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  Carol was the primary reason for his scheming and planning to begin with. She was everything he had ever wanted in a woman. She was smart and beautiful and her sexuality heated up a room just by her being present. Carol Malone was a very powerful woman and, if she had been a man, could very well have been president of the Iron Angels.

  But she was a woman. A powerful woman... but a woman. And she was a woman with a weakness. That weakness was power itself. She was girlfriend and chief advisor to the current Iron Angel’s president. The power that she could not claim for herself drew her close to him. That power, which she made her own as her influence grew, kept her close to him... until she betrayed him.

  Maddox knew that once he had that power, he would also have Carol. They had planned Burke’s downfall together. It was simple: set things up so that Burke would be carrying either a large quantity of drugs or illegal weapons, and then somehow let the cops know when and where. The rest would take care of itself.

  Everyone knew that Johnny, the bartender at the Wheel Horse Bar, was an informant. It was just a matter of saying something when he could hear it. Once Burke went to prison, his reign as president would end.

  Again, there had been a day when the president of a club could rule from inside a prison, but those days are also gone. Loyalty to a fallen leader is a thing of the past. Today, if you go down, you’re out. The club will protect you inside—they will get revenge if something happens to you in prison. You might even be able to reclaim your position when you come back out, but while you’re inside, someone else rules. And Maddox– with Carol’s help– had set everything in place so that he was going to be that “someone else” when Burke went inside.

  Everything went down as planned — well, not quite as planned. Burke was carrying enough on his person and on his bike to put him away for a long time. That part of the plan worked perfectly. The police were able to surprise him in the middle of a deal. That part also worked. What didn’t work so well is that no one expected him to try to shoot his way out.

  No one, that is, except the SWAT team backing up the drug unit. Burke got off one shot before crumpling to the ground. Each of the three backup snipers could claim a kill shot. All three hit in vital zones.

  There had been over a thousand bikes in Burke’s funeral procession. Clubs from several surrounding states came to pay their respects to a fallen leader. Now the problem facing Maddox was how to make his claim for the presidency. Taking over for a leader dumb enough to get himself arrested in a sting operation was one thing, but replacing a leader who went out in a blaze of glory was something else. Maddox knew he would have to move very carefully or there might be backlash. If he moved too quickly, someone might even think–not incorrectly–that he had something to do with Burke’s demise.

  After hours on the road, Maddox had considered several possible plans, but he was unsure that any of them were the best. Finally, he decided what he really needed to do was meet with Carol and plan out their next move together. He pulled a screaming, leg-down U-turn across the highway, just to prove to himself that he could still do it, and headed back home.

  The sun was starting to get low in the sky by the time he got back to Iron Creek. Iron Creek was an old gold mining town. Some people think that the Iron Angels are named for the town, but the name was just a coincidence when the Angels moved there from Denver in the 1970's. Back then, Denver was getting too civilized, and Iron Creek still had the ambiance of “old west freedom” hanging heavy in its dusty streets.

  Now Iron Creek was a biker town with everything the name alluded to in a place like Colorado. Civilization eventually caught up with Iron Creek but the bars, tattoo parlors, and other shady establishments that surround the biker world consistently threw mud in its eye. Tourists were welcome in Iron Creek, or at least they were tolerated, but bikers ruled and had done so for over forty years.

  Carol Malone owned and lived above The Iron Angels Bar, a primary meeting place and unofficial clubhouse for the Iron Angels. She had purchased the bar several years ago and renamed it for the club. The building itself dated back to the Wild West era. Her apartment was upstairs with an old-fashioned, wooden stairway running up the back of the building. It was her night off, so they would have plenty of time to talk... or engage in other activities.

  Maddox pulled his bike carefully into the alleyway. It was a narrow alley and there wasn’t a lot of room. You had to approach the steps just right to get that big Harley into the small parking place beneath them.

  He was lined up perfectly, but his bike wasn’t going to fit. That was because there was already a bike sitting there. The custom Maltese cross wheels and the Iron Angels skull and wings on the tank told him the bike was David Arnold’s. David was perhaps the second most powerful member of the club, or at least he used to be.

  Maddox killed his engine and sat silently in the alleyway. The inner door at the top of the steps was open and light streamed through the screen door. Sound also carried into the alleyway from above. On a busy night at the bar, you wouldn’t have been able to hear anything in the alley above the music, but it was relatively quiet tonight and the juke box wasn’t playing. Maddox could clearly hear voices. They weren’t speaking, but what those voices were telling Maddox was very clear. He was hearing David and Carol having sex... loud, wild, heavy sex. Carol was always a bit loud when they made love, but he had never heard her like this. She was yowling like a cat in heat and screaming, “Harder! Harder! Harder!”

