Wednesday WIP: Saint's Sinner and the long road back from Texas

 

First, there was Burning Luck!

Then there was Claiming Cody!

Coming in April the Rollin' Jokers series will grow by one more, with the release of Saint's Sinner!

Now let's take a quick look back to the end of Claiming Cody to see just how Saint's Sinner came about!

“There’s a cave behind the falls,” Bellamy’s grandfather said. “You can’t see it today, the water’s too thick, but during a drought, when the water slows to thin lines, you can see it. Old legend has it that it was an old outlaw hideout and that gold and coins from a stagecoach robbery are hidden somewhere inside.”

“Has anyone ever found anything?” Cody asked, prompting a snicker from several members of the family.

“Not from lack of trying. There have been a few deaths, some near-drownings,” Bellamy’s father said. “There’s a ledge that runs along the rocks, must have been carved into the stone when the pool was higher up.”

Sighing heavily, Bellamy’s mother stepped up beside them. “I wish you wouldn’t tell that story. It’s slick granite, but some fools, including my own children after their father filled their heads with such tales, have tried to walk on it to get there, a few others have approached from the pool and tried to climb, all to varying degrees of success and failure. Broken bones and gashes are the least most folks walk away from here with. Bellamy’s brother, Reid broke his leg, Sadie, that’s my youngest girl, had to have forty stitches from slicing herself up on the sharp edges, and still, my husband persists in telling this story. If there’s something in there, the mountain is guarding that secret well. As far as I know, not even a stray coin from that era has been found in the pool. I’d suggest you don’t get it in your head to go looking.”

“Did Bellamy ever try?” Cody asked, prompting a groan from her and Bellamy.

“Oh, he couldn’t resist, even after his brother fell,” she said. “Only my son decided to go all loco coyote on it, tie a rope to a tree and try and swing himself over onto the ledge, mistimed the landing, and hit his face on the lip of the ledge when he fell. Busted two teeth out. At least they were only baby ones.”

“Ouch,” Wreck groaned, cringing in sympathy. “Was that the only run he made at it?”

“Nope. Next, he brought a ladder. Now I have to admit, that might have been the best scheme I saw for getting up there. If the bottom wasn’t silt and the ladder didn’t sink into the ground when you added weight to it. It tipped, he hit the side of the cliff and needed thirteen stitches to close the gash on the side of his head.”

“I hope he gave up after that.”

“If he didn’t, I don’t know about it, was the last time he came back a mess from one of those misadventures.”

“I got the point. I didn’t need three tries like Franny.”

“I should hope not,” his mother replied.

The phone in Wreck’s hand rang, Mark’s name flashing across the screen as he held it out to Cody.

“Hey pops,” Cody answered. “Did you see the pictures, holy shit, we’re up at these falls…”

Cody’s words trailed off as he listened to whatever it was his father was saying, face paling some before the call was through.

“We gotta go home, now,” Cody said, locking eyes with Wreck, who was at his side in an instant.

“What happened?” Wreck asked, sliding his hand up Cody’s arm to feel him trembling a little.

“Sinn, he’s missing. Uncle Saint is freaking out, no one’s seen or heard from him since yesterday afternoon. He didn’t work his shift, he wasn’t at home, there was no note, and all his stuff is in his room. We gotta help find him. Dad called to see if we’d heard from him, but I haven’t gotten a text from him since yesterday. I was wondering why he wasn’t reacting to the pictures.”

“Will take you days to get back there,” Bellamy’s mother said. “Don’t they think they’ll find him by then? Maybe he just needed some alone time?”

“Sinn’s legally blind,” Wreck explained. “If he’s missing, it’s not by choice. After the trouble we had this summer, there’s a legitimate reason to be concerned.

“If there’s danger, you’re not riding out alone,” Bellamy’s father said. “Give me an hour, and I’ll have a couple of guys ready to ride with you.”

