Tin Queen

by Devney Perry

“Tera?”

  Bryce nodded. “She’s really nice. Her daughter was there too. Maggie. But she’s not in Xander’s class.”

  Xander was starting kindergarten tomorrow. Zeke would be going to preschool.

  Today was the last day the boys would be around the garage, and even though they always stayed in the office where it was safe and they were out of the way, I was going to miss the energy they brought with them.

  Dash knelt in front of his sons, and though he had a smile, there was longing in his eyes too. I wasn’t the only one who’d miss having them here. Somehow, we’d all blinked and the boys had become boys, not babies.

  Xander looked more and more like Dash every day. Which meant he looked more and more like Draven.

  “Be good for Mom today,” he said.

  “Can we work on something later?” Zeke asked.

  Lately the boys had been interested in helping on the cars, so we’d find some old parts for them to bang on with wrenches and screwdrivers.

  “Sure. We can this afternoon, but only if you’re good.” Dash gave them both hugs, then sent them with Bryce to the office.

  As she walked away with the kids, I checked my phone again. Nothing. Damn.

  “Something wrong?” Dash asked, studying my expression.

  “Nah,” I lied. Then I jerked my chin for him and Leo to follow me to the other side of the shop, away from Sawyer and Tyler. Once we were in Leo’s paint booth, I tied up my hair so it would be out of my face while we worked today. “Heard back from that PI in South Carolina again.”

  “And?”

  “He sent me another file I’ve got on my laptop at home. Mostly pictures he tracked down from when the girls were younger and lived in Montana. Summary of their routines. He’s good to keep an eye on the daughters for a while, but he doesn’t think it’s necessary.”

  The PI I’d hired had been following Tucker Talbot’s daughters for three weeks. There was only so much we could do from here and given they were Tucker’s daughters, we had no idea if they might be a threat. So far, there’d been no indication whatsoever that they were in contact with their father.

  “And the ex?”

  “Same as the daughters. Nothing new.”

  Dash nodded. “I think it’s worth paying him for another month or so. Just to be certain.”

  “Agreed,” Leo said. “No chances.”

  “I’ll let him know,” I said. “I spent some time last night digging through the visitor log from the prison that the FBI sent Luke.” It wasn’t like I’d had anything else to do.

  “Find anything?”

  I shook my head. “The VP’s wife came to see him two Saturdays ago during regular visiting hours. Otherwise, it’s only been lawyers. Tucker met with his again.”

  “What for?” Leo asked. “His trial is over.”

  “It was one of the junior partners at the lawyer’s firm. Nancy something. I’m guessing it was estate stuff.”

  “The FBI seized his assets,” Dash said.

  “Maybe he’s fighting for some of it back. Maybe he’s updating his will. Whatever it was, I’ll keep an eye out for any filings.”

  “Thanks,” Dash said, running a hand over his face. “Think this will ever end?”

  “I hope so,” I muttered. Maybe if enough time passed, Tucker Talbot and the Warriors would forget about the former Tin Gypsy Motorcycle Club.

  “We haven’t talked about it, but maybe we need to get in touch with some contacts at the prison.” It was something I thought of often these days. “Tucker gets caught in a brawl and doesn’t survive it. It’s extreme but . . .”

  “Better than looking over our shoulders our entire lives,” Leo said.

  Dash sighed. “If they traced it back to us—”

  “Me. It would have to be me.” I had no family. No wife or kids to leave behind if I was arrested.

  “Let’s just . . .” Dash shook his head. “I don’t want to go there yet. We might get lucky. Tucker’s reach might have ended with his nephew. We’re being vigilant. The prosecutors are working through the other Warrior cases. Maybe this goes away.”

  Maybe. Or maybe not. But the chances of this disappearing were far greater if Tucker Talbot was rotting in hell instead of a cell.

  His men were loyal but I doubted they carried the same thirst for vengeance as their former leader. If cutting the head off of the snake was what we had to do, then we’d do it. Plenty of men died in prison and if I needed to facilitate that for Tucker, so be it.

