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Among other reasons he was wrong for her, he was none of those things.
Mav grunted in distaste. “I hate those assholes. Bunch of entitled pussies.”
“So who’d be good enough for her, then?”
For a moment, Mav only stared. Then, shockingly, something not too far off from a grin landed on his face.
Dex might have grinned back, but for his stitched lips. “Nobody, right?”
A heavy sigh gusted from Mav’s chest. “You gotta understand, man. Kelsey is … I love all my kids with everything I got. If you said I had a favorite kid I’d call you a dirty liar and knock your lights out. Dunc and Hannah, they make me nuts sometimes, but they’re amazing. They are parts of me I would die without. Like vital organs. But Kelse … she’s special. Maybe it’s because I was inside when she was born, for years all she was was a wish, an ache, and then when I got out I had to fight so hard to make things right with Jenny and get to be Kelsey’s dad. But I didn’t have to fight her. She loved me right away. Saw I was her daddy and just jumped into my arms. She’s just so goddamn sweet, sees the good in everybody, tries so hard to do good in the world.”
He was quiet for a moment, staring at the steering wheel. Then he continued, “Hannah loves all the worst parts of us. She thinks the outlaw shit is exciting. Being in the Bulls family is turning her into a hellion. Duncan is one of us now, and that worries me every day. But Kelsey came up in the same family and sees nothing but the good. That kind of innocence is fragile, Dex. I never want anything to happen in her life that dims her light. That Greg guy—he almost did it.”
“And he got dead for it.” Dex didn’t point out that he’d killed him; it didn’t matter whose bullet it was. The whole club had killed that bastard.
“Yeah … yeah.” Seeming to realize he’d shared a lot more than he’d intended, Mav shook his head sharply and turned back to the binocs.
Dex sat and processed all Maverick had shared.
Finally he said, “I see her like that, too. Her light? I see it. I’ve … I guess I’ve liked her as more than a club kid since the day I first took one of my dogs to her clinic. She’s so … good.” And beautiful, but that didn’t seem an appropriate thing to say to her father.
Lowering the binocs to rest on the steering wheel, Mav sighed again and dropped his head. Dex sat quietly, keeping an eye on their surroundings.
“Heads up. Got a bike—three bikes coming up behind us, about two blocks back.”
Maverick looked up at the rearview. He squinted and leaned in. “Got ‘em. Damn, your eyes are sharp.”
And Maverick’s were not. Now the sound of the bikes was clear. Not Harleys. Japanese crotch rockets. Fucking poseurs.
They scooted farther down in their seats and waited for the bikes—two Kawa sport bikes and a Honda bobber. The dudes on them wore kuttes with, yes, blue-flamed Hades on the backs. And fucking rockers declaring OKLAHOMA as their territory. Yeah, he meant to make those cocksuckers eat their rockers.
They parked their bikes on the driveway. One of the guys went to the closed garage door and heaved it open. The angle wasn’t good to see more than a foot or so inside the garage, but it was obviously full of stolen crap. Dex could make out a few stacks of boxed electronics.
The three men went into the garage, and the door went back down.
They’d just opened the overhead door with all that loot right there. Either this neighborhood was really nonchalant about illegal activity—quite possible—or these assholes were really stupid—even more possible.
“Maybe it’s not a clubhouse or somebody’s house,” Maverick mused. “Maybe it’s a warehouse.”
“Eight didn’t say anything about a fencing operation, but that’s what it looks like to me. Or I guess it could be another arm of their resale operation.”
“Which is what fencing is.”
Dex shot an irritated look at Mav, but he was peering through the binoculars and didn’t see it. “Yeah, I know what a fence is. I’m wondering if they’re stealing stolen goods, getting in the way of fence transactions like they’re getting in the way of courier deals.”
Now Maverick dropped the binocs and focused on Dex. “Fencing is Hounds work, too. If that’s what these idiots are doing, they’re horning in on all the big Hounds business.”
That would suggest that the ‘Hade’s Army MC’ was trying to position itself as significant players and possibly angling to supplant the Street Hounds.
Which meant that the pushback should come from the Hounds. But these assholes were in kuttes with rockers and on ‘bikes,’ and that made it Bulls’ business.
Hell, maybe they meant to take out the Bulls, too, and claim Tulsa for themselves. That would be some serious overreach for these few idiots in their stupid colors.
“We’re not gonna get enough intel sitting here,” he said to Maverick. “We either need to go up there and get some trouble started, or come back when the place is empty again and nose around. I vote Plan B. Unless we go in guns blazing, neither of us is in condition to take on three dudes on their own ground right now.”
Maverick considered that and finally nodded. “I want to hang out a while longer. There were seven guys in that Facebook picture thing. I want to see if we can put eyes on them all, get plate numbers Apollo can run.”
“Works for me. Hey—we good?”
Maverick turned and faced Dex. He stared for a long time before he said, “Yeah, we’re good. But if you hurt her …”
Dex understood that Kelsey’s father had just given him the closest thing to permission he could muster. Did that change anything? It didn’t change anything he’d done. It didn’t make him a better man.
But maybe being with Kelsey would.
“Soup,” he said to her father. “I understand.”
