by Evelyn Glass
Dix scratched at his neck as he thought. This is above my pay grade. “Okay, I’m going to come clean. I’m not Cale Johnson. I’m Dixon Montague.”
“You lied to me? Why? Do you know Cale?”
“I know Cale, but we don’t know you. Why are you pretending to know Cale?”
“Because I’m desperate. Please, are you part of the motorcycle club here in Douglas?”
“I don’t know of any club.”
“Please, Dixon. I’m begging you. Can you please get a message to Cale? If you’re part of a club, you really, really need to know this.”
“And if we agree to help get your son back, you’ll tell us the news?”
“Yes!”
“And the news is related to the kidnapping of your son?”
“In a way. Once I explain it, you’ll see.”
Dix scratched at his neck again. “Follow me.”
He led Daisy into the bar then to a back room that was normally closed off unless the bar needed the extra tables. It was their room so long as Dunes weren’t using it.
“Cale, this is Daisy. She said she has information she thinks we need to hear and, in exchange, she wants help finding her son. Somehow they’re related.”
Cale looked at Dix a moment then motioned to a chair. “Won’t you have a seat? Want something to drink?”
“Just a pop, please, Sprite if they have it,” she said as she sat down. There were a dozen men in the room, ranging in ages from Dixon and another man at about thirty to Cale, who was, perhaps, sixty.
Dix stepped out of the room since he was standing, returning in a moment with Daisy’s drink. “Here you go.”
“Thank you.”
“Maybe you should start at the beginning,” Cale said.
“If I tell you this, will you help me?”
“I can’t answer that until I hear the news.”
Daisy paused, afraid of being used, but she was out of options. “About three days ago, my son, Riley, was kidnapped,” she began. She laid it all out, starting with arrest and going right up to Dixon stepping out to her car.
“How sure are you about this information?” Cale asked. If the Firechrome was moving on their turf, they were going to have problems.
“Not very,” she admitted. “I don’t think Leeda would lie to me, but she could be wrong. I hope not, because if she is, I have no idea where Riley is. What’s here the Chrome could want?”
Cale looked around the table. “I’d rather not say.”
“But you men are in a club, right?”
Cale nodded. “Yes. The Cutthroat ‘99.”
“Interesting name.”
“I formed the club in 1999, and the Cutthroat, well, let’s say what we do is just that. You get one chance to do what you have to, then…” he made like he was cutting his throat with his finger.
“Look! She went pale!” one of the men laughed.
Cale chuckled. “We don’t kill anyone, run drugs, or steal. Nothing like that.”
“But there’s something, isn’t there?”
Cale looked at his brothers. “Yes, there’s something.”
“Will you help me? I told you everything I know.”
Cale thought about it a moment. “I can’t promise anything, but if we get an opportunity to help with your son, we will. There’s a problem, though.”
Daisy went cold. “What?”
“I’m sorry about your son, but I’m not going to send a brother to jail for kidnapping.”
“There’s a restraining order! If that happens I’ll tell the police you were helping me! Or we can tell the police where they are! I just need help finding him! After that, I can get the police involved!”
“We’re going to need some kind of break. Douglas isn’t Eugene, but we can’t scour every place in town looking for Firechrome,” Chuck said. “How would we know unless we see the patch?”
Cale rapped on the table with his fingers. “We’re not going to solve this tonight,” he said before he turned to Daisy. “Do you have a place to stay?”
“No.”
“We’ll put you up tonight. I think the best thing is to go slow with this. Maybe tomorrow pair you up with one of the Cutthroats and take a look around town? Maybe you’ll see a bike or someone you recognize.”
Daisy nodded. “I can try, but I wasn’t that involved in the club.”
Cale frowned. “Well, we have to start somewhere. Dix, can you take care of putting her up tonight and show her around tomorrow?”
Dix grinned. Every man in the room, save him, was either married or in a committed relationship, and with the way Daisy looked, he wasn’t surprised the task fell to him. “Yeah, I’ll take care of it.”
CHAPTER FIVE
“How’s this?” Dix asked, tossing her suitcase onto the bed. It was inexpensive place near where he lived. He knew the owners and knew the rooms were clean and well maintained.
“It’s fine,” Daisy said, stepping into the room behind him. The room was small but clean, decorated with pictures of fishing trawlers and other nautical items. “Thank you so much for doing this.”
“I guess it’s the least we can do since you have given us the heads up.”
“You help me get Riley back and we’ll call it even.”
He smiled. “I’m sure we’ll do what we can. As Cale said, though, we’re going to have to be careful. Nobody is going to want to go to jail for kidnapping.”
