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He reached out and wrapped his hand around her slim wrist. “Kelsey …” There wasn’t another word loaded behind her name, so it just faded out.
“Yeah, I know.” She twisted her arm from his hold. “It’s fine. Bye, Dex.”
She hooked her bag over her shoulder. He wanted to say something, but nothing would come. He wanted to at least be a gentleman and walk her to his front door, but he could see she didn’t want him to. She wanted to be away from him.
So he sat where he was and let her go.
When she opened his bathroom door, all the dogs lay in the hallway, pointed at the bathroom. As they stood, Kelsey picked her way through them and walked away.
Dex stayed in his bathroom and called his dogs to him.
~oOo~
On Monday morning, four days before Christmas, Eight called the patches to the chapel. It wasn’t so unusual for the patches to meet at the table on the spur of the moment; it usually meant a new opportunity had come up, something big enough to need a vote. But it could also mean a new problem had cropped up.
To have an unexpected meeting this close to Christmas, though, that was unusual. Like seemingly most of the non-retail world, the last few weeks of the year were usually slow as molasses. Even outlaws, maybe especially outlaws, liked to take a break from the grind during the holidays. And winter was always slow for the Bulls. They’d ride in all but the harshest weather, but an Oklahoma winter was a pretty miserable time to be on a bike. Not a lot of snow most years—this year was an exception—but a whole lot of wind, near cold enough to flash-freeze a man’s balls.
Dex and Cooper had been in the bays when Eight had called everybody in, and Gunner had been doing his time in the shop. Now they three sat at the table with their kuttes over their Sinclair greens.
Maverick sat directly across from Dex and glared. As much as he could glare through a face that looked a lot like one of those funky tomatoes Mr. Clement grew and gave him bags of a couple times every summer. Heirlooms, he thought they were called. Purple and bulbous.
Not that his own face looked any better.
Eight sat between them, at the head of the table, and gaveled the meeting open. “Got a call from Samms last night, looking for help.”
Gary Samms, head of the Street Hounds, and Eight’s counterpart on the north side of town. The Hounds and the Bulls weren’t the only crews in town, but they were the onlygamein town. They’d been bitter enemies in a time before Dex’s, but an alliance between them had held for decades. Gotten shaky a couple times, but held.
“There trouble?” Apollo asked.
Eight leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “I don’t know if it’s trouble, so much as a pain in the ass. But Samms is looking to us because he says it’s cleanup we owe him.” His attention locked on JJ Jessup. “Cleanupyouowe, Jay, to be specific about it.”
A little over a year ago, JJ, his patch still bright white with newness, had gotten himself in big trouble, and nearly died, freelancing a stupid-ass, penny-ante drug deal. In addition to nearly dying, he’d nearly lost his patch and had been fined twenty percent of his club take for six months.
Now, he gaped at their president. “I’m flyin’ straight, Prez. I didn’t do nothin’ out of bounds.”
“I know, kid. Don’t soak your britches. It’s not new shit. The assholes you took the job from last year are making noise again, getting in the Hounds way.”
“So why don’t the Hounds deal with ‘em?” Zach, JJ’s older brother, asked.
Eight turned an irritated look at Zach. “These assholes started getting pesky after Jay’s fuckup. Samms doesn’t think his Hounds should take the risk for a problem a Bull made.” He looked around the table. “We’re here to vote on whether we agree, and if we do, how we handle it.”
Maverick sat forward. “We vote not to help the Hounds out, that’s a hit on the alliance.”
Dex was spitefully pleased to hear the thick, slurred texture of Maverick’s speech. He’d felt guilty and like he deserved the beating Maverick had dealt, all the way to the point he’d called him psycho. Now, he was glad the old man looked and sounded at least as rough as he himself did.
“I don’t want keeping that alliance solid to turn us into the Hounds’ bitch,” Cooper said.
“What’s the ask, exactly?” Simon asked.
“Just intel for now. Recon. Samms says these guys are sporting colors now, calling themselves an MC. He thinks they’re running a resale operation in Tulsa. On our turf and the Hounds’, but it’s the Hounds’ business they’re shitting on.”
The Hounds ran drugs. The Bulls were out of that business.
“Resale?” Duncan, their newest patch, asked. “How’s that?”
With a glance at Eight to make sure he wasn’t overstepping, Dex leaned forward and looked down the table at Maverick’s kid. “What those assholes did to you and Jay—roll a courier, repackage the goods, put it back out under a new mark, profit.”
Duncan’s jaw swung open. “Holy shit. Robbing the Hounds? That’s either metal as fuck or stupid as fuck.”
