Shield Read online

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Epilogue

  Shield

  Greenstone Security

  Anne Malcom

  Contents

  Shield

  Author’s note

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by Anne Malcom

  Shield

  Greenstone Security #2

  Anne Malcom

  Copyright 2018

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.

  Dedication

  For those wild children, who live hard and love harder.

  Author’s note

  I’ve been waiting for this book for a long time. Maybe since the beginning. I’ve wanted to write it since the beginning.

  But they weren’t ready.

  Things needed to happen.

  And they did.

  This story took a lot of work because this story has happened in the background of all the books in the Templar universe, before Gwen and Cade started it all.

  Because here’s a secret—Gwen and Cade didn’t start it all.

  Rosie and Luke did.

  No one knew.

  Not even them.

  I know a lot of people have wanted to read their story, and I really hope it’s all you expected and more.

  Anne

  xxx

  *Also, you can read this book as a standalone, but I would recommend reading Still Waters first. If you want the complete reading experience, and love MC, I’d also read my Sons of Templar series before this.

  Prologue

  Rosie

  Age Five

  Most doomed romances didn’t actually know they were doomed at the beginning. I mean the very beginning. Before the tragedy. In that Hollywood mega zoom-in moment when their eyes meet and lasting—and more often than not, fatal—love is born. First comes love, and then comes all the rest of the shit.

  This is in most cases.

  Romeo and Juliet, Heathcliff and Catherine… and I don’t know any more, come to think of it. I flunked English.

  Anyone who knows me knows I’m never going to fit into the category of ‘most cases.’

  Or maybe I’m the ultimate fucking cliché. The girl who strives so hard to be extraordinary that she meets the masses doing the exact same thing. Falls for love right where she shouldn’t. Just like the rest of them.

  Whatever.

  I knew it was doomed before it even began. The second I saw him.

  I was five. First day of school. Yep, it’s that fucking pathetic. Even more so because he didn’t even know I existed at that point, and many points after.

  Total fucking cliché.

  I knew who he was. Even at five, I knew the line drawn in the sand. The one splattered in blood.

  Dad dropped me off at school, with me riding on the back of his motorcycle. My dad was the president The Sons of Templar MC.

  Not many people had stark, in-detail memories of their five-year-old selves. Normally it was a mix of images, some memories muddled with make-believe. Recalling it was like staring at an interior TV screen. Maybe because moments with my father could’ve been held in my hand, treasured because moments and memories were all I had left.

  Maybe it was because then, precisely then, was when my life stopped being my own.

  “Now, baby, what do you do if anyone gives you trouble?” Daddy asked, his knees clicking as he bent down so I could see his eyes smiling, even if his face didn’t.

  Daddy didn’t smile around other people. Bad for his image, he said.

  I didn’t get that. A bad image was like a photo of someone who looked bad. And even when he wasn’t smiling, my daddy never looked bad. I thought my daddy was the most handsome man ever.

  I grinned, holding up my fist, squeezing it tight so my nails cut into the insides of my palm. “I give them a knuckle sandwich,” I said.

  Daddy chuckled, rustling my hair. “That’s right, my princess. No one fucks with my girl.”

  I was laughing too, happy I’d made Daddy laugh. I collected that sound, and it made me smile whenever I was the reason Daddy chuckled. His laugh stopped when he focused on a car.

  I looked at the car too, uninterested, until I got a look at him.

  He was dropped off in front of us, in a policeman’s car—his daddy wore a uniform. With a great big badge on it.

  I barely knew how to tie my shoes, but I knew the police were bad. We didn’t like the police, and they didn’t like us.

  I also knew the look that darkened Daddy’s face.

  It meant someone was in trouble. A lot of it.

  I’d seen that look a lot, though never directed at me. Mostly it was directed at the men in the club if they did something to ‘fuck up.’ I knew fuck was a bad word from the way it sounded in the air, harsh and wrong. I heard other mommas yell at their kids who said it in the grocery store. But I didn’t have a momma, not to take me grocery shopping at least, and no one yelled at me when I said it. No one had ever yelled at me.

  I was the princess. That was what my brother Cade called me. And Daddy.

  But I’d never really felt like much of a princess. And I knew I really wasn’t when I caught sight of the older boy getting out of the police car. The second I saw his blond hair, his beautiful face, his clean clothes, I knew. He was the prince. The real one, like in the movies. The good guy.