“I understand. If you, the Cutthroats I mean, can just help me find him, I’ll take it from there.” She paused for a moment. “Is there someplace around here to eat? I haven’t eaten since breakfast and I’m starving.”
“I know a couple of places. Want to join me for dinner?”
“I don’t want to be a bother,” she said, mentally crossing her fingers he wouldn’t take the out she’d given him.
He was simply stunning and seemed very kind. He had, despite lying to her at the beginning, gotten her one step closer to finding Riley. He was about the same height as Leo, perhaps six one or two, but that’s where the similarities ended. Where Leo was loud, Dixon was quiet. He said little as she gave them her story, but watched her intently as he took it all in.
Leo was good looking in his own way, a carefully crafted bad boy look he worked hard to maintain, but Dixon, with his dark hair, kind eyes and square jaw, looked like he should be a model. Where Leo checked his look every time he passed a mirror, Dixon didn’t seem to notice or care. Where Leo rarely smiled, playing the brooding bad boy shtick to the hilt, Dixon smiled easily and often.
“No bother. I have to eat, too. I would enjoy the company.”
She smiled. “I would love to, then, if you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.”
He led her back out and offered her his helmet. She plopped it on her head and expertly adjusted the strap before climbing on his bike behind him. They motored for a while before he pulled into his standby. He didn’t cook or eat at home, and when he wanted something quick and close, Billbe’s was the place.
“Dix!” the hostess cried as he walked in. She kissed him on the cheek. “We haven’t seen you in almost a week. I thought you were mad at us or something.”
“No. You heard about Kevin Murphy?”
“Yeah. I’m really sorry. I know you two were close.”
“Yeah. I’ve been trying to help Vicki.” He shrugged.
“Let us know if we can do anything to help, okay?”
“Thanks, Kate. I will.”
Kate led them to a table and placed two menus of the table. “Sarah will be right out. Enjoy.”
Dix watched Kate until she was out of earshot. “Kate’s family owns the place.”
“You obviously come here often.”
“Two or three times a week.”
Daisy picked up the menu, breathing a sigh of relief. Billbe’s wasn’t too expensive. “What’s good?”
“Everything.” When she looked over the top of her menu he smiled at her. “No really. The meatloaf an
d chicken fried steak are really good. The salmon is decent. If you don’t mind having to wash up afterwards, the fried chicken is great.”
She nodded, then closed the menu. “Why don’t you order for me, then. I like all that stuff.”
“Hey, Dix,” a pretty young waitress said as she arrived. “I’m sorry about Kevin.”
“Thanks, Sarah.”
“The usual for you tonight?”
“Yeah. For Daisy, she’ll have the fried chicken, white or dark?” he asked looking to her.
“White, please.”
“All white. For her sides, she’ll have mac and cheese, new potatoes and, let’s see…she looks like a green bean person to me. What do you think?”
Sarah grinned. “Definitely.”
Daisy shuddered dramatically. “No green beans. Yuck!”
“No green beans, huh? Lemon carrots?” She shook her head. “Hmmm, last guess. White beans with onion?”
“That works,” she said.
“And a basket of rolls, please.”
“What would you like to drink?” Sarah asked as she looked at Daisy.
“Do you have beer on tap?”
Sarah shook her head. “We don’t serve alcohol.”
“Oh. A pop, then. Do you have Sprite?”
“Yes.”
“That’ll be fine.”
Sarah finished scribbling and picked up the menus. “I’ll have the bread right out.”
Dix and Daisy sat in uncomfortable silence for a moment. “If you don’t mind my asking, what happened to Kevin?”
“I don’t mind. Killed in a motorcycle crash about a week ago.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Yeah. Actually, you showing up has helped clear up a question. It looks like what caused the crash was somebody taking a shot at him. He went off the road and hit a tree. I wonder if it’s the Firechrome.”
“Why would they do that?”
He shrugged. “Doesn’t make sense to me either, but it’s the closest thing it a reason I can think of.” He paused as Sarah set their drinks and a basket of rolls on the table. “That’s honey butter,” he said as he hot fingered a roll to his plate.
She took one and carefully opened the steaming roll, buttered it, and took a bite. “That’s really good.”
“Told you. So tell me, how did you end up in this mess? You told us how Leo had taken Riley, but you didn’t say how you ended up arrested, or why.”
Daisy looked at her plate. “Are you sure you want to hear that? It’s a long story.”
Dix shrugged then grinned. “You have somewhere else to be?”