  “We’ve been on the defense this entire time,” I said. “Since Draven. Maybe it’s time we move to offense.”

  “Yeah.” Dash raked a hand through his dark hair. “I don’t like sitting around and waiting for the storm either. But there are too many eyes on the Warriors right now. It’s too obvious.”

  “So we give it time,” Leo said. “Then revisit.”

  I nodded. “Until then, we keep up the guard.”

  “Enough of this.” Dash clapped me on the shoulder. “Let’s get to work.”

  The three of us left the paint booth and joined Sawyer and Tyler in the shop. The day went by quickly since we were busy. That and with family in the office, we popped in and out to see what was going on, and as per usual, the office was a source of constant laughter.

  “It reminds me of the old days, having them all here,” I told Dash, nodding to the office.

  “I was thinking the same yesterday.”

  When Dad and Draven had been alive, this place had been crawling with family members. I’d spent my childhood at this garage, coming down with Mom to bring Dad lunch. The same was true with Dash and his older brother, Nick.

  This garage had been the gathering place. For our families. For the club.

  Not all memories here had been good ones. A cloud had hung over us all after Dash’s mother, Chrissy, had been murdered. That same cloud had come back after Dad. Then Draven.

  But the good outweighed the bad. All we had to do was make sure that cloud didn’t get any darker because the Warriors came after us again.

  Presley had propped open the door between the office and the shop. We’d ordered lunch from the deli and the scent of onions was too strong for her. Draven had loved that Pres preferred the scent of motor oil and metal.

  The women’s laughter and the kids’ chatter drifted our way. After lunch, none of them had returned to the apartment upstairs. Bryce was telling Pres and Cass a story that she was printing in the next newspaper about a teenager who’d tried to steal a package of Oreos from a convenience store on Central. When the boy had been caught, instead of handing over the package to the cashier, he’d torn the top open and licked all the cookies.

  “Did they give him the Oreos?” Pres asked Bryce.

  “Yes, after the kid’s mother came down and paid for them. I guess she hauled him out of there by his ear, and he was shoving Oreos into his mouth as they walked. The cashier gave me a picture she took.”

  I chuckled as they all crowded around Bryce’s phone to see the photo.

  Nova would fit in here.

  That thought came on so fast I jerked.

  “What?” Dash asked.

  “Nothing.” I waved it away and turned to the job board.

  For a woman who was supposed to be a fling, Nova crossed my mind more than I wanted to admit. And damn it, where was she? Who was she?

  It would only take an hour to find out. All I had to do was open my laptop, key in her license plate and I’d know everything there was to know about her. Her real name. Her address. Her job. Her social security number and how much money she had in her retirement accounts.

  But I didn’t want that. Not with her. I wanted to learn those things from her, not steal them.

  If our fling was over, it was over. We’d gone from meeting every night to nothing for four days. I could read the writing on the wall. Time to walk away with the beautiful, pure image of her asleep in my bed.

  “What do you want to work on next?” I asked Dash.
>
  “Sawyer and Tyler can tackle the rest of this. Let’s spend the rest of the day on the Stingray.”

  “Fine by me.”

  Leo and Isaiah joined us and we spent the rest of the day working on the garage’s latest restoration. The Stingray was a hot car, one Dad would have loved. Though he would have loved all of the cars we’d brought in lately.

  The Firebird we’d fixed up, the car Leo had given to Cass as a wedding present, would have made Dad drool.

  He’d taught me to love classic muscle cars and their sleek design. He’d taught me about working with my hands and how to break machines down, then build them up again. With every car and every bike we built, Dad might not be here, but he was a part of it. Every one.

  At four, Dash’s boys came clamoring out of the office, dragging Bryce with them. We put the work on the Stingray aside and spent the last hour of the day letting Xander and Zeke dink around.

  I found an old gear for Zeke to hammer on. Xander and Dash tore into a broken carburetor. And Leo and Isaiah disappeared into the paint booth, where Leo was teaching Isaiah some airbrushing techniques.

