We exchange numbers as she explains what went down. “Rogue, Ace, and Knuckles were supposed to be let out today, but the cops obviously didn’t want to do that, so instead they sent police in here to do a raid. Everyone who was in the clubhouse at the time was arrested. Dad, Shack, Jasper, Bane, Jameson, and Origin, all gone,” she explains, referring to all the prospects. “I didn’t know if you were here or not, Zoe. I just know that Celina and I didn’t get arrested, and a good thing too, because she was arrested last time the police decided to raid the clubhouse.”
“So now what happens?” I ask her, looking at Vanessa. “Prez told me everything was going to be fine, and now they’re all behind bars.”
“Do they need us to sort out lawyers for them?” my sister asks, a gleam in her eye. “Because I know really fucking good lawyers.”
“Who?” Erin asks, pulling out her phone. “Because we might need all the help we can get right now. The cops aren’t saying shit. The men from the Wind Dragons were arrested too, so that means both our club presidents are currently behind bars. This is going to cause a fucking uproar.”
“The Bentley and Channing law firm,” Vanessa explains, pressing buttons on her phone. “Jaxon is a good friend of mine. He will help us out, no problem, and he’s one of the best criminal lawyers in the city. Whenever he’s on a case, everyone fucking hates it, because if he’s there, he’s going to win.”
Erin’s eyes widen, and she claps her hands together. “You’re friends with Jaxon Bentley? He’s a babe.”
“I know, but he’s very, very taken.” Vanessa sighs, pressing her pink phone to her ear. “Yes, hello, Yvonne. I was wondering if I could speak to Mr. Bentley, if possible.” She pauses. “Okay, no worries. Could you give him a message for me? Could you tell him to give Vanessa Kane a call back? He has my number. Thank you.” She presses the end button. “He’s going to call me back. Have you spoken to them since they got arrested, Erin?”
“A woman called me to tell me what happened,” she says, wrapping her arms around herself. “Faye Black. She’s a lawyer and married to one of the Wind Dragons men. If you know all the important people of the city, you’ve heard of her. Anyway, I’m glad she let me know, because none of the men have been allowed any calls, and we would have been left wondering what the fuck was going on.”
“Yeah, I know Faye,” says my sister, who apparently knows everyone. “She’s kind of old now, but she used to be the best female fighter around.”
“Well, she knows what’s going on here and is probably already working on getting her men out, so we need to do the same,” Erin says, frustration written all over her face. “Come on, let’s lock up and get out of here. The place is so dead without the men.”
“It really is,” I murmur, glancing around and wishing I could see Rogue’s face appear from his bedroom. Last night I had a bad feeling about this whole thing, but I didn’t say anything, and even if I had, it wouldn’t have changed a thing, because Rogue would have still gone. There was no way he’d have left his friends hanging. “The worst part is, the problem wasn’t even in the Cursed Ravens MC, it was the Wind Dragons, and now all of our men are in jail.”
Vanessa’s phone rings and she answers it quickly. “Jaxon? I’m good, how are you? No, no, I haven’t gotten myself arrested again. Not this time, anyway. Actually, I was wondering if you could get a whole motorcycle club out of prison for me.” She pauses and laughs. “No, I’m dead serious. The Cursed Ravens MC have all been arrested. Three of them were meant to be released today, but instead the police raided their clubhouse and brought them all in. Nope, no phone calls, we found out what’s going on from Faye Black. Yeah. Okay, we will meet you at the police station. Thanks, Jaxon.”
She presses the end button and turns to me and Erin. “As soon as he heard the name Faye Black, he seemed a little too interested.”
“She’s supposed to be an amazing lawyer, maybe a little friendly competition?” Erin suggests.
We all shrug.
Not our problem, as long as he’s willing to help us.
“We better go,” Vanessa lets us know. “I want to be there before he is, so we don’t miss any of the action.”
We all get into her car and lock the gate behind us. Erin knows the code, so if we need to get back in, it won’t be an issue; however, I don’t see us returning until the men are all out of jail.
