by Hart, Eve R.
I was ready to end this fucker too. And I was doing the best I could with what I had.
“No. Sketch is looking for someone from his past. I pulled her in to help because it’s safe and I figured she’d have better luck than me. This chick he’s looking for… she’s not really one that stays on the radar.”
“Streets?” he asked with a knowing look in his eyes.
“Yeah.”
“What’s with that? You hittin’ on Lake’s girl?”
I barked out a laugh and shook my head.
“She seen you naked?” he asked and my laughter died real fucking quick. “Well then. I don’t think I want to know.”
“It’s not like that,” I said awkwardly. I mean, how the hell did I even explain that one?
“Just don’t hurt Lake. He’s good people, done a lot for this club.”
“I would never.” I blinked at him like he was crazy for even thinking that.
“Okay. Shoot me a list of people. I’m going to go get set up and I’ll call Lucy and fill her in. I’ll take all the help we can get right now. You know where to find me.”
With that, he stood and made his way out the door.
Hopefully, between the three of us, we could pick up some breadcrumbs.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Cable
“Ready, partner?” Bridget said, to-go cup in one hand and a huge smile on her face.
“You betcha,” I said with a small smile as I closed my door behind me.
“So, did you find anything?” she asked as we made our way down the stairs.
It had been a long night. I felt like I was up doing a million different things and not really getting anywhere.
I hadn’t really gotten much about this guy, Andrew. Not anything that sent up red flags, anyway. If I had to guess, I would’ve said that he had maybe offered Claire something more than what she had. And from everything I’d gathered so far, Claire probably jumped at the chance to get out of the Gilded Rose. Maybe it just wasn’t for her. Or maybe she found a connection with this guy. Or maybe this guy didn’t even have anything to do with why she left.
Who the fuck knew?!
Honestly, I just wanted to find the girl because I needed one less thing hanging over my head. One thing emptied off my plate. Some kind of fucking break in all this chaos. Please.
“Seems a bit average, to me. Nothing sticks out. His house is nice enough. He works at home doing some kind of medical coding for billing or something. He doesn’t seem to have a lot of bills. And nothing on his recent purchase history makes me think I need to dig more.”
I gave a small shrug.
It had been a pretty boring search. But then again, that wasn’t such a bad thing.
Bridget’s brows pinched together in a way that told me her mind was already working.
“That job pays well enough… but Gilded Rose well enough?” she asked as she flung the passenger’s side door of the SUV open and hopped in.
I plopped my ass in the driver’s seat and fired up the engine.
She was right. Why hadn’t I thought of that?
And as the tires bounced along the dirt trail leading away from the compound, I got a strange feeling in my gut.
I knew it wasn’t smart, but I tried to shake it off as best as I could.
“I guess we should find that out, huh?” I finally spoke. “He lives in a neighborhood on the other side of town. Mostly middle to upper-middle class. Houses kept in good repair even though they are older.”
“Does he own the house?”
“Yeah. His parents died a few years ago and he inherited it from them. No siblings.”
“Any kind of money from that inheritance?” she asked as her eyes scanned out the front windshield.
“A little. But not nearly enough to live off of. I got the sense that his parents weren’t the type to save money.”
“Something isn’t adding up,” she breathed out while her eyes continued to stare straight ahead. Yep, she was trying to fit the pieces together in her head, only I had a feeling there were too many missing to be able to see a clear picture.
“That’s it,” I said as I pointed to the house four down from the one we were parked in front of.
We had a clear shot and with the tint on the windows, I wasn’t worried about being seen. But that also kind of made us stick out like a sore thumb.
There was a car parked in the driveway so we decided it was best to wait it out and maybe he would take off at some point.
“What if she’s in there?” Bridget asked not looking at me. I shrugged knowing she’d see the movement out of the side of her eye. “What does Sketch want to do when you find her?”
“Not a clue. Figured I’d give him what he was looking for and let him deal with it from there,” I answered.
I wasn’t trying to sound like a dick but maybe it came off that way a bit.
If I had, Bridget didn’t let on that she was bothered by it.
“Have you told the guys?” she asked out of nowhere after a long stretch of silence.
“What?” I asked totally confused.
“Do they know. I mean, I’m guessing by Lake’s reaction that some of them don’t.”
“Oh, that.” I pretty much grunted the words. “A few.”
“You should make a big announcement and get it all out there. From what I’ve seen, everyone is pretty accepting. I don’t know, it’s just a suggestion. But I kind of get the feeling like you’re hiding and that you’re a little tired of it.”
“You’re not wrong,” I replied.
“Just run down to the clubhouse bar one day, full birthday suit on. Jiggly bits flopping around and all. Then you have to smile wide and yell ‘I fucking like to be naked, deal with it!’ I think that would be great.”
The corners of her lips twitched but I got the feeling that she was being mostly serious with that suggestion.
I chuckled and shook my head. Sometimes she said some random shit. And it was always awesome. She sure knew how to make people feel comfortable about who they were and that was maybe the thing I liked about her the most.
