This was family, though.
As much as I wanted to be understanding, resentment welled up within my veins. Mike had spent more time with my father than either Dakota or I had. I would’ve given up every measly possession I owned if it meant even five minutes alone with Grey, and Mike had taken it for granted. Then, he’d gone and fallen off the wagon, leaving everyone, including his wife, to fend for themselves.
It left me feeling anything but compassionate to his plight.
He folded the corner of one of the quilts down into a small triangle before looking over at me. “That isn’t what triggered it. I—I lost my job.”
I kept my face impassive, even though his revelation surprised me. I’d been under the impression that he’d been very successful as a detective. “What about the club?”
His eyes dropped down to the quilt again, sounding irritated as he admitted, “Bear’s running the club… said a badge would never wear a Silent Phoenix kutte.” He ran a hand over his beard, trying and failing to smooth it down. “To top it off, Lauren’s pregnant. So, Counselor, just how the fuck am I supposed to tell her that I lost it all?”
I leaned back and shook my head, feeling every bit as trapped as he had been. “Can you fight it—being let go, I mean?”
He shrugged. “Doubtful. Whoever was helping the Sons is still pulling strings in the department. I just can’t figure out why.”
Already knowing the answer, I asked, “Has anyone heard from them?”
He watched me closely. “Not a fucking peep. Why would they stop now? I looked into it, and not once has a rival club backed down after taking out another MC’s Pres. If their intention was to take over the area, then they would’ve done it by now. It was like Grey was their sole target, not the club.”
I might’ve been ignorant about the ways of bikers but was well-versed in dealing with crazy ex-wives, enough to know that there was always an endgame when it came to the enemy.
“Maybe they think he’s dead. I mean, those of us that were at the cemetery know he’s alive, but they don’t.”
Mike clawed at an invisible itch on his arm before shaking his head. “I went out to see your mother… admitted to every biker there that the casket was empty. Before he was shot, Grey told me that someone within the club was giving up intel—”
I jumped out of my chair and crouched beside Mike near the couch as someone pounded a fist against the front door, the heel of my hand pressed to my heart to silence its thrashing.
Gloria materialized in the hall, holding a feather duster and still humming the same unfamiliar tune. The hairs on my arms stood on end, the need to warn her resting on the tip of my tongue, but I suddenly couldn’t speak.
Until now, I’d listened to my husband and avoided all contact with my family. It had made sense then. My mother had chosen to live her life always looking over her shoulder, and with Dakota’s lifelong obsession with superheroes and villains, it made sense that she’d be eager to tag along.
Not me, though.
I wasn’t willing to risk mine and Nate’s careers for a man I barely knew.
Only my husband wouldn’t see it that way. When he found out that I’d been murdered along with my half-brother, he’d mistakenly assume that I’d betrayed his trust.
“I don’t want to die,” I whispered.
“Kate,” Mike sighed heavily. “If someone came here to kill us, they wouldn’t bother knocking first.”
He stood and wrapped the quilt around his shoulders like a cape before slowly walking over to where Gloria stood. He didn’t reach for a gun or call out a warning for the older woman to get down and stay quiet.
It was as if he’d never seen a single episode of The Devil Next Door or Evil Nightmares. Maybe the department had been right to let him go. He was walking right into danger with nothing more than a blanket to protect him.
He looked through the large glass window with a grin while I cowered near the end of the couch, ready to dive behind it once the bullets started flying.
“You’re up early,” he said calmly.
“Yeah, you’re still lookin’ like shit,” a male voice stated flatly. “You want somethin’ to take the edge off?”
“No way!” Gloria snapped, jabbing a bright red fingernail into the man’s chest. “His body is almost dried up.”
The man chuckled and held his palms up. “Okay, okay. Listen, I brought a crew with me. Thought we’d get this place put back together for ya if it’s alright with the boss lady.”