Jaxon beats us to the police station after all. When we walk inside, he’s demanding to speak to the officer in charge and to be present during any of his clients’ questioning. The officer who comes out to deal with him looks like he’d rather be anywhere else, but when Jaxon starts throwing around all these law terms, the officer agrees to let him in to speak to his clients. We unfortunately aren’t allowed in, and there’s nothing we can do other than wait for Jaxon to come out and report to us, which could take a long-ass time.
“This sucks ass,” Vanessa announces after the first twenty minutes. “There must be something else we can do to help. Sitting here is really ruining my adventure mode.”
“I know what you mean,” I mutter, tapping my foot on the carpet and watching the shady people walking in and out of the station. “But until we talk to Jaxon, we’re going to have no idea what’s going on here. Vanessa, you need to make some cop contacts.”
“I have one, but I don’t think he’s going to help us out after I left him handcuffed to his own bed,” she grumbles.
“Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to cut it this time around,” I say, wincing. I turn to Erin, the saner of the two. “Any ideas, Erin?”
Celina walks into the police station, a baby on each hip. She sees us and storms over. “I got here as soon as I could. Do we know anything new?”
“Nothing,” Erin says, taking David and placing him on her lap. “Our lawyer is in there with them, but we’re waiting for him to come out and tell us what the hell is going on.”
“Zoe?” a masculine voice asks from the right of me. I turn and look into green eyes belonging to none other than Fox. “What are you doing here? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I tell him, frowning. “Just waiting for some friends.”
“Are you sure?” he asks, studying me.
“Why do men seem to care more about women after they break up than when they’re actually together?” Vanessa asks us all, glancing up at Fox. “Please, answer this age-old question for us.”
Fox’s lips tighten. “Because sometimes we only realize later what we had.”
We all go quiet.
“Not what I was expecting,” Vanessa replies, sounding almost impressed.
“Wait, who is this?” Erin asks, eyeing Fox in a way one would a potential enemy.
“This is Fox,” Vanessa tells her cheerfully. “Zoe used to bone him, but he lied about having an old lady, so she stopped boning him. My sister is good like that.”
“Safe to say I haven’t missed you, Vanessa,” Fox mutters under his breath, fiddling with the chain on his belt that connects to the wallet in his back pocket. I always hated that damn chain.
“The feeling is mutual, Fox. You’re lucky the only thing I did to you was spray-paint your bike,” my sister sneers. She spray-painted the word Cunt on his black bike in white paint after she found out what he did to me.
“Zoe likes the bikers, huh?” Celina says quietly, snickering.
“We all do,” Erin chimes in.
“All right, guys, that’s enough. Fox, I’m fine. Carry on,” I say to him, waving him off. “We ladies have a scheme to come up with.”
“A scheme? Need some help?”
“What can you do to help us?” Vanessa asks him, eyes narrowed.
“They don’t call me Fox for nothing,” he says, shrugging and looking at us.
We all duck our heads together, leaving him standing there.
“What MC is this guy from? I don’t think he needs to be involved,” Erin murmurs, tapping her cheek. “You just can’t trust people these days, especially a guy named
Fox. Foxes are cunning.”
“They’re cunning and known pests,” Vanessa agrees, looking to Celina, who nods.
Then they all look toward me.
“You know I can hear everything you guys are saying, right?” Fox says.
We ignore him.
“I agree with all of you,” I say.
“Plus, Rogue isn’t going to like it,” Erin adds. “He’s detained, and we’re all hanging with some shady ex-boyfriend from another MC?”
“I know one of the cops who works here,” Fox continues. “I could get a message to whoever you want that’s detained.”
We all glance up at him.
“What’s the catch?” I ask him, folding my arms.
“No catch, Zoe,” he says, shaking his head as if surprised I’d even ask.
“So you’re going to pass a note to Zoe’s boyfriend for no reason other than to be a nice fucking citizen?” Celina asks, eyes narrowed to slits.