  I looked down at my boots, the smallest ones at the Harley Davidson store and they were still a little big. Daddy said I’d grow into them. Another reason why I knew I wasn’t a princess—they always wore froufrou dresses and a lot of pink, and their hair was always in lots of pretty braids.

  I didn’t wear pink. Pink was for pussies, as Uncle Steg said, so I always wore all black. Like my brother, Cade. Black was my favorite color in the whole world. My hair was always curly and crazy; I didn’t know how to braid, and neither did Cade or Daddy. Sometimes Daddy would brus
h it and tie it up into the ponytail I had it in right now. But my hair wasn’t straight and shiny like Barbie or princesses; it was curly and wild, and some of it was always escaping from my hair bobble.

  I didn’t mind that.

  I didn’t want froufrou, or pink or Barbie. I didn’t want to be a princess.

  I wanted to be a warrior like my daddy. Like my big brother.

  Until that moment outside the school, on my very first day. When I saw the prince. Then I wanted very badly to be the princess he saved from the bad guys and rode away with to live happily ever after.

  The problematic thing was the bad guys were my family. The ones I loved with all my heart. If you wanted to get technical, I was a bad guy too. Maybe the worst of them all.

  The bad guys didn’t get a happily ever after.

  As it happened, neither did princes.

  Chapter One

  Rosie

  Age Six

  “Why can’t I be like them, Daddy?” I asked, nodding toward the men roaring away on their motorcycles.

  Daddy ruffled my hair. “Because even for a Fletcher, six years old is too young to be on a motorcycle,” he said, his voice smiling. “But don’t worry, kid. Soon as you can reach the pedals, you’re on a bike. It’s in your blood.”

  I smiled too, but I also frowned because that wasn’t what I meant. “No, why can’t I be in the club too? Like you.” I tugged at the leather he always wore, so much so that it was a part of my daddy, just like his gray eyes and his smile voices. “Is it because I’m a girl?”

  Daddy grabbed my chin. His eyes weren’t smiling. “Simple answer? Yeah, baby, it’s ’cause you’re a girl. ’Cause my pops lived in a time where women didn’t have much say in anythin’ and he quite liked it like that.” He paused, and even though he was looking at me, I thought he might’ve been seeing something else. “Still like that now, I guess. Society is moving on in that respect, but our club doesn’t move with society. Our club just is. Not many rules, but the ones we got ain’t gonna change. I’m sure of that. Not while I’m around, at least.” He looked at Cade, who was helping Uncle Steg with a car. “I have a feelin’ your big bro might shake things up a bit, though. Maybe after I’m gone.” There was both a smile and a frown in his voice.

  I slipped my hand into his.

  Daddy looked down, staring at my teeny tiny hand. He squeezed mine, not too tight, just right, then smiled.

  “You’re gonna shake things up more than a bit, my little princess,” he said. “I already know that. Which is why even if the club wasn’t the way it is, I wouldn’t have you wearin’ a cut, following rules. There ain’t many, but there’s enough to tell you to be a certain kind of person. My Rosie will never let anyone tell her what kind of person she is. You’re my caterpillar. You’re gonna grow wings, baby. And you’re gonna soar and be the only version of you in this whole world. I know you’ll be the heart and soul of this club. In more ways than one. But you’re destined to be somethin’ different. Somethin’ bigger.”

  Age Thirty

  Something magical happens when you separate from someone you love and it’s someone you shouldn’t. When it’s too totally Fucked Up—Fucked Up requires capitals because of the sheer consistency of that phrase in my life—to ever work. When there’re a million and twelve reasons why it won’t. You know it when you’re together. Even when those little cracks of sunshine peek through the darkness that is un-destined love, disguising themselves as happiness for a fleeting moment, even then you know.

  You make your plans to end it. You convince yourself that you’ll be okay. It’ll hurt, of course. It won’t be easy to walk away with a broken heart, but you’ll do it. You’ve broken things before and you’ve survived. You know the pain will be crippling, but you’re also sure you can do it.

  Self-preservation and all that.

  So you leave.

  Walk, run, crawl. Whatever it is that gets you out the door so you can commence the process of repairing yourself. Or re-breaking everything he fixed because you can’t be whole without him; you only know broken, can only survive broken.

  Then it happens, once you actually do it. All those reasons, those concrete barriers to true and lasting happiness that had seemed so unsurpassable before they melt away. The reasons, all one million and twelve of them, don’t seem so important anymore.