  Maddox restarted the Harley and tore out of the alley, knocking over a garbage can near the entrance and sending it flying into the street. His first impulse was to roar out of town and ride until morning, or at least until he could figure out his next move. But someone from the club would see that. They might discover what was happening and that would be a total loss of face. All of his plans and schemes and alliances would be for nothing. He may even be seen as weak and possibly blamed for what happened to Burke.

  That could be fatal, so instead of allowing his anger to simmer and flare, Maddox let his feelings go immediately beyond hot until his mind was almost cold as he pulled his bike around to the front of the bar and parked it with the line of Harleys already there on the street. Then he walked into the bar as if nothing had happened.

  He wasn’t sure what he was going to do once he got inside, but several doubles of Yukon Jack seemed high on the list of probabilities. There were a few open spaces at the bar. He chose one next to a dark-haired girl in a close-fitting white pullover blouse and tight, tight black jeans.

  “Double Yu, neat,” he told the bartender, and when his drink arrived, he held up his glass in a toast to the dark eyes that were now watching him. There was something about those eyes... and that face... and those lips. Something was tugging at his memory. He knew her.

  She wasn’t a tourist, but she wasn’t part of the club. He’d seen her somewhere before, possibly around town in Iron Creek. But if that were the case, he definitely would remember her—of that he was sure. She was the most gorgeous woman he had ever seen.

  “What’re you having?” he asked her.

  “If I let you buy me a drink, does that mean I have to let you fuck me?” she asked bluntly in an almost musical voice.

  “Uhhh,” responded Maddox in surprise. Then, recovering, he said, “That depends on how many drinks you like to start with and how willing you are.”

  “Honesty,” she replied. “I like honesty. What’s your name?”

  “Maddox, Maddox Robinson. What’s yours?”

  “Aimee,” she replied. “Aimee...”

  “Wells,” he interjected. “You’re Jake Wells’ kid.”

  “Not exactly,” she answered. Her voice was flat and sounded hurt... and angry. “But that’s a long story that would require sitting in one of the booths and ordering a couple more rounds.”

  “Make mine a coke and Jack...” she yelled to the bartender. “Double on the Jack.”

  ***

  Aimee Wells’ anger flo
wed from the death of her father. More precisely, it had simmered for a long time–perhaps her entire life. Her mother had died while she was in high school. She had cancer, but they carefully hid that truth from Aimee until she was hospitalized for the last time. But her simmering anger toward her father at last bubbled up like lava at the reading of Jake’s will.

  About four months ago, Jake died of liver failure–not uncommon for someone who drank as heavily as he did. He had promised Aimee that he would quit. He had assured her that he had quit. Her brother, James, even reported to her regularly that their dad was staying on the wagon. Then came the call that he was dead.

  Jake Wells had collapsed on the street one night, severely intoxicated. He died the next morning in the hospital. The cause of death was listed as “acute liver failure brought on by years of heavy alcohol abuse.”

  James only comment to her was, “He didn’t want me to tell you.”

  In other words, her mother lied to her up to the day of her death; her father lied to her all her life; and all along, her brother was part of those lies.

  The day for reading Jake’s will arrived next. James was, of course, the executor, but a lawyer read the will to both of them as they sat in his office in Denver. It was an old will and had been written while her mother was still alive, but it was still good and legal. With her mother dead, everything was essentially split between her and her brother. There wasn’t much, but what was there was divided evenly between the two of them.

  The terms of the will were not the source of her anger. It was the preface to the will which read, “We acknowledge our love for our adopted daughter, Aimee, and declare her to be a full and complete heir and equal to our true child, James, for the purposes of this will.”

  This was the first she had ever heard she was adopted. As a child, she would ask where her dark eyes came from, and her mother would answer, “There must have been somebody with dark eyes in our family trees.”

  The same answer was given for her slightly darker skin, high cheekbones, height, and lithe body when the rest of the family was relatively short, stocky, and of paler skin. After her mother’s death from breast cancer, Aimee spent months building a DNA family tree recording who died of what and when. No one ever said it was not her family tree.

  The fact that she was adopted would have, by itself, been shocking. But when it was combined with the phrase, “our true child, James,” Aimee’s response was white-hot anger.

  There was nothing in the law that required the will state that she was adopted and not a “true child” of her mother and father. Even though the lawyer reading the will interjected, “That’s just a technicality of Colorado law... means nothing,” Aimee knew his words were bullshit. She was a lawyer working for a national firm in Illinois specializing in corporate law. There was nothing in the law that required such wording, nor was there anything that required you acknowledge your love for any of the beneficiaries of the will.

  “If you have to say it, it isn’t true,” was one of her father’s favorite sayings. They had to say that they loved her. They didn’t say that she was not their true child. Nor did they say that all of them–mom, dad, and James–had lied to her all of her life.

