Britta smiled.“Lucky me.”
Swift’s mouth twitched as she moved away from him.
“Coming!”Britta called to Tempi.
The two women disappeared behind the bar, already talking about buns, cheese, and who the hell had eaten the last jar of pickles.
I stayed at the bottom of the stairs with my arms crossed and my ears open, listening for the bathroom door.
The club could joke and grumble and pretend we were having a normal afternoon with burgers on the grill and women in the kitchen, but none of us had forgotten what waited outside.
The Ledger.
Goldie’s envelope.
The gunfire from last night.
The fact that she had run to us instead of the police.
She knew something.
And until I knew exactly who had her scared out of her mind, I wasn’t moving from the bottom of those stairs.
Chapter Four
Goldie
The burger was ridiculous.There wasn’t another word for it.
I had eaten half of it before I realized I’d barely taken a breath between bites.It was messy, greasy, loaded with cheese, and exactly the kind of food I hadn’t known I needed until Tempi set the plate in front of me and told me to eat before I fell over.
I hadn’t argued.I wasn’t stupid.
The beer helped, too.
I didn’t drink much, not because I didn’t want to, but because I didn’t trust my body not to collapse into a nap right there at the table if I got too comfortable.One long sleep did not magically fix days of fear, stress, and running on fumes.
But the burger?The burger did its part.
I leaned back in my chair and sighed, staring down at the half-eaten masterpiece on my plate.“That might be the best burger I’ve ever had.”
Tempi stood beside Twister with one hand resting on his shoulder.She looked entirely too comfortable in a room full of bikers, bullet holes, and tension.“That good, huh?”
“That good,” I confirmed.I glanced toward the kitchen where Britta was cleaning up.“If you two cook like that at The Badger’s Den, I’ll definitely become a regular.”
Britta’s voice called from the kitchen.“I heard that, and I support this plan.”
Tempi smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes.“Sounds good.You’ll just have to wait until we get the place fixed up and open again.”
The easy noise dipped—not fully gone, but enough that I felt it.Enough that everyone remembered why The Badger’s Den wasn’t open.Why the clubhouse had plywood over a busted window.Why Swift was standing by the door like he expected someone to come through it at any second.Why no one looked fully relaxed, even though everyone had a plate and a beer.
“Fucking Ledger fucked everything up,” Method muttered from the bar.
He sat with Gramps, Nugget, and Sully, all of them close enough to hear every word said at the table.Not that anyone in this room seemed like the type to miss anything.
“No lie there,” Sully said, lifting his beer.“They’ve been a pain in our ass since we rolled into town.”
“Pain in the ass is too nice,” Hodge called from the couch.He sat forward with his elbows on his knees, scowl firmly in place.“They burned the bar, shot at us, screwed with permits, and keep hiding behind paperwork and money.That’s coward shit.”
