Baptism by Fire (The Restless Kings Motorcycle Club Book 4) Read online

Five months ago, I heard her name on the news when her boyfriend mysteriously went missing after a work trip. Her and our brother Michael both disappeared around the same time too. They might both be dead, but the change of address has given me hope.

  So, here I am. I'm going to find my sister, and no one's going to stop me. There's no car outside this house, just a motorcycle. So, I don't think Jewel lives here. She lived in a mansion for four years. There’s no way she’d be here. I can't tell what I'm hoping for more. I want her to be here so I can talk to her and find out she's okay. I don't want her to be in Albuquerque because… then that means she's changed.

  This house isn't the house of a rich man. Her and Alec are obviously not hiding out here. The house isn't decrepit or anything, but it's small. Too small for a man like Alec to have been happy with it as far as I know. Maybe Michael has her sequestered here.

  I take the steps up the porch with my heart hammering in my chest. I can't believe I'm really doing this, but I need to find my sister. Here's hoping the prayers I said in the church back home before coming here didn't get lost on their way up, because I have a feeling I'm going to need them.

  The window blinds on either side of the door are drawn closed, so I can't peek through them. I gather up all of my strength and fortitude, and knock on the door with my heart in my throat.

  Loud footsteps come closer, and then the door opens. I notice his boots first, dark jeans, his tight T-shirt. Then, his face. His eyebrows are drawn together as the super tall man stares down at me.

  "Can I help you?" he asks.

  "Um. I… Jewel? My sister. I'm looking for Jewel. She… Her mail comes here." Of course I wouldn’t be able to get the words out. I’m nervous and a little bit scared if I’m honest with myself. This guy doesn’t look friendly.

  The man looks me up and down, and his jaw hardens. "I don't know who you're talking about."

  I know he's lying, but he's kind of intimidating so I can't call him out on it. I pull my phone from my pocket and hold up a picture of her. "She's my older sister. She might actually go by another name now, if she's still alive. Her boyfriend went missing a few months back, so I'm trying to find her and make sure she's still alive. If you see her, will you tell me please? I just want to make sure she's okay. I can leave you with my number?"

  He nods. "Sure. I'll take your number." He reaches into his pocket for his phone but stops at the sound of Gravel crunching, and he looks over my shoulder. "Hey, listen, kiddo. If she doesn't want to talk to you or tells you to go, you gotta go. I'm not fucking around."

  I flinch at the harsh obscenity, but turn around to peek at the maroon car coming up the drive. And I see her- Jewel.Joy threads through me. She is alive! But she looks different through the window.

  She parks the car and gets out. When she catches me in her gaze, her expression hardens too. "What are you doing here, Sapphire?" The sound of her voice is so sweet after so long of not seeing her, but she doesn’t seem happy.

  "I… I missed you."

  She crosses her arms over her chest and furrows her brows at me. "Are Mom and Dad here, too?"

  I shake my head and tuck my hair behind my ears. "No, I came alone. They told me to stop looking for you, but I didn't. I didn't even tell them I found you. But you're safe? You're okay? They said Alec was missing and-"

  "Shit!" Jewel stomps her foot and slams the car door, then moves towards the steps. "I'm safe. Alec is gone. You can go home now."

  "Gone? Like, you got away from him? Is he dead? Do you know where Michael is?”

  "How did you find me? How did you get here? I didn't see a car."

  Sadness washes over me. She's not going to listen to me. "It's been three years, J.” A little longer than that actually, but it seems like I’m the only one that matters to. “You really don't want to just… hug me? Catch me up on what's been going on?"

  She comes up the steps and wraps her arms around me, then immediately releases me and steps back, closer to the man. "There's your hug. Now go home. I'm sure your parents are just terrified for you and missing you like crazy."

  My parents? "Jewel, please. I'm not here because of our parents. I'm here in spite of them. They don't know I'm here. As far as they know, I stopped looking for you. I worked so hard to find you, and you're just going to turn me away?" My heart is breaking. Tears are welling up in my eyes, but I refuse to let them out.

