Tanner (Dirty Misfits MC Book 5), page 8
She nodded. “You know, I can understand that. Have you tried explaining it to Tanner that way?”
“Honestly, I don’t think I’ll have to. For all of the garbage and craziness my sister and I put him through when we were younger, he’s already respected my sister’s gumption and strength. We went through a lot growing up with my parents, and we grew up fast. Sloane, especially. I think he’ll be hesitant about it, but I think he’ll ultimately support it.”
She scooted a bit closer to me. “Will you tell your sister what’s going on, then?”
I leaned back against my chair and let my head flop back. “I honestly don’t know. I think I might give her an overview. Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just chalk Cheyenne’s visit up to her needing some space and stability while I get a grip on my new job or something like that.”
She took my hand and squeezed it. “One thing I’ve already found with motherhood, even during pregnancy, is that Moms usually always know best. I’ve had to fight Cole on a couple of things regarding my medical treatments and gestational diabetes, but in the end, I know in the pit of my gut that I’m right. That it’ll be better for me, and our little boy, if we took my routes instead of his. Does it feel like that, Summer? Like it’s right, in the pit of your gut?”
I didn’t hesitate to answer either. “Without a shadow of a doubt. It feels right and good for me to stay here, but not Cheyenne. Not like this, anyway.”
She leaned forward, gazing into my eyes. “Then, you know what you have to do.”
I licked my lips. “Do you know where that SAT phone room is?”
Molly ripped me out of my chair and tugged me out of her and Cole’s bedroom before we rushed down the hallway. We peeked into bedrooms to make sure we weren’t disturbing anyone, and once we got to the room we slipped inside and closed the door behind us.
Before I plucked the SAT phone off the wall and dialed out to my sister.
“Hello?” she asked.
“Hey! It’s me.”
She paused. “Summer? What the fuck kind of number are you calling from?”
“Look, I don’t have a lot of time to explain, but Cheyenne is going to come visit you for the weekend. Is that okay?”
“Uh, I mean… yeah, sure. I’m always up for seeing my niece, you know that. But where are you calling—”
I interrupted her as Molly clocked my time on the phone. “I can’t explain. A lot of stuff has come up. But I’ll have her at your place by—”
“Wait, wait, wait, wait. How did your first day on the job go?”
“Gotta wrap it up. You’re at twenty seconds,” Molly whispered.
I closed my eyes. “Look, that’s the issue. My first day didn’t go well at all. It was rough, and I’m having a hard time accepting it, so I’ve taken a weekend shift to see if I can work on my skills with a slower crowd. But to do that, I need someone to take Cheyenne. Can you do that?”
“Sure, of course I can do that. Do you want to talk about it?”
I shook my head. “I can’t. I gotta go. But Cheyenne will be at your place no later than dinnertime on Friday. And thank you so much for this. I love you.”
“Love you, too. But did you get a new cell—”
I hung up the phone on her and prayed to God on high that she didn’t call back. I held the massive phone in my hand, waiting for it to ring. But the longer I stared at it, and the longer I went without a phone call, the more secure I was in hanging the phone back on the wall.
Before I turned to face Molly. “I did the right thing, right?”
She nodded. “And not a second sooner. You were right at twenty-nine.”
“Jesus fuck,” I whispered.
Yeah, I couldn't keep Cheyenne in this tense of an environment, especially when there was a chance we could be tracked down and attacked again.
Now, all we had to do was get my daughter four hours away without being tracked by the same crew that terrorized me at the club.
Fabulous.
Thirteen
Tanner
The longer we stayed in that fucking warehouse, the more anxious I became. Every time I looked up at the clock, it felt like hours had passed, when really it had only been minutes. Sitting on my hands with my thumbs up my asshole wasn’t something I did well. If there was an issue, I wanted to resolve it as quickly and as painlessly as possible.
Yet, Brooks was completely content with dragging his fucking feet.
“No,” he said curtly.
I shook my head. “Dude, we gotta do something. We can’t just coop everyone up here until further notice. They have lives. Jobs. Money to make and bills to pay.”
He glared at me. “And if they die, none of that will matter, Tan.”
I threw my hands up into the air. “So, we’re just going to keep those assholes tied up downstairs while we feed them our food and use them for nothing?”
He charged me until my back was against the wall. “You raise your voice like that one more time, and I’ll have your balls in a mason jar on my nightstand. You got that?”
I smirked. “Look who’s pissed off now.”
He stepped back and rolled his shoulders, but I wasn’t having it. I tore away from our president and went in search of the one person that I knew would be on board with my plan. The only other person that was pissed that we had even been put into this situation in the first place.
“Hey, Cole,” I said.
He looked over at me. “What?”
I crooked my finger. “Need you over here for a second.”
He sighed. “Man, I’m making myself a damn sandwich right now. You got something more important than my stomach being hungry?”
I walked up to him, leaned against the counter, and lowered my voice. “How about beating up on some Black Flags for info, huh?”
He slowly looked over at me before he pushed his plate away, and the two of us headed down into the basement. We had to sneak out of the warehouse and wrap around, but once we dipped in through the cellar doors and closed them behind us, I clicked on the small light we were afforded down here.
