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“I know how to swim,” I said, shrugging. I reached for the coffee table, snagging a shot, and handing it to him. “He just blew that guy’s head off,” I said. “Bottoms up.”
Then, with a glint in his eye I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen there, he tossed back the shot, and moved over toward the chair, reaching for the hand of the pretty curly-haired girl who was seated there, pulling her up, sitting down, then pulling her back down on his lap.
I went ahead and brewed myself a pot of coffee, having a feeling I would need it as the movie and pong game continued, as voices got louder, and laughter more constant.
Then I did what I’d seen Brooks do a million times before.
I cleaned up spills. Took out trash. Dumped the ice from the fridge into the cooler, so it would force the maker to produce a fresh batch, checked the TP levels in the bathrooms, made sure condoms were in all of the rooms and bathrooms, including the basement and the fucking glass room on the roof.
By the time a few hours passed, I realized just how much we all undervalued Brooks’s contributions to the club.
Sure, at some point, I think we all just thought he was there with a stern word just to keep shit from being too crazy. But it was a lot more than that.
And I was glad to be able to see him having fun for a change. Even if a part of me wondered why he was suddenly open to the idea when he never showed any interest in partying before, not even when he was a prospect himself.
“The fuck you doing here?” I asked as Seth walked through the door. “Don’t you have a bunch of kids and a woman to be home with?”
He’d recently shacked up with a single mom of three littles. And was enjoying the fuck out of his new role as partner and father.
“I think we left Clara’s blanket here earlier. She won’t sleep without it. Been crying for the past hour,” he said as his gaze moved around the common room.
“I don’t think it’s in here. Maybe check outside.”
“Yeah,” Seth said nodding, and started to move away to do just that when he froze.
“Is that… is that Brooks doing a body shot off a club girl?” he asked, eyes wide.
“Something got him in the mood tonight,” I said.
“Probably not something good,” Seth said before making his way outside.
I hadn’t given that a thought.
I’d figured he was just ready to loosen up a bit.
But Seth was right. This was Brooks. He didn’t ever seem interested in partying. So if he was, it was likely something happened in his personal life to make him want to forget.
The thing was, I wasn’t sure any of us actually knew the guy well enough to figure out what that might be.
Out of everyone, I figured maybe Fallon or Sutton—natural-born leaders who Brooks would relate to—might have more insight. I made a mental note to bring it up to them, just in case Brooks was heading into some sort of a spiral.
“Found it,” Seth said, coming back in with a pink blanket covered in rainbow unicorns lifted in the air. “Thank God,” he added, looking exhausted. “We tricked her into going to sleep with a car ride earlier. But then she woke up and freaked out. Did you talk to Voss yet?” he asked.
“Is he looking for me?” I asked. “I had to do the drop today for Fallon. Then I had… errands. Just got here a few hours ago. He was gone already.”
“Oh, well, he’d finally heard back from Junior.”
“Know you gotta go, but Cliffsnotes,” I demanded.
“Right. Ah, there was another carjacking last night. A boy beat to shit because he tried to resist. Junior wants to talk to you to see if you think it’s related.”
“I’ll call him in the morning,” I said, nodding. “Thanks, man. Go get the blanket home to the baby.”
With that, he was gone, running across the parking lot to climb in his woman’s car, and peeling off.
I wasn’t happy that someone else got jumped, but I couldn’t help but be glad that there was at least something like progress going on.
This wasn’t the kind of area known for carjackings. It seemed really unlikely that there were two crews doing that kind of shit around here. It had to be related.
Maybe that guy had gotten a better look at the guys than I had.
With that, Junior could do a lot. Way more than the NBPD could.
And if he could track down the crew, I could finally take my anger about that night out on someone.
I didn’t know if Fallon was going to agree to let me kill any of them, even though we’d both taken lives before and likely would again. But he wasn’t going to let someone put their hands on a member of this club without getting some sort of consequences. It wasn’t good for our reputation.