  "How did you find me, Sapphire?" Her eyes are so cold and unforgiving. This woman standing in front of me doesn’t look or sound like my sister, but I feel like the little girl I was when she left.

  "Your mail," I admit, rolling my eyes. "It's not that hard." My cold, angry shell is apparently out of commission for now. I feel weak and vulnerable in front of Jewel and her… boyfriend. I’ve spent so much of my life looking up to her or looking for her, and she’s not even excited to see me.

  "And why did you come? Didn't you know I was alive when you saw I'd recently updated my address? So, why make the trip all the way down here?"

  "Because you're my sister!"

  She jolts back when I shout, and I reach for her instinctively. She's so very, very different.

  "I'm sorry, J. I'm sorry. I just- I-" I sigh and take a deep breath to calm myself. "I have this memory of you, of the last time I saw you.” It’s a memory I’ve went over in my head a million times since I graduated. “You and Alec came to my graduation. You had a bruise on your arm, and when I asked you about it, you smiled and waved me away, told me it was my day and not to worry about you, but you had tears in your eyes. You looked over your shoulder at Alec, like you were making sure he didn't hear me. You were terrified. That's the last time I saw you.

  “So, every day for the past three years, I've wondered if he finally killed you. I have prayed every single day and asked God to help me find you and to keep you safe. He did. Six months ago, they mentioned your name on the news when they talked about Alec going missing, and I knew you were alive. I figured he probably pushed you too far, and things… Well, I knew you made it. Did he? Did he push you too far?"

  She wraps her arms around her chest and squeezes, like she wants to be smaller. She leans in to the man, who wraps an arm around her waist and holds her tightly. "I can't do this, Zed. I'm not ready," Jewel says, before turning to face him. "Take care of her, okay? Whatever she needs. I just can't…"

  He nods and kisses her forehead before helping her into the house. When he turns back to me, he gives me a pitying look that makes my chest ache. "Where are you staying?"

  "I, uh… Well, nowhere. I had some friends drop me off on their way to Mexico. I was so confident I'd find her and things would… that she would-" I wrap my arms around my belly, just like my sister did, and try to hold in the sobs, but it doesn't work. I thought she would at least have a desire to see me, to speak to me. Never once did I consider that she might send me away the second I’ve finally found her.

  Zed pulls me against his chest and holds me tightly, tighter than Jewel did, and rocks us back and forth. "Oh hell, Sapphire. It'll be okay. I can put you up in the clubhouse. Someone will give you a ride wherever you need to go. It'll give you a place to sleep, shower, eat, whatever you need to do before you get back on the road. It's a biker clubhouse. You comfortable with that?"

  What the hell is a biker clubhouse? "I thought when she saw me… I thought that she would-"

  He sighs. "I know, sweetie. She's been through a lot. It sounds like she'll come around, she's just not ready yet. So, I'll call the prospect and have him come get you, if you're comfortable with that. He'll take you to the clubhouse."

  "How long do you think it will take her? How long do you think it'll be before Jewel is ready to talk to me?" It’s obvious he knows her better than I do now. She leaned into him, and she told him to take care of me. She knows he’ll do that. And he’s hugging me, probably because he knows that’s what she would do for me if she weren’t… whatever she is now.

  "I don't know, honey."

  "She's not the
same person anymore. The way she flinched away from me. He really hurt her, didn't he?" I knew something was wrong. Jewel would never have just left me like that. She would never have just up and disappeared and not said a word without it being something… I don’t know. She wouldn’t have done that on her own. Alec did that to her.

  "I'm sure she'll tell you everything when she's ready. It's probably just a shock to see you here after so long,” Zed says. "I'll get you somewhere you can sleep it off and we'll call you when she feels up to talking about it. Right now, you're best off to let me handle her."

  "Do you love her?" I need to know that she’s with someone that will take care of her the right way, especially since she wants me to leave, and he thinks he can ‘handle her’ better.

  He smiles automatically, and that's answer enough but he answers anyway. "I love her. She's a tough girl."

  "And you don't hurt her?"

  "Of course not. I'll kill anyone who tries." The murderous expression he has when he says that makes it seem true.

