Out his window, the red brick industrial building housing Hard Ink Tattoo loomed in the darkness, punctuated here and there by the headlights of the motorcycles belonging to some of the Raven Riders who’d helped Easy and his teammates rescue Jenna and take down the gangbangers who’d grabbed her.įive former Green Berets and twenty-odd members of an outlaw motorcycle club. Easy lifted his gaze from Jenna’s fire red hair and too-pale face to find that they were home-or, at least, where he was calling home right now. The pickup paused as a gate whirred out of the way, then the tires crunched over gravel and came to a rough stop. And then you wished you’d given more thanks and held on harder before the fires ever started raging around you in the first place. When you walked through fire and somehow came out the other side in one piece, you gave thanks and held tight to the things that mattered.īecause too often, when shit got critical, the ones you loved didn’t make it out the other side. The nickname had been the brainchild years before of Shane McCallan, one of Easy’s Army Special Forces teammates, who now sat at the other end of the big backseat wrapped so far around Jenna’s older sister, Sara, that they might need the Jaws of Life to pull them apart. Had been for a long time.Įasy, for his initials E.

He should feel happy-or at least happier-but those feelings were foreign countries for Easy. And saving her from the clutches of a known drug dealer and human trafficker was without question the most important thing he’d done in more than a year. Jenna Dean was bloodied and bruised after having been kidnapped by the worst sort of trash the day before, but she was still an incredibly beautiful woman. F150 truck shot through the night-darkened streets of one of Baltimore’s grittiest neighborhoods, Edward Cantrell cradled the unconscious woman in his arms like she was the only thing tethering him to life.

Hard as It Gets by Laura Kaye