I strained to see the man’s face, only catching glimpses of a long salt and pepper beard as he talked. Gloria’s shoulders relaxed, and she patted the man’s arm before stepping back with a sly grin. “Of course it’s okay. I fix you something to eat and drink. This one…” She pointed toward Mike. “He is letting himself waste away to a ghost.”
“Thank you, Gloria. We’ll start outside and then make our way in here.”
She turned and spotted me hiding. “Oh, you have not met Mike’s sister, Kate! Come here, come here!”
I reluctantly left my leather sanctuary and made my way over to the entryway. As the man came into view, my steps faltered slightly, but I quickly regained my composure. His mouth turned up in a grin when he saw me, the corners of his eyes crinkling ever so slightly. It wasn’t that he was unattractive, because he was in a rugged sort of way. His long dark hair was streaked with silver straight out of a Just For Men commercial, and as he showcased a mouthful of blindingly white teeth, my knees weakened, leaving me wondering if I had daddy issues after all.
It was the presence of a leather vest that stopped me in my tracks.
He was a biker.
I extended a trembling hand, choking on the pooled saliva in my mouth as I said, “Hello, it’s nice to meet you.”
He gripped my hand in his with a lopsided grin. “Kate, I’ve heard a lot about you. I’m Michael, but everyone calls me Comedian.”
Comedian rolled over on the club.
The blood drained from my face, and I jerked my hand back as though I’d been burned. “Comedian?” I spluttered, watching as the grin faded from his lips.
“Yeah… is there a problem?”
I took a deep breath, pulling air into my tight lungs before pummeling his chest with my fists. “Y-you shot my father!”
Comedian blinked several times before looking over to Mike. “Junior, how many times do we gotta do this? It’s gettin’ a little old.”
“Kate!” Gloria cried out. “We do not hit guests!”
“He trusted you!” I screamed, my fists turning to claws that I angrily raked down his arms.
I felt Mike at my back a half-second before he wrapped me up in a reverse bear hug, quilt and all. When I began to struggle, his arms tightened. “Kate, it’s not him. It’s not him, okay?”
I shook my head, still fighting to free myself. “You said—in the cemetery!”
“I know what I said. I was wrong. Jesus, haven’t you talked to your mother and sister?”
“No, but I thought…” I left the rest of my sentence dangling in the air. I’d thought that Comedian had been the one to betray my father; had assumed that my mother and Dakota only wanted to involve me in more needless drama.
Comedian held me with a stare. “Why you avoidin’ your mama, Kate?”
Even Gloria crossed her arms over her ample chest, giving me the same look of disappointment that I thought only my Nan was capable of making.
“I…” I swallowed. “I don’t know. I mean, we’re not exactly close…”
A line of sweat ran down my spine from the interrogation, pooling near the waistband of my slacks. Mike’s grip tightened, his body like a furnace, leaving me disoriented.
Maybe he was a better cop than I gave him credit for.
I’d come seeking answers, only to end up on trial.
Comedian nodded at my statement; his eyes still narrowed in suspicion. “Why is that?”
Shoving my elbow into Mike’s side, I broke away with a rough
pant before spinning around to face the three of them. “You wanna know why I’m not close to my mother? Maybe because she abandoned us when we were still kids, leaving my grandparents to raise us. Maybe it’s because she chose gambling and a biker gang over being a mom. Or maybe…” My voice rose to a shout. “It’s because I’ve had to scrape by for years while she lived it up on the road!”
Gloria made a sign of the cross over her chest and muttered something in Spanish before retreating back to the kitchen. Comedian and Mike watched me warily, and I huffed out a breath before going to snag my purse from the floor.
I’d come for information. Information I was never going to get.
“You know what? I don’t need this. I’ve got patients to see—”
Comedian stepped in front of the door and crossed his muscular arms over his chest, blocking me in. “Have you ever asked your mother for the truth?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I growled. “That is the truth. Now, let me pass.”
He stepped aside, holding his hands up as if he was afraid I was going to do something crazy.
Maybe I was.
