Henry nodded. "Talk to Drake downstairs. He has connections to a realtor here in town. He can probably arrange a house for you to stay in until we can get you settled somewhere permanent." He looked at her with a questioning eyebrow. "a.s.suming, that is, that you aren't planning on running off again as soon as I solve your little problem?"

Maggie immediately opened her mouth to spew out the knee-jerk, anti-authoritative bile that often pa.s.sed as conversation between her and her father, but she stopped herself. She knew she was in no position to give att.i.tude, no matter how badly she wanted to do it. And the truth was, she hadn't planned her future at all, because she still wasn't sure she was going to have one.

She swallowed her words and simply nodded at her father. "That sounds fine. Thank you."

Henry nodded. "We'll get this taken care of. If these people are as dangerous as you say, and if I'm going to protect you properly, I need your promise that you'll leave that rebellious bulls.h.i.t at the front door. I'm in charge here, and you'll do as I say, when I say it. You're my daughter, and I won't leave you with the wolves, but I'll be d.a.m.ned if you're going to abandon your family, come crawling back for help, and put them in danger because you're too proud to shut up and listen once in a while. I call the shots, or you can hit the road and take your chances on your own again. Is that clear?"

Even as part of her was screaming that she had made a huge mistake, Maggie nodded again. Her pride wasn't worth her life. "Yes. Understood."

"Good," said Henry. He stood up from the chair, and on instinct Maggie stood up with him. "Go downstairs and talk to Drake. We'll get this taken care of."

Maggie waited for a moment, feeling hesitant. Should she hug him? Shake his hand? There was no protocol for this awkward moment. Henry cleared his throat and walked over to open the conference room door for her, more or less showing her out. Maggie flushed with a bit of embarra.s.sment as she grabbed her purse and sungla.s.ses and left the room. Henry didn't follow, but closed the door behind her, staying in the conference room alone.

Someone had started up the jukebox in the den, and a few more unfamiliar members joined Tommy and Beck at the bar. When she came down the stairs, Tommy shouted her name happily and grabbed a beer, cracking it open on the side of the counter. "I can't believe you're back!" he said as he handed it to her.

His kindness immediately took some of the edge off her nerves. She took a seat at the bar and for a split second, she felt welcome. "Can't believe it myself," said Maggie as she clinked her bottle against his in a friendly cheers. She took a few grateful, deep swigs and tried to gather her senses. When she realized her hands were shaking again, she put the bottle down on the counter and shoved them into her pockets nonchalantly. "Henry said I need to talk to Drake..."

"Well, if it ain't my lucky day!" said the one at the pool table. He had begun a new cigarette, and patted his table partner on the shoulder as he walked over with a c.o.c.ky stride. His greasy blonde hair was done up in a bun on top of his head. Toned, tanned arms showcased a wide array of colorful old-school tattoos. He was attractive in his own way, but something in his mannerisms made Maggie's skin crawl. "'Cuz you are about the finest looking b.i.t.c.h I've seen in this place in a long a.s.s time."

The look on Tommy's face was priceless. "Dude," he said, dragging the word out.

"What?" said Drake. Then he yelped loudly when he felt Beck's meaty hand whack the back of the head mercilessly. "What the f.u.c.k, man?!"

"That is Maggie Oliver, you s.h.i.thead!" said Beck without an ounce of humor. "As in, your president's daughter?"

The cigarette tumbled from Drake's lips as his jaw dropped. His eyes went wide. "Oh, oh s.h.i.t! f.u.c.k me, man, I didn't know... f.u.c.k, please don't tell your old man... I didn't mean any disrespect."

"Oh? Do the other 'b.i.t.c.hes' typically find that kind of talk respectful?" said Maggie with a hint of a smirk as she took a swig of her beer.

"You're a G.o.dd.a.m.n moron, Drake," said Tommy, laughing. "Henry's gonna kill you."

"Hey, it was an honest mistake! I've never met her before, Jesus! And you're one to talk about being a moron, Castillo." Drake leaned far over the bar and smacked Tommy the way Beck had smacked him. Maggie just laughed and rolled her eyes at their boyish display and finished her beer with a grateful breath.

"Henry said you could find me a house to stay in while I settle back into town," said Maggie.

"Oh, no doubt," said Drake as he straightened his shirt and cut. He bent and picked his still-burning smoke off the ground and took a drag. "I can definitely do that for you. Lemme make a few calls while Tommy gets you another beer."

Tommy was two steps ahead of him and had already put an open bottle on the counter in front of her. She tipped it to Drake and said thanks, watching him pull out his phone and scoot off into the quiet hallway.