“It’s really not that weird. Trust me, I’ve seen some shit now.” I felt like she was saying ‘you wouldn’t believe it’ with the side eye and raised brow she aimed my way. “I mean, you could like to sit around in a diaper and watch clown porn.”
I barked out a horrified laugh.
That was an image I didn’t need in my head.
“Just own it,” she said with a shrug and I knew it was the end of the conversation.
Maybe it could be that easy. Just be me and, well, fuck anyone that couldn’t handle it. Alright, I could get on board with that. I mean, I didn’t think I was going to go with her idea of how to announce it, but I could start slow. And I wasn’t going to walk around making people feel uncomfortable, but while I was in my space, I was going to live like I wanted to. It wasn’t like I was hurting anyone after all.
“We got movement,” she said sitting up in her seat and effectively capturing my full attention.
I watched as Andrew made his way to his car, alone.
“Follow him,” she said.
“You sure? Shouldn’t we check out the house?”
“No,” she said with a shake of her head. “Gut feeling. Wait until he hits the stop sign then turn over the engine and go.”
I followed her directions because she was the expert here.
“Stay two cars back. Don’t switch lanes unless I tell you to, even if he does.”
She was full on PI mode and it was kind of awesome.
He made a left turn and she let out a huffed breath.
“I wish I knew these streets better. Is there another one near that connects through? I don’t want him to catch onto the fact that we’re tailing him.”
“I got you, girl,” I said and hit the gas once he was cleared out of the way and wouldn’t take notice. “Hold on.”
Without warning, I took a sharp left turn, cutting in front of a
n oncoming car and just barely clearing the back bumper as they drove on. Yeah, I deserved the blast of their horn and the middle finger I was sure they’d tossed my way.
As I floored it down the narrow alleyway, all I could think was how this would be a hell of a lot easier if I were on my bike.
Just as we reached the end of the alley, his car drove right on by and I watched just to make sure he wasn’t looking our way. This guy seemed oblivious to us which worked in our favor.
We tailed him another five minutes. Then the hair on the back of my neck began to stand on end. Something was off here and I almost wished that Bridget wasn’t right there beside me.
Fuck!
I couldn’t let anything happen to her. Lake would kill me. Prez would be disappointed in me. And the rest of my brothers… well, I could only say that trust was a hard thing to earn back.
“Pull over for a second,” Bridget said, her hand landing on my arm just to make sure that I was with her.
I did as she said and noticed that his brake lights blinked a few times like he was slowing down. A second later, he turned down another road and Bridget told me to ease to the corner.
This wasn’t a busy street but there were quite a few cars parked along the curb. Mostly older houses, two and three-story colonial style. This was an older section of town. Some of the houses looked like they were ready to give up on standing, while others appeared to have been given a fresh makeover and were ready to take on the next generation.
“Okay, get closer, but not too close, then park,” she directed me after we watched his car turn down a narrow driveway between two houses and disappeared somewhere behind them.
“How do we know which one he went into?” I asked confused about what to do next.
“The one on the left. I watched the reflection in the other house’s windows. His brake lights bounced off them, which indicates they were facing that way.”
“Which means he turned away from the house on the right,” I said out loud, my head bobbing with an impressed nod. It was simple and smart, but something I wouldn’t have thought to look for. “You sure you want to give up the PI gig? We could get you something set up here.”
Her eyes briefly looked down and her head bowed with the movement.
From my search, I knew all about her PI business she had down in Florida with her dad. But when he passed away, he’d set it up so that she wouldn’t continue to drown in the hole that he’d never been able to pull the place out of. I think most days she was alright with giving it up. That said, she was clearly good at it and I wondered if there wasn’t a big part of her that wished she could do it again.
“It’s nice to help out like this. It’s enough for me,” she said after a moment as her head came back up to watch the house. There was something in her tone that led me to believe her words.
As she dug through her huge messenger bag that currently sat on the floorboard between her feet, I sat back and got comfortable knowing it was probably going to be a long wait.
CHAPTER NINE
Cable
“What the hell you got in that thing?” I asked Bridget as she pulled out a pair of binoculars from her bag.
“Oh, just everything I might need. Ever.” She let out a small laugh. “Pens, notebook, hair ties, tampons, peanut butter crackers, laser pointer, paperclips, zoom attachment for the camera on my phone—”
“Okay, okay,” I said with a chuckle. “Sorry, I asked.”
Moments passed and I became twitchy. I wasn’t good at sitting around. I felt like I always had to be doing at least one thing, if not two or three. How the hell did people do this for hours? I wished I’d brought a book, not like I could really read it if I was supposed to be watching something. Yeah, this was definitely not the gig for me.
“You can talk, you know.” She gave me the side eye and I could tell I was annoying her with my tapping fingers, which I hadn’t even realized I was doing.
“Sorry,” I said then cleared my throat and sat up straight.
“The windows are all covered, I can’t see what’s going on inside.”
“What, you don’t have one of those body heat radar things in that bag? Can’t see through walls and shit, tell how many of them are in there?”
