by Lane Hart
“Good. Thank you,” I tell him as I take the leather. “You’ll get it back as long as you bring her back to me in one piece. If anything happens to her, I’ll take it out on you five times over. Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” he agrees with a nod before he opens the driver side of the van and climbs inside.
“A little harsh there, Sax,” Isobel turns to me and says.
“We have to put the prospects through their paces, see if they have what it takes. It’s tradition,” I assure her. “Eventually, he’ll stop letting us treat him like a dog and he’ll get his patch.”
“So it really is all just a test?” she asks me with a grin.
“Sort of,” I agree with my own smile before wrapping my arm around her waist to pull her to me and cover her curved lips with mine. “Be careful. Have Cedric call me if anything comes up.”
“We’ll be fine,” she says. “Now go, they’re probably ready to start the meeting or whatever.”
“Okay,” I say as I reluctantly make my feet start back to the house, even though I would rather be going with Isobel. It’s not safe for anyone to leave the group until we find out who is behind the attacks, but she’s right and a good meal is what the guys need.
The van pulls away, and then I slip back inside and stand in the corner of the dining room since all six of the chairs are taken.
“Now that we’re all here,” Torin starts from his seat at the head of the table and then winces. “Except for Coop. I’m gonna call Jade and put her on speaker.”
He gets her on the line and then pushes the speaker button and lays his phone down in the middle of the table.
“Hey, guys. Sorry you’re dealing with all of this shit today,” Jade says. “We still haven’t had any luck tracking down family members of Jenna Higgins. None of the other dancers seem to know much about her. They all said she’s only been at Avalon for a few weeks. Can you try to get more information from Cooper?”
“Ah, yeah,” Torin responds. “But it may be tomorrow. He’s had some hearing loss and been pretty out of it. Sax’s nurse gave him something to help him relax and now he’s sleeping.”
“Okay, well, just tell me if you find out anything else. Maybe Reece can do some digging?”
“Sure,” Reece agrees. “Do you have a date of birth?”
“Yeah, it’s December fifth, nineteen-ninety-nine.”
“I’ll let you know what I can find.”
“Thanks,” Jade says. “As far as who is responsible, we still don’t have any answers for you, which I know is frustrating. But I think you’re doing the right thing, laying low. My deputies haven’t seen anyone suspicious at the clubhouse or the Jolly Roger, but I’ll keep them posted just in case.”
“Can you give us any updates on the explosives?” War asks.
“The ATF has taken over, as you probably guessed, and they’re not telling us much other than that the bombs were homemade with remote triggers, so we’re probably dealing with a group that has a military background. Most of the homemade shit usually doesn’t even detonate, much less work with a long-distance remote.”
“That’s a good point,” Torin says. “Anything else?”
“The DEA is looking for you guys,” Jade informs us. “Agent Wesley is acting like he just wants to sit down and talk about potential suspects, but I don’t trust him. If you point him in the direction of suspects and the feds find them first, they could provide incriminating evidence against the Kings in exchange for a deal.”
“Exactly,” Chase says. “Fuck that. We’re sitting tight and don’t have anything to say to anyone.”
“You’d be smart to get a lawyer.”
“Ah, yeah, we sort of know one,” Torin replies.
“The woman who was looking for Cooper?” Jade asks.
“Yeah, we’ve hired the firm she works for in the past, but I don’t recall if she worked personally on any of the cases. Either way, she seems to have a relationship with Coop, so that could help us.”
“Or it could be seen as a conflict,” Jade points out. “Maybe you should get her to refer you to someone else in her firm. That way she can still keep you in the loop, but it puts some distance between her and the MC.”
“Good idea,” Torin agrees. “Anything else we need to know?”
“I’ll have the incident reports for both buildings tomorrow so you can get them to your insurance company, and they can get to work on the claims,” Jade tells us. “Do you plan to rebuild?”