Fox’s head snaps to me. “You’re dating one of them? A Cursed Raven?”
I nod. “How did you know which MC was being detained?”
“I overheard the cops talking,” he murmurs, shrugging it off. “Fucking hell, Zoe. I thought you’d be smarter than that.”
“What? You mean after what you did to me?” I reply, looking away from him.
I can feel his gaze on me for a few moments, but then he says, “Give me the note, and I will make sure they get it.”
“I’ll write a note,” Erin says, pulling some paper and pen out of her handbag. “We need a secret code or something. I don’t want anyone else to read what I write.”
“What are we going to say in the note?” I ask her, ignoring Fox.
She scribbles something down, then shows it to all of us:
We got a fancy lawyer for you, so sit tight. You’ll be out soon. We’re all okay, and all the women are together. So don’t worry.
“I don’t know what else to say,” she admits, biting her lower lip.
“Maybe draw some boobs on there for motivation to get out sooner,” my sister suggests, snickering.
I roll my eyes.
Fox takes the note, and we see him talking to the cop he knows, who takes the note and nods.
When Fox walks back over to us, Vanessa says, “That note better get to one of our men or I’m challenging you to a duel.”
“It will,” he assures us, then exits.
We never even asked why he was at the police station.
Time to play the waiting game, even though every second is excruciating.
I’m going to add this to the con list of dating a biker.
24
Jaxon comes out two hours later, paperwork in his hand, and walks straight up to us.
“Come sit in my car so we can talk,” he says, so we follow him to his fancy car and pile inside like we’re doing something shady, about to smoke some weed or something. We all lean in to listen to Jaxon as he speaks.
“When the police raided the clubhouse, they found thirty grams of crack cocaine, which is the basis on which they’re holding all the men who were present in the clubhouse at the time,” he explains to us, looking at our faces.
Crack cocaine? Do the men do that stuff? I mean, I know none of them is a saint, but I’ve never seen the men walking around high on drugs.
“Our men don’t sell or do drugs,” Erin says, looking at Celina.
“Can they hold them for that?” I ask him, wanting to know what exactly we’re dealing with here. I’m out of my element, and I don’t know what to think, but I do know that I trust Rogue and the women surrounding me right now, and that is enough.
“Not for long, no, unless they find something else. It wasn’t a large amount of the substance, and to me it seems like they’re holding them for a reason, I just can’t see what it is,” Jaxon murmurs, fingers tightening on the steering wheel. “I’m going to call Faye Black and see what her plan is to get her men out, and then maybe work with her on it. Don’t worry, ladies, we will definitely get them out, it just depends how soon we can do it and how much of an asshole the police want to be.”
“So what do we do?” Celina asks, tapping Walker on the back gently.
“Go home,” Jaxon says bluntly. “There’s nothing you can do to help; that’s what I’m for, all right? Go home, get some rest, and stay by your phones. Vanessa, I will call you the second I know anything.”
“Thanks, Jaxon,” Vanessa says, and the rest of us thank him too, then jump out of his car and head into our own cars. Erin gets in with Celina to help with the babies, and we all decide to meet at Celina and Knuckles’s house. We want to be together until our men are out, because I for one can’t think of anything worse than sitting alone at my apartment wondering what the hell is going on and when they are going to be free. Do I call in sick for work tomorrow? I don’t think they’ll be able to replace my shift, so they’ll probably be furious, and I’m sure Rogue would appreciate if I spend time with his mom when he’s unable to.
“What do you think will happen?” I ask Vanessa on our way to Celina’s. She’s got rap music playing, but I can’t hear anything over my own thoughts, my mind running wild with worst-case scenarios.
“They’ll get out, you heard what Jaxon said. He wouldn’t say something he doesn’t think is true,” she assures me, turning the music down. “You don’t need to stress, Zoe. I don’t think this is the first time they’ve been locked up, and I have no doubt it won’t be the last. They probably keep spare cells ready just for the MC members. Like, Don’t put them in there, Officer, those cells are allocated for the Cursed Ravens, one of those bastards show up here every week.”
