Forbidden Sacrifice: An MC Romance (Savage Kings MC Book 10) Read online

  True to my word, I put my hand over my lips so I wouldn’t interrupt Brock anymore. I tried to steal glances at everyone else in the room, but no one seemed in support of what I said. Most, in fact, seemed to expect me to blurt something right back out again.

  “This much I know,” Brock said. “Unless someone else in this room can give me a good reason to strike tonight—or if anyone else cares to support Parker’s plan—then we are standing pat for now. The two Anarchists were arrested by Officer Burton and Sheriff Jones, so it’s not like we don’t have anything from them.”

  This was not going to end well.

  “All in favor of striking tonight?”

  I boldly raised my hand. I didn’t need to look around the room to know that I had no other support. I put my hand back down over my mouth, the better so I didn’t start cussing everyone around me in sight. They just don’t fucking get it.

  “We will continue to discuss the issue,” Brock said. “Trust me, Parker. No one wants to see these guys killed more than me. Lest you forget, my girlfriend’s uncle runs the fucking Anarchists and nearly had her raped. He is the scum of this Earth and I want him gone yesterday. But we have to think smart as we plan this out, because if we don’t, we feed right into his game.”

  “I hear ya.”

  But it was just a courteous response, not one actually out of agreement with him. Nothing that he was going to say here was going to make me think anything other than that Brock was being too cautious for his own good and was overthinking everything.

  “Alright, meeting’s over. Parker—can you stay a moment?”

  Well, this should be interesting. I remained in my seat as the rest of the club cleared out. Brock waited until the door had slammed shut, looking at no one, not even Petey, until the door closed.

  “What’s going on with Liza?”

  I scoffed.

  “That ain’t none of your damn business.”

  “It’s my business when it affects the man I most trust to protect this club.”

  I stared him down, hating what he said, but appreciating the show of trust all the same. If it was possible to both love and hate someone simultaneously, that’s how I was feeling about Brock right now.

  “I think she’s a wonderful cop and I ain’t gettin’ her as long as the Anarchists exist. So I’d like to see ‘em wiped out soon as I can.”

  “I understand,” Brock said. “You know, you helped a ton when they had Heather in captivity. Without you, I might have lost my damn mind and gone crazy. But I knew that I was losing my mind. I relied on guys like you and Petey. I need you, Parker, to understand that you are biased here toward quick action. I want my sergeant in arms to not be afraid to run into battle, but I can’t have him be insane. Just trust me when I say we want this resolved as badly as you do. But if you act foolishly, there’s nothing I can do. OK?”

  “Ah, fuck,” I groaned. I knew there was no arguing with him. “I understand.”

  “Thanks,” Brock said as he stood. “That’s all. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  For the moment, I was fine. I understood what Brock was saying, and when I went to sit on the couch and decompress, I accepted it and went with it.

  But as time went by, I realized that what they had done to Liza was far, far worse than what they had done to Heather and Anna. Yes, they had eventually gotten to them, but they were striking at Liza immediately. The danger of them escalating to just a straight murder was very real.

  I couldn’t wait. I became convinced after about an hour of my mind running around in circles that if they got to Liza again, they wouldn’t hold her captive or use her as bait to draw one of us out. They’d just straight kill her.

  I walked out as casually as I could to my bike, but as soon as I got to my motorcycle, I peeled out of the lot. I looked back to see a few concerned faces, but none of them were Brock’s. He’d probably get word eventually of what happened, but that still gave me a little bit of time to strike before I got pulled back.

  I headed over to Golden Valley, determined to make my strike brutal and swift. I had no interest in making this a suicide run—just a message that we were not to be fucked with again. We would take a page out of their playbook, strike quickly, and then head home.

  I didn’t know from intel where in Golden Valley they were, but the town was even smaller than El Sorino and Romara—it was basically two perpendicular streets off of a highway exit, with some homes off in the distance. It was less of a town and more of a pit stop for passengers en route to Los Angeles. It wouldn’t take but a minute or two to search for the motorcycles in question.