“We’re going to vote on that as soon as we hang up,” Chase tells his step-sister.
“Sorry. None of my business. I’ll be in touch when I find out more,” she says and then ends the call.
“So?” Torin asks as he picks up his phone and glances around the room. “What does everyone think about rebuilding?”
“Yes to both,” Dalton speaks up and says first. “Avalon is our biggest money maker and Gabe’s tattoo shop is a big draw for tourists. Everyone wants to get inked by a Savage King.”
“Thanks man,” Gabe says with a nod in his direction.
“Yes to both,” Abe answers. “You can never go wrong with a titty bar, and the shop is everything to my baby brother.”
“Yes to both,” Chase agrees. “In fact, Gabe, what do you say about a bigger building so that you could bring in a few more artists?”
“Hell yes,” Gabe replies. “I would love the help, and I think we could triple the revenue with two more artists taking walk-ins since I’m usually booked up.”
“That’s a damn good idea,” Torin says. “And if we have to rebuild anyway, we can have a contractor add the space for more chairs. All in favor?” he asks, and everyone answers in agreement. “Anyone opposed to the rebuild of Avalon?”
“Maybe there’s room for improvement in the rebuild of Avalon too,” I suggest.
“How so?” Chase questions.
“Well, you would have to talk to the dancers, but aren’t virtual shows sort of hot right now?”
“Virtual shows?” War repeats, his brow wrinkled in confusion.
“Do you honestly never look at porn online?” Miles asks the club’s father figure.
“Why do I need porn when I have a gorgeous woman in my bed?” War throws back, making Miles roll his eyes.
“Anyway,” Reece says. “I think what Sax is referring to is the type of live porn when guys sign on to watch hot girls take off their clothes and…touch themselves while the audience watches.”
“Exactly,” I say. “It’s not much of a stretch from stripping, right? Maybe even better for the dancers because they don’t have to deal with the men getting handsy in private rooms or whatever. I bet we could build a few apartments over top of the new Avalon for production.”
“That’s pretty brilliant,” Chase says. “And those sites charge by monthly memberships, right? If we had a few thousand subscribers for, say, five girls, we could have a shitload of new profits coming in. The only expenses would be to pay the women and set up the tech, which I’m sure Reece could do with his hands tied behind his back.”
“Easily,” Reece responds. “I’d need a server room with some hardcore firewalls and shit. Then we’d be in business upstairs and downstairs.”
“Sounds like we can make the best out of a fucked-up situation,” Maddox concludes.
“We’ll cut out a percentage of the new Avalon’s profits for Jenna’s family,” Torin says. “It’s the least we can do for them since she died in our club.”
“Agreed,” Chase says, followed by everyone else’s approval.
“As soon as we get everything settled with the insurance company, we’ll have a contractor start rebuilding,” Torin assures us. “We’ll all feel the hit on our next quarterly payout, but we’ll get through it. Just be patient, not only with the money side of things but with vengeance as well. We did what we had to do with the Russians; but if this is them hitting us back, we’ll have to be careful going forward. No more innocents are going to die on my watch.”
“Amen, brother. At least shit can’t get any worse than this, but the Kings will always endure,” War mutters, echoing everyone’s sentiment.
And as the solemn mood fills the room, I can’t help but think that they have no idea just how worse things can get for them thanks to the evidence the governor is holding over my head.
Chapter Sixteen
Sax
“I bought you something,” Isobel whispers from behind me as I finish washing up the dinner dishes at the kitchen sink.
“You bought me something? Wasn’t cooking dinner for all of us enough?” I ask.
“It’s not much,” she says. Wrapping both of her hands around my waist to rub their way up the front of my shirt, she says, “I’ll be in bed with it when you finish up here,” before she walks away.
Never in all my life have I washed dishes as fast as I did then. In fact, tomorrow I’ll probably need to rewash them. We really need to get a dishwasher put in here.
