Chapter 2 The president dirty little secret

Raven 

"What did my brother do?"

Damon didn't answer. He stepped over the broken glass and started barking orders. Men hauled a dead streetlight of a man out the back door. Someone swept the floor. Someone else boarded the window with a sheet of plywood and a nail gun that sounded like small bones breaking.

"Damon!" I shoved past a biker twice my size. "You can't say that and walk away!"

"Not here." He didn't even look at me. "Half this room doesn't know who you are, and the other half can't be trusted to hear it. Jace. Take her upstairs."

"Don't touch me," I said.

"Wasn't planning to." Jace was already holding up my gun between two fingers like a dead mouse. "But I'm keeping this."

"That's mine."

"Then come get it."

I followed him. Of course I did.

The room at the top of the stairs smelled like old cigarettes and lemon cleaner. One bed. One lamp. A window with bars. Jace shut the door, set my gun on the dresser, and leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, grinning like I'd just handed him free beer.

"You're angry," he said.

"You're observant."

"You walked into a clubhouse full of men who bury people for sport, and you brought what, a handgun and a bad attitude?"

"I brought a plan."

"Which was?"

"Shoot him."

"That's not a plan, sweetheart. That's a suicide note with extra steps."

"Don't call me sweetheart."

"What should I call you? Calloway? Raven? Ghost?" His grin sharpened. "Because I saw you at the gate two weeks ago, you know. Leaning on a lamppost, pretending to read a map. I figured you were a cop. Then I figured you were a lost tourist. I never figured you were his sister."

My face went hot. "You watched me?"

"We watch everyone."

"Then you know I've been studying this club for four years." I stepped closer. "I know your patch colors. I know which of you drinks bourbon and which one only pretends to. I know the Vultures run guns through the old shipyard on Tuesdays and that Damon hasn't slept in the same bed twice in a month. I'm not some lost girl who needs two tattooed men to keep her alive."

For a second his smile faltered. Then it came back, slower, warmer, like I'd said something he'd been waiting years to hear.

"Damn," he murmured. "I like you."

"I don't care."

"Yeah, you do. A little."

"Get out of my face."

"I'm not in your face. You walked up to me."

He was right, and that made it worse. Another inch and my nose would have touched his collarbone. I stepped back too fast and bumped the dresser. My sleeve rode up.

Jace went quiet.

His eyes had dropped to my wrist, to the thin white scar curling beneath the bone. I'd had it for four years. A jagged little crescent that never tanned right.

"Where did you get that?" His voice had changed. All the humor had drained out of it.

"Why?"

"Raven. Where."

"The night my brother died." I yanked my sleeve down. "I was in the car outside the bridge. Somebody smashed the window and I cut myself on the glass. Why do you care?"

"Because I was there."

The room tilted.

"You were where?"

The door opened.

Damon walked in, still bleeding from that cut on his cheek, and shut it behind him with a soft click. He looked at Jace. Jace looked at him. A whole conversation passed between them without a word, and I hated not being able to read it.

"Don't," Jace said quietly.

"She's earned it."

"She's earned a lot more than a damn photograph."

"What photograph?" I asked.

Damon pulled a folded square from inside his cut and held it out. "Your brother wasn't the bystander the police report said he was, Raven. He was working with us. On something bigger than this club."

"You're lying."

"Look at it."

"My brother was a mechanic. He fixed bikes and he paid my rent."

"Look at it."

I took the photo. My hands were steady now, which scared me. It was a little curled at the corners, taken at night under a sodium streetlight. Three men stood shoulder to shoulder against a brick wall. Damon, thinner and younger. Jace, laughing. And between them, one arm slung around each, grinning like an idiot, my brother.

Cole.

Something cracked open in my chest.

"This could be from any time," I whispered.

"Flip it."

On the back, in blue ink, in handwriting I knew better than my own: Two days till we blow this open. C.

And a date.

I read it three times. Then a fourth.

"No." My voice didn't sound like mine. "No, that's wrong. Cole died on the fourteenth. That's the date on the police report. That's what's on his headstone."

"The photo's dated the sixteenth," Damon said.

"Two days after." Jace's voice was rough. "He was alive, Raven. Two days after they say he died."

I sat down on the edge of the bed because my legs had stopped working. Four years of anger had a shape, a hard clean shape I'd carried every day like a stone in my pocket. Now someone was prying the stone out of my hand.

"Somebody lied," I said slowly. "Somebody lied about when he died."

"Or whether he did," Damon said.

"Don't." My head snapped up. "Don't you dare say that to me unless you can prove it."

"I can't. Not yet." He crouched, so we were eye level, and for the first time he didn't look like the devil. He looked tired. "But I need thirty days. Stay here, inside the club, where I can keep you alive. Dig, ask, search my files if you want. And you keep the flash drive hidden. The one your brother mailed you."

I froze. "How do you know about that?"

"Because the people who want it have been looking for four years."

"I'm not handing it over."

"I'm not asking you to. I'm asking you to keep it from them."

"And who are them?"

"The ones who just shot at my window."

I looked at the photo again. At Cole's stupid, beautiful grin. Then I stood up.

"Thirty days," I said. "But understand me, both of you. I'm not joining your club. I'm not your guest and I'm definitely nobody's property. If I find out either of you had anything to do with his death, I won't need a gun. I'll find another way."

"Noted," Damon said.

"Terrifying," Jace added. "Where do I sign?"

I snatched my gun from the dresser. He caught my wrist as I passed, gently, his thumb resting right over the scar.

He leaned down until his lips almost brushed my ear.

"You think Damon's the dangerous one," he murmured. "Wait until you've lived under my roof."

"Your roof?"

"Ours." His breath ghosted over my neck. "Sleep light, Raven."

I pulled free, heart pounding, and told myself it was anger. Only anger. Wanting wasn't the same as trusting, and I would not mix them up.

I'd barely reached the door when my phone buzzed in my pocket.

Unknown number.

A photo loaded slowly, one gray strip at a time. A bridge at night. A man on his knees with blood down his face. And standing over him, gun in hand, jaw set, was Jace.

Beneath it, six words.

ASK JACE WHO PULLED THE TRIGGER.

I raised my eyes.

He was already watching me…