A Civilian for Silo Read online

  A Civilian for Silo – A Hellion MC Novel

  By

  J. A. Hornbuckle

  *.*.*.*.*

  Published by J.A. Hornbuckle for Smashwords

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  Copyright © 2014 by J.A. Hornbuckle

  Edited by: Laura Kingsley

  Cover Design by: Brandi Doane McCann

  License Notes

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this novel with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this eBook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please buy an additional copy for each recipient.

  No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information story and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of J.A. Hornbuckle or her authorized representatives.

  Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction and is not a reflection or representation of any person living or dead. Any similarity is of pure coincidence.

  Although, if you recognize yourself in any character represented, maybe we need to talk…

  EPub Edition October 2014

  ISBN: 9780991239177

  Chapter One

  “Why aren’t you married, Si’?” the sweet voice of the girl lying next to him asked softly, not even panting after their bedtime frolic. Which fucking meant that it hadn’t been his imagination and he really had done all the fucking work.

  He shifted on the bed, moving the sheet up to his chest before running a hand over his bald head. “Ain’t never been fucking asked, I guess.” He smiled at his own joke. The joke being as if any girl would ever ask him.

  “You don’t even have a steady Honey.” She rolled to her side of the mattress and sat up, reaching for her clothes that were still in a pile on the floor.

  Propping an arm under his head, Silo watched as she slid her tiny t-shirt on. “Yeah…and?”

  She twisted to look at him over her shoulder. “I don’t know. It just seems like all of you on the council have found your other half.” She reached for her panties and stood to put them on. “All, except you and Bishop.”

  Silo picked up his phone and checked the time. Seeing it was still in the wee hours of the morning, he wiggled further down in the sheets, knowing he could squeeze in a few fucking hours of shut-eye before getting ready for work. And since the room he was in, the one behind the Hellion Motorcycle clubhouse, was only across the driveway from where his office was located, the commute was gonna be short and sweet.

  “Well?” the Honey asked before pulling on the short shorts that gripped her pert ass, showcasing her legs to perfection and had given Silo the incentive and interest to ask her to bed.

  He yawned before replying. “Well, what?”

  “How come you aren’t a part of a couple?”

  Turning his head to look at the woman, he shrugged his answer.

  The girl made a pout. “Don’t you want to be with someone?”

  “I was just with you, Sukie. Ain’t that goddamn good enough?” Sometimes, Silo wished whichever girl he took for the evening would just fucking shut it afterwards, but it seemed as if they all wanted to talk after playtime. And all he wanted to do was sleep.

  Strapping on her towering heels, she looked down at him with a small, sad smile. “You’re going to sleep here again?”

  “Lots of fucking questions, girl, for the middle of the fucking night.”

  “Why don’t you ever go home anymore? Carmi said you don’t ever seem to go back to your place. That you’re here at the complex 24/7 and…” the woman’s voice wound down at the scowl that had crept across Silo’s face at her words. “I didn’t mean to make you mad, Si’, it’s just that we’re worried.”

  “We?”

  “You know. The Honeys,” she explained, waving her hand back towards the vicinity of the main part of the clubhouse.

  “The Honeys are talking about where I fucking choose to sleep?” While he loved that the female portion of the motorcycle club took care of the Hellion brothers, sometimes their concern went a little too far in his opinion. Bordering on being nosy bitches. “Need you to back the fuck off, Sook.”

  It was the girl’s turn to shrug as she planted a knee on the mattress and leaned into him to give a short kiss. “Sleep wherever you want, sweetie. We’re just worried is all.”

  His eyes zeroed in on the jiggling of her sweet ass as she let herself out of the room, making a point of setting the inside door look before closing it softly. But his mind was on what she’d said.

  It was true, he admitted to himself before rolling over and turning off the bedside lamp, pulling the sheet up higher on his shoulder. He and Bishop were the only unattached Hellions on council, a fact he threw in the face of the other four biker brothers frequently. ‘Footloose and fancy free’, he’d crow in derision when each of them started ending their after-work drinking sessions early in order to get home to their girls.

  And as for staying at the compound instead of going back to his house? Fuck, what was there to go home to now that his grandpa had passed? No one there and nothing to do. No, he’d rather stay at the compound raising hell with the brothers, drinking and laughing until he had a mind for a little bed action and then grabbing whatever Honey caught his fancy for the evening.

  He’d like to say he enjoyed the goddamn variety, of having a different girl every fucking night but he knew it wasn’t true. That a small part of him deep inside would be over-fucking-joyed to have a woman that was just his, that wouldn’t fucking leave when the deed was done. Someone just for him.

  His mind ran over the roster of the current group of Honeys but none of them struck him as being his ‘forever’ girl. Most of them liked the variety too and made no bones about it. And the few that might be interested in something more long term were not fucking interested in him in that way. Yeah, they’d give it up if he asked but they never sought him out, never came to him first.

  Silo turned his pillow to the cool side and wiggled back down into the covers with a snort.

