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“Fuck you, asshole.”
Rook laughed all the way into the garage where it echoed back at him.
Chapter Fifteen
Six blocks separated Dino’s Diner from the garage. Both businesses were on Main Street with the diner closer to the center of town and Dutch’s Garage at the west end. While taking the long stroll back, Jemma took her time checking out the businesses along the way. Usually when she came home for a visit, Lottie wanted to make her homecooked meals and Deke and Judge would join them, so Jemma rarely went into town. She wasn’t aware how much things had changed over the years.
All for the better, from what she could remember.
The town was still quaint, and for the most part quiet, but Jemma noticed more tourists were coming to Main Street to shop the locally-owned businesses. Most came to the area to enjoy the nearby Pennsylvania Grand Canyon whether by hiking, biking, horseback riding or whatever.
Jemma didn’t have to wait for dinner for Cage to tell her about the mountain clan, Reilly spilled the info she knew. Reese’s younger sister admitted she didn’t know everything but knew some key things.
Like the basics of what happened to Autumn. How Sig saved her. About Levi. About one of the local cops and his wife, an OB/GYN, adopting the baby Sig’s ol’ lady had by the former leader of the Shirley clan.
She learned the Shirleys considered themselves a “sovereign nation,” a group who didn’t follow any laws but their own.
All of it sounded kind of worrisome.
Reilly said something big went down on the mountain after the clan abducted an already pregnant Autumn, but none of the guys would tell the twenty-four-year-old exactly what.
If the current club was anything like the Originals, the retribution probably involved mass death and destruction.
She’d have to ask Judge, who, as the club’s enforcer, would know the details. Whether he’d share them or not was another story. Jemma wasn’t a member and also being a woman, he’d probably tell her that club business wasn’t her business.
However, Dyna was her business, and the baby was club property.
Hearing about these “inbred hillbillies” who cooked meth, made moonshine and had a stash of guns made Jemma worry even more about her brother stepping into their father’s boots as sergeant at arms. Her brother was responsible for the safety of everyone under the Fury’s protection. That also meant if any violence went down he’d be front and center.
Deacon probably would be, too.
Lottie fretted over and despised the fact they were both wearing Fury colors. Jemma could see why. This wasn’t a weekend riding club, this was a motorcycle club. This wasn’t a social club, this was a lifestyle.
One they’d protect any way they’d need to.
Jemma only hoped Judge did it with a cooler head and more smarts than Ox. Trip was nothing like his father Buzz who ruled the original Blood Fury with an abusive fist. She’d heard a few comments here and there about Trip having the same temper as the former Fury president. So did Sig. But both were doing their best to keep it under control.
Trip, for the club and Stella. Sig, for his “Red.”
Their women seemed important to them, unlike the way the Originals treated theirs. That made Jemma optimistic, but it didn’t settle her fears.
She had no idea if the Shirley clan existed when Buzz and Ox ruled the Fury. If they had, she didn’t remember hearing about them, not even as a kid growing up with Lottie and Walter. Possibly, they’d kept to themselves or had been, at the time, a much smaller group.
Hearing everything Reilly told her over lunch turned Dino’s famous loaded fries in Jemma’s gut to a slab of concrete.
Jemma might have waited until later for Cage to explain if Reilly hadn’t seen a sketchy vehicle slowly traveling down Main Street toward the end of town where all the chain stores, like Walmart and Target, were located. Justice Bail Bonds was also at that end of town.
“Did you notice that rust bucket had no plate?” Reilly had whispered after the primered, four-door sedan with the missing exhaust passed them.
“I wasn’t paying attention.” She was too busy checking out the new stores in town and window shopping.
“I wonder if a couple of Shirleys were in that car. I’ve been keeping an eye out ever since I was warned about them. The boys said their cars are never inspected or registered. They don’t have driver’s licenses or insurance, either. They never bring their vehicles to Dutch’s to get repaired, they do it themselves.”
Jemma had looked for the car but by then it was too far in the distance with a cloud of smoke billowing from behind it. “Why do you need to keep an eye out?”
“Because they hate the club,” the blonde answered.
“Because of Autumn?”
“Yes. And whatever the club did to them to get her back after they stole her.”
