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“Yeah, or something,” I laughed. “You suck at surprises. Let’s go.”
I pushed open the door, and Maddox stopped dead in his tracks as soon as he saw what we got him. My chest hit his back and my arms went around him, but I walked around to the front of him to admire his expression. Shock, awe, gratitude, and those child-like eyes that lit up whenever something miraculous happened.
“Congrats on your new job, Madd,” I whispered, smiling at him.
“You…” he paused to swallow. “You got me a shitty dirt bike?”
“Hell yeah!” Nate laughed. “The shittiest!” This dirt bike had nothing on his old one, but it was a bike, and he was grateful.
“Now you have your own way to work, Madd. No buses. No walking.” Xavi smiled at him.
“Someday, we’ll get you a better one, but for now—”
“Thank you,” he said to all of us. “I… it’s so fucking shitty!” he laughed like an asshole. “I love it.” I knew he battled a hundred emotions he wouldn’t want anyone witnessing, so he blinked them away.
“She’ll get ya to work,” Xavi said.
“Do I wanna know how you paid for this?” he asked.
Nope. While Seth was cleaning out Gary’s old office, he found a decent-sized baggie of coke. I sold that shit to Patrick Harris for enough to buy this bike. I shook my head at Maddox, telling him not to ask.
“Fuck it. I don’t even care. I’m taking it for a ride!” The smile on his face was worth everything.Everything.
“But… bed,” I quoted him.
He flipped me off. In a pair of blue sweats and nothing else, he swung his leg over the saddle and climbed on. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead. It’s been way too long since I rode.” He started it, and I even got chills at the sound. Fuck, it really had been too long since we got to ride. Someday, we’d get new bikes and be able to get back into motocross. Might die without it.
Maddox took off on the bike, heading down the gravel road of Garron Park for a bit of a pleasure cruise that half the park residents would complain about tomorrow.
“Ya did good, Dev,” Nate said, wrapping his arm around my shoulder to watch Maddox ride off. “Real good.”
I smiled.
Itwastheendof the workday on Monday, but I hadn’t gone back to the park yet. Maddox didn’t know what time he’d get off, but he said sometime in the evening. Long ass day for his first day there, and since I had to pawn his phone off, I had no way to reach him. He called me from the landline at lunch to tell me he liked the place, but it made him realize how out of shape he was. I missed him already and it’d only been one day.
I sat on the deck outside the shop, smoking a cigarette and staring at the number on my phone that led to my dad. I’d debated calling it so many times, just to see if he’d answer. Did he even have the phone attached to this number still? I mean, Davis had sent him a warning to this number, but other than that, I had no idea if my dad still sat at the other end of it. He might have ditched it, but I had no doubt he’d somehow heard about Maddox getting out. Jim Sawyer was a wanted man, so how the fuck had he been evading the cops for this long?
Nate handed me a coffee, looking over my shoulder. “You better have a plan if you reach out, Dev,” he scolded, sitting down with me. “You got your boy back. Don’t fuck it up now.”
I wouldn’t. I’d never make that mistake again. “But how do you know we’re safe while he’s still out there?”
“We don’t know that.”
I took a sip of the coffee and pocketed my phone. “What would you do?” I asked my brother. I did that shit now. I asked for advice and help because I knew I wasn’t capable of handling it all on my own. So fucking mature.
Nate shook his head, sighing out a long breath. “Fuck if I know, man. I don’t even understand how he hasn’t been found yet. He’s not that resourceful.”
“Would it hurt to try? It’s not like he can track us or anything. He knows exactly where we are. Probably has eyes on us. Maybe his sons are the only two who can bring him out of hiding.”
“He has always had a fucking issue with us. He’d come back to make sure we were beneath him if nothing else,” Nate agreed. “But if he does? What if he comes back on some murder warpath this time?”
“What if he already plans to?” I countered. “What if he’s been using all this time to plan something even more fucking elaborate than the setup on Madd? He won’t settle for that failure, and it makes me think something else is coming. Maddox wasn’t the only loose end, Nate. I’m worried you’ll be next.”
Nate looked out at the water. “I know. We could call the number and hope he picks up out of spite. Might be easier to know something is coming than to sit around wondering.”
I took another sip of the coffee. It was bitter, shitty, and lukewarm, but it was better than a beer. “I just need some sort of conclusion, you know? Nothing feels finished. Yeah, I’m grateful as fuck to have Madd back, but everything else feels up in the air, and it’s stressing me out. What if he takes you next?”
“Well, my boyfriend will have my back if something happens to me,” he joked. “You aren’t the only one with a Kane in your pocket.”