Only to watch the two Black Nugget assholes quickly scoot away from it.
“Light hurt your eyes?” Cole asked.
He walked over and fisted one of the guys shirts before tossing him into a chair.
“Good,” I said as I grabbed a chair of my own.
Cole hovered over my shoulder as I scraped the chair along the floor. The man’s lower lip already quivered, and if I didn’t have a heart of steel I probably would’ve felt bad for him.
Guess you should’ve chosen a better moral code.
“All right, this is how this is gonna work: I ask a question once, and if you don’t give me what I need, my friend here will beat you until I say ‘stop.’ Got it?”
Cole cracked his knuckles as the man’s swollen face nodded. “Got it.”
“Good. Now, where’s Chops?”
The guy still on the ground snickered and Cole reared his foot back. His steel-toed boot connected with the man’s ribs and the way he cried out made me happy that we had sound-proofed the fucking cellar in the first place. I held eye contact with the guy sitting in front of me as his one good eye widened. The more Cole beat the guy on the ground, the more unsettled he became.
Then, I raised my hand and Cole stopped.
“Don’t think you’re immune because you’re on the floor,” I said plainly.
The man panted for air and spat what I figured was blood onto the concrete flooring before I leveled my eyes with the guy in front of me again.
“Now, where is Chops?” I asked.
“Don’t tell them shit,” the guy on the ground growled.
But the second I stood up and clenched my fists, the man in front of me sang like a goddamn pussy-ass canary.
“He’s probably working on the other shipment coming in tonight! H-h-he’s—he’s got this loft somewhere downtown. I don’t know where it is. No one does. But he goes there sometimes to work on shit because it’s closer to the docks and—”
“Shut up, Barty!” the man on the ground roared.
“I can’t take this anymore!” the other man shrieked.
I grinned. “Thanks for the info. We’ll bring you food when we can remember it. Cole?”
He harrumphed. “What?”
“Give these two a little love tap before you go.”
The guy in the chair whimpered. “No, no, no. Please. My teeth. I’ve already lost—no!”
But the man on the floor made a very misguided calculation. “Raven’s lookin’ mighty fine these days, you know.”
Cole stopped beating the one guy as I froze halfway up the steps. “What did you just say?”
The man chuckled. “Molly, too. Swollen with pregnancy. How far along is she now? Seven months?”
Cole growled. “One more word out of you and—”
“Have you met your daughter in person yet?”
I whipped around and charged the man on the floor, yanking him up by his blood-stained jacket. He laughed like a maniac as I shoved him against the wall, practically holding him up in midair as he danced on his tiptoes.
“Say one more word about those women. Try me,” I growled.
He leaned his face closer to mine. “I can’t wait to put Cheyenne to work. She’s gonna rake in so much money for us. I’ll buy a fucking mansion off the way she shakes her—”
“That’s it,” I glowered.
I felt the first punch as my knuckles cracked. I even felt the second punch as his jaw broke against my skin. But as my vision dripped with red, all I heard was Cole calling out to me in the distance while the other guy in the chair cried out in horror. Blood splattered against my face. The man gasped for air as I watched the light drain from his eyes.
And by the time Cole pried me off him, he slumped to the floor.
Dead as a fucking doornail.
“No, no, no, no, no,” the man in the chair whimpered.
I walked over and gripped his hair, pulling his head back until he looked up into my face. “You see that? Did you see it?”
Tears streamed down his face. “Yeah. Yeah, I did.”
I held my finger up to his face. “You utter one word—one word about our families—and you’ll meet his same fate. Got it?”
He swallowed hard. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I g—got it.”
I shoved his head off to the side. “Great.”
I felt Cole staring at me as we made our way out of the cellar. I had no idea what in the hell we were going to do about that guy’s body, but his friend could stew with it until he decided to make better life decisions.
“Stop,” Cole commanded.
I halted my tracks before he wiped off my hands with a wipe he pulled out of his pocket. “Can’t go inside with your fists looking like a warzone.”
I stared straight ahead. “He had it coming.”
“Brooks is gonna be livid with you, my dude.”
I shrugged. “He had it coming, too.”
“Had what coming?” Brooks asked.
Cole paused, but I didn’t care. I took the wipe from his hand and continued wiping the blood off my skin as I turned around and faced our cowardly president. He didn’t have the kind of balls I figured he would have, and while he was a decent overseer of shit, he had no idea what the fuck he was doing.
And it showed.
“Don’t tell me you went into the cellar,” Brooks said as he walked up to both of us.
Cole stepped up to my side. “Dude, it was an accident. All we were trying to do is—”
I held up my hand, silencing him in his tracks. “Yes, we did. And we figured out that not only does Chops have some studio apartment near the docks, but he’s there right now finalizing plans for a shipment that comes in tonight.”
Brooks nodded slowly. “Uh huh. And if I go into the cellar, both of those guys are still going to be alive?”
I swallowed hard. “One of them mentioned Molly. They know how far along she is in her pregnancy.”