  At five o’clock, Shaw rolled into the parking lot to pick up Presley and Nico. Leo loaded Cass and Seraphina into their Firebird, leaving for home. Isaiah left to get Genevieve and his kids. Dash, Bryce and the boys headed out at the same time as Tyler and Sawyer, leaving me alone at the garage.

  The quiet was a stark contrast to the noise from the day. The silence, something I normally enjoyed here and at home, was too loud. Too obvious.

  I found myself alone more often these days. A year ago, it hadn’t bothered me.

  Today, I didn’t want to be alone.

  So I shut the bay doors to close down the garage, then double-checked the office was locked. I flipped on the security system, heading to my bike. I rode out of the lot, stopping to slide the gates together and secure the chain and padlock around them. If someone really wanted to get in, they could scale the fence or bust through the gates, but it was a deterrent.

  Whatever we could do to keep safe.

  Traffic through town was bustling, people coming and going home from work. I headed toward Mom’s neighborhood, wanting to stop and say hello. I parked in her driveway just as Tera and Maggie parked next door.

  “Hey.” I raised a hand and waved as Tera climbed out of her SUV.

  “Hi.” She smiled and opened the back for Maggie to scramble out.

  Maggie went to her mother’s leg, leaning close as she stared up at me. She was still not quite easy with me.

  “Heard you’ve got Xander in your class,” I told Tera.

  She nodded. “I do. And I have a feeling he’s going to keep me on my toes.”

  “He’s a Slater.” I chuckled. “It won’t be boring.”

  Tera smiled and put a hand on her daughter’s head.

  She was a beautiful woman. She was smart and kind. For the first time, I wished I had something more than friendly feelings toward her, not just because she was beautiful but because at least with her, I wouldn’t be alone. But there was no spark. Maybe Tera and I could have some fun, but it wouldn’t go anywhere. And I wasn’t going to lead her on, not when there was Maggie to consider.

  So I took a step back and left her alone. “Good luck tomorrow. Have fun at school, Maggie.”

  The girl blushed as I winked at her.

  Tera waved.

  And I turned and strode for Mom’s house, calling out as I opened the door, “Mom.”

  “Emmett?”

  “Who else calls you Mom?”

  She laughed, shaking her head as I came into the living room, where she was reading a book. “What are you doing here?”

  “Just wanted to say hi.” I bent to kiss her cheek, then took a seat on the couch across from her, leaning into the back and crossing an ankle over my knee. “How’s your week going?”

  She shrugged. “It’s only Tuesday. Come back and ask me Friday. I might even have dinner for you then. But you’re out of luck tonight. I ate a late lunch, and I won’t be hungry for hours.”

  “That’s okay. I don’t expect you to cook for me every time I visit.”

  “I know. But I like to.”

  I motioned to her book. “What are you reading?”

  She smiled and closed the cover, holding it up for me to see. I recognized it from the bookshelves Dad had kept filled at his room at the clubhouse. “It was one of your dad’s.”

  “I know.”

  “It was in a box in the garage with a whole pile of others. I decided to read them. And look.” She slid out of her chair and joined me on the couch. Then she opened the book to a page she’d dog-eared.

  There were notes in the margin in Dad’s blocky script. I hadn’t seen that handwriting in ages. Not since the last time I’d bent beneath the workbench at the garage and found Stone written on the wood.

  “He’s got notes through this whole book. His thoughts on the story.”

  I swallowed hard. It had been so long since we’d lost Dad, but just seeing those notes brought back the pain from his death. Didn’t Mom feel it? She’d been content to leave his belongings tarped in the garage. Couldn’t they have stayed hidden for another ten years?

  “It’s time, Emmett.” She must have heard my thoughts because she put her hand on my leg. “It’s time.”

  “Why?”

  “Because when I’m gone, I don’t want you to go through it all on your own.”

  “Don’t talk like that.” I shoved off the couch and went to the kitchen for some water.

  Mom followed, watching as I chugged a glass dry. Then, thankfully, she didn’t talk about Dad again. “I had Tera and Maggie over for dinner last night.”