“Ain’t tryin’ to stop ya, but it’s obvious you came here lookin’ for answers. If it were me, I’d start with your husband. He knows more about that night than any of us.”
The screen door slammed shut behind me with an ominous thud, and I jogged toward my Tahoe as if a deranged lunatic was on my heels. In the cemetery, Mike had been convinced that Comedian was the one behind it all, said he’d try to run.
It didn’t fit with the man I’d just been introduced to inside. He wasn’t running from anything or anyone. If Mike had been wrong, then it meant that the traitor was still out there.
It meant that there was no one we could trust.
Comedian might’ve been under the impression that Nate was involved, but I knew my husband. He’d been fighting to distance us from my family since the funeral. There was no way he had anything to do with what happened to my father.
He wouldn’t do that to me.
Chapter Five
Dakota
I tugged the leather pants up toward my hips while panting, “Dress for the job you want. That’s what they say, right?”
Little Ricky looked up from his cell phone. “Who says that, Caparina?”
I studied my reflection in the mirror with a frown. I looked like a can of biscuits that had been left out in the sun for too long. The baby’s nightly demands for ice cream hadn’t done me any favors when it came to fitting into my biker-wear.
“People, Little Ricky. People say that you should dress for the job you want. Can I borrow your vest thingy? I think it’ll help cover up the fact that my pants won’t zip.”
He shook his head. “Nah, I earned this kutte. Why don’t you just wear normal clothes? You know, yoga pants and shit. Why you tryin’ to look like a patchwhore?”
I didn’t know what a patchwhore was but judging by Little Ricky’s expression, it was not something I wanted to be. “I just want them to take me seriously.”
My Harley-Davidson tank top chose that moment to roll up, exposing my swollen stomach and the spiderweb of blue veins stretching across it. Everyone kept telling me how beautiful pregnancy was, but I felt like a science experiment gone wrong.
His teeth connected with a lower lip that was twitching suspiciously. “Yeah, I think you should walk up to the clubhouse like that. I can’t tell if you’re going for ninja or biker. Your outfits look the same.”
“That’s because they’re interchangeable. I just wish…” I gave the pants another good tug, my cheeks reddening from the efforts, before giving up with a dramatic sigh and yanking them off. I retrieved the discarded leggings I’d carelessly tossed on the bedroom floor and pulled them on. “I just wish the designers would’ve considered the fact that I might be expecting.”
“You know, I don’t think there are a lot of knocked-up ninjas or bikers, Cap. If you wanna talk to the guys, though, we gotta go now.”
The drive to the clubhouse was fairly quiet. Little Ricky messed with the radio, unable to settle on a single station. I picked at my fingernails, my nerves increasing the farther we got from the city.
Instead of traipsing out into the middle of nowhere, I could’ve put all my focus on being a store manager and Zane’s wife. What little excitement I’d been exposed to had only left me longing for the familiar, so why couldn’t I let it go?
A chill worked its way down my spine at the thought of my father being lost forever. Maybe I’d never really known Grey, but there was a small part of me that felt like I owed it to him to fight.
Grief had left me battered, but anytime I felt like quitting, I asked myself if he would’ve given up on me.
“Have you heard from Hail Mary?” he asked, peering at me from over his sunglasses.
I shook my head. “She still won’t return my calls. Mama said she’s just trying to process everything, but it’s been two months. I don’t understand why she shuts down like this.”
He nodded before turning off onto a dirt road. His truck bounced up and down violently, causing the baby to startle. My belly contorted beneath the fitted tank top as little arms and legs fought to make their presence known.
“Holy shit, Cap, it looks like it’s going to burst out of you!”
I patted my shirt reassuringly as we hit another rough patch of road. “You woke it up with your bad driving. Why are we even on this road?”
“You wanted to go to the clubhouse, woman! What, you think we just have it sitting on a busy street corner next to a Starbucks? ‘Yeah, I’d like a mocha latte, and a side of blow, please.’ The fuck, Cap? You wanna be a biker, you gotta think like a biker.”
