means I immediately take a liking to this clearly spirited woman who’s managing to survive such hurt. “Well, then, let me welcome you on behalf of the city.”

I find I admire her even more as I drive them through the city. Pyro’s asking me for updates, and telling me he’s going to join the search, while Melissa, who I understand prefers being called Mel, seems intent on going looking herself. While I’m impressed with her determination, I’m not enamoured by the suggestion.

Pyro, though, he seems to know how to handle her. “Mel, we find him, we’ll bring him back to the compound. You’ll have your opportunity to speak to him face-to-face. You deserve his explanation.”

“Same as the club,” I add fast. “Fucker walked out, and he better have a fuckin’ good reason for that.”

I’m not doing the guided tour so avoid taking them along the strip, instead taking the fastest route to the clubhouse. Once we arrive, I leave them to catch up with the Colorado members but ask Rosa to show them to their room. Rosa, I know, will go into mother-hen mode, looking after Mel and making sure she’s sorted.

Finding a man in Vegas sounds hard, but we lucked out seeing as the photos turned out to have been taken on his home turf. Finding him was one thing, holding on to him another. Brothers had chased him, but he’d escaped through a back entrance. All was not lost though, Wills and Cuff had taken off after him.

The rest of the search party had returned to the club, expectant that we’d soon have the absconder in our hands. I’m standing by the bar checking the inventory when I hear Pyro shout.

“Fucker’s gone!” he screams at the top of his voice.

My attention shifts from the paperwork fast. “What do you mean, he’s gone?” I snarl. “Wills and Cuff lost him? One of them come off their bike?”

Pyro stares at the phone he’s still holding, shaking his head in disbelief. “Nah. Skull had help. Two cars intercepted and prevented them from following. It was stop or be run off the road.”

He had help? That Skull’s not a lone wolf starts alarm bells ringing. “They get ID on the cars?” I cross the room over to him.

Pyro’s face falls as though he realises he’s forgotten to ask.

“Trail’s not dead,” Keys shouts from the other side of the room. “I’ve tracked that licence plate Cuff called in.” Thank fuck for techno freaks and men on the ball.

“Then let’s get moving. Text me the address.” I want this man now. It’s more imperative now I know someone’s aiding and abetting him. There’s something wrong about this situation, and I need to find out what. I take my bike key out of my cut. “Coming, Twister?”

“Try and stop me,” my enforcer replies.

Feeling adrenaline rising through me, it’s been a while since I was involved on the front line. I lead the group that’s heading to the destination Keys had come up with. I want my hands on this Skull, now more than ever. Demon’s got a prior claim on him, but for all that, this is my town.

When we reach the locality, I give the signal for them to slow down and pull over, whistling to gather them around me.

“Place we’re headed to is a couple of roads over,” I tell them, pointedly looking at Pyro, the stranger to our town. “Any sound of bikes and he’ll be off.”

“He won’t get away from me next time,” Cuff growls a promise.

He didn’t get away without help. Question is, how was the fucker able to summon assistance so fast? I’m certain stopping the chase was no accident.

Leaving that to be answered once we’ve got our hands on him, I lay out my plan, which is for me, Pyro and Twister to take the crash truck and scope the place we assume is his home address out, then call for reinforcements dependent on what we find. Pyro voices my fear, that Skull, having recognised the Satan’s Devils were after him, won’t have come back to his home, but will have left town.

What we feared seems confirmed when we get to the house, but oh, the surprises we find inside. There are pictures of Skull with the woman and child which definitely point to the kid being his as we’d expected, but the man in those photos was dressed in a suit and tie and looking nothing like a biker. Furthermore, the bills were addressed to a Donavan Jordan, and not the legal name, Kris Cox, that Colorado had known him to go by.

Something stinks.

Despite my gut feel that our rat has run, and this house, prestigious as it and its contents is, has been left abandoned, I nevertheless agree to some brothers and Pyro staking it out in the vain hope that Skull might be back.

I return to the compound, trying to make up some bullshit about where her man Pyro, is, but Mel, clever woman that she is, isn’t having it. I settle for my go-to excuse,club business,which works. Leaving her swearing after me, I go tend to some of my own work.

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