“They’re taking too long.”
“I thought so.”
“I’ll text Onika.”
He sends a text message.
“Your sister-in-law works for you?”
“Yes. We started taking on interns recently… Rian’s wife went to Harvard and started working as one of our au pairs and Aiden thought we could have a more constructive influence on women in college than we have in the past…”
“I guess I see his point.”
“Should we check on them?” I add, barely pausing. The need to see Gabby presses on me already. Maybe it was foolish to let her out of my sight.
“Sure,” Callum says. “But our property is secure, I can assure–”
Callum’s office door swings open and slams hard againstthe wall.BANG!
A tall man with dark brown hair and piercing green eyes yells at him, “Sir, we have a problem.”
Callum’s hand rushes to his jacket. “What problem?”
“Some crazy red-headed bitch just shot through the front glass and grabbed Onikaand the other hot chick,” he says in a thick accent that I can finally place as Irish. I’m not too familiar with the differences between their accents, but this man is not American.
The red-headed bitch on the other hand?
I suspect we both know exactly who she is…
Callum and I exchange knowing looks. There’s no need for words anymore. We follow the man I presume is Callum’s Irish cousin out of the room, and the search for Tylee continues.
And more importantly – Gabby. The woman I want to keep.
Chapter Seventeen
Oske
Several Months Ago
Iinvested $75,000 in repairing The Fire Spot and reopening just in time for the summer. I expected a rush of tourists pouring across the country, but absolutely nothing went according to my plan. The Route 66 highway and all the nearby towns along the route have a reliable influx of tourists each summer. I grew up working at motels, casinos, and gas stations along the highway ever since I was twelve years old. It’s easy to get a job as a kid if you lie your ass off, work hard and seem desperate enough.
I know the highway, and when I told Wyatt that I could only make back $26,000 on my investment, he thought my primary motivation for badgering him was my own desperate need for a bail out. First, I never asked him for a bail out. I just didn’t decline his offer to pay off the rest of my debts. He’s not a saint, if you were thinking that. Wyatt stands to gain plenty from our exchange.
Specifically, information. There’s major drama going onwith the Shaw family and I’m stuck in the middle of something that I accidentally got caught up in while working on construction for The Fire Spot. Cody Hollingsworth stopped by with a truck full of lumber on his way to Boston and we had a few drinks together. Like most of these bikers, he’s pretty easy to loosen up with beer and weed. Cody told me alotabout what’s going on with Tylee, including something he saw that he’s been too scared to tell Wyatt.
He is pretty sure that Tylee is planning to dump the kids with Selma Sinclair and run off with some guy – he wouldn’t tell me who, so I don’t know if he even knows the guy or if it’s typical dude-paranoia. Cody also wouldn’t tell me why he has those suspicions, but he insisted that we couldn’t believe anything that Selma said. He also said that Tylee was an entitled brat who needed to be beaten, but I sincerely hope that was just a drunken rant and not a serious comment on how he felt the bikers should handle their affairs.
Wyatt doesn’t believe Selma could be involved, but I sent my brothers out to Selma’s place to investigate. I hope they don’t screw up this time, because if they do, I will send them off to live with Owen again. They like staying close to the rez these days, which is new for them. I like to think it’s my tenderness, but it’s probably related to the weed money they get doing petty errands for the Barbarians.
They scare me. So does Selma Sinclair.
That woman is a problem on her own, but I stay out of the way as much as possible when dealing with the older generation of biker chicks. They’re a crazy, tough crowd, and I don’t want to get into altercations with any woman who has been throwing hands since Nixon was in office.
I’m just lucky that Tylee Shaw Sinclair still trusts me, although if Wyatt presses me about those stupid divorce papers, she won’t trust me long enough for me to pinpoint her exact location and more importantly, where she brought thekids. This Selma tip gives me something to work with when I next talk to Tylee. Maybe I can get her to give the kids up willingly. If she’s going to leave them behind, I don’t see why it makes a difference if they’re with Selma or with their father.
Isaac is a good dad. I’m no fan of the bikers, but every time he came to the Fire Spot to drink, he would show me pictures of those kids on his phone until he passed out. Yes, I would sometimes lift a twenty dollar bill or two out of his wallet during those vulnerable moments, but that doesn’t make them any less touching.
I understand that the Rebel Barbarians are a bunch of brutish, abundantly stupid men. But what Tylee’s doing just isn’t fair to her kids. I open up The Fire Spot at around 11 a.m. each day to prepare for the first wave of nonexistent tourists. Cody told me rumors about where they went too. They’re scared, he says. Everybody in the country is scared.