“Safe? Safe from what? Who are you?” I asked and tipped my head back to see a strong jaw, a partial view of a goatee and longish dark hair curling around a muscled neck and his ear.

“I’m Tack.”

Oh boy.

“President of a biker gang Tack?”

His chin tipped down slightly but not enough for me to get a good look at him before his eyes went back to the road and he muttered, “See Lawson’s told you about me.”

“Uh –” I started.

He cut me off. “Motorcycle club.”

“What?” I asked.

“Chaos isn’t a gang. It’s a club.”

From the firm tone of his gravelly voice sounding over the roar of the motorcycle I noted that, clearly, this was an important distinction.

Right.

“Um…sorry,” I murmured.

“Just keep quiet and hold on,” he ordered and I thought this was good advice seeing as I’d never been on a motorcycle. I also didn’t know you could ride on a motorcycle like this. It didn’t feel very safe though he seemed in command.

Still, probably better if he had nothing to concentrate on but the road and making sure we didn’t crash and die since neither of us were wearing helmets.

We roared onto Speer Boulevard then we turned and roared up University Boulevard then another turn and down we roared on Alameda then another turn and more roaring down Broadway and then we turned into the enormous forecourt of a mechanic’s garage.

He parked in front of a long rectangular building and all the bikes roared in beside us like they practiced this formation often and they were the motorcycle equivalent of the Air Force Thunderbirds.

It was then that I realized somewhere along the way I’d lost my phone and purse.

And I’d been talking to Mitch when it all happened.

“Oh no,” I whispered, staring at Tack’s neck.

“Hop off, chestnut.”

I blinked and looked up at him to see his shadowed face looking down at me.

“What?”

“Can’t get off until you let me go and get off so hop off, chestnut.”

“Chestnut?”

“Your hair,” he grunted. “Now hop…off.”

And it was then I noticed that I still had my arms tight around him. Considering his tone was becoming impatient, I felt it prudent at that juncture to let him go and hop off. So I did that and stood unsteadily beside his bike while his brethren closed ranks.

He threw his leg off, grabbed my hand and started walking with wide strides toward the rectangular building taking me with him.

“Um…Mr., uh…Tack –”

“Just Tack,” he interrupted, not breaking stride and dragging me toward the door to the building.

“Right, uh…Tack. I lost my phone. I was on a call to my boyfriend, um –”

He pushed open the door at the same time he twisted his neck and ordered, “Dog, call Lawson. Tell him we got his woman at the compound and she’s safe.”

He knew who I was?

“You know who I am?” I asked as he dragged me into what looked kind of like the rec room of a house except a lot bigger and decorated in shades of seedy bar.

“Make it my business to know everything worth knowin’ in Denver,” he muttered, stopped and stopped me with a tug on my hand.

And since the lights were on I saw him.

Wow.

I’d had a lifetime of rough, gruff men like him visiting my Mom’s trailer and even some of them coming in to visit me in my room. Therefore, I was not big on rough, gruff men who required haircuts and needed to carve out some time to trim their facial hair.

But he was different.

He had some silver in his unruly black hair. He also had visible tattoos and lots of them. Further, he had fabulous bone structure, a dominant brow, a strong jaw. His goatee was long at the chin but for some reason I liked it and I figured this reason was because he wore it well. He had lines radiating from the sides of his eyes and they were extremely attractive.

And he had very, very blue eyes.

“You’re dangerous hot too but a different kind,” I blurted, unfortunately still drunk regardless of the drama I found myself involved in.

His eyes narrowed on me, his head tilted to the side then his goatee moved as both ends of his mouth tipped up slightly.

Oh yes. Dangerous hot.

He turned his head to the boys who followed us in and ordered, “Lockdown Ride. Eyes on the perimeter. No one gets in except Delgado and Lawson.”

On that, he started walking while dragging me behind him again. He took me around a bar to a hallway that had lots of doors off of it.

“Do you know what’s going on?” I asked as he dragged me.

“You know Grigori Lescheva?” he asked back.

Russian mob.

I felt my stomach clench.

Oh boy.

This could not be good.

“I know of him,” I answered as he pushed open a door.

Then he turned on a light and I saw it was a bedroom, a very untidy one.

He pulled me in, stopped us and looked down at me. “Well, he knows you.”

Fantastic.

Tack wasn’t done.

“He also knows your cousin was talkin’ with the DA.”

Damn.

Tack kept going.

“And he also knows you recently had a sit down with him.”

Shit.

“Uh…” I mumbled, unable to wrap my head around this.

“And last, he knows you got a connection with that shit for brains Otis Pierson.”

Shit!

“I barely know Otis,” I told Tack. “I just kind of work with him. And I think he’s creepy.”

“Might be so but Lescheva’s got a problem, he’s comprehensive about solvin’ it.”

That really didn’t sound good.

“Are you saying that he thinks I’m part of his problem?” I asked.

“I’m sayin’ that you got a connection with two people who are bein’ serious pains in his ass. He’s made note ‘a that and when he sweeps up a mess, he’s thorough.”

I stared up at him and whispered, “That’s insane.”

“Chestnut, this guy’s Russian mob. Not one of them is right in the head.”

This was probably true.

“How are you involved in this?” I asked.

“Your cousin and Pierson are bein’ a pain in Lescheva’s ass, he’s a pain in mine,” Tack answered but didn’t elucidate further.