  Sure enough, just by a small 50’s diner, I saw about five bikes belonging to the Anarchists parked outside. I wished that I knew that one of them was Vulture, but that was a little bit beyond the scope of my capabilities.

  I stopped my bike, lined up my rifle, and shot up the tires of each and every bike. I only got about five seconds’ worth of firing in before the Anarchists emerged from the restaurant, and none of them were vulture, but it was enough to leave them without rides for the immediate future. I shot at one, hitting him in the thigh, before driving off with my middle finger raised.

  I next made my way over to Las Cruces, a town of slightly larger size. This was going to be a more difficult strike, but my mind wasn’t thinking on what was smart and what was safe. My mind was instead focused entirely on killing as many of the Anarchists as I could, consequences be damned.

  But this time, when I pulled up to the bikes in Las Cruces, I was met with a hail of bullets. One struck me in the shoulder, and though I turned away and got away unscathed otherwise, the motherfucker still hurt.

  “Shit!” I growled. I tried to raise my gun with the injury in my shoulder—it was still in significant pain. But it could fire. I turned the corner, aimed—

  And then took cover when more gunfire erupted from the other side.

  But this wasn’t the gunfire of the Anarchists. This was a ride in from the Savage Kings. This was the firepower that I needed to help win the battle.

  “Fuck yeah!” I roared.

  I saw Brock, Petey, and some prospects driving up and laying down more than enough fire to mow down whoever was on the other side. Again, I didn’t see Vulture—we might as well have nicknamed him Ghost—but the casualties would put a dent in their operations. Brock pulled up to me, a scowl on his face.

  “Let’s go.”

  “Fine by me,” I said with a smirk. Mission accomplished. We took out their forces. We surprised ‘em. We gave them a goddamn test of their medicine.

  I checked my phone just before Brock entered.

  I still had not heard a reply from Liza from this morning. I was being too nice to her, giving her too much space. Much as I had swept into Las Cruces and El Sorino, I needed to sweep in to her unannounced, make my move, and force her to accompany me on one date. That was all—I didn’t expect her to sleep with me or do anything other than give me a chance.

  It’ll work perfect, I thought. I was a little cocky, sure, but I was confident.

  And then Brock ended.

  “Listen closely,” he said. “As this is not a discussion. This is what’s going to happen. I warned you back there that we were not going to strike at the Anarchists tonight.”

  “We—”

  “Shut it, Parker.”

  I had never seen Brock be this firm with me before. I kind of admired it, wondering where the hell it had been before, though I obviously didn’t take a great deal of pride in being on the receiving end of it.

  “You deliberately disobeyed a direct order on my part,” he said. “If you were a prospect, we’d just kick you right out of here. Obviously, you’ve done a lot of good for this club, and I’m not going to kick you out. But for the sake of my standing with the club, I can’t just let this go unpunished. There needs to be some sort of consequence.”

  “Alright, then what?” I said, though I had a growing unease that something bad was about to come my
way—even though I had done a lot of good for the club tonight. At least, that’s what I’d like to believe.

  “I’m taking your cut for one week.”

  Shit. For real?

  “Brock—”

  “I said this was not a discussion, Parker.”

  Sometimes, I liked to think that even though Brock was president, with him being relatively young, I could have run over him at any moment if I wanted to. I liked to think that it was because of my military background, respectful of authority, that made me this way. It gave me a sort of power that fueled my confidence and, yes, my ego.

  But Brock was now smashing that notion to bits.

  “Honestly, I’m probably letting you off the hook pretty easily here, given that one week is not that much. But for the next week, I need your cut. You can come back in next Thursday and claim it back if you don’t do any other damage in that time. Understand?”

  I pulled my lips back, folded my arms, and waited to see if Brock might change his mind or break a little bit. He did no such thing.