  "Did you kill Alec for hurting her?" I whisper, trying to figure out how Jewel got here, how she got away from Alec and what happened to him.

  His face shutters. "Let me call someone to come get you." He turns from me and pulls his phone from his pocket. "Hey, Pres. I need you to send the prospect out here with the cage. Jewel's sister tracked her down and- yeah, she has siblings. The middle one's here. Her name is Sapphire. She needs a place to stay and get something to eat… No, Jewel's not ready… She can't stay here. Can someone else come? Can she-" He looks over at me, his gaze flicking over me from my head to my toes. "I don't think she's built for riding with somebody."

  "What does that mean?" I question, before I can stop myself. Riding what?

  "Priest?" He smiles at the phone, ignoring me entirely. "Yeah, that's fine. Someone will probably have to give her a ride to the airport tomorrow."

  "Tomorrow?" I spit. "No, I don't think so. I've spent three years looking for her and I just found her! You aren't going to send me away!" I have worked too long and too hard to get here and I won’t be pushed off just because I’m inconvenient. I will get a lot more annoying before I let them put me on a plane.

  "You can take that up with the club," he hisses. "You stay longer than tomorrow, that's between you, Pres, and Amy. Jewel seemed to want you to go home. It could be awhile before she wants to-"

  "I'll be right here when that time comes. If I have to live in this stupid city, I will." It’s atrociously hot in New Mexico right now, but I’ll survive it. I can’t leave until I talk to Jewel.

  He chuckles and leans his head into the phone. "I can see the resemblance. Pres, send Priest out here. Bike, cage, tricycle- I don't care. Just as long as somebody handles her before I have a cat fight on my porch between these two stubborn headed ladies."

  "I'm not stubborn, you jerk. I'm passionate." So many people want to tack on these words to describe me and I don’t like that. I don’t want other people's words hanging above my head like a title card. I want to be able to speak for myself for once. My parents always called me stubborn, and they were wrong.

  He ends the call and grins at me. "Passionate, right. Good word. What about fiery? Hot headed? Acting like a damn fool for tracking your sister down and showing up here. You could've been killed. You had no idea what you were walking into here. You need to be more careful."

  "Careful is not in my vocabulary." My sister is the impulsive one they say, but me? I’m not just impulsive. I chase the danger. My sister could fall into anything if it’s presented the right way. I don’t fall. I lunge. Danger doesn’t cross my path. Danger is my path.

  "You better pray up, sweetheart,” Zed says, sneering at me. “You're gonna need it. Priest will be here soon with some kind of mode of transportation to take you to the clubhouse. I recommend you lose the attitude before you leave here. Amy will mop the floors with you if you sass her that way." There’s two more words he’s attaching to my long list of descriptors- attitude and sass.

  "Who's Amy?"

  "She rules the roost. Elvis, our president, is in charge of the club, but Amy is in charge of the clubhouse. She'd probably castrate him if he crossed her. She's a special breed, and she's been part of the club longer than you've been alive, so you give her the respect she deserves. Oh, and the things you see there, you don't breathe a word of to anybody."

  Chapter Three

  Priest

  "I'm not an Uber," I mumble under my breath as I stomp down the stairs and get to gravel. Pres told me I could take the cage, or if I was up for a challenge, I was welcome to take my motorcycle. There's some girl at Zed's house that's upset his ol' lady and she needs a place to stay. It seems odd that somebody hurt Jewel's feelings and lived to tell about it. Maybe it's because it was a woman, or maybe Zed is feeling benevolent today.

  All I know is I've been chartered as the personal caretaker of this particular woman, and she's already been labeled a difficult one. Yesterday, I dusted a guy in a bar for calling me a pussy from across the pool table. Today, I'm a babysitter with the potential to be a wrestling match ref.

  My motorcycle growls as it starts, and I rev it up a few times before I take off in the direction of Zed's place. He's not too far from mine, which is where I'm coming from.

  "There's a problem I need you to solve, Priest. Something that may require a soft touch, but I don't have much info," Pres said over the phone.

