Aaron’s quiet for a moment, almost like he’s holding his breath as we fly onto the track and then up the hidden side road. Glancing in my rearview, the only person I see behind me is Vic on his bike. No cops. Good. Eventually, this trick isn’t going to work anymore. But that’s okay. It just needs to last one more time, one final night.

“More often than I’d like,” he finally says, after we’ve emerged onto the suburban street and turned right at the next stop sign. The exit for the highway isn’t far off. From there, it’s about a two-hour drive without traffic. In traffic … fuck, it takes forever. This area was never meant to have so many people living in it. I just wish all the out-of-state transplants would fuck off and find somewhere else to live. Yeah, I’m that salty about it.

“Maybe we should use the handcuffs again?” I hazard, hoping that I’m not about to set off a PTSD trigger or anything. Aaron takes off his seat belt and scoots closer to me, making me wonder why every car doesn’t have a bench seat in the front. It’s sort of, like, optimal for cuddling or whatever. Totally new concept for me, but I’m embracing it.

“If you want to use handcuffs, Bernadette Blackbird, then we’ll use handcuffs, but not for my benefit. I’m okay, really.” I flick a quick glance in Aaron’s direction, but he puts a single inked finger up and pushes my face away, turning my eyes back to the road. “If you’ve been worried about me, don’t be. Obviously, what happened with Kali wasn’t ideal, but it had to happen. She was on your list. She was dealt with. I don’t take pleasure in it, but she isn’t appearing to me in ghost form.” He smiles to soften the blow of that, but it doesn’t bother me. I’m over that now.

“Hey, I promised to be a Havoc Girl, but I never promised that I was sane.” I turn my blinker on, rocketing onto the highway behind the Camaro.

Aaron’s nice-boy smile turns a bit naughtier and he leans in, pressing his lips against the side of my throat. When he puts his hand on my thigh, I decide that we’re not going to make it to Portland alive if he keeps touching me. Fortunately—or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it—he draws his hand away and sits back.

“Nobody in our family is sane, Bernie. That’s why we work so well together.” Aaron turns up the music—“Determined” by Mudvayne—and then threads his fingers together behind his neck, closing his eyes against the rush of farmland on either side of the highway.

We make record time, pulling into a disturbingly dark parking lot outside of some industrial shitbox with the word Kay’s written in neon pink lighting across the front. Looks exactly like the type of place I’ve gone out of my way to avoid in life. This is the sort of establishment that girls go into and they don’t come out of. Or, if they do, they don’t come out the same person that they were when they went in.

I turn the engine off and, with one last look at Aaron, I open the door and climb out.

We have seventeen minutes. That’s it. There’s no time to dawdle.

“Set the timers on your phone,” Vic commands, hopping off the Harley and hooking his helmet over the handlebars. He’s dressed in a black hoodie and jeans, just like the rest of the boys. But Hael and Aaron are the only two wearing black fingerless skeleton gloves on their left hands. Even fingerless, the gloves cover up to the first knuckle, hiding that deliciously dark acronym from view. “Bernadette, call my phone and leave the line open; I want to hear everything that you’re doing in there.”

“Got it,” I say, pausing beside Oscar near the back entrance to the club. There are a few dumpsters out here, a wash of graffiti which includes that horrid silhouette of a clown face, but little else. It’s so fucking creepy. Apparently, this place used to be a bank once upon a time. According to Vera, there are old vaults in here that make up some of the rooms. The doors have all been turned inward, making them nearly impenetrable.

I text Vera as Hael and Callum do a quick check of the parking lot. Here, girl. That’s all I send, just in case the feds get another warrant to take our new phones. Not that it really matters. Even if Sara and Constantine figure out we were here, they’ll never know why. It’s not like the GMP is going to report Mason’s murder.

The underground operates within its own set of fucked-up rules.

Leaning my shoulder against the wall of the club, I can feel the pulse of the music from inside, a dirty heartbeat that speaks to the underbelly of the city, beckoning forth its darkest denizens. I make sure to keep my eyes on my phone, pretending to scroll as I wait for Vera to unlock the door from the other side.

If someone stumbles on me, they’ll think I’m a stripper or a hooker. Either way, I likely won’t be shot on sight the way the boys might.

Coming, Vera texts, and less than a minute later, I hear the sound of a chain-lock being removed, the metallic swish of a deadbolt. The door cracks open and within seconds, I’m surrounded by a sea of male shadows, pushing me forward and inside. Just me and a cloud of Havoc, baby.

“Be careful,” Vera hisses, reaching out to grab my arm with her pink-nailed hand. “Mason is edgy tonight.” She has to shout to be heard over the music, but I consider what she has to say, nodding before I slip down the hall with Hael and Aaron trailing behind me. “Grab a bottle of liquor and start pouring. Any girl that isn’t dancing or fucking is makin’ drinks.” Vera peels away from me, heading for the stage at the front of the room.

It’s hard to see in the dirty shadows of the club, but it’s clear that there’s someone sitting in the frontmost booth, the crest of his head barely visible above the back of the blue cushion. I straighten out the black miniskirt I’m wearing and turn to face my boys. They’re both hyper-alert, eyes darting around the club to take in any possible threats, cataloguing the exits.

Glancing down at my phone, I see that two minutes have already passed since we got here. Jesus fucking Christ, this is going to be tight. Shit, it might not work at all. Mason might not pick a girl, or he might decide that today of all days is going to be one where he takes an hour before selecting one.

Then what?

Will I snitch to the fucking feds to keep a girl safe from Mason’s perverted hands?

The answer to that question scares the shit out of me.

I know I would.

I seriously fucking would.

Forcing Aaron and Hael into a booth near the bar, I snatch a bottle of booze as Vera suggested and go about pouring them each a drink. I take my time doing it, waiting for them both to throw back the shots just so I can pour some more.

“He’s just fucking sitting there,” Aaron growls, checking his phone for the time. It just keeps tick-tick-ticking away. If the police cruiser arrives to find our cars empty, the six of us disappeared into the depths of a known gang hangout, then they’ll come in looking for us. We can’t risk that; it’s an emergency contingency plan for a reason. The last thing Havoc needs is to be seen as a pack of snitches in the southside. “What gives?”

I glance back just in time to see a man with dark hair and an uneasy smile rise from his seat at the front of the room, like it’s a dirty throne made of rusted nails and the bones of people he’s broken in the pursuit of his own sadistic pleasure. Vera is right there with him, working that curvy Prescott body of hers, flashing her tits.