“Danny got shot,” I whispered.

“Yes, he did, and he survived, and I’ll tell you right now, you got a battle on your hands and it’s not what you think. The battle you got is that he allowed that man to get to you and he’s killing himself right now he let that happen. Now you got a real important decision to make. You can give in, let them win, or you can fight for what you deserve. You can take off and leave Mag where he’s at in his head right now, or you can be here and stand strong for your man. What’s it gonna be, Evan? What really makes you? Who really are you? What life do you really want to lead?”

“I wanna get my degree,” I told her quietly. “I want to stop stripping. I want friends to go to movies with. I want a life not defined by my family.” I pulled in a breath and said, “I want Danny.”

She shook my hand. “Then fight for that.”

I felt something weird, like an electric hum, skating up my spine.

“You want Mag, so you understand all there is to have if you have him,” she continued. “Nikki wanted him too. It’s Mag’s to tell you and I’d normally let him do that, but I can’t now. Both of your futures are at stake.”

I thought I’d been listening closely.

But now that she was talking about Mag, my ears hurt, I was listening so hard.

“He’s shared,” she told me. “Mo’s shared. She loved him. She wanted a life with him. She also wanted to dictate what that life would be and made a faulty play for the purpose of protecting what they had. She wanted Mag to quit his job and do something less dangerous. In other words, she demanded that Mag not be Mag. Which means, in the end, she didn’t love Mag. Not more than she loved herself. And there’s one single thing I’ll give to your family. They taught you, if you love someone, you let them be who they are.”

She squeezed my hand tight, didn’t let go and didn’t stop talking.

“That is why I chose you for Mag. And I think the world of you, Evie, but it would disappoint the fuck out of me you gave him a hint he could lay his hands on something that beautiful and then took it away.”

“I need your sister to ask her husband to find a way to get me in to see Mick,” I blurted.

Her head twitched and she asked, “Say what?”

“I need Jet to ask Eddie to find a way to get me in to see Mick.”

Slowly, she smiled.

“And I need my phone,” I went on.

But since I could get my phone myself, I got up and found it.

Mag

Mag walked with Boone into the office suite with his arm in a sling, a bottle of painkillers in his pocket and a need to kill somebody.

He looked right immediately, toward the wall of windows beyond which was the conference room, and saw Hawk was not fucking around.

Tack was there, as was his son, Rush, who had taken over from Tack as president of the Chaos MC.

Brock and Mitch were there too, as was Lee Nightingale and his right-hand man, Luke Stark.

Axl and Auggie were in the room, Mo was standing outside.

“Evie okay?” he asked Mo.

“Hangin’ at your place. Tex and Dutch are on her inside and Rush’s got Joker and Jagger keeping watch outside.”

As Mo was saying this, Hawk joined them.

“A word, Mag,” Hawk said low, then walked up the steps and out of view of the conference room.

Mag followed.

When he stopped, Mag stopped with him and immediately said, “I’m good.”

“No, you’re not,” Hawk replied.

“You gotta know, you can’t take me off this, Hawk,” Mag told him.

“I’m not gonna take you off this, Mag. I’m gonna tell you, your mind doesn’t work like theirs.”

Mag didn’t know what to say because he didn’t know what Hawk was trying to say.

Hawk explained.

“You can think you got everything covered, but you don’t got in you the dark they got in them so you can’t ever know what they’re gonna pull.”

Now, he understood.

He just didn’t agree.

“I was vacuuming, Hawk.”

“You were armed. You had Evie and her girls working in the back, so you were her line of defense. And you couldn’t begin to think some jackass would open fire on a Saturday afternoon in an apartment complex in Platt Park.”

“I should have been prepared.”

“You were.”

“He got the drop on me.”

“He got a lucky shot in, and if he didn’t have that luck, he’d be handcuffed to a hospital bed. That’s not the way it went down and you gotta shake that off so you can have your head in the game.”

It sometimes seriously fucking sucked when Hawk went guru.

Hawk got close. “You know, Mag. You’re pissed and kicking yourself in the ass, and I’ll tell you, I’d be the same. Feel that and set it aside. Get outta that headspace, because you know. You know it’s not the measure of a soldier the battle he finds himself in or the chaos that becomes of that battle. It’s how he comports himself in it. I’d say don’t let me down. I’d say don’t let Evie down. But what’s important here is you not letting your emotion get the better of you and letting yourself down.”

They locked eyes and they did it a long time.

Mag broke it by nodding.

Hawk nodded back and carried on.

“Goes without sayin’, Brock and Mitch are all kinds of interested in finding the gun that killed their brother and linking it to Cisco. That guy’s off the street, his operation in disarray will be a big win for the DPD, not to mention the citizens of Denver. So it’s done clean, they want this punted solely to them and I’m of a mind to agree.”

Mag opened his mouth.

Hawk lifted a hand.

Mag shut his mouth and ground his teeth.

“It’s theirs. This is their brother, think on that,” Hawk said quietly.

Fuck.

Again, he was right.

“That said, the cops are not gonna turn down some friendlies having their ears to the ground. And word has to get out that Evie has nothin’ to do with this. But Brock and Mitch don’t have to know how close to the ground we’re gonna get to have our ears to it.”

And finally, Mag’s bad mood started lifting.

Slowly, he grinned.

Hawk’s lips twitched and then he said, “Let’s get in there.”

Mag agreed by turning and walking down and into the conference room with his boss.

Evie

“Evie! Sunshine of my life! What’s shakin’?” Dad asked in my ear.

“Well, my apartment was tossed on Wednesday,” I replied conversationally while pacing Mag’s condo with my phone to my ear and six pairs of eyes following my movements. “I lost nearly everything. And that bag of drugs was stolen from my car, after someone jacked my trunk to get to it. Oh! And today, I was kidnapped and the man I’m seeing was shot.”

Dad was completely silent.

I let that last for several beats before I continued.

“You didn’t ask, but just so you know, Mag’s okay and so am I. I had to be rescued by a team of commandos who threw smoke bombs and also got shot at. But they saved me. After, you know, Snag tied me to a chair and hit me while he interrogated me.”