  “Alright,” I said. “This is bullshit, though.”

  “Bullshit is putting your life unnecessarily on the line,” Brock said. “If not for Petey mentioning something, you’d be pinned down in Las Cruces and then executed or tortured. If you prefer, think of it as you taking a week off to get your mind right.”

  Yeah, I’m not gonna see it like that.

  But as I discarded my cut and handed it to Brock, I did see a small silver lining in what was otherwise a pretty awful moment.

  That boldness had paid off somewhat, but it had also put me in a ton of danger. If, however, that boldness were applied to women… and to one woman in particular…

  Well, it was a damn good thing I had some more free time to work with now.

  4

  Liza

  I could say that I felt good about going home Thursday night without having to deal with an attack of any kind, but that would be a bit of a misnomer.

  It was probably more accurate to say I just didn’t feel anything at all. Being a cop meant that violence, attacks, and fear were a regular part of my life. Certainly, I hadn’t expected to come to this small town and had the extreme danger that I had faced so far, but it wasn’t like it was going to mentally scar me for life.

  Rather, I could objectively detach from it, just note it as something else that I needed to account for, and move on with my life. To me, as best as I could, I treated like the violence like I did a bad commute—just another factor to account for. That didn’t mean that I always succeeded, but striving for that mindset made dealing with the fallout much easier.

  That, or I just buried it deep enough that it wouldn’t become an issue until much later for me.

  In any case, when I awoke Friday night, I headed to the police station at an early hour, about 6 a.m. I wanted to get the jump start on my work so that I wouldn’t have to deal with the sheriff’s questions until after a couple of hours. Sheriff Jones was a good person, but boy was he in the pockets of the Savage Kings. Boy was he so deep in that he would have called it drowning from any other perspective.

  I drove my cruiser to the station, but just before I turned the headlights off, I noticed a motorcycle parked there. Taking caution, I pulled my pistol out as I walked out of my car, ready for an Anarchist to try and knock me out so he could free the prisoners inside.

  But instead of an ambush, the rider of that motorcycle stood by the entrance to the station with his arms crossed. He didn’t have on his usual cut, but he had the same beefy, thick build and the folded arms.

  “It’s kind of early for you to be here, isn’t it, Parker?”

  “More like it’s really goddamn late for me to be up,” he said with a yawn.

  “Where’s your cut?” I said as I came up to him, waiting for him to move to the side so I could get inside.

  “Funny ya should ask,” he said.

  He then proceeded to explain that he had gotten kicked out of the Savage Kings for one week because he had gone to attack the Anarchists on his own. I got the feeling that he was exaggerating his heroic efforts in El Sorino and Las Cruces, but he had no reason to lie about having actually gone. I didn’t think that he had had a ton of bad relationships with other members of the club; he just seemed like someone who had a bit of a streak of being a little too bold.

  “So… why did you do that?” I asked.

  “For ya,” he said with a smirk. “I didn’t want ya to suffer any further because of what we did. So I figured if I played my part to try and protect ya, it’d be worth gettin’ kicked out for a bit.”

  It was a good thing that it was early morning, because that was one of the most weirdly sweet things that anyone had done for me since my breakup. It definitely wasn’t flowers and chocolate, but it was a nice gesture in its own way.

  “Well, thank you, I suppose,” I said. “But why did you come here to tell me that, then? Would a text or a call not have sufficed?”

  “Ya not answerin’ your texts, how am I supposed to know you got ‘em?”

  OK, fair point.

  “I’m a busy woman, Parker. And I have work to do. I suppose if you’re here for work… I don’t know—”

  “No,” he said firmly. “I’m not here for work. And I ain’t come here to tell ya what I just told ya, though I did need to tell ya for background.”

  “OK,” I said, folding my arms. “Then what?”

  If I was being honest, I didn’t need to ask the question. I knew the real reason he’d come. His smirk, his cool demeanor despite losing his status in the club for a week, and his confident air told me we were about to go in the same circle all over again.