  When she got back to her office in Chicago, she found out that a re-organization had been announced in the days that she had been gone. Despite the fact that she had been doing extra work and training, and had been taking advanced courses at the local college on the promise that she would be promoted, she was informed that she must take a demotion and accept a transfer to the Cleveland office to keep her job.

  Her boyfriend’s response to that news was unsympathetic to say the least. He informed her that she better be able to keep up with her share of the rent or he was going to have to find a new roommate.

  Roommate! She thought they were in love. She thought she was his significant other. He thought she was a roommate with privileges! She packed her few belongings in a suitcase and left to spend the night in a motel.

  The next morning she turned in her resignation at work. They must have been expecting it, even waiting for it, because less than ten minutes later her supervisor appeared at her desk with a check for four weeks’ salary and three officers from security. They carefully watched her as she cleaned out her desk and then escorted her from the building. As she handed her building badge to the man at the main security desk, she realized it had all been carefully orchestrated so she would quit rather than be fired and the company could dispute unemployment benefits.

  Her mother lied to her; her father lied to her; her brother lied to her; her boyfriend, or so she thought, lied to her; and the company to which she had given nine long years of her life lied to her. Everyone lied to her. Everything was a lie. Her entire life was a lie.

  Standing on the sidewalk that morning in front of what used to be her office building, she decided that she was going to start her life over. And her new life was going to be based on the truth. She would wipe out her old life by starting over from the beginning. To do that, she was returning to the one place she had ever felt truly at home–Iron Creek, Colorado.

  Her first night in town, she came to the Iron Angels Bar because that’s where she had spent a great deal of her childhood. It didn’t have the same name then, but it was still the Angels’ primary hangout. Mom and Dad would put her and James in a corner booth in the back, and then they would drink and dance and party with fellow members of the Iron Angels.

  She was sitting at the bar wondering, “What now?” when Maddox Robinson sat next to her and ordered a Double Yu. Her dad loved the taste of Yukon Jack, but would never order it in public because it was a “pussy Canadian whisky.” He always ordered Jim Beam at the bar, even though he preferred Yu.

  When she heard Maddox give his order, her first thought was, “Maybe this is an honest man.” Her second thought, after she looked over at him, was “My God!”

  Maddox wasn’t the most handsome man she had ever seen, but he was the most... attractive, meaning that she was intensely attracted to him on a physical level — perhaps even on all levels. She had never felt such a strong and immediate attraction to another person before in her life. It was as if her out-of-sync life had suddenly clicked into place. Normally she would have dismissed such a weak and obvious pickup line with a witty put down, but when he asked “What’re you having?” she answered truthfully with the question that was going through her mind, “If I let you buy me a drink, does that mean I have to let you fuck me?”

  Now they were walking toward a booth, each with a drink in hand, to talk. Perhaps she would tell him about the lies from her parents, from her job, from her life. Or perhaps she would keep the conversation on him. In either case, she would tell the truth. And he would tell the truth to her or he would be leaving alone.

  “The corner booth in the back is empty. Let’s sit there,” she said as he led her away from the bar. Then she added, “It has special meaning to me.”

  So far, truth was ruling the evening.

  ***

  As they slid into the booth, Aimee asked, “So, Maddox Robinson, are you hoping to play me with liquor and get me to sleep with you?”

  “I wouldn’t object.”

  “That’s not an honest answer,” she replied shaking her head. “Honesty wins the prize. There’s no second place.”

  He laughed. “Okay, then. Yes, I was hoping that I could play you with cheap liquor and get you to sleep with me.”

  “I might be interested, but I have some rules.” She smiled and looked Maddox directly in the eyes. “Actually, I have one rule: total honesty. If you lie to me, even a little, it’s all over.”

  The smile left her face, but her eyes continued to bore into his. “Do you think you can live by that rule?”

  “I’ll try my best,” he answered. And then he added with a smile, “And that was totally honest.”

  “So, tell me about yourself. Why are you in here tonight downing double Yukon Jacks?”

  “I would r
ather you told me your story first,” he replied.

  “Honest answer. You’re getting the hang of it, but I asked first, so you talk first.”

  “Short answer to a long story,” he began, “is that I was plotting to overthrow the president of the Iron Angels and take over the club and his woman... especially his woman.”

  He took a long sip of his whiskey. “But his woman is better at the game. She was playing me and is evidently grooming a different man for the Presidency and for her bed. That’s them bouncing around upstairs sealing the deal.” Aimee looked slightly confused. “You can hear them from the alley, especially if you’re right at the foot of the stairs to her apartment.”

  “So what are you planning to do now?” she asked.

  “Stay alive,” he answered with a laugh. The expression on his face and the hollowness of his laugh indicated that he was not joking.

  Then his face brightened as he raised his glass toward Aimee and said, “And try to get in bed with the most gorgeous woman I have ever seen.”

  “Still honest?” she asked.