  “I saw them as I came in.”

  “She’s a good woman, Emmett.”

  “She is.”

  “Why not ask her out to—”

  “I met someone.” The words came out so fast it surprised us both.

  “Oh,” Mom said, her voice full of hope. “I didn’t realize.”

  “It’s not serious.” Fuck. This thing with Nova was not serious and it was likely over. But I’d opened my mouth and now I’d be backtracking. Because the last thing I wanted was for my mother to get her hopes up of a daughter-in-law or grandchildren. The chance she’d have those was slim at best.

  Her shoulders fell. “Okay.”

  “I’d better get home. I’ve got some work to do around the house.”

  “Thanks for coming over.” She smiled as I walked over and pulled her into a hug. “Friday?”

  “Friday.” I let her go, giving a quick glance to Dad’s book on the end table beside the couch as I walked for the door.

  On the wall was one of the last photos the two of them had taken together, Mom sitting behind Dad on his bike, both wearing bandanas tied around their foreheads and wide smiles on their faces.

  Mom was in love with Dad. She’d loved him her entire life, even though they’d divorced when I was in fifth grade.

  Mom still wore her wedding rings. Dad had always worn his. Their wedding picture was on the nightstand in her bedroom. A copy had been on Dad’s dresser at his place. Never once had Mom gone on a date and as far as I knew, Dad had never been with another woman. Because he’d loved Mom too. Even though their marriage had ended, and he’d lived at his own place.

  At the time of their divorce, I’d been too young to demand or understand an explanation. But years later, when I’d been a new member of the club, I’d gotten drunk at a party and asked Dad why.

  He’d told me that after Chrissy Slater had been murdered, it had spooked Mom. Rightly so. Chrissy had been innocent, but because of her husband’s club, she’d been murdered outside of her own home.

  A rival club, the Travelers, had been causing the Gypsies some trouble back then. Mostly skirmishes over some drug runs and disputed territory lines. Draven and the club had been aggressive about expanding in those days. They’d taken on more drug routes, trying to boost club income. The Tr
avelers hadn’t liked it and had sent threats. Draven had ignored them.

  He shouldn’t have ignored them.

  The Travelers came to Clifton Forge and went straight to the Slater house.

  Chrissy was outside planting flowers. They shot her in the back of the head. Dash and Nick were the ones to find her body after coming home from school.

  Dad helped Draven kill every member of the Travelers. Every. Single. One. Then he divorced Mom, hoping that Chrissy’s fate wouldn’t fall on her.

  Mom would never have asked Dad to leave the club—she knew how much it had meant to both of us—but Dad had insisted on the divorce.

  They hadn’t been married. But they’d been married.

  And when Dad had died, it had broken Mom’s heart.

  Mine too.

  Outside, I sat on my bike and walked it backward out of the driveway, then I cast a glance at the house as I started the engine. Mom was standing in the living room window that overlooked the front yard. She had that book of Dad’s pressed to her heart and a hand raised to wave goodbye.

  I waved back, then roared down the street. My chest was too tight. Mom’s expression, with that damn book, was stuck in my head.

  What I needed tonight was a distraction. A hard fuck. Maybe a fight. I could probably find both at The Betsy but instead of going to the bar, I rode home. The bar would be there later if I changed my mind.

  I turned down my lane and when I spotted a black car in the driveway, the tightness in my chest vanished.

  Thank fuck.

  She was here. Nova.

  I parked beside her car and stood off my bike.

  She was waiting beside the front door, leaning against the log exterior.

  I walked up, shoving my sunglasses away.

  “Hi, Ace.”

  I hated how glad I was to hear her voice. I hated how relieved I felt to see her. But damn it, I hadn’t been ready to call it off. Not yet. There wasn’t a single woman I wanted to see tonight but her. “Hi, baby.”

  There was a stiffness to her body as she stood straight, her eyes falling to her fingers clasped in front of her before she looked up. Maybe she hated being relieved too. “I’m sorry I haven’t been around. I’ve been—”

  I held up a hand. “No explanations, right?”