“Is everything okay?” she asked immediately.

“Club business, Carrie, gotta go,” he told her.

Through the shadows she looked beyond him to the alarm clock.

“Club business at two thirty in the morning?” she asked.

“I gotta go,” he repeated. “I find out what’s happening, when I get back, I’ll explain.”

She pushed up to her forearm. “Is someone hurt?”

“No,” he lied. “Not in the Club,” he gave her the truth. “But I don’t think it’s good, and I gotta go.”

“I… um… okay, sweetie.”

It was hesitant but he had to take it, so he took it by leaning in to give her a quick kiss.

Then he rolled out of bed.

He was on his bike and at the address Tack gave him in thirty-five minutes. But Tack could have given him the vicinity and he’d have been able to find it. There were cop cars all around, lights flashing, crime scene tape cordoning off the alley, and bystanders even though it was the dead of night. That much police activity, they crawled out of bed or stopped on the road to find out what was happening.

Joker rode to the line of bikes, parked his, and saw his brothers huddling on the sidewalk beyond the thin line of bystanders and police tape. Tack was there and had already been joined by Hop, Shy, Boz, High, Roscoe, and Snapper.

Lee Nightingale and his right-hand man, Luke Stark, were with them.

And last, Hawk Delgado, Mitch Lawson, and Brock “Slim” Lucas were there too.

In other words, essentially every badass in Denver, outside the rest of Lee’s team, the rest of Hawk’s team, the rest of the Chaos brothers, and Knight Sebring and his crew. Joker wasn’t surprised to see Knight wasn’t there, since Knight was not on the right side of the law or even straddling the line like Chaos, Nightingale, and Delgado.

But with what Knight did as a side business and what Joker suspected he was about to learn, Knight Sebring would get interested.

And if he did, this shit that Joker knew in his gut just got messy would blow sky high.

Joker approached the large group of men watching Tack.

But when they adjusted to allow him in the circle, it was Lee who spoke.

“Sorry, Joke, Hank caught the case. He knew I was on it for you so he could give me a heads-up if he heard anything. He heard something and called me.”

“Heidi bought it,” Joker guessed.

“Yeah,” Lee confirmed.

“Joke, brother,” Tack called him, and Joker looked to him. “There’s a reason the brothers are here. You need to see. But before you go behind the tape, you need to get your shit tight.”

“You said it’s ugly,” Joker said.

“This kinda thing is never pretty,” Tack replied quietly. “But this is worse.”

“Valenzuela?” Joker asked.

“Absolutely,” High growled, and it was a pissed-off growl that was beyond Valenzuela making a move and doing it using a woman.