She fires up the engine, pipes coughing to life with a deep, mechanical growl as she backs out of my garage. Not wantingto miss a second of her commanding that machine, I fire up my own and roll out beside her.
Watching Marigold ride is fucking mesmerizing. The raw control she has over that beast of a bike, hugging Coral Cay’s curves like she owns the road, is hot as hell. It hits me like a drug.
If we didn’t have a life-or-death meeting with Pope waiting, I’d have her off that bike, bent over the seat, fucking her senseless right here on the roadside.
Instead, we tear down the asphalt, wind whipping past, until we roll into the gravel lot of the compound.
“You’re late,” Pope barks, his massive arms crossed over his chest as he leans back heavily against the weathered brick of the clubhouse wall.
“That’s my fault, boss man. I mesmerized him with my vagina. She’s a hard one to resist,” Marigold quips smoothly, shaking her hair out of her face and hooking her helmet over the handlebars.
Pope just shakes his head, groaning low and scrubbing his hands over his face like he can’t believe what he’s hearing. I don’t know why he’s still surprised. The woman is always dropping off-the-wall shit to throw people off balance.
“Sorry, Pres,” I say, stepping into her space and planting my boots firmly onto the gravel right next to her. “Shouldn’t have ignored your call.”
Pope chuckles, his heavy shoulders relaxing slightly. “Don’t worry about it, Tomcat. If it were a code-red emergency, that’d be a different story. Cypher found the bastard who ambushed Marigold in the alley. Malice, Cyanide, and Butcher already went out and dragged him in. He’s currently tied to a chair down at the Slop N’ Chop.”
The playfulness vanishes. Marigold freezes beside me, her body locking up at the mention of her attacker. I lace my fingersthrough hers, squeezing her cold hand tight. “It’s okay, baby. I’m right here. You don’t have to face him if you don’t want to.”
My grip pulls her from the dark trance. She jerks her head up, eyes blazing. “No. I want to. Ineedto know why he came after me, Tomcat. I need to know who he meant when he said they warned me away from you.” She spins to Pope, jaw set. “Please, Pope. Let me in that room.”
Pope fixes her with a calculating, intense stare, weighing the risk. “Can you actually handle it, sunshine?”
Marigold snorts, folding her arms tight over her chest in absolute defiance. “Do you have Jack the Dripper inside?”
“He’s sitting right behind the bar.”
“Then I can handle anything you throw at me. Just let me take my little buddy along for the ride.”
Pope glances over at me, a huge, dark smile splitting his rugged face. “You heard the lady, Tomcat. Take her inside to retrieve her little champion, and let’s go pay this motherfucker a proper visit.”
“Hold up, Pres. We need to talk to you about some heavy shit first. Shit the two of us just figured out,” I interject, my voice dropping into a deadly, flat tone that immediately kills the humor. “We’re gonna need Cypher to drop everything, do his thing, and locate Damon.”
Pope’s brow furrows, his frame tensing. “Damon Katzis? As in the ghost from Greece she supposedly put in the dirt? The one who might or might not be back from the dead?”
“Not might be, Pope. Heis,” Marigold states, her voice chillingly devoid of fear, vibrating with pure, focused malice.
I pull my phone out of my kutte, flip through the local surveillance files until I locate the exact shot from the ports, and pass the screen over to him.
Marigold moves quickly to stand at Pope’s flank, her finger tapping hard against the glass. “That’s him right there. That’sDamon. See that tiny, heart-shaped pigmentation loss in his right iris? I’ve stared up at that exact defect too many damn times while he was hitting me to ever mistake it for anyone else.”
Pope stares down at the pixelated image, his chest expanding with a slow breath. He cuts his cold gaze directly to mine. “You’re telling me this motherfucker is actively doing high-level port business with the Saint's Outlaws? Using our own operations to get closer to a girl under our protection? Slipping into our goddamn territory?”
The dead, hollow tone in his voice tells me just how dangerous he’s become. An angry Pope is the last man anyone wants to negotiate with. That version of our President is a bloodthirsty psycho who is impossible to leash once he’s moving.
“Do you know where Ghost is holed up right now?” I ask, knowing Pope usually keeps a tight tracking grid on our business partners.
“Fuck no,” Pope snarls, his grip tightening on the edge of the porch railing. “Cypher’s been running Keres to ping his location, but the bastard is coming up entirely dark. He’s living up to his goddamn name.”
“Cypher should still be able to squeeze a lead out of these port photos,” I press, the enforcer in me taking over the math. “Someone standing on that dock with Ghost has got to know his safe house layout. Ghost is the only asset who is going to give us the answers we’re hunting for.”
“Fine,” Pope barks, handing the phone back to me. “While you grab your lady’s little weapon, I’ll head back to the monitors and check in with Cypher regarding Ghost and his inner circle. Meet me at the trucks in five.”
As soon as Pope storms inside, Marigold slips her fingers back into mine, swinging our hands. She skips ahead, manic excitement for her reunion with Jack the Dripper eclipsing the looming interrogation. I should probably be jealous she’s moreeager to hold that toy than me, but it’s honestly kind of cute how she’s established a completely violent, unhinged relationship with a piece of silicone that had been engineered for a totally different purpose.
The moment we cross the clubhouse threshold, she lets out an adorable, high-pitched squeal, drops my hand, and claps her palms together. She bolts behind the bar, diving for the top shelf where the pink monster waits.
I follow, breathless laughter bubbling up as I take in the weapon’s makeover. Scorch wasted no time stitching it a custom leather kutte, complete with a tiny rocker patch that reads‘Pussy Beater’in silver thread. Marigold wanted to glue on googly eyes, but Malice went further and had D-Bag tattoo cartoon eyes right into the silicone so they’d never fly off in a fight. Still not enough for their twisted minds, though. Malice and Marigold insisted on a thick seventies porn mustache, so D-Bag inked one across the tip, too.