“Thank you,” Cody said, fury darkening his face like an impending storm. Wreck knew that look. It was the same one Cody had when Lucky had gotten hurt. If Sinn was missing, that had to mean something bad happened. But after the way the club had taken care of Shaw and Tully’s crew, who was left to do something like this, and why target Sinn, who didn’t even have a patch to prove he was one of them?

And now for the opening moments of Saint's Sinner!

“Relax.”

If there was ever a word spoken in the human language that had the ability to cause the opposite effect it was intended to, relax was at the top of that list. In fact, Saint couldn’t think of a single instance in the history of the word relax where someone had responded to it by calming the fuck down. His brother should know that but judging from the way he was kicked back in his chair nursing his beer, he’d clearly forgotten what it was like to have it utter at him when he was stressed.

“Brutha,” Saint cautioned, slamming his empty bottle on the desk, and taking satisfaction in seeing it shatter, “if you tell me to relax again, I’m going to forget we’re blood and kick your ass to the beach and back.”

“Save your energy for when we find Sinn.”

“You mean if we find Sinn!”

“We’ll find him.”

“You can’t promise that! You can’t promise he’ll be okay either!”

“No, but what I can promise is that whoever’s done this will be made to pay.”

“And that’s supposed to be comforting!”

“Did I say…”

Snarling, Saint cut Mark off by whipping a heavy glass ashtray at his head. Fucker didn’t even have the good graces to try and get out of the way. Would have been nice if he’d pretended it had come close to hitting him, but Saint’s aim had always been shit when it came to throwing. Mark probably figured moving would be what got him hit. That or he just didn’t give a shit. He hadn’t flinched when glass and plaster exploded outward from the dent it put in the wall. Mark hadn’t even twitched when shards slit his cheek and sent blood spilling down it.

“If this was Teddy, Kat, or god forbid, one of my nephews, you’d have destroyed half the town by now!” Saint roared.

“And you’d have been right there beside me.”

“Then why the fuck aren’t we out their doing it now?”

The casual way Mark reached up and brushed a hunk of glass glittered hair from his face took Saint to a whole other level of pissed off. “Because we’re older and supposed to be wiser at this point in our lives, and we both know the cops are itching to swarm this place and lock us under the jail.”

“Wasn’t going legit supposed to keep them off our asses?”

“Could be we underestimated how difficult it was gonna be to keep the personal from spinning sideways even when the businesses were on the up and up.”

“You think!”

“Saint! Cool it! I mean that shit too. I can’t think with you going ballistic every twelve seconds and I’m tired of telling you that no one has called in to report the smallest damn thing.”

“Well what the fuck are they waiting for!”

“To find something would be my guess!”

The low rumble of approaching Harley’s quickly turned to a roar. Someone, maybe multiple someones, had taken the baffling off their bikes, making them extra loud, which meant it was no one in their club. Town noise ordinances had cured them of straight piping years ago, when they got hit with so many fines they had to throw a ‘rent party’ just to pay them. Saint grabbed the sawed-off and headed for the door, his brother at his back with the pump action. The gate was engaged, no one would get through without the code, but that didn’t mean they’d go away peacefully.

Mark cast a glance at the looming antebellum house they shared with Kat and Teddy and Saint did too, a reminder of the life they’d fought for and the people they loved, one of them absent. If the fuckers roaring up to their gate had anything to do with Sinn not being up there with Kat, Teddy, and the rest of their loved ones, there would be hell to pay.

It was the second time this year they’d gathered everyone for a lockdown. Enemies these days were cowards, or maybe they always had been. Terrorizing one another over territory and criminal enterprises had always been the outlaw way. Parents, siblings, children, spouses, anyone connected to a patched member was fair game in a world where playing the long-odds and cutting corners were the only ways to get ahead.  

As young men, riding on the wrong side of the law had been a trill. A way of thumbing their noses at a society they felt was designed to keep them from ever rising above their dirt-poor beginnings. Now in their fifties, their mission was to leave the next generations of their family with options they could never have fathomed.