She sighed. “I married Leo when I was nineteen. My parents tried to tell me but I was young and stupid and wouldn’t listen. I knew he was in the Firechrome, but I was into bad boys then and he said he was next in line for the VP position in the Eugene chapter. He promised me all these things, how I wouldn’t have to work and he’d take care of me.” She paused as she took a sip of her pop. “Turned out he was a lying sack of shit. He was a nobody, just another person in the club. All those great plans? Nothing. I didn’t mind working, but I got pretty tired of working while he was goofing off with his pals in the club. Anyway, I got fed up and filed for divorce and slapped a restraining order on him to boot because he was slapping me around.”
She noticed h face turn hard when she mentioned Leo hitting her, but he said nothing. Another thing to like about him…he doesn’t approve of hitting women.
“So he wanted to meet me for lunch one day, said he wanted to try to work something out so he could see Riley. I was stupid and I went to meet him. I have no proof, of course, but I think he stole my driver’s license. I’m not sure how he managed that because I never left the table, but I still think he did it.
“Anyway, a couple of days later the cops show up at work and ask to see my license. I didn’t have it, which surprised the hell out of me. The reason I didn’t have it is because the night before my license was found outside a convenience store immediately after a robbery. The man was seen driving away with a woman with brown hair.” She flicked her ponytail. “They arrested me on the spot.
“I called my parents and they picked Riley up from daycare then bailed me out. A few weeks later, the charges were dropped because at the time of the robbery Riley and I were having pizza at a birthday party for one of his friends.”
“The cops couldn’t figure that out before they arrested you?”
She snorted. “I don’t think they even tried. I kept telling them I didn’t do it, but they didn’t listen. The judge lectured the prosecutor about that when they dropped the charges.”
“And you think Leo planted the license so he could get custody of Riley?”
“That’s what I think. While I was waiting for the arraignment, I moved back home to Prineville to get away from Leo and try to put my life back together, but it’s hard. I was still looking for a job, but when you didn’t know if you’re going to prison, it makes finding something tough.”
The sadness of her smile touched him. She had a lot of shit dumped on her and it didn’t seem right. A deadbeat husband, soon to be single mother, and now this? “If Leo is in town, we’ll find him and I’ll help you get Riley back.”
“Thank you, Dixon,” she said as their food arrived.
“Call me Dix. Everyone else does.”
“Okay, Dix. This looks wonderful.”
She watched his hands as he unwrapped his utensils. They were calloused and scraped, the hands of a man who wasn’t afraid of work. It was hard to tell under his shirt and leather jacket, but he appeared to be well-built in a way of a man who did honest work, not someone who spent hours working out in a gym. In short, he was everything Leo wasn’t, and that was appealing in the extreme.
He cut off a bite-sized portion of his meatloaf and placed it on her plate. “Try that. Best meatloaf I’ve ever had. What kind of work do you do?”
“In Eugene I worked for a construction company, in the office, scheduling the crews, contractors and deliveries. In Prineville, I was looking for whatever I could find. What do you do?”
Dix snorted. “I work in a recycling yard.”
“Where trash goes?”
“No, where crashed cars go. We break the cars down and sell the pieces off to body shops and the like. What’s left we can’t sell, we crush and sell for the scrap metal.”
“Been there long?” She knew it was none of her business, but Dixon was fascinating. She wanted to find out if there was a Mrs. Montague, or someone he was close to, but didn’t know how to ask. If not, she couldn’t understand why someone hadn’t snapped him up because having just met him, he seemed like the perfect man.
“Twenty years.”
“Twenty? How can that be? You can’t be a day over thirty.”
“Twenty-seven. My dad worked there and I have been there in one way or another since I was seven or eight years old.”
She could sense there was more to the story but didn’t press. It was none of her business and she didn’t want to piss off her benefactor. “So what else do you do? You work in a scrapyard—”
“Recycling yard,” he corrected with a grin.
“Excuse me. A recycling yard, and you ride with the Cutthroats. What else do you do? Have a family?”
“Just Old James.”
“Old James?”
“James McGhee. He owns the scrapyard.”
She put her fork down and grinned at him. “Okay, which is it? Recycling yard or scrapyard?”
He chuckled that she’d picked up he’d used her term. “Recycling yard is the,” he made tick marks in the air with his fingers, “politically correct term. But we call it a scrapyard because it’s easier to say.”
“What about your dad?”
He was quiet a moment. “He’s around but we don’t see each other much,” he said softly.
“This was really good,” she said, leaning back and backpedaling away from an obviously touchy subject.
He
smiled, thankful she didn’t press. He didn’t mind talking about his life, long since having accepted it was what it was, but it wasn’t a subject he enjoyed. “This is my go-to place, if you couldn’t tell.”
“I can see why.”
