Part 3: The Hunt

Jake sucked in a breath of thin desert night air then coughed it out again. He felt restless and irritable. For the past thirty minutes, ever since he’d seen Kayla standing next to his mother, Lucille, he’d struggled to take a full breath. He chalked up this feeling of being sucker-punched in the gut to the exertion of having busted, Rambo-like, into the club tonight. It wasn’t his usual MO when he was rounding up his mark, and having Bella intercept him while he was raging through the Desert Rat’s clubhouse, waving his .44 Magnum with his AK slung over his back probably saved him from having his balls handed to him on a platter by his old club brothers - the uber-alpha, testosterone-laden males liquored up and ready for blood. Something in her had touched something in him and he found himself compelled to help her, even if it meant losing his mark.