  Because of the magical thing that happens when you leave someone when you don’t want to. When you leave someone because you know it’s ultimately the best thing for both of you, even though in your entire life you’ve always known that the best things for you have never been right for you.

  You forget all the bad. The blood trickles down the drain, not leaving a trace of the wounds you sustained while together. Making you forget they even existed, convincing yourself that you imagined them. The only ones left are the new ones, so raw and painful that they have to be real. The ones that, in the empty air of loneliness, cut even deeper than the ones you couldn’t handle before. The ones that made you leave. The ones that you perhaps imagined.

  Then it gets even more Fucked Up. You find yourself craving that exquisite pain you had before.

  With him.

  It had been unbearable, but it was easier to experience than the stifling empty air that yawned ahead of a life without him.

  Even if I was never really with him.

  “Please fasten your seat belts and set your electronics to airplane mode before stowing them safely,” a professionally pleasant voice requested over the intercom.

  That was easy since I’d tossed my phone in a trash can two connections back. Right after I’d bought a one-way ticket out of the country. It wouldn’t do very well disappearing if I had a big fucking homing beacon in my pocket declaring where I was going.

  Which was why my phone was buried amongst discarded sodas and soggy airport sandwiches.

  Which was why I used my fake passport and stolen credit cards.

  This was not my first rodeo.

  My brother may have gone legit, and good for him. He could join the fucking Boy Scouts, bathe in his new, almost law-abiding life.

  I excelled at breaking the law. When your brother is the president of an—until recently—outlaw motorcycle gang, you found the law didn’t pay much attention to the younger and seemingly harmless little sister. I utilized that, even though it killed me. Kurt Cobain had once said, “Thank you for my tragedy. I need it for my art.”

  I couldn’t sing for shit, but I did make an art out of breaking the law and not getting caught. The boys could learn a few things from me, if they decided to go dark side again—unlikely—and listen to a female—even more unlikely.

  I was a better criminal than all of them put together.

  Not that any of them, including my brother and his club, otherwise known as my family, would ever know. The only thing they’d know was that the flighty and unpredictable Rosie had disappeared.

  Again.

  Hopefully that would be all they focused on. And hopefully no one inspected my now-abandoned house with a blue light.

  They wouldn’t. They were used to this by now.

  It wasn’t their first rodeo either.

  Sure, Cade would go all stoic, perhaps break a couple of chairs, maybe even send someone to check my usual haunts: Las Vegas, Mexico, the Dominican Republic.

  Maybe.

  And he wouldn’t be overly worried when no one found me. He knew I could take care of myself. He taught me to. Well, taking care of my physical self. Emotional self was a shit show. Another Fuck-Up.

  He’d sit back on his throne and wait. Plan on yelling at me when I eventually got back, toting a new guy or a new tattoo and a thousand new stories. He’d think about that for a hot minute, then focus on the wife he worshipped and the children he adored.

  My finger twitched thinking about them. My beautiful niece and nephew.

  My throat burned with the knowledge that I wouldn’t be seeing them for a long time, of all the things I’d miss of their lives.r />
  “The crew are pointing out your exits, in case of emergency.”

  I didn’t glance up. I’d already selected my exit in case of emergency. It was this fucking plane. If it went down, so be it.

  I clenched my fists against the one armrest I had. The asshole in the middle had his meaty clams claiming both on either side, and most of my personal space as well, so his sweaty skin brushed on my bare arm when he moved. Normally, I would’ve called him out. Calling out assholes was my favorite hobby.

  But I was kind of in the middle of one of my not-so-favorite hobbies.

  Ruining my life.

  “Cabin crew, be seated for takeoff,” the harshly accented voice of the captain replaced the soft and calm one of the attendant.

  I’ve made a huge mistake. The ultimate Fuck-Up.

  I was pushed back in my seat and the roar of the engine filled my ears as we ascended, lifting from American soil.

  Well, it was too fucking late now. Besides, the only mistake bigger than leaving was staying.

  Six Months Later

  “Una cerveza, por favor.”

  I paused, my mind running over the events of the day. The horror. The blood. The death.

  Just another day at the office.

  “And a shot of Patrón,” I added in English. I could’ve said it perfectly well in Spanish—I was near fluent at that point—but it felt nice to speak my native tongue, a way of holding onto an identity that was slipping away. That I was trying to shed at the same time I was clutching at it to store for later, like a sweater I could slip back into once I’d left this season of my life behind.