My lip twitches, and soon we’re both laughing hard; it’s one of those laugh-or-cry moments, and I’m glad I’m doing the former. With Vanessa, it’s always going to be the former.
“I love you,” I tell her, turning my head to look at her profile. “Thank you for being here with me through this whole thing when you don’t have to.”
“What are big sisters for?” she asks, quickly looking at me before returning her gaze to the road. “You know there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you, including waiting with you for your criminal boyfriend and his friends to get out of jail. Oh, and calling in a guy I used to sleep with but haven’t seen since he got married. I’m glad that wasn’t too awkward.”
“Do you only sleep with successful men?” I ask her, my eyes wide. “Not that it doesn’t come in handy, but wow. And Jaxon was seriously hot.”
“He’s amazing,” she agrees, smirking. “No, I don’t only go for successful men. What about Matt? I don’t even know if he has a job.”
“Ahhh, Matt. How could I ever forget him? I felt like I got to second base with him in the first second I met him, because he was naked with his junk hanging out all over my apartment,” I groan.
“Yeah,” she says, shrugging. “His giant penis made up for his lack of employment. Most men have something good about them, you just need to find out what it is.”
“You have issues,” I mutter, blinking slowly a few times but thankful for the distraction.
“Imagine if this goes on the news,” Vanessa muses. “Aren’t you glad you didn’t introduce him to Mom and Dad? Think about the phone calls you’d be getting right now.”
“I’d have to turn my phone off, because they’d be calling nonstop, probably wanting to send me out of the country or something.”
“Legit.”
“How is this my life right now?” I ask myself out loud.
Vanessa answers. “Because you finally decided to live a little.”
I don’t know about that, but what I do know is that my heart is behind bars right now, and I’m not going to stop until Rogue is back where he belongs.
“You have a lot of dogs,” I say, sitting cross-legged on Celina’s kitchen floor, getting licked by them all. “Holy crap, I’d never be sad if I got to come home to this every day.”
“I know, right?” Celina agrees, pattin
g one of her Rottweilers. “They really do brighten my mood when I’ve had a bad day.”
“It’s basically therapy,” I tell her, letting them all jump on me and shower me with their love.
“They love the boys so much, it’s so cute to watch,” she says, sliding onto one of her barstools and smiling down at us. “Do you have any dogs?”
“Nope, but not because I wouldn’t love to. I live in an apartment, and I love the big breeds, but it just wouldn’t be fair. If I ever move into a house with a garden, the first thing I’m going to do is adopt a dog,” I say.
“Rogue loves dogs too,” Erin points out, bending to pet each dog in turn.
“Good, because if he didn’t, that would kind of be a deal breaker,” I tease, but actually I’m being deadly serious.
“I know what you mean. I don’t trust people who don’t like dogs,” Celina admits to me. Both her boys are down for a nap, so all four of us are drinking coffee and talking shit, basically trying to distract ourselves while we wait for Jaxon’s call.
The second there’s a break in the conversation, though, we’re all reminded what we’re really doing here.
“I just feel like there has to be something we can do other than this,” Erin says into the silence, glancing down into her mug. “We’re literally waiting for someone else to save our men while we sit around and wait, like we’re back in the olden days.”
“We can’t do anything when it comes to the law, though,” Celina murmurs, sounding put out.
“We can help find evidence, though,” I say to the women. “You guys said that you don’t think the men do any drugs, so what if someone planted it?”
“They don’t do drugs,” Erin says, but then winces. “However, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t theirs. I can’t bet my life that it wasn’t. I personally know Ace, Knuckles, Rogue, and my dad don’t touch the stuff, but what about Shack? I don’t know what he dabbles in. Or the prospects. I don’t know them well enough to vouch for them.”
“Don’t you have security cameras everywhere, though? Maybe we should conduct our own investigation and see what we can find. If we find any video footage that could help them, then the police can’t really say shit or keep on with this whole vendetta they seem to have against the club.”
Going Rogue Page 14