"He the new resident 'hook-up artist'?" said Maggie to Beck. It seemed every new generation of the Black Dogs brought in variations of the same types of men, and the hook-up artist was a valuable one. The club always found itself in need of random skills and tools, and a good hook-up artist acted like a spider in the middle of a web of connections, brokering beneficial relationships between groups who would otherwise never meet.

Beck looked at Drake and nodded. "Best one we've had in a long time. That little s.h.i.t's running so many deals, we can barely keep up with him."

"He looks like he needs a shower."

"He probably does," said Beck, and clinked her beer bottle with his as she laughed.

After a few minutes, Maggie actually felt a little like herself again as she sat at the bar, shooting the s.h.i.t with Tommy and Beck. For the first time in years, she felt safe. It was almost like she had never left.

She listened to Tommy telling a story about his wonderfully colorful abuela when they heard the sound of the clubhouse door open and shut. Heavy footsteps came down the hallway. She didn't think much of it until one of the members at the pool table behind her shouted, "Hey, Jase! Time to defend your championship, bro!"

Maggie felt her throat seize up and almost choked on the swallow of beer she was halfway into when she heard his name. She found her composure before she could make a complete a.s.s of herself and gulped it down, turning to face the doorway.

And there he was: Jase Campbell, all six-foot-one of him. He had been painfully attractive before, and had only become more-so as a fully grown man. He had shaved his jet black hair on the sides and kept it long on top, giving him the appearance of somehow being clean-cut and dangerous all at the same time. He had always been broad-shouldered, but in the years since she had seen him, he had clearly been hitting the gym hard. His arms and chest were huge, his waist whittled neatly beneath his MC cut. And, as the men who joined the MC were wont to do, he had abandoned the scruff in his early twenties and grown himself a dark beard and moustache combination. He stood straight like a soldier, always standing out of the crowd-even when that crowd consisted of other alpha males like himself. Power seemed to flow off him like an invisible aura.

Even her best dreams couldn't do justice to the reality of the man that Jase was. Maggie felt her stomach drop somewhere near her ankles as she looked at him for the first time in almost five-and-a-half years.

Jase, the man she had loved. The man who had first loved her.

The man she had abandoned.

She couldn't bring herself to do or say anything in that moment, and no one else in the room seemed to realize she had stopped breathing. She couldn't tear her eyes away from him. She had promised herself she would play this cool, but her heart was pounding in her chest like a bird trying to escape from a cage.

Jase didn't notice her, not right away. He was looking at the man who had challenged him, smiling. His whole face lit up when he smiled. He took a few steps into the den before he finally looked over to the bar and saw her sitting there with a beer in her hand as if she had never left in the first place.

As soon as he saw her, he stopped dead in his tracks. The smile fell from his face, and in its place a red-tinted darkness began to brew. He stared at her as if he was looking at a ghost and she could see his chest heaving as his breaths came shorter and shorter.

"Jase, look who it is!" said Tommy. "Maggie's back!" He might have been oblivious, but even the cheer in his voice couldn't mask the tension building in the room.

Maggie stood up carefully from the barstool and put her beer on the counter. She said nothing, made no motion towards him. She only met his eyes and waited.

Everyone had stopped what they were doing and watched Maggie and Jase with curious eyes. Maggie wondered if the way she felt today was what it felt like to be famous: everyone constantly staring, watching everywhere you went, waiting for you to f.u.c.k up.... waiting for you to scream. Maggie withered beneath their collective gaze.

"Yeah," said Jase suddenly. His baritone voice sent shivers down Maggie's spine. She did her best not to let it show. "So she is." After a pause, he took three hard steps towards the bar and came to stand right in front of Maggie. She only came up to his shoulders. She forgot what it felt like to feel so small next to a man, and it wasn't just his size that made her feel that way. The smell of his musk sent overwhelming waves of memories through her mind.

Maggie blinked hard, waiting, watching him. He let her stew in her worry for a few moments, and then without warning, he backhanded the beer she had been drinking from the bar. It went crashing into the wall, spilling suds all over an ancient poster of Willie Nelson.

Jase bent down low towards Maggie's face. His whispered words pierced her heart in ways she didn't know were possible. "Go home."

With that, Jase turned abruptly and stalked out of the den, down the hallway, and out of the clubhouse. Seconds later, the sounds of a roaring bike echoed down the long driveway.

Shaking and pale, Maggie felt herself rooted to the spot she was standing. She stared at the empty s.p.a.ce where Jase had been like she was caught in a bad dream.

"Jesus," said Drake from the doorway of the den. He shoved his phone in his pocket and, completely oblivious, thumbed towards the clubhouse front door. "Obviously I'm not the only one who didn't know who she was."