She barked out a laugh.
“No, sorry I don’t carry one of those with me,” she answered while shaking her head at me. “Why don’t you do your fancy nerd thing and find out about this house, huh?”
“I’d love to, but I don’t have my shit on me.”
I didn’t bring anything because I honestly didn’t think I’d need it. Tracking down this Claire chick had been a pain in the ass but one that didn’t require most of my skills.
“So… tell me about yourself?” she said and it was more like a question. Almost like she was grasping for something to keep me from crawling out of my skin because I was sitting still.
“Like what?” I asked, my eyes darting all around the fairly quiet street.
“How’d you come to be the club nerd?”
“Well,” I said thinking just how far I should go back. “I’ve always been good with that kind of shit. Got myself into trouble a few times. But so far, no jail time, so there’s that. One day I was looking into this tech company that had contacted me out of nowhere. They offered me a job and I’m a little too smart to just take something without checking it out first. I was excited, you know. But I also had no clue how they found me. Well, I kept digging. And that led me to unearthing some things I probably shouldn’t have. That was when Lucy found me.”
Apparently, the hacker guru woman had been keeping tabs on the company for a while and she’d already found what I had. I somehow tripped her alarm when I went looking and let’s just say, our friendship developed from there. I’d known her for years, but only met her twice in person. She wasn’t one to leave her hole, which I got, but at least I could function in the outside world. Though it seemed that she’d gotten better about that lately. Every now and then she’d ask me to help her look into something but would never tell me why. I got the sense that she was one of those angels hiding in the dark corners of the world, sifting through the evil to drag the innocent back into the light.
I imagined if I told her that was what I thought of her, she’d laugh at me. It wasn’t until years later that I really found out her whole story.
“Anyway, when the Steel Paragons set up shop here, she passed my name along. I was never sure if it was because she thought I was that good or if it had to do with convenience because I wasn’t tied down to anything. Either way, I was grateful. For a long time, I was… maybe lonely. Now, not so much.”
“You like it here?” she asked once I’d finished my story.
“Yeah. Hell of a lot. You?”
She inhaled deeply through her nose.
“Yeah,” she breathed out on a heavy exhale. “I really do.”
“Good people,” I said talking about every single one of my brothers and the people they surrounded themselves with.
“Yeah, Cable. Good people.”
Without looking at me, she reached over and patted my leg letting me know that she was including me in that.
“When did you learn to ride?” she asked, not letting the silence linger for too long.
“I had an uncle. My dad’s brother. He was kind of the black sheep of the family. Old school biker type. Smoked too much. Drank too much. Wouldn’t ever settle down. You know, more than a little rough around the edges.” I smiled at the thought of him. “He was great but only came around for holidays because everyone made him feel so unwelcome. But he was still family, you know?”
“Yeah, I get that.”
“When I was sixteen, I got into some trouble at school. Got expelled… from all three schools in the county.”
“No!” she said with a mocking gasp. “Not you?”
“Yeah, me,” I replied with a laugh. “I’ve tamed my wild ways a little since then. I was just a bored little shit and didn’t fit in with
anyone.”
“Hm, I could see it.”
“Well, my parents couldn’t afford private school or anything. And they didn’t want to leave their jobs or sell the house. My uncle stepped in and offered for me to come live with him. Man, they hated the idea but they felt like they didn’t have any other options. But my uncle promised to whip me into shape.”
“And they went for it?” she asked, her brows going up in surprise.
“Like I said, not a whole lot of options. He wasn’t lying, he was hard on my ass. Made me work like I’d never worked before. Some of his buddies owned a bar. During the summer, I had to scrub that thing down every night after close and make sure it was restocked for the next day.”
And that was just one of the things he made me do. Two days a week he helped out with a charity that he and his buddies had started. It was to help older people with low incomes get the repairs they needed done on their homes. I thought it was actually a really good idea. So, who made those repairs? My uncle. Which also meant me while I was there. The other days, I was with him all day at his tattoo shop doing all the grunt work and making the place shine. And when I was in school, he didn’t let up. I had to keep my grades up and work in the afternoons. It was hell, but the best kind.
One day, he took me to a friend’s house. This guy fixed up motorcycles in his spare time, and I was talking about junkers, okay. Not like ones he got on a dime because the owners didn’t know what the hell was going on with it. Or because someone’s girlfriend or wife had a meltdown over a tiny accident and didn’t want him to ride anymore. These things were pieces of crap that probably would have been better being used as yard decorations. But this guy did amazing work.
So there I was, standing in the middle of this guy’s detached three-car garage wondering if the roof was going to cave in on me, when my uncle told me to get on. Get on what? Well, that so happened to be a two-wheeled beast that had more rust than chrome showing.
“That thing was a fucking piece of shit,” I said with a shake of my head. “Made this awful noise when I started her up. Shook so hard I was worried if I’d be able to stay on the damn thing. But the moment after he explained what I needed to know and I took off, I was done for. I knew right then that I’d found my calm, even if the thing itself was the loudest ruckus I’d ever heard.”
