Getting in and out of the car to open the gate was pissing him the fuck off. All the unnecessary steps were dumb. He had to have the securest building on the damn block as far as he was concerned. Three federal agents lived on the property. All the cameras… Goddamn the government being so close was hard to stomach. The thought had shooting stars sprinkling his vision.
Ask him a month ago, or any other time in his life, if he’d ever straddle the narc line between the club and the government, and he’d have laughed in your face then pummeled the shit out of you for being so damn stupid.
Justifications spun through his head. Sniffing around Cash’s fantastic ass didn’t mean he’d turned. He was playing both sides against the middle. He did that shit all the time. Besides, the feds knew everything going on. He hadn’t told them a damn thing they didn’t already know.
Inviting Cash into the room where they held church, then watching him set up surveillance after getting fucked so good inside the room…
Dev winced at the thought. He’d crossed the line. No way around it.
He let the gate hang open as his phone began vibrating in the passenger seat as he continued driving to his parking spot. He’d had a hell of a day. Every minute had been spent on getting the girls settled into their new lives. The public school system sucked. Way too much unnecessary paperwork. To unenroll them in one school and enroll them into another had taken two-thirds of his day. The girls hadn’t helped with all the hugging, tears, and sadness they gave to their friends as they cleaned out their desks and cubbies.
Meeting the real estate agent to sell the Sunnydale house took the rest of the day. Tena’s tacky furnishings were gonna be a problem if he wanted to get top dollar. He needed to get the prospects over there to clean up the place and toss her shit out. Then he’d have to spend a pretty penny renting some fancy staging furniture. So much bullshit. He better get that extra fifty grand out of the deal that the real estate agent had promised.
The day came with a surprising amount of emotion for Dev. When he’d originally bought the house, his vision was clear. He saw the house as one of those super-functional sitcom family homes. Fresh paint, pretty blooming flowers, a white picket fence for his kids. He never suspected their past would follow them. He should have known better. Life always found a way to kick you in the balls.
The property became a “pushing up daisies” kind of place. Whoever got the home needed to concentrate on putting some happy back in its walls.
Honestly, he hadn’t wanted to let the house go. He struggled to sign the contract with the real estate agent. As fucked as his life had gotten, he still wanted all the things that house represented. Instead of Tena being his partner, he easily envisioned Cash in her place and that scared the hell out of him. The changing visions were crystal clear in his head though. An obtainable reality.
Right. If Dev lived through the end of this case, his prize was Cash leaving for the next assignment. The most likely result of all this was Dev coming to the end of his life. It could be the other way around. Cash could die and Dev would live on, but it hurt too badly to think of it that way, so he didn’t.
He had to get the girls’ lives settled before too much longer. He needed to set up a will. His mom needed to have a hand in helping to raise them… Maybe Keyes. Lock it down tight so Tena didn’t fuck with them too much by coming and going. Keyes wasn’t a half bad idea. He’d take the job seriously. Let his mom be the grandmother she was so good at being. Those thoughts hurt too. More than anything, he wanted to be there as Abi and Mae grew into young women.
If Keyes was their new father figure, he was going to have to learn how to properly spell Mae’s name… His heart lightened at how Keyes remembered their birthdays and Christmas, never late with the gifts, yet always misspelled Mae’s name, all the cards addressed to May.
He parked the car at the back of his building and picked up the cell phone. Ironically, he saw a message from Keyes. Shit, maybe that was why he had Keyes so much on the mind. Keyes was going after someone. A prospect… Fuck. He hadn’t thought twice about their conversation earlier that evening. He opened the text with his thumb as he cut the engine off.
“I fucked up. He’s beat down. I have his patch.”
Dev’s mind raced. Thankfully that was a fast process. “Cummings?” Dev typed. The prospect who had been unexpectedly released from prison today. Keyes was good and pissed off about it.
“Yeah. With witnesses.”
Dev knocked himself in the head with the butt of his palm. He should have ditched the real estate agent and gone with Keyes. The one thing they didn’t need right now was witnesses.
“Fuck, Bro, what were you thinking?” Dev asked.
In today’s world, witnesses came with cell phone cameras. If that shit got recorded, Keyes was in trouble.
“I got his patch. Whatever happens, he ain’t gettin’ this one back.”
Anger hit him from another direction. This was where the club’s bullshit came back to mind. Members being voted in, prospects moving up, all without proper protocol and the blessing of every brother. It was horseshit. Since he was back in the second position, his muscle was flexing further, and he could face the problem head on. Anybody voted in without everyone’s approval was gone.
The other thing he was going to do was make sure all those motherfuckers treated Keyes with respect every time they crossed paths. Keyes could be a fire-breathing dragon, and they still needed to walk up and dap the guy.
Anger made him jab his finger down on the call button, done with texting.
“Yeah?” Keyes answered.
“Lay low,” Dev instructed in no uncertain terms. “If you need somewhere to go, come to…” Well fuck, where did he say? “Holly’s.”
He decided to keep it simple. Keyes wouldn’t need a place to stay anyway.
Keyes stayed silent. They both had secrets from one another. That needed to end soon, too.
“Tell your old man for me?” Keyes asked.
“Fuck, man, I should’ve gone,” Dev said. His head hit back against his headrest.