~ Three ~

Jase had driven almost five miles outside of LeBeau before he realized he was actually on his bike. The sudden rage that enveloped him when he saw Maggie sitting at that bar was unlike anything he had ever felt in his relatively young life-and that was saying a lot for a guy who was professionally angry. One moment, he had been close enough to kiss her; close enough to strangle her dead; close enough that he could still smell her lingering perfume in his thick beard. Then he was suddenly aware of the swirling colors of the falling twilight as he tore down a country road at twice the speed limit, wind whipping his face without mercy. The moment spooked him when he realized he had no idea what had happened between here and there.

He slowed his bike down as he came around a curving hillside, and pulled her over at the first shoulder that was wide enough to park safely. The bike rumbled between his legs for a few moments before he killed the engine. Instantly the sounds of the coming night came rushing in to fill the silence: bullfrogs, crickets, the final songs of day birds. Jase tried to focus on the visual of his anger melting away like the patient, slow drip of wax from a burning candle; sometimes he could daydream his way into some level of calm. Some of the stars twinkled brightly, out early in the night sky and he did his best to focus on them. But all he could see in his head was Maggie, sitting there at the bar, like she had never left; joshing around with Castillo; drinking the MC's beer and acting like she owned the place. Like she hadn't just up and abandoned it one sunny summer day much like this one.

The back of Jase's neck pulsed, tense with stress and heat. He moved to rub it away and was shocked to see his hand trembling when he lifted it.

"f.u.c.k," he sighed heavily and felt suddenly weighted.

Why was she here? Why now? After all this time... after Jase had worked so G.o.dd.a.m.n hard to st.i.tch up the bleeding wound she had left behind in him. A wound that was infected and pulsing for over a year afterward; a wound that nearly drove him to self-destruction. Only the guiding hand of the MC had saved him from himself. It was the second time Henry and the boys had saved his life, and he wasn't even thirty yet. He owed them everything. And Maggie had almost made him lose it.

He found himself wishing someone had bothered to call or text him and warn him about her return, but Jase immediately wondered if that really would have helped. He tried to imagine calling himself about the news, trying to keep it from ending in rage, and he failed. He knew deep in his heart that this was just a mini-apocalypse he would have no choice but to face and endure. He used to rehea.r.s.e this emergency on nights when he couldn't sleep, nights when he felt weak. He thought if he could be prepared for it, he could find some way to make it easy to endure. But now he felt that maybe there was never a way for it to be easy.

As the last light died from the sky, Jase revved up his bike once more and headed back into town at a significantly slower speed. Regardless of how calm he had felt on the country road, every mile that led him back to LeBeau only recharged his anger a little at a time. He didn't have the luxury of taking time for it to completely die. He had to talk to Henry and find out just what the h.e.l.l was going on. No more surprises.

He pulled up to the MC and saw the strange SUV he had noticed before was gone. It had to have belonged to Maggie; only he hadn't realized it at the time. He took a deep breath, grateful he wouldn't have to see her again.

When he pa.s.sed through the den, Beck shouted at him over the Roy Orbison on the jukebox and the sound of laughter at the pool table that he needed to make a liquor store run. Jase tossed a hand at the old man and didn't reply. He headed straight through the den and up the stairs to the conference room. Without thinking, he simply opened the doors and barged in.

Henry sat at his place at the head of the table, lost in thought. He jolted to attention when Jase entered, looking too surprised to be mad at the show of insolence.

Jase took time to close the doors behind him before he spoke. "How the f.u.c.k could you not tell me she was here?" The question came out bitter before Jase could do anything to stop it. But he didn't take it back and he didn't apologize. He stood over Henry and waited for an answer.

Henry shook his head and waved a hand. "It's not like that, son."

"What is it like? Is your phone broken?"

"I know you're angry, Jase, and you have every right-"

"I don't f.u.c.king need your permission to be angry!"

That was the line. Henry jumped to his feet and met Jase with hard eyes. Jase put down the finger he realized he'd been pointing at his club president.

"Why don't you sit the h.e.l.l down and we talk about this like civilized men, eh?" said Henry. It was half-serious, half-sardonic. "Or I guess we could just tear each other apart over her, like she's always wanted us to do."

A few deep breaths later and Jase was feeling more himself. He apologized to Henry and slumped his way into Beck's chair. "I never expected to walk into that room and see her sitting at that bar again. I feel like my last sanctuary has been... breached."

"I'm sorry for that," said Henry. "She came with no warning. And I was still in too shocked to think about calling you."

Jase nodded. "What is she doing here?"

"She says she needs help. Some small-time dealers tried to bully her into a racketeering scheme at her job," said Henry.

Jase frowned. "Do you believe her?"

"I believe it would take something equally as dangerous or difficult to get her to come back here after all this time. Whether this is the actual truth, I don't know. But something big is going on. I really..." Henry trailed off, then cleared his throat and continued. "I really believed I would never see her in LeBeau again."

