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Cyn shot him a look. “Seriously? Save that BS for Hallmark movies.”
“Such a cynic. Are you sure that’s not what your mother meant to call you? Cynic instead of Cynbad?”
“Bite me, bitch.”
Bastion bared his teeth, his dark eyes sparkling. “Anytime, mean girl.”
“Children.”
Ros had returned and was standing on the bottom step. As Bastion gave Cyn a wink, moving to his desk to pick up an incoming call, Cyn went to Ros. “You worried about this?” Cyn nodded toward the front, where the truck was pulling away.
Ros’s lips pursed. “Just like you and Abby, Skye’s childhood taught her extreme self-reliance. If things don’t work out, it won’t be the first time she’s suffered a broken heart. But if it happens, we’ll be there with the first aid kit.”
She headed for the first-floor office area, but gripped Cyn’s shoulder briefly as she passed. While Cyn didn’t much care for touchy-feely gestures, Ros’s touch always held a firm reassurance, which was welcome now.
Cyn agreed with her sentiment. None of them liked to see the others suffer emotional blows, but each of them was resilient enough to get through it. Which meant the concern Cyn detected in their boss wasn’t about that. Skye getting in deeper with a man who had zero degrees of separation from a criminalorganization, one that had caused a murder in his own parking lot? That was far more likely to be keeping their boss up at night.
She wasn’t alone in that.
The Fallen Angels clubhouse was a well-patrolled compound, and Tiger noted those security measures had only increased since he’d last been here. At the main gate, a pair of watchful prospects he didn’t know stopped every vehicle to give it the once-over and confirm the identity of the drivers and passengers. It suggested shit was still going down, even weeks after Nicole’s death. Retaliation, realignments, power bids, all sorts of back-and-forth bullshit.
But as Nicole herself had said, it was never-ending. The security today might not even be related. It might be the norm.
When Tiger pulled up in his truck, he told them who he was. It still required a call to the clubhouse. As he waited, he was silent and tense. Skye’s hand moved to his thigh, rested there. He almost hoped Colt would tell them not to let him through. He could take her to a nice dinner somewhere and say fuck this.
Instead, the prospect got off the phone and gave him an unsmiling nod. Eyes curious but not unfriendly, so Colt had only confirmed Tiger was his brother and safe to let in. Not, “He’s a backstabbing piece of shit coward and traitor to the club,” his words last time they’d had a conversation of any significance.
Skye had switched the phone to its record setting and let him hold it. So when the prospect told him to head up to the farmhouse and the parking for vehicles was on the left, he’d glanced at the screen to understand what he’d said, then given the kid a nod and eased forward.
The prospects had barely given Skye a look except to note she was hot. In this world, old ladies and sweet butts, otherwise known as wives and biker groupies, could often fight like hellions, but they were almost never viewed as the same threat as the men.
An assumption Colt should really fix. Otherwise, during some raucous clubhouse party one night a woman with great tits and a hidden AR-15 might take out half the club.
He’d told Ros that Skye would be safe today, and he knew she would be. He still wasn’t sure if he felt good about her being anywhere near this world.
“Do any of them know you can’t hear?” Skye had taken the phone back to type the question and show it to him.
He shook his head. “My brother and I haven’t spoken directly since my father’s funeral a couple years ago.”
“Not even right after Nicole was killed? So Colt could find out what happened from someone who was there?”
“No.” Which had told Tiger his brother knew who had done it. Because of that, those who killed Nicole would be taken care of by the MC. The police knew that, too. Another reason they wouldn’t expend much effort on finding the perpetrators.
It just perversely rankled, that Nicole’s life didn’t count for much outside the MC world. Guilt by association.
As Colt’s brother, Tiger had that as well. Some brass newer to the district had put a tail on him for a week after he got out of the hospital. However, Del Hernandez, a cop whose Indian Scout was regularly tended at Tiger’s place, made that go away. Having to have someone vouch for his character chafed, but he’d been used to that most of his life.
And in that dark part of his heart he had to keep under wraps, he was glad Colt would kill those who’d hurt Nicole. If they’d hurt Aubrey, Tiger knew the harrowing truth; he would have gone back to the Fallen Angels and stood shoulder to shoulderwith Colt to cut apart the bastards piece by piece. It wouldn’t have mattered to him then, his bone-deep knowledge that the blood-taking never ended in the outlaw MC world.
He'd worked hard to distance himself from that world, but being born into it, the farthest he could get was only a step over the line. The police keeping an eye on him made total sense. They knew that truth as well as he did.
A year after he’d left it behind, an FBI guy had shown up on his doorstep, trying to get him back into it to work as an informant. Tiger had told him to get the fuck off his property and never come back.
He remembered the guy had left his card and given him a knowing look. “Better to go back for the right reasons than for the wrong ones. Being part of a crime family is the hardest habit to break. Makes meth and heroin look like Skittles, man.”
When Maryshka had written down the answering machine messages from his old machine, Del had been one of them.When you’re back open, let us all know. My Scout misses you. Don’t forget who you are, man.
Del knew, too.
