Page 32 of Misrule
When they reached the gate to Outlaw and Megan’s place, the biker punched in the code. Still holding Megan’s hand, he stepped aside and allowed everyone to enter.
Knox hovered back, waiting to hear that they’d changed their minds. That he’d be allowed to come in with them. That he was one of them, the way Roxanne always insisted.
But, no. Outlaw slammed the gate closed.
“Johnnie?” Knox called. “Come to the club and have a drink with me.”
“Fuck no,” Outlaw growled. “Fuck off. Good fuckin’ night, Knox.”
Knox waited a moment to hear Johnnie’s protest, but none came.
“Assholes,” he growled under his breath, stuffed his hands into his pockets and started off toward the club. He refused to ponder the events of the last half hour. If he did, he’d get his personal effects, go to his car, and walk away for good. That was the last thing he wanted, so he concentrated on getting to the clubhouse.
At the entrance, it surprised him to see Cash McCall lounging outside, smoking a cigarette. Cash, Stretch, and Ophelia stayed mostly to themselves. Knox speculated it was because of their unconventional relationship the three had, with neither being married to Ophelia, but to each other. She was just their girlfriend and mother of their children.
“Cash,” Knox rumbled, not in the mood to talk to him. He was one of them and had never been particularly nice to Knox.
Cash blew out a ring of smoke and turned to Knox. “Come with me, Harrington.”
His hand on the door handle, Knox glared at Cash. “Fuck off.”
Cash’s soft laughter chilled Knox. He reminded himself this man had been a sniper in the military and was now the club’s explosives technician.
“You can fucking walk or I can fucking do it my way. Your choice.”
“My God, you people are all maniacs! Even you, McCall. What happened to your goddamn upbringing?”
“Not that it is any of your fucking concern, but my father happened. He couldn’t keep his cock in his pants. Now, are you coming or…?”
“Fine!” Knox snapped. “I don’t feel like getting bruised and battered again.”
“Does that mean you’ve learned your lesson and will stop challenging Outlaw?”
“Someone needs to challenge him,” Knox complained, and thought of a tall, muscled brown skinned man with dreadlocks. “And Mortician, for that matter.”
Instead of answering, Cash started toward a bike a couple of spots down from where they stood.
Knox stomped behind Cash as the biker mounted and started his Harley. “Hop on.”
“Where?”
Cash grinned. “Bitch seat. Tonight, you’re my bitch.”
He wanted to go to his shitty room and lick his wounds, but the sooner he got this over with, the better. Cursing under his breath, Knox slid on the small second seat and rested his feet on the footrests for each side. He didn’t have biker gear, so it worried him how his Italian loafers and expensive trousers would fair.
“I hope I don’t regret this,” he said to himself, since the idling Harley pipes were loud and obnoxious.
Without warning, Cash started off. At the gate, he stopped to use his preprogrammed card to exit. Outlaw once explained that if motherfuckers somehow got on the property without the proper credentials, they wouldn’t be as lucky leaving since authorization was needed to exit too.
That just proved how fucking stupid Outlaw was. If someone took the trouble of sneaking onto club grounds, they’d probably have an escape route all planned out.
A block away from the dead-end street, at the stop sign, Cash paused his Harley. No vehicles came in either direction on this main thoroughfare, so it annoyed Knox that Cash remained at the intersection for five minutes before finally taking off by turning right at Mach 1.
Knox’s boiling anger didn’t allow him to be afraid at Cash’s high rate of speed. Had he still been on the police force, this was exactly the asshole that Knox would’ve ticketed. He was endangering himself and any hapless soul who might’ve been out.
Knox had only worn a suit jacket, so the cold night cut into him. When Cash turned off from the main street onto a back road, noticeable if one knew where to look and covered by canopies of trees, the darkness swallowed them up and the temperature plummeted by another few degrees.
Although it galled Knox to admit it, Cash handled the bike with expert ease, not deterred by the bumpiness in some places, or the pitch black, or the howls and cries of night roamers. The zig-zagging and twists and turns confused Knox so much that, by the time they reached a gate similar to the one at the club’s entrance, he was thoroughly lost.
