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“I can tell if someone is lying to me. Not just the big ones, but white lies as well. Makes dating even more difficult than it already is, but at least I don’t waste time on complete losers.”
“Is that why you chose a law career?” Cleo asks.
Sasha laughs. “I wanted to be a cop, but figured Hex wouldn’t like that much. I know the club isn’t a typical 1%er, but I can’t imagine he’d want a cop in the family.”
“Hex would have been fine with you being a cop,” I protest. “The San Diego Chapter has a cop. I think his name is Shield. Also, the Enforcer in Las Vegas is dating a cop. Although, as your mother, I’m glad you didn’t decide to become a cop. Hex already gives me gray hairs.”
As the technicians finish our treatments, I see Cleo checking her phone.
“No word from Skylar?” I ask her.
She shakes her head and looks at me. “This isn’t like her. She should be here by now, or at least called to say she would not make it. Do you sense anything?”
I close my eyes and concentrate on Skylar. She feels trapped, and she’s angry, but I don’t sense danger, which is what I tell Cleo.
“Maybe she’s stuck in traffic,” Cleo muses.
“Call Pirate. See if he can track her,” I suggest.
Cleo calls our tech guy, but it goes straight to voicemail.
“Let’s get back to the clubhouse,” Shayna suggests.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: DIXIE
I sit in Church and stare at the Demon Dawg logo etched into the table as Hex lays out my sins to my brothers. While I want to sneak a peek to gauge their reactions, I’m scared to see their disappointment or disgust. Chiding myself for being a coward, I glance around the table and see nothing but emotionless faces. Not sure why I thought I’d see anything different. These men know how to keep their thoughts to themselves. Hex ends his speech with a description of the current mess I’m in. How I’ve taken the job to kill Hex’s father and twin brother.
“Well, shit, what are we going to do? Can we fake the assassinations?” Zip asks.
I stare at the man, because that wasn’t the first question I was expecting. ‘Should he hand in his kutte?’ Or, ‘should we take his kutte off his cold, dead body?’ Those were the questions I was expecting.
“I’ve asked Vladimir to come back to the clubhouse so we can discuss this,” Hex says. “Before he gets here, we need to decide Dixie’s fate.”
“What’s to decide?” Lake asks.
“He put all of us in danger,” Abra says.
“How?”
“If the cops or one of his targets discovered who he was and where he was, they’d have come looking for revenge,” Abra explains. “We would have been blind-sided.”
“Why did you keep it a secret?” Zip asks. The question is more curious than accusatory.
“Plausible deniability,” I tell him. “I’m good, one of the best, but that doesn’t mean I’ll never make a mistake and get caught. Every job has a certain level of risk and the more jobs I do, the more likely someone will spot a pattern or a trail that I didn’t know I was leaving behind. One that leads the authorities to my door. I hoped that by keeping you unaware of my work, that if the worst happened, you wouldn’t get caught in the fallout.”
“With all due respect to my VP, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Pirate says. “Do you really think the cops wouldn’t believe we were involved? We all wear the 1% patch. We may not be hard-core criminals, but we aren’t Boy Scouts.”
I open my mouth to argue, but then close it again. “You’re right. I thought I was protecting you when I kept silent. When I first joined the club, I was already an assassin and used to keeping it a secret.”
“Too bad, we could have helped you,” Pirate muses.
We all turn to look at him. “How so?” Hex asks.
“Well, think about it. Being part of a motorcycle club is the best cover. We have clubhouses across the United States, in all the big cities. You wouldn’t have to rent a hotel room, so that’s one less paper trail for the authorities to follow. They couldn’t track your travel either if we rode as a group and paid for expenses via the club credit card. We could serve as your alibi if they got that far, which I doubt they would. Plus, the other clubs could help with surveillance of the mark. They all have plenty of experience disposing of bodies.”
I open my mouth to comment, but close it again. Pirate’s right. Many of the challenges I face as an assassin would disappear once I make use of the resources and the anonymity the club offers.
“You realize you fucked up, right?” Abra asks with a smirk.