I giggled at the image. “Geez Louise, calm down. So, I’ve been working on my interview questions. I wrote them down on index cards and stuck them in my purse. Do you think they would be opposed to me referencing them?”
The truck came to an abrupt halt, getting the baby all fired up again. Little Ricky cocked his head to the side and looked over at me with a smirk. “The fuck? Look, I think you’ve got it twisted. This ain’t—wait, hold up. Actually, I think you should go over some of them with me. Practice makes perfect, yeah?”
I fished the cards out of my purse with a wide grin. “So, they’re just a few hypothetical questions… things that I thought might come up. First one is…”
I shuffled through the index cards to find the one I wanted. “‘Dakota, how will you increase the ROI on our drugs and guns?’” I folded my hands in my lap and recited, “I’m glad you asked me that, Sir Bear. As store manager of Bella Beauty, I have consistently been a top performer in our district. I possess excellent customer service skills and am willing to go above and beyond to ensure my clients are satisfied—that sounds sexual, doesn’t it?”
Little Ricky ran a hand over his mouth, hiding another smirk. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, it absolutely sounds sexual… and what’s with the Sir Bear shit?”
“Oh, well he’s the boss, so it’s a sign of respect. Does he prefer Your Majesty? I can’t screw this up. We have to find my dad.”
Instead of laughing at me, Little Ricky’s mouth settled into a flat line and reached across the console to squeeze my hand. “We will, Caparina. I swear to you.”
I swallowed the emotion threatening to spill over in the form of tears and looked out the window at the sea of motorcycles. “How are there this many bikers and we still don’t know where the Sons are?”
Little Ricky shrugged easily as he navigated his pickup truck into a narrow space between two bikes. “Bear called in some of the other chapters… thought it’d be best to make sure everyone was on board with him takin’ over, ya know?”
“So, they’re not here to fight for my dad? They’re just here to say that they think Bear should run things?” There was no hiding the judgment in my tone.
I suddenly wasn’t feeling much like a biker chick. My father had given everything to the club, but it seemed as if they�
�d already forgotten about him.
With Mike busy sobering up, it had made sense to pledge my loyalty to the club, to let them know that I was willing to break whatever laws necessary to find my father.
Now, I wasn’t so sure.
The prospect, Alex, walked up to the window with a wave. I hadn’t seen him since the night of my wedding when he’d stood in front of the doors, refusing to let either me or Kate pass. I’d hated him at the time but realized that his actions hadn’t been some elaborate scheme to keep me away from my mother but were meant to keep me safe.
I climbed down with as much grace as I could muster before meeting his curious expression.
“Hello, Alex,” I said, carefully infusing conviction in my words. Nan had always claimed that people responded well to authority. Granted, she’d only ever said it to Pops, but it was good advice, nonetheless.
He eyes me warily. “Why are you here?”
Little Ricky came around the back of the truck, his boots connecting loudly with bits of gravel. “She’s with me. Why don’t you get back to your post before Pres sees you?”
Alex nodded and scurried back toward the gate, still watching us with wide eyes.
“Does Alex know something I don’t?” I finally asked. “He keeps staring at me like I’m about to get my head caved in, and he wants to remember how I looked before I got dead.”
With a chuckle, Little Ricky looped an arm around my shoulders and led me toward a large building. “Nah, Cap. Everyone’s just on edge with what happened to your old man. Bear cracked down on security—”
“Yet, here you are, bringing strays back to the clubhouse,” the man in question stated flatly as he appeared in the doorway. “Why is that?”
I stepped forward. “Bear, I’ve come to pledge my support to the club. I want to patch in—to find my father. I have skills. Good ones. I think that I could be a huge asset for Silent Phoenix.” My words came out rushed and incoherent, nothing like what I’d rehearsed in front of the bathroom mirror.
Savior: Silent Phoenix MC Series: Book Five Page 7
