The two men looked plenty scared, but they worked hard to cover it. The guy whose movements I’d recognized reached his hand up and scrubbed his hair back. The back of his hand had been tattooed with the hand of a skeleton. A tattoo I’d seen before, in my nightmares, in the darkest hours of night when the agonizing vision of Dex’s death came back to me. I could hear my pulse in my ears. I flexed my fingers to get the blood flowing again. The murdering asshole kept glancing at me as if something about me bugged him.
“Looks like you boys stepped out of your territory,” Dreygon said as he casually lit a joint.
The other guy spoke up. “Don’t want no trouble, Sharpe. We just stopped for a quick beer. We’re heading back to Reno right now.”
There was a long, tense silence, or at least it was silent to everyone else. My head was filled with a voice urging me to rip them to shreds.
“You’re damn right you’d better be heading the fuck out of here.” Dreygon looked back at me. “What do you say, Boy? Looks like you really want to take a crack at this idiot.”
The guy eyed me suspiciously. “Inviting new people into your club, eh Dreygon? I heard you were desperate to expand. Good luck with that. Bent for Hell is going to be swallowing up this whole territory soon and then you’ll have to trade in the bike for one of those old man classic cars. At least you have a pair of saggy old balls you can hang from the rearview mirror.”
Dreygon faced him, and the guy fidgeted some under his cold glare. “Let’s go inside everyone so these two boys can get back on the road.” Dreygon walked forward and then, without warning, his elbow shot out and flew into the guy’s nose. Blood spurted in every direction. The guy dropped to his knees. Dreygon walked toward the saloon without looking back. Jericho and Gunner followed him.
The fucker was just pushing to his feet as I stepped up to him. I shot my knee into his face to double up on the nose break. He landed flat on his back. Dreygon had stopped in the doorway of the saloon to watch, but this wasn’t for him. This was for Dex. I leaned down over the bloodied asshole. I knew I was taking a chance at being recognized, but I didn’t give a shit.
I pulled the bandana down so he could hear my words clearly. And they were meant only for his ears. “You’d better sleep with one eye open from now on because I’m coming for you.” His eyes bulged over the dark circles that were already forming around his eye sockets.
Cash had remained behind to see that they left. He stared at me as I strolled past him toward the bar.
Angel ran to me as I stepped inside. Rock and roll exploded from the jukebox, and the windows rattled from the sound. Angel looked so fucking hot standing in the center of the dark, grungy bar that I grabbed her to me and kissed her hard. The incident outside had sent adrenaline coursing through my veins, and if we’d been alone, I would have ripped her dress off and fucked her on top of one of the pool tables. She seemed to sense what I was thinking and threw her arms around me as if she had no plans of letting go any time soon. And I was good with that.
She dragged me over to a booth. The bench was hard, sticky and sour smelling like the whole damn place. Tobacco smoke had turned the cracked plaster walls a dingy yellow. The man behind the bar, who I could only surmise was Mickey, was a stout, tough looking guy who looked as if nothing could intimidate him, not even his MC clients. Jericho, Cash and Gunner sat on stools at the counter. Candy had wandered off to talk to someone in the pool hall.
Dreygon pulled up a chair at the booth Angel and I had fallen into, throwing a cold blanket over any plans I’d had of touching her beneath the table. “Hey, Mick,” Dreygon’s voice shot over the music, “hope you pissed in those beers before you served those two assholes.”
Mickey tossed a wet rag over his shoulder and shoved some beers toward Jericho, Gunner and Cash. Then he carried a pitcher of beer and glasses to the table. “They just came in for a drink before heading back on the road. I’ve got to pay my bills somehow, Sharpe. Last thing I can afford to do is turn away paying customers.”
Dreygon lifted a thick gray brow at him and tossed him a twenty. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just keep the beers coming. There are some guys meeting us here, so you’ll make plenty of cash tonight. That way you can keep adding to that stash of porn I know you have back there in your DVD collection.”
Mickey’s shrug made his belly wobble. “Not much else to entertain out here.”
Dreygon returned his attention to me, but he was the last person I wanted to talk to. “You’ve got one hell of a temper.” He glanced over at Gunner. “Gunner has a temper too, but he never puts it to good use. I like what I saw out there.”