  “I came to ask ya on a date.”

  Oh, Lord.

  “Look, yesterday, when I was out shootin’ up those motherfuckas, I knew I needed to be bold. Fortune favors the brave and bold, or somethin’ like that, right? And it’s the same here with ya. I knew that this pussyfootin’ around of askin’ ya out by texts or flirtin’ with ya wasn’t going to cut it. I needed to show you, really show you, how much I liked ya. And so that’s why I’m here.”

  I mean, I have to admit, it is more audacious than normal…

  “And if ya gonna say ya can’t while we’re fightin’ the Anarchists,” he continued. “Just remember, I can’t fight the Anarchists right now. I’m a free man!”

  “That’s certainly a better spin than saying you’re an unemployed man.”

  “Hey now,” Parker said with a chuckle. “But in any case, Liza, I like ya. I care about ya, but I ain’t gonna care what ya say. I know ya want the date too. If ya don’t want to date me in the long term or sleep with me, OK, I get it. But ya should at least gimme one date. Ain’t like ya gonna get any other prospects out here.”

  I hated how right he was. I hated how I was feeling more inclined to say yes after what he’d done yesterday, even though it had cost him his job for a week. I hated how, the more I thought about it, the more inclined I was to say yes.

  If I didn’t say yes, when would I? When I got more responsibilities? When I got more tasks and duties in my job? When I got more stress?

  I knew this was a foot-in-the-door technique. Parker didn’t just want one date with me. And I knew as soon as I said yes, I wouldn’t just want one date with him. I wouldn’t go into the evening with the mindset at least.

  But…

  Damnit.

  “The job still takes priority, Parker,” I warned. “If—if—we go on this date, and duty calls, I don’t care what we’re in the middle of doing. I will drop everything to take care of it.”

  “Good ‘nough for me!” Parker said, clapping his hands. “Now ya have yourself a lovely day, Miss Burton. I’ll pick ya up from the station tonight at six.”

  “I didn’t say yes yet!”

  Parker rolled his eyes and tilted his head, as if daring me to counter his assumption.

  “Ya really gonna say all that and then pull the rug under me?”

&nbs
p; I sighed.

  “Exactly,” he said.

  “Don’t forget, the job comes first,” I said as he finally moved to the side.

  “Good enough for me, I ain’t got a job at the moment!”

  That made me laugh, and the laughter increased with the warm feelings that followed from the touch of his hand on my shoulder.

  “Now, I gotta get me some goddamn sleep,” he said. “See ya tonight, Liza!”

  Oh, Lord. What have I got myself into?

  I opened the door, only to see Sheriff Jones had already gotten there. He looked up, winked at me, and then went back to his paperwork. I didn’t even want to know if he had somehow helped Parker with this.

  It didn’t much matter, anyways. I had work to do if I wanted to make sure it didn’t interfere with tonight.

  5

  Parker

  How do you get someone who has made a career out of following the rules to let loose?

  That was the question that bugged at my mind, so much so that I actually had some trouble falling asleep. Fatigue eventually took me over shortly after eight in the morning, but I woke up around noon, meaning I had to drag my sorry ass around my apartment like a zombie. And I couldn’t exactly go to the club to hang out, either; even casual drop-ins were forbidden. Brock was the only person I could communicate with in my week off, and he wasn’t desperate to speak to me by any means.

  But by the time four rolled around, adrenaline was starting to get me excited. An answer was starting to form in my head, and by the time I left my apartment, I knew I had just the answer.

  You get her to break the rules.

  I pulled up to the station shortly before six in the evening. Sheriff Jones left first. He nodded to me, and I nodded back, but we didn’t say anything to each other. I didn’t know to what extent he knew of Liza’s and my interaction, and frankly, I didn’t much care. I was much more interested in seeing Liza than figuring out who knew what. I wasn’t some middle schooler who needed the world to know about my love life.