When I slip into our room a few moments later, I’m only a little disappointed to find Isobel sitting up in bed, still wearing her clothes.
“You thought I would be naked, didn’t you?” she asks with a grin.
“Maybe.”
“I’ll be naked soon enough,” she promises, which is all it takes for my cock to start swelling down my jean leg.
“That’s good to know,” I tell her as I flop down on the mattress next to her on my side.
“Are you ready for your present?” she asks excitedly.
“Yes.”
Reaching beside her on the nightstand, she grabs a tiny blue notebook with matching pen that looks similar to her pink one.
“This is your bucket list,” she says when she places it in front of me on the bed. “Now you have one so you can start putting down all the things you want to do or see before you die.”
“Thank you,” I tell her, sitting up to place a kiss on her cheek.
Positioning my back against the headboard, I pull the pen free and open up the notebook to the first blank page.
“Well, I wanted to kiss you, so that’s one I can check off,” I say as I scribble “Kiss Isobel” on the first line and put a check mark beside it. “Then I went skinny dipping, which is something I had never done before but always wanted to do,” I add, checking it off as well.
“Now add ‘travel around the world on your boat’,” Isobel instructs, so I jot it down. “What else?” she asks.
“I’ll need some time to think about it.”
“There must be some ideas on your mind, no matter how farfetched or impossible or silly. Just write it down, Sax. Then find a way to make time to do it!”
“Okay,” I reply with a heavy exhale before I write down the thing I’ve wanted to do since I was a kid.
Isobel tilts her head to the side to read it aloud. “Find a shipwreck. You mean like pirate treasure?” she asks with a smile.
“Not to try to find gold and get rich or whatever, but just to study it. I think it would be pretty cool to find a piece of history at the bottom of the ocean.”
“Oh, I get it,” Isobel says. “You’re a closeted history dork.”
“No, I’m not,” I scoff indignantly, causing her to giggle. Finally, I admit the truth. “Okay, so maybe I am a little bit.”
“That’s sort of adorable,” she says. “I knew you weren’t cut out to be a Savage King. You want to be a savage pirate instead.” A giggle escapes her curved lips before she adds, “You already have the boat and one-eyed cat. Oh! You should totally get a tiny little black patch for Willy to wear!”
“You think you’re hilarious, don’t you?” I tease right before I launch myself at her, pulling her back down on the mattress and pinning her underneath me while I squeeze her sides, tickling the shit out of her.
“Stop! Stop! Truce, Captain! Please!” Isobel squirms and laughs.
“Thank you,” I tell her when I finally relent, hovering over top of her. “I’ll try to check off as many items on my bucket list as possible. And now I know not to let anyone ever read it,” I joke before I steal a kiss from her lips. And then another until we’re both naked and losing ourselves in each other’s bodies.
Chapter Seventeen
Isobel
The next morning, as soon as I wake up, I slip quietly into Cooper’s room to see how he’s doing. From the moment my palm touches his forehead, I can tell he has a fever.
“C-cold,” he stammers because he’s also shivering.
“Sorry, but no more blankets for you until your fever comes down,” I say to him, even though he probably can’t hear me.
Grabbing the thermometer from the top of the dresser, I sit on the edge of the mattress and ease the device underneath his armpit to see just how high it’s gone since my last check around four a.m. At that time, it had been a perfect ninety-eight point eight, so I had slipped back into bed with Sax.
Cooper barely notices what I’m doing with his teeth chattering so hard and the rest of his body shuddering.
Finally the low beep on the thermometer tells me it’s finished, and I cringe at the result. His temperature is now a hundred and one underneath his arm, which is usually one degree lower than the actual temp.
I hurry into the bedroom Sax and I slept in last night to tell him the bad news.
“Sax,” I say when I’m standing next to his side of the bed and giving his bare shoulder a shake. “Hey, Sax. Cooper has a fever.”
“Shit,” his groggy voice grumbles before his eyes even open. “High?”