Silence fell as both men, for very different reasons, contemplated the return of Maggie Oliver. Already the clubhouse felt different to Jase. It felt like it was on the horizon of some growing storm.

"What did you say to her?" said Jase.

He had interrupted another daze. Henry blinked a few times and then said, "She's my child, Jase. Of course I told her we would help."

Jase nodded, but then stopped. "Wait, we?"

"We, as in the MC, yes. Maggie seems pretty convinced that these a.s.sholes are threatening enough that she had to leave Eagleton just to feel safe. She will be a liability to us and to the town if we don't intervene... to say nothing of the fact that I'm not leaving my daughter out in the woods to be devoured by wolves."

"I'm not saying you should..."

"Really?" said Henry. He looked Jase in the eyes. "You sure about that, son? Didn't you just bust through my beautiful cherry-wood doors without knocking to tell me I should do just that?"

Jase felt uncomfortable at the insinuation Henry was making. He was furious as all h.e.l.l at Maggie, yes. He would be happy never seeing her face again. But seeing her hurt? Or dead? Thoughts like that turned his stomach to stone. He shook his head. "I didn't know she was in danger. She was just... suddenly there at the bar. Like a bad dream. I wasn't ready for it."

"Yeah, I guess she picked up a lot more about tactical thinking than I a.s.sumed," said Henry. He actually chuckled to himself a little at that.

"I'm glad she came to us-to you-if she's in trouble," said Jase. "But to be perfectly frank, I'd prefer it if she got the f.u.c.k out of town after all of it has blown over."

Henry was silent a minute as he looked at Jase. "You don't want her stay to be extended, then?"

"Not if I have any say about it, no," said Jase. He put his hands on his knees and leaned forward. "Maggie left LeBeau. She abandoned it for a different life. She doesn't get to come back and just hit the reset b.u.t.ton on all of that. This is our town and we deserve to be here without her dragging up the ghosts of the past. We're the ones who stayed and took care of it."

Henry licked his lips. He took a breath before he responded. "She may very well not want to stay, anyway, Jase. Let's worry about one thing at a time."

"Such as?"

"The sooner we can take care of this threat against her, the sooner she can stop being on the run, and start...well, whatever life she ends up choosing," said Henry.

Jase nodded. "I agree. What do you suggest?"

"I'm going to put some feelers out to some allies around Eagleton. We don't have a chapter very close to there, so we are going to need to hire some people to do the work for us."

"You've got an Afghani group up there. We've never met them directly but I know they work for Aamir. Maybe he could set up contacts." Since the wars in the Middle East, the MC had found their best gun-running allies in the natives from that region, who happily sold American weapons back to the States and out of the hands of insurgents.

Henry said, "Yep, already on my list. I've also got a call in to the Broken Pillars and the Gladiators, to see if they have anything we can use. Once we figure out who these morons are, we'll have a nice talk with them, make sure they are settled to leave Maggie in the 'loss' column of their dips.h.i.t operation, and move on. We'll work the details of that out once we have more information on them."

"Sounds like a plan. Let me know how I can help." I want to get her out of here as fast as f.u.c.king possible.

"Actually," said Henry, and Jase's blood immediately went cold at his tone of voice. It was that tone he had heard a million times since the MC had 'taken him in', and since Henry Oliver had become his father figure. "I do have a job for you, Jase."

"Don't..." said Jase. The word fell out of his mouth before he even realized it was in his brain.

"She's my daughter, Jase. My only child. I can't risk anything happening to her, despite our differences," said Henry. He sighed and wrapped his fingers together on the table. He leaned forward towards Jase. "Maggie needs a detail on her every minute until I am confident she hasn't been tailed here. Until we know more about these guys, I have to a.s.sume they're big and bad enough to have followed her out of town."

Jase closed his eyes. "Henry, please..."

"Beck is not the soldier he used to be. His eyes are getting worse. I need my best soldier on her, Jase. And you are my best soldier."

"f.u.c.k that. What about Will? Or Ghost?"

Henry shook his head. "Will is not a better soldier than you. A better spy, maybe. And Will is also not going to intimidate anybody from a distance." Henry made a gesture from Jase's legs to his head, as if to say you're a giant, kid, you know that! "Ghost is too fresh to the club for me to let him close to Maggie."

Jase pushed to his feet, angry and feeling trapped. "Do you really understand what it is you're asking of me?"

"I'm not trying to put you in a world of pain, son, but my back is against the wall. You're the best man I've got. She's my only child. I'm supposed to change my tactical plans based on the fact that you two fell in love once?" Now Henry stood up to meet his face. "If I put your feelings, or hers, ahead of my battle instincts, then I might lose her for good. Is that what you're asking me to do, Jase?"