  “Let go of the emo shit, dude,” he whispered to himself, smiling at using one of Dare’s favorite expressions.

  He closed his eyes, knowing the next day was Monday. Which meant there’d be a manager meeting which usually ended with a Hellion council meeting. And with Trey’s idea of establishing a new chapter in Billings, there would lots on the agenda to keep his goddamn brain engaged and away from the pondering of couples.

  And why he wasn’t a part of one.

  *.*.*.*.*

  “Trey? Sorry to disturb the council meeting but Silo has an emergency call on line 1.” Lulu’s normally dulcet voice sounded brassy over the intercom of the phone in the middle of the conference table.

  Emergency call? Silo’s forehead creased as he caught the confused looks of the elite group of Hellions seated around him. “Who the fuck is it, princess?”

  Since he had no living family and didn’t know of anyone other than the brothers he was currently sitting with who would claim him as an emergency contact, he just figured the phone call was a joke of the ‘unfunny’ variety.

  But it had to be important if Lulu would go against Trey’s edict of no calls during their weekly meetings. He glanced at the large man at the head of the table who appeared as annoyed as expected by the interruption.

  “He says his name is Sheriff Sharpels. From someplace in New Mexico,” she replied and he could hear the ringing of the
main line behind her voice. “Says it’s about your sister. I didn’t know you had a sister, Si!”

  “I ain’t got no…” Wait a fuckin’ second. Sister? Why did that word cause the hair on the back of his neck to stand up and take notice?

  Well it would’ve, if he didn’t shave his entire head. He glanced again at Trey, looking for approval and saw the other man’s wide shoulders shrug. Before Silo was even up and out of his chair in order to take the call in his office, Bishop rushed by him with a muttered, “’Scuse.”

  As his long legs quickly took him down the hall, he let his mind roam on the word ‘sister’ and remembered wrapping himself around someone much shorter, warm and smelling sweet as their lips met.

  ‘I will, Si. I promise. If there’s trouble, I’ll call and tell them I’m your sister.’

  As soon as his mind brought up the memory, the full recollection came to him. Of him and Shelly Palmer, Lulu’s sister, saying good-bye in the morning sunlight of the dining room of Hardwood’s house. Sharing a kiss and a hug after one of the best nights of his life, with a woman he could’ve only dreamed of being with as a Hellion biker.

  Class, style and a sharp sarcastic sense of humor that had them laughing as much as they’d played over the course of the few hours they’d spent together.

  But there’d been problems.

  Shelly’s sister had caught her father red-handed trying to launder dirty money through his Albuquerque investment firm. She’d ran to Montana, taken a job at Hellion Construction in order to hide from both her dad and her ex-fiancé but had been found. And both of them had wanted her back in order to ensure she didn’t sound the alarm about their activities.

  Shelly, though, had been convinced that she could work the paperwork to extradite both her and Lulu from the mess their father had eventually been caught in. And by untangling their assets keep, all their father’s charges from bleeding down onto them.

  But Silo had known better.

  Men that played the way Daddy Palmer did were notorious for getting even their children unknowingly involved in their stupid shit in one way or another, and Silo had made Shelly promise to contact him if she ever needed his help. Up to and including making her memorize the Hellion Construction main number.

  ‘But we can’t tell Lu, Si. If I’m in that much trouble that I need you, we can’t let Lulu know.’

  ‘Then when you fuckin’ call, tell ‘em you’re my sister. Since I don’t goddamn have one, that’ll be the fucking code word to get me to you, yeah? And I’ll be there as fast as I fucking can.’ He remembered her nodding, her strawberry blonde curls bouncing over her shoulders. Even as a memory, those curls caused his heart to do a double-thump.

  ‘Yeah. I will, Si. I promise. If there’s trouble, I’ll call and tell them I’m your sister.’

  He reached past all the crap on his desk for his phone, idly noting the tremble in his hand as he did so. “Silo Kettering,” he growled into the receiver and felt his balls pull up towards his trunk as he finally recognized the fear moving within him at what might be doing with Shelly.

  “Kettering? This here’s Bernalillo County Deputy Sheriff Micah Sharpels.” The other voice, a tenor, already grated on Silo’s nerves at only the man’s greeting. “We’ve found a girl…well, a woman, actually. Found her wandering, more like hobbling along one of the county firebreak roads.”

  The other man stopped on a coughing fit and Silo heard the sound of the man hawking up a ball of phlegm before continuing.

  “Just limping along that old back road in some kind of mangled ball gown and pert near coughing up a lung. We ain’t never seen the like. Only info she could get out was that she was your sis and gave us your number. ”

  “Where?” Silo knew he roared the one word but his voice was naturally loud in the best of circumstances. At that moment in time, though, his volume had increased by tenfold.

  “Out there by Oso Springs, east of Albuquerque. She’s…”

  “How do I get there from Montana?” Silo could hear Lulu’s high heels rushing towards his office, and he tried to lower his voice in order not to have the rest of the managers storming to his part of the building.