“High enough,” I reply as he peeks at me with one blue eye. “We can try giving him some Tylenol and see if that will bring it down, but it’s worrisome either way. His body is trying to fight an infection.”
“Yeah, let’s hope the Tylenol works,” Sax agrees.
“Can you help me sit Cooper up so he can swallow a few pills? He’s shivering and looks pretty miserable.”
“Ah, yeah, of course,” Sax says as he pushes himself up in the bed. “Let me throw on my clothes and I’ll meet you in his room.”
“I’ll go grab the bottle from the kitchen cabinet,” I say since I remember seeing a few of the standard meds in there yesterday.
It’s not easy to get Cooper alert enough to take the pills, but we finally get him to swallow two extra strength Tylenol with a sip of water before he passes out again.
“Why is he so…” Sax asks as we stand over his friend. “Out of it.”
“His body is trying to recover from a serious trauma. Hopefully it’s just the high fever making him weak and sleepy, but for all we know he could have internal injuries. Without a CT or MRI, there’s no way to know.”
“You think we need to take him to the hospital?” Sax asks.
“Yes, but I understand the reason you can’t,” I assure him. “For now we can attribute his condition to the fever, but we may need to find something stronger than Tylenol if it doesn’t come down soon.”
“Yeah, okay,” Sax agrees. “What do we do now?”
“Wait,” I tell him. “That’s all we can do. Wait and let him rest and recover. He’s lucky to be alive. If he can survive a building blowing up, he’ll be able to overcome these injuries.”
***
Sax
While waiting to see if Coop’s meds work, I join the guys in the living room to watch a baseball game on television. Despite the delicious meal Isobel made yesterday for us, today the guys are brooding, worried about Cooper’s rising temp and missing their women. The silence and tension is so thick in the room that you could cut it. So, when I see Isobel walk out the back door with her guitar in her hands, I get up and follow her.
She’s already seated on one of the steps, strumming her pick over the strings when I walk outside.
“Bored?” I ask her when I sit down beside her.
“No, not at all,” she replies with a smile. “I enjoy the downtime. But I need a distraction to keep myself from worrying unnecessarily about Cooper’s fever.”
“You’re worried about him?” I ask in surprise.
“Well, yeah. He’s my patient, and a fever means infection,” Isobel responds. “If his body can’t fight it…”
“We’ll need something strong and may have to cave and take him to the hospital?” I finish.
“Yeah,” she agrees. “And I know that would make everything more complicated when the guys are already tense enough as it is, concerned for Cooper and upset about who is responsible.”
“Well, let’s just pray the fever comes down,” I say on a sigh.
Isobel’s fingers move over the guitar strings as she starts playing a somewhat familiar tune.
“Some people don’t believe it, but I think music is good for the soul,” she tells me. “Studies even show that it can have a positive effect on the sick when the songs are relaxing and familiar.”
“Really?” I reply since I’ve never thought about music as a remedy to ailments.
“Sure,” Isobel says. “Music can reduce anxiety, help depression, lower your heart rate and blood pressure. There’s a reason so many people enjoy hearing their favorite songs over and over again. Listening to music releases dopamine, which lifts your mood. Everyone knows a song that can lift you up every time you hear it.”
“Oh, yeah?” I ask. “Like what?”
Instead of telling me a song title, Isobel plays the tune on her guitar until I catch on. “Walking on Sunshine, right?” I guess, then I remember the jackass at her father’s house mentioning it. Daniel said Isobel would sing it to their patients to calm them down and it always worked.
“Who can listen to this song and not find themselves just a little bit happier after it’s over?” she says as she plays the last cord.
“That’s very true,” I agree. “Even if it’s not exactly my style, it’s still uplifting.”
“So what is your style?” Isobel asks.
“I don’t know, I listen to rock mostly. Guys like Tom Petty. I’ve got a bunch of his CDs on the boat.”
