Under Fire (Winged Enemy MC Romance) by Olivia Ruin

Roost.

ANOTHER
    I hailed the lead man, Luke.
    “What’s going on?” There was urgency to their movements. It telegraphed that they weren’t just coming to spend time at the bar.
    A grim look settled over the man’s bearded face. ”It’s Nathan. He’s been shot.”
    Not him, too.
    There had been a sense of inevitability around it. Someone had to be the next target. That it was Nathan wasn’t a surprise considering those who had been in line before. First Frank, then Patrick. Jed, then Tim. It was only a matter of time until the dog of war came barking up Nathan’s tree. There was no telling if I would be next in line or if the fire would just bypass me completely.
    “Is he alive?” Zach asked.
    Luke nodded. “Barely. He’s in rough shape, but we’ve called an ambulance.”
    I cut him off before he continued. “We might as well go into the bar so the others can hear and you don’t have to repeat yourself.”
    We walked in, and I tried my hardest not to stare in Jed’s direction as we did so.
    Has Kat been with Jed the entire time? If so then maybe she isn’t the killer. But there’s nothing saying that she doesn’t have an accomplice. Or, for that matter, that she isn’t acting as the accomplice for someone else.
    Luke restated what happened and after the initial shock and dismay wore down he elaborated further. “Nathan was leaving Tim’s house to ride to the headquarters. A couple of us still at the house heard what sounded like distant gun fire a short while later, so a few of us went to check it out. We found him face down in the gutter, two wounds in his back.” He spat on the ground in disgust. “It looked like he’d been shot in the back as he rode by.”
    Anger mutters from the other men laced the room. I couldn’t blame them. I felt like doing some angry muttering myself. There was little hope for anyone on a motorcycle to stand a chance against someone using tactics that dirty.
    The hope I had felt when Luke had said that Nathan was alive faded. There would be no chance that the older man had seen who the assailant was if he’d been shot off his bike while riding by.
    “That’s it,” Jed said. “Let’s go and see to him. Everyone’s coming, I’m not leaving a single man behind to get picked off like stray sheep.”
    There was no argument from anyone present.
    We got into or on our assorted vehicles and rode off in a big caravan. It would have been funny if it hadn’t been for such a serious reason. It was the dead of night and there were seven motorcycles and my little car trundling along the town’s streets at a sedate pace. When we got to where the others guarded Nathan, the flashing lights of the ambulance were already there.
    Over half the club was out on the random side street, milling around. I hung back a little as Jed and Kat went to go check on Nathan before the paramedics drove off with him to the hospital.
    “Hey Trank,” I pulled on the elbow of one of the men who had been at the Devil’s Roost when I had gotten there. “Do you know if Jed and Kat got to the bar together? Did they ride in at the same time?”
    I had noticed that each of them now had a motorcycle, but they had left Tim’s on the same one.
    “No, Jed got there first. Kat was only there for a few minutes before Luke and them came to tell us about Nathan.”
    Fuck. Hoping for an answer to quell my doubts about her, now I had nothing but reason to believe that Kat was the source of the pain and suffering that beset the motorcycle club.
    Jed whistled for silence. Accustomed to following his orders, the unruly bikers fell quiet.
    “Men, we’re at war with whoever did this. We are going to find them, and we are going to make them pay for what they’ve done in our town.”
    A grim roar sprang from the throats of the assembled bikers at the prospect of bringing someone to their version of justice. They didn’t like feeling useless and in danger, and Jed offered them a chance to feel on top