I stepped forward, my body confronting and challenging him even though he wasn’t there. My face twisted and snarled, and I dared him to continue. “You better watch your mouth, chief.”
“Or what? You’re going to kick another table?”
“I will…”
“End me. Finish me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ve heard it all before. Let’s play fight when you get back. Right now you need to get your head out of your ass and listen to me. ATF is all over this shit right now. The Mayor is sniffing around more and more. He seemsrealinterested in sticking his nose in all our paperwork to find out why there’s so much hell breaking loose around here these days. People are drifting in and out of my unit all day long, asking questions, dragging out old files, trying to find something.”
“What kind of something?” I asked, my breaths hard to take in.
“Wish I knew, kid. Wish I knew. All I know is that I don’t like the smell of whatever they’re cooking, and now Harry’s man Clint is dead, as well as Jon Taylor,justas you go out of town. I can’t help but feeling that they’re either trying to clearsome dead ends up somewhere or that they’re going to pin something on The Hounds. This is all me doing the math and getting it wrong because I don’t know who is adding four to what or taking two away, you hear me?” He took a breath, and that’s when I heard the slight quiver in his release, and I knew the chief was worried… about me.
“Who are they?” I asked calmly.
“What?”
“They. You saidthey’retrying to clear some dead ends up somewhere, or they’re trying to pin shit on my club. Who arethey?”
“I don’t know. It could be someone on the inside. It could be The Navs seeking retaliation. I have no evidence of anything. All I have is this feeling in my gut. A feeling that says things ain’t over yet.”
I needed to pause. I needed to breathe. Turning back, I saw Ayda staring at me, her face full of worry and concern as she waited for me to drop even more bombs at her dancing feet.
“We’ll figure it out,” I told the chief, but really, I was telling Ayda, too. We’d figure all this out. We had to. We had a life to live together. One filled with more times like the night before. Whoever was coming for us, they wouldn’t win. They couldn’t. Not now I finally had something good to live for.
“Stay safe,” Sutton said with genuine concern.
“Always do.”
I ended the call, not needing to speak to anyone but her right now.
Ayda rolled to her knees without thought and shuffled closer to me, one arm reaching out in an invitation to join her. “What’s going on?”
I didn’t go to her, though. I couldn’t. Not while I felt this anger surging through me.
“Clint is dead. Jon Taylor, too.”
Ayda muttered afuckunder her breath and dropped her hand. She moved to the edge of the mattress and got to her feet, giving me the space I needed by heading to the window and peeking out of the blackout curtains.
“What does this mean for the club and us?”
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. There wasn’t one clear emotion in my whole body. Was I sad about Clint or was I pissed about Taylor? Looking around the room we’d spent one of our best nights in, I took an inventory of everything we’d brought with us. “How soon can we be ready to leave?”
Ayda dropped the curtain and turned to look at me. “Give me five in the bathroom. I’ll be ready. We need to see his family sooner rather than later, right?”
“Right.” I blinked and nodded once, and Ayda began to move, her strides calm yet quick as she made her way across the room. I grabbed her wrist before she went past me, pulling her back and staring down into her wide, love-filled, innocent eyes. “Last night was great. Whatever happens now, let’s not forget that. Okay?”
“Like I could forget,” she mused quietly, her hand touching my cheek before stepping back and heading to the bathroom again. She stopped just inside and turned to look at me again. “Can we make a stop before we get to their house? We can’t show up empty-handed, and no one can turn down donuts.”
Trust Ayda to think of something like that in a time of crisis. I couldn’t help the small flat smile that tugged at the edges of my mouth. “We can do that.”
She gave me a nod and moved, stopping again only two steps inside. She peeked out and hit me with deadly serious eyes. “I love you. We’re going to figure this shit out.”
“We always do,” I assured her. Sometimes I forgot how much she needed to hear the words I love you in return. Ayda said them ten times more than I ever did, but that didn’t mean my love for her was weaker, I knew that. I just picked my moments. Still, as I watched her drift away into the bathroom, I cursed myself and wished my I love yous didn’t always come when I was sorry, horny, or about to die. Sometimes she needed to hear me say it just for the sake of saying it, so even though I began to move around the room, collecting shit off the floor and tossing it on the bed, I found myself calling out to her anyway, despite the running water and the urgency in which we were both now moving.
“I love you, too, Hanagan. We’re going to be okay.”
And then I got us the hell out of there, wondering which battle it would be that called me out as a liar, and hoping like fuck it wasn’t going to be this one.
Or the next.