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“Oh, I couldn’t possibly.” I shook my head. “I’ve never done something like that before.”
She tapped her finger against the drawing. “Trust me, your skills are more than up to the task.”
“Do you really think so?”
Bridget came over to look at my sketch. “Definitely. You guys should go talk to him now. I can take care of breakfast.”
Erin didn’t hesitate to take her up on the offer. She snatched my pad off the table and wrapped her fingers around my wrist to tug me to my feet. “C’mon, don’t be shy. I’ve been dealing with a grumpy husband for way too long, and you’re my ticket to being the one who gets to solve his problem for him when it’s usually the other way around.”
“Well, I guess when you put it that way, I’d love to help.” Especially when I owed the Silver Saints for keeping me safe after what my dad tried to do to one of them.
8
Knight
“She fits you,” Mac said gruffly as he stroked his beard and stared at the door our women had disappeared through.
“Yeah, she does,” I agreed with a grin. “How soon do you think we could get her a vest?”
Mac grabbed his cell and hit a button, then waited. When the other person picked up, he grunted, “Scout, stop by Rider’s office and have him check our inventory of property vests on your way here.” He listened, then grunted again and hung up.
“Thanks.”
Mac nodded. “Cash dropped off the files last night. Only managed to get through a small chunk. Scout rounded up a few brothers to help us get through them faster. I want to know who this asshole is. I understand that your first priority is protecting your woman—”
“Damn fucking straight,” I growled.
Mac tossed a look that clearly said to shut the fuck up. “Like I was saying, I understand that your first priority is protecting your woman—as it should be. But we aren’t going to stop with just her. This guy clearly needs to be taken down and his operation dismantled. Just from what I’ve learned so far, he’s got his fingers in everything from human trafficking to drugs to weapons. I’d be willing to bet my cut that he makes a habit of finding weak people in the right places that he can exploit and keep them doing his bidding through blackmail and intimidation.”
The next two hours proved him right. Timkins hadn’t managed to break all of the coded information, so our knowledge had holes. Still, we had a lot to go on. Hack took the files to run through a program he’d built that would organize and catalog them into a database for us to use, particularly for his web crawlers.
“Cash, take Doc and go nose around, see if there is any chatter about what might happen with Bickle’s kid when Timkins doesn’t come through for them. If there is a jailbreak, or whatever, planned, I want to know about it.” Cash nodded at Mac and left.
“I called a couple of our informants from some of the…less than upstanding clubs nearby,” Scout announced. “Grey’s gonna take a handful of prospects and send them on meets with them while he does his thing with the computers in the van.”
Mac handed out some other assignments before finally looking at me. “I’ll keep you updated. For now, go take care of your woman. Better get her used to MC life since it’s her future. Besides, I know you’re slammed with Christmas orders.”
I wanted to argue, to tell him to give me something that would help move this along and ensure Kiara’s safety. But he wasn’t wrong on either count. I was a little backed up at the studio, and ensuring Kiara understood an old lady's life and fit in here was important to keeping her.
That made me wonder how things were going with Bridget and Erin. I hadn’t intended to be away from her for so long. I hoped that since we hadn’t been disturbed—other than Bridget dropping off Mac’s breakfast and a plate for me—it meant Kiara had hit it off with the girls.
When I exited Mac’s office, I made a beeline for the kitchen. I was anxious to see my girl, and I doubted I’d last more than a few minutes before I was dragging her sexy ass back to bed. Just thinking about her delicious curves had my groin tightening.
Since breakfast was long over, I didn’t expect to find Kiara still in the kitchen but decided to check there first. As I’d suspected, they were no longer there, but none of the current occupants had any idea where they’d gone. They weren’t in the lounge or the activity room, or the kids play area. Figuring she might have lain down for a nap—she hadn’t had a lot of sleep the night before—I took the stairs two at a time to the room we were staying in. When she wasn’t there either, my mood plummeted. Where the fuck was she? I knew Erin and Bridget wouldn’t let her wander alone even though she was wearing my vest, so they had to be together. But no one seemed to know where that was. Until I checked the garage and found Rylee, Nova’s old lady and a talented mechanic, rolling out from underneath a car.
“Have you seen Bridget or Erin?” I asked impatiently.
Rylee grinned as she wiped her hands on a cloth. “Are you asking about those two or the knockout blonde with them?”
I mentally snapped at her for not just answering my damn question and trying my patience, but if Nova lurked anywhere near, he’d break my jaw if I did it out loud.
“Any of the three,” I grunted.
She laughed and pointed at a door that led from the garage bays to the back office of Silver Ink. “Nova mentioned that your lady is quite the talented artist. Apparently, Patriot has taken an interest in her.”
I hadn’t been aware that Kiara was an artist, and I felt a wave of fury that someone else was appreciating her talents before me. I was even angrier with myself for not knowing every single thing there was to know about my woman. This wasn’t rational, considering the time we’d been together, but nothing about Kiara and me was rational.
I was also aware that Rylee was purposely egging me on, but fuck me if I could keep from letting it get under my skin.