  “Uhm. Dunno. But if I were you, I’d just make my way to Albuquerque,” came the lazy voice on the phone. A voice that Silo was quickly coming to hate.

  “Where is she? Where exactly is…my sister?” He glanced down at the hand he had on the desk and saw it was fisted so tight his knuckles were white.

  “Now? Uhm. At first we took her to one of them urgent care places but they’ve since transferred her to Presbyterian Hospital in Albuquerque proper…”

  “Since? What the fuck does that mean? How long has it been since you’ve found her?” Brand, his Hellion brother, co-council member and whose office was next to his, stood next to Lulu, taking up most of the space in the doorway.

  “Only a couple hours shy of a day. You don’t have to worry, Kettering. We’re treating your sister real good but she didn’t have no ID on her or nothing so we waited to contact you until we had no other option.” Silo knew exactly what the other man was saying.

  Fuckers!

  Silo’s brain caught on one word but wanted clarification. “What the fuck do you mean ‘treating’?

  “Well now, she had a couple of problems when we first picked her up. No bleeding or nothing. But sick enough we took her to urgent care. But they had her transported to Presbyterian Hospital.”

  Shelly was in a fucking hospital in Albuquerque?

  “I’ll be there no later than tomorrow!” Silo’s voice had dropped to almost a primal growl as he tried to process all the man had said. Silo slammed the receiver back into its cradle and covered his face with his hands.

  Christ!

  Fucking Christ!

  “Silo?” Brand called, and Silo knew the man remained just at the entrance to his office in order to give Silo the space needed to pull himself together.

  “Gotta go see Trey,” Silo rumbled from beneath the palms he had pressed against his lips and cheeks.

  “Understood. If I can assist…”

  “You can’t. Appreciate your help, but I gotta go,” Silo found himself saying baldly and in a deadpanned voice. “Thanks, though.” He pushed himself up and out of his chair, feeling a weakness in his knees at what he had to do in order to get to her. To get to his Shell, the name he’d christened her with in their one night together so many months ago.

  Brand and Lulu stepped aside as he barreled out of his office and practically sprinted down the hall to where Trey held court, only to see his boss was on his cellphone as the other council brothers talked among themselves.

  Even Bishop was back, albeit looking green around the gills, as if he’d tied one on the night before.

  Closing the door behind him but not taking his seat, Silo shifted his weight from side to side, anxious to get the next part over and done with. He couldn’t get to her until he’d told Trey and the other members that he had to leave.

  “Shit, Si. Impatient much?” Trey grumbled, setting his cellphone on the large table.

  “Actually, yeah,” Si boomed on a scowl. He didn’t need any shit from anyone at the moment, but he knew he needed to be respectful about it. “I’m taking off. Have some personal shit doing that can’t wait.”

  Trey’s brown eyes narrowed as he stroked his goatee while carefully studying Silo’s face. “How long you gonna be gone, amigo?”

  “Dunno.” Silo let his gaze drift at the other members as he tried to think it through but until he got to her, he didn’t have a goddamn clue when he’d be back at work. “As long as it fucking takes, I guess.”

  “And this absolutely goddamn needs to be handled right the fuck now? Christ, Si! You know we’re behind on the Johnston Ranch job and over-budget on the Kearney Hills one…plus with Billings…”

  “Can’t be helped, man.” Silo ran a hand over his smooth skull. He knew he was putting Hellion Construction in a fix since he was the one that held the rein
s on the plumbing side for their jobs in Montana. But he needed to fucking go! “Get Hardwood or Dice to cover the shit on my desk. And I’ll keep you up to date. But I’m fuckin’ going, Trey. I just gotta go, man.”

  Trey’s eyes were on him as if weighing his options and Silo chaffed under the steady perusal. All the other members were watching Trey silently. Seconds ticked by, precious seconds that Silo was sure were gonna cost him in getting to Shelly as soon as fucking possible.

  “You doing this alone or can the Hellions help?” Silo should’ve anticipated Brand’s question, since he knew that anything that affected a brother, affected the whole club. But he also knew that, at least for the moment, it was up to him and only him to see to Shelly.

  “Just me, man. If I...if things go tits-up, I call for backup,” he assured the other men, trying to make his voice sound convincing even though he didn’t have enough info to support his words. But he’d spoken true. If things were too much for him to handle, Silo would have no problem involving his club in making sure Shelly was safe.

  “I can give you two weeks to get your shit sorted,” Trey rumbled. “Any longer and there’ll be hell to pay. You get me?”

  Even though Silo hadn’t been looking for approval, receiving it took a load off his mind. He nodded at the large man behind the table and gave each man one as well before turning and stepping into the hall.

  “Si?” Glancing back over his shoulder, Silo saw all of the others were now standing even though Trey was the only one speaking. “Good luck, amigo. I hope everything works out.”

  Silo did a finger-flick in response before racing out of the building and to his ride.

  Chapter Two

  “…seems to be breathing fine on her own now. We’ve done as much as we can but with her refusing to talk about what happened to her...” The voices were out in the hallway, just loud enough to carry into my room and wake me up.