  I grew giddy at the opportunity to knock some more heads together, and then Pres saddled me with a load of crap.

  "There's a woman at Zed's place, she's been pissing off Jewel and causing trouble over there, so I need you to go and get her and bring her back to the clubhouse."

  For a second I thought maybe Pres was telling me that Jewel had caught Zed with another woman, but then I remembered how Zed is around Jewel. Zed’s so whipped he probably begs her for sex. But that means there’s not going to be any fun in this ride. There’s not going to be any fighting. It’s just someone being annoying. "That's all?”

  "Well, it would be nice if you could show her around and try to make her comfortable. It sounds like the length of her stay is undetermined."

  So, I'm on my way to rescue a damsel in distress, as has become our modus operandi as a club. Since I became a fully patched member about six months ago, I've been so grateful to be accepted into the family. Some days are better than others. Today apparently is not going to be one of those better days.

  Zed's driveway leads to this tiny little house set back in the woods at the top of a hill. The gravel drive is curvy and lined with trees on either side that hide everything from the main road at the bottom of the hill. It's the perfect spot. I wish I had a secret hideout, instead of the rundown apartment I used to share with my siblings, before they all outgrew me and left.

  I'm not ashamed of my place in the club. I'm proud of what I've achieved with all my hard work. It just doesn't sound as good when you compare it to my oldest sister- the lawyer- or my brothers- one a doctor and the other a career Marine.

  I'm not serving my country or even my community all that much. I'm in a motorcycle club. I scrubbed motorcycle tires for two years and did everything short of sucking dick for these men to prove my loyalty and secure my spot in the pack. Now there's some other poor bastard washing wheels and begging to be allowed to look at a woman.

  I just recently went from Prospect to Priest. I'm the only one who reads the Bible and attends Sunday services- when I wake up in time- so they affectionately call me Priest. Affectionately may be too generous a term. Either way though, now I have a name. I'm a biker now, not just a hangaround. I got a name and some upgrades to my cut, but it seems I'm still bottom of the totem pole sometimes.

  I turn into the driveway and readjust my attitude on my way to the top. I expect to have to play the tough biker with her, but when I pull up I see Zed's got the Bad Cop role fully filled with his arms crossed over his chest and one eyebrow cocked so high it's battling his hairline. He's
pissed, and the little girl he's staring down ought to be shaking in her boots. From this distance, she doesn't look it.

  She's tall for a girl, but I can only see the back of her. She has her brown hair braided straight down her back. The curve of hips in her jeans is wider than Jewel’s. Her thighs are thick and her butt is plump. If her and Jewel started fighting, it would definitely be a close fight.

  I'm starting to think I should've come with the cage because she looks so feisty, but that would've slowed me down and I don't think Zed's going to go much longer without exploding. As if to prove my point, the girl shoves Zed right in the chest with both her hands as I kick the stand down and rip my helmet off when I see her going for a slap.

  I know Zed would never hurt a woman, but it doesn't mean she's not going to hurt herself beating up on a man built like a professional fighter.

  "You aren't going to keep me from my sister!" she shouts at Zed. When she sees me, she takes a step back and stares at me. "Who's this?" This girl must be Jewel’s sister then. They look alike, so that makes sense.

  "He's your ride," Zed growls at her as he turns to watch me coming to the porch.

  "I'm not getting on that death machine," she sasses, hands on her hips and all. A true handful.

  "You are. You're no longer welcome on my property, and since you told your friends to fuck off down to Mexico after they dropped you off at a random address. He's your ride.” He turns to look at me. "She's gonna be trouble."

  "Pres said she might be." I'm still sizing her up and she squints her eyes at me.

  "I just found my sister after three years and he's just running me off!" she says, in an obvious bid for my compassion.

  I can see she wants to fight me too, so I just point to the bike behind me. "We need to go."

  "I'm not leaving with you." She spins to Zed again, thinking she's dismissed me. "I said I would stay at the clubhouse, but I never agreed to this. I didn't know you were going to try to send me home the second I found my sister! It's been three years! Don't you have a heart?"