“Dad, Bigfoot didn’t take Colleen.”
“Don’t lie for him. Or hell, maybe he’s lying to you. It’s obvious it was him after our conversation earlier.”
“I promise you that it wasn’t him.”
“I don’t believe you.” Bigfoot took my cell from me and put it on speaker, so my dad could hear him too. “We do not have Colleen. If we were going to take the bitch, it sure as fuck wouldn’t be on the back of one of our bikes.”
“Why the hell not?”
“That’s a sacred space meant for our women only, Brian. Your daughter, as my ol’ lady, will be the only woman to ride behind me unless we have a daughter of our own one day. Then she can ride there too. Not all clubs honor that tradition, but our chapter of the Kings of Anarchy does. No one rides with us unless they plan to be together for life.”
“Then who in the hell rode off with my wife?”
“My guess would be one of the Mojave Devils.”
“Check with Brady. He can pull the security camera footage,” I suggested. Bigfoot pulled out his phone and texted someone. As he was doing that, Dad started to cry into the phone.
“I need help, Sammy. You need to come home and help me with Ryan. He’s beside himself because his mom left him here alone. I don’t know what to do to calm him down, and I think… I think there are things missing that I need to check on.”
Bigfoot looked up from his phone and shook his head. “That’s not going to happen, Brian. Sammy isn’t safe on your property right now. If you want her help, you can come to the clubhouse with your boy, and she can help if she chooses to. Her safety comes first, and that is something I will not compromise on.”
“How is she not safe at home with her family?” Dad asked.
“You left your wife in charge of the campground for days. There is a camper who checked in during that time. An assassin put three rounds in your daughter’s bed, and she was forced to do something about that. There are cameras planted in her home. They were watching her and all of that was done right under your nose. Sammy will be here where my club can keep her safe. That shit is not up for further discussion.”
An hour later,my dad showed up with Ryan and informed us that Colleen had cleaned out their joint checking and savings accounts. “She also took copies of the family trust paperwork.” That caught Bigfoot’s attention, and he hopped back on his phone.
“Baffle, need Doc here with some DNA test kits.” He listened for a minute and hung up. “We need to test you and Ryan to see if he’s your son.”
“What the fuck do you mean? Fuck you. Of course, he’s my son.”
I shook my head. “You never had a test done. You believed her and we know she’s a lying bitch.”
“She wouldn’t leave her own son behind with me if he wasn’t mine.”
“We really don’t know what she would do at this point, Dad.”
“I know you’re pissed, but you’re going to have to hang on to that anger for a little while. If Ryan was your son, then he would stand to inherit the entire family trust if something happened to all of you.” As Bigfoot explained, Colleen’s plan became crystal clear in my mind.
I turned to my dad and took hold of his hands. “It means they kill all of us and they can use Ryan to take control of the land.”
Dad folded in on himself and made a horrible noise that held equal notes of regret and frustration. “How could I have had a fucking monster living with me all this time? I married that woman.”
“We need to get Uncle Brady and Josh here, now,” I told Bigfoot. He nodded his agreement.
“Fair warning, that means Lis will be coming in too, since she’s with Josh.”
“What?”
“That was the other thing I needed to tell you earlier,” he admitted. “The real reason she lied to you is because she’s been seeing Josh in secret for a year. They didn’t think any of us would be able to deal with the family dynamic it would create if we were a couple too. So, she wanted to make sure that you wouldn’t be interested in me.”
“What family dynamic?” I asked. Bigfoot smirked and then laid it out for me. “As your Uncle Josh put it, he would be Hawk’s Uncle-Stepdaddy and you would become his Cousin-Stepmom.”
It was so ridiculous that I burst out laughing. “Oh my God, that’s kind of hilarious.” I continued to laugh and some of the people around me joined in. “Why do the Morton men all have really shitty taste in women, though?” I asked. My dad winced, but I wasn’t sorry for saying it. He had ruined our relationship for a woman whose whole goal was to have a baby with him, kill us all off, and steal our land.
“Why would she leave her son behind, if he was the key to obtaining the land?”
“That’s why I want Doc to run their DNA.”