If that meant blasting holes in a few fuckers along the way, then one thing the club had always guaranteed was that a members’ family would be provided for, their homes and bikes would be maintained, and there would always be money on their books.

Resolved, boots crunching gravel as they approached the gate, Saint thought he was prepared for anything, only to be thrown at the sight of Cody, Bellamy and Wreck flanked on either side by seven other bikes, each rider bearing the same colors Bellamy had on his kutte before his patchover.

“I’m sorry pops, I should have called and warned you we had reinforcements,” Cody stammered. “We just wanted to get on the road.”

There were dark circles under all of their eyes like they hadn’t slept, or at least, not more than would have been necessary to keep it between the lines.  Saint was touched by his nephew’s consideration and the friendship he’d formed with Sinn. It was far more than Teddy, with his tendency towards jealousy, had exhibited.

One thought kept spinning over and over in Saint’s head, something he hadn’t shared with his brother because the wrong answer could lead to the kind of confrontation one of them wouldn’t walk away from.

Ever.

But if Teddy was behind this. If something he’d arranged had harmed one hair on Sinn’s head….

The gate slid open between them with a rattling clang. Cody didn’t bother to wait, he shoved through the moment the gap was wide enough.

“Any word?” Cody asked, bypassing his old man to get to Saint.

“None yet.”

“Where do you need us to get started?”

Saint was tempted to tell them to crash for the next few hours, it was obvious they all needed it. Cody wasn’t the only one with greenish-black shadows beneath his eyes. There were haunted looks among the men Saint didn’t know. Stories he’d be curious to hear once his lover was back in his arms, safe.

“We’ve got teams working outward from Charles St. where Sinn went missing, searching every abandoned building they come across. We’ve got teams in every armpit bar within’ a hundred miles, skulking in shadows, hoping to hear anything that can give us a clue as to who took him. So far, nothing. Since you brought a crew, how about we load up in the van and hit factory row. We’ll park up on the ridge behind it and hike down.”

“We drove all this way to ride in a cage?” A burly brunette with a thin, droopy mustache, snarled, nose wrinkling like he smelled something foul. When his lip curled, the yellow of his stained teeth revealed a lifelong smoking habit, the sour stench emanating from his clothes. Saint knew the type. Enforcer. He was there to beat on someone and go home. He opened his mouth, only to have his nephew beat him to the punch. Was eerie how much Cody sounded like him and Mark in that moment.

“No, we drove all this way to get Sinn back from whoever the fuck took him. If that means riding in a cage, repelling down a chimney, or climbing on the back of a rabid bull, then that’s what the fuck we’re gonna do.”

Saint's Sinner is available for Pre-order now!

They took what meant most to him, but they underestimated what he and his club would go through to retrieve the man he loved.

Going legit didn’t mean going soft. Unfortunately, no one informed the rest of the world of that. Factions within their MC had been pushing buttons for months, wanting to pull the club back into ventures they were better off staying out of. Betrayals had been brought to light and swiftly dealt with. Treaties had been forged that were proving to be particularly lucrative. Business was good. They were even learning the ins and outs of diversifying. It wasn’t as profitable as their previously less than legal pursuits, but it kept the cops off their backs, for the most part, and bodies in the clubhouse rather than behind bars.

So then why was Sinn not at his side where the man belonged?

Well, that’s exactly what they were burning up the road trying to discover.

Along the way, loyalties might be tested, lines would certainly be drawn, and blood was sure to be shed, once they discovered who was behind the mysterious disappearance of the man he’d unwaveringly been drawn to.

And if a certain prospect should happen to prove unbelievably desirable in ways that had nothing to do with the road, well than that was just a bonus to Saint’s way of thinking. He was a man who thrived on pleasure and debauchery. What better place to find both than in the arms of men named Night and Sinn?