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“Fuck off, Kel,” he grumbled. A low chorus of snickers rumbled around him.
“I don’t see how you’re late so much,” Saxon grumbled. “You live down the damn hall.”
Kellen laughed. “Only when he’s not sowing his seeds in Gia’s garden.”
Zaxx’s spine turned to steel as the offense of that crack shot through him.
The whole Keep went instantly quiet, except for the low, sharp rumble of an actual growl coming from Isaac. Darwin, seated beside Kellen, hit him upside the head.
“You make another crack like that, asshole,” Zaxx said before Isaac could voice a threat of his own, “and I will rip your balls off with a fucking pipe wrench.”
Kellen looked around, then sat back and lifted his hands. “Yeah, okay. Sorry.” His tone was more sullen than regretful.
Zaxx looked to Isaac and found a set of familiar green eyes waiting to meet his gaze. Since the summer, the old man had been accepting of Zaxx’s frequent presence on his property and in his daughter’s company, but his expression now was so dark and angry, Zaxx didn’t know if this prolonged eye contact meant they were united against Kellen’s bullshit or if Isaac thought Zaxx should have gone harder, or if, conversely, he was feeling territorial in the defense of his daughter.
Eventually, Isaac nodded briskly and shifted his attention back to the head of the table. Zaxx decided that meant Option A: they were on the same side.
Badger didn’t say anything about Zaxx’s late arrival or about Kellen’s ill-advised crack. He waited for the table to focus and picked up where he’d apparently left off. “As I was saying, Dub and I are gonna meet one of these guys next week, in Ellis’s office, and we’ll hear ‘em out.”
Ellis Hopkins was nominally the mayor, elected by the townspeople. Officially. In reality, Ellis didn’t do anything without the Horde’s approval, and he did the Horde’s bidding. Everybody in town understood that, and most were fine with the arrangement.
If Badger was meeting some ‘guy’ in Ellis’s office, that guy had to be an outsider, who thought the mayor was actually in charge.
Out of context and deeply confused, Zaxx turned to Thumper, sitting at his side. With a look, he asked for help.
Thumper leaned over to mutter, “Some company wants to put a strip mall in where the old tractor repair place is. They want to buy up the block of houses behind it, too.”
“People live in those houses,” Zaxx pointed out.
“Yeah, Dom already brought that up.”
The tractor repair place had been closed for years. Nobody had claimed the property after the owner died, and eventually ownership had reverted to the town. They hadn’t figured out what to do with it yet.
Don Keyes had been an old friend of the club, so the Horde been taking care of it since his death; it was in good repair for a long-abandoned building.
“Boys?” Double A called down the table. “Anything you want to share with the class?”
“We’re good,” Thumper said. “Just catchin’ Z up.”
“Sorry,” Zaxx added.
Badge gave him an irritated look but didn’t make a fuss. “What we need to talk about is if there’s any way we could be interested in a strip mall in town, and if so, what conditions do we need. I want to go into this meeting knowing where we stand. Ellis wanted a town meeting, but I said no. I want don’t want to hear from anybody else until we know if we’re interested.
“Don’s place has been standing there empty for a long time,” Bart pointed out. “I say it’s time we do something with it. Even with us watching over it, it’s starting to crumble. Hurts my heart every time I ride past. I worked there with Hav for a long time.”
If anybody was more of a Night Horde saint than Isaac, it was Havoc Mariano. He’d died long before Zaxx had come anywhere near the clubhouse, but it was impossible not to feel his presence even so.
“Yeah, but a strip mall?” Isaac said. “What’s goin’ in a place like that?”
“We’d need oversight and veto power over who gets leases,” Showdown added. “I don’t want one of those payday loan places or anything like that. Fuckin’ sharks.”
“We should also make sure SBC does the build,” Dom suggested.
Mel leaned forward and looked around the table. “Sounds to me like we’re halfway to sayin’ yes, if we’re already talkin’ about building it and deciding what goes in.”
“No, we’re not,” Badger countered. “I’m a no myself, and I don’t see them saying anything that’ll change my mind, but I’m not the only vote. What I want is all the info and ideas we can put together on the table, so I know what to get out of this suit-wearin’ asshole next week. So I want to talk about what it would have to look like for us to say yes.”
“I’m a no, too, for what it’s worth,” Mel said. “I’d be happier if somebody wanted to reopen a heavy-machine repair shop. Hell—could we do that? Cox—you could run it.”