Brooks sighed. “Tan, what did you—”
I pointed my finger at his face, too. “And he mentioned Cheyenne. Said she’d rake in loads of money for them. That he’d buy a house with her work. What the fuck was I supposed to do? Let them spout that kind of shit? That’s my daughter!”
“And this is your future!” he bellowed.
I took a step toward him, closing the distance. “I will choose my daughter over some scum of the earth any day of the fucking week.”
Brooks tilted his head off to the side. “Was he hurting Cheyenne?”
“Well, no, but—”
“Did he have Cheyenne in his grasp somehow?”
I clenched my jaw. “You know damn good and well—”
Then, he shoved me. “You killed one of our two lucky leads because you don’t know what to do with your pent-up energy. Is that it!?”
I shoved him right back. “No, Brooks. I killed one of our two lucky leads because he had the audacity to put my daughter’s name in his mouth. And if you can’t understand that, that’s on you. Not me!”
Cole stepped in between us. “Enough! Both of you!”
But Brooks turned on him. “And where you were, huh!? Where were you when he was beating the ever-loving snot out of this guy!?”
“He mentioned Raven, you know,” I said flatly.
Brooks froze. “What did he say?”
I shrugged. “Does it matter?”
He shoved Cole out of the way and gripped my leather jacket in both of his hands. “You better tell me what the fuck that sorry excuse for a human being said about Raven.”
I smirked. “Not so easy when it’s someone you love being talked about, huh?”
He shoved me away. “What did he say!?”
“He said that Raven was looking mighty fine nowadays!”
Brooks’ nostrils flared. “They’re still tracking the girls.”
In a flash, Brooks was down in the cellar. In a flash, he had our other prisoner up against the wall with his feet dangling in midair.
And in a flash, the man spilled his secrets as if he were an overturned cup.
Fourteen
Summer
I heard the softest commotion outside while I lounged in the tub, attempting to shave my legs. It was hard to concentrate, though, especially with thoughts of Cheyenne’s safety running through my mind. It felt like days had passed, when really it was almost time to go get Cheyenne from her sleepover.
And it worried the hell out of me that we might be tracked.
I still wasn’t sure what I needed to do, though. While part of me wanted to stay with Tanner, the bulk of me wanted to go with my daughter. I mean, I knew we’d both be safe. Sloane was a stickler with me when it came to carrying some sort of concealed firearm around, just in case. And with the training she had to endure in order to work with the Santa Barbara police department, I knew she could take whatever was thrown her way.
I just didn't know, and I wished someone would tell me what the fuck to do.
Doors slammed all around me, but I tried to block it out. I shaved my legs, cleaned myself up, and took a hot bath until the water turned lukewarm. I turned on the shower very quickly to wash my hair and my body down, then I wrapped myself up in one of the most luxurious towels I’d ever held against my body.
Before Tanner came charging in my room.
“What a fucking numbskull!” he bellowed.
My eyes widened as he slammed the door behind him.
“Brooks is just—fuck!”
He punched the wall, leaving a massive hole that allowed me to see the electrical wiring behind it.
“It didn’t have to be this way, you know!?” he roared.
I slowly raised my hand. “Uh, Tanner?”
His eyes met mine before they dropped to my body. “Shit.”
I snickered. “Could you give me a few minutes to get dressed?”
But all he did was turn around. “He’s an absolute maniac sometimes, and a fucking hypocrite twenty-four-seven.”
I sighed. “I’m sure he is.”
A fist pounded against our door before Brooks yelled, “I can hear you, man!”
Tanner ripped the door open. “Get the fuck away from her room now.”
“Can I at least get dressed in peace, please!?” I shrieked.
Both of the guys stared at me before Tanner clapped his hand over Brooks’ eyes. And after the two of them stepped out into the hallway, I let my tears fall. I rushed over to the door and locked it for good measure, then slumped against it as water from my hair dripped endlessly down my back.
And when the commotion in the hallway ceased, only Tanner’s voice remained.
“I’m sorry for letting you see me like that, Summer.”
I shook my head softly. “It’s the first time I’ve seen you be genuine with me in I don’t know how long, Tanner. Don’t be sorry for it. Just talk to me instead of punching holes in my damn walls, yeah?”
He sighed. “I’ll just shut my mouth.”
“No, no, no. Shutting your mouth is what got us into this mess in the first place. You were never one to open up, but if you want things to be different between us then you have to start doing different things.”
“I guess you’re right.”
I giggled. “I know I’m right. So, what’s going on? What did Brooks do to piss you off?”
He sighed. “Just… being a hypocrite.”
“How?”
I heard him stand to his feet. “He just is, okay?”
So, I stood to my feet. “And I’m asking how. What made him such a hypocrite in your eyes?”
“Everything, Summer!”
“Then tell me what ‘everything’ is!”
He growled. “Whatever. Get dressed, we have to go get Cheyenne soon.”
I ripped the door open, not caring who saw me in my towel. “If you think for one second I’m going to ever entertain the idea of letting you back into my life without some things changing, then you’ve got another thing coming.”
