Chapter 18 – Isaac Sinclair | “Ghost”
Chapter Eighteen
Isaac Sinclair | “Ghost”
Magnum and I polished off half a thirty rack of Rolling Rock – the worst of the gas station beer we could find – before Wyatt called and asked if we were good to meet with him later.
He left his wife and kids behind to drive up for a meeting, which means he’s going to be in a pissed off mood over…
well… everything. He’s not happy about the shit that went down with Tylee hiring Zeb to drug Damara and the situation with the kids has him even more pissed off.
I’m hoping that his anger fueled him to talk some sense into Tylee so I can see the kids again.
She won’t answer my calls and I haven’t seen them in the longest amount of time that I’ve ever gone without seeing my own flesh and blood.
I can’t protect them if I haven’t even laid eyes on them.
The three of them are so small and vulnerable.
Before, I wouldn’t have ever thought to question Tylee’s mothering.
Now, I feel strangely anxious about leaving her unattended with the kids.
I’ve known this woman my whole life. Could she really hurt them?
Then again, I would have thought that Tylee could have never stepped out on me before.
But now, I’ve been questioning it. Magnum and I are three-quarters of the way done with that thirty-rack and playing pool in his basement when Damara leads Wyatt and the rest of the boys downstairs.
She shakes her head looking at me and Wyatt as if to say that she knew letting me into her house was a bad idea.
I don’t blame her for hating me. I’m in my forties, a damned mess, a single father, living like an alcoholic, and she hates that I won’t shower unless she makes loud hints about how badly I smell.
Her last hint was pouring cold water on my head allegedly “by accident”.
I asked Damara what she was doing when she filled up that damned hot pink Stanley cup with water and she said “nothing” before pouring it straight on my head without flinching.
Magnum’s protection makes her bold, but I suspect she could take me down if she really wanted either with poison or a pillow to the face.
I walk a righteous path with that woman.
Even if she glares at me like she wants to kill me anyway.
“Wyatt, here are the drunk idiots,” Damara says. “I brought Wyatt and he brought Hunter, Ryder, and Owen.”
“Do I not exist to you?” Gideon asks.
“You do not,” Damara confirms before turning her back and shutting the basement door.
“Can you make sure she didn’t lock that door?” Wyatt grumbles, stomping down the stairs.
“Please tell me you have more of those,” he says, indicating that the source of his distress was the absence of beer more than anything else. I can fix that. I’ve already moved on to whiskey.
“Here,” I tell him. “Last Rolling Rock.”
“Oh, you are depressed,” Wyatt says, snatching it greedily from my hands. “Who the fuck drinks Rolling Rock?”
He doesn’t seem to mind enough to stop himself from drinking it. The beer pours down Wyatt’s throat. I need to be way more drunk to put up with seeing my in-laws under these circumstances. He’s slow to get down to business and I’ve known his family long enough to know that isn’t good news.
“How you holding up?” Hunter asks, thumping me on the back before he takes a seat on the couch next to Magnum, who answers as if the question were meant for him.
“He’s been a pain in the ass since he got here,” Magnum responds.
“Not you, idiot,” Hunter says. “I meant Ghost.”
“I haven’t seen my kids in days. I just want to know if you found Tylee yet.”
Wyatt sits on a separate metal stool that he drags to an authoritative point in the room.
Magnum and Hunter look like defense attorneys – if they were also guilty as fuck.
I don’t like it. Ryder pulls up a spare bar stool between the couches in the basement, a hand-rolled cigarette sticking out of the corner of his mouth.
He lingers in the back, unlike Wyatt, who keeps his green dice rolling purposefully over the tattooed tops of his fingers.
Most habits you get in prison are hard to kill, even when you’re on the outside.
I hate the smell of cigarettes but most of us owe Ryder Sinclair our life from something he did at some point or another.
The room smells like sweat and grease already, and I wish I could either crack a window or get far more wasted.
“How much has he had to drink?” Wyatt asks Magnum like I’m not in the room.
“Too much. But what do you expect? He’s depressed. Guy misses his kids.”
“Where’s Tylee?”
Wyatt looks too pissed off. This can’t be even remotely good news and I want so badly for things to be different. This is fucking humiliating. What would Wyatt do if his wife ran off? He would probably kill people.
“Tylee is the least of our concerns, but she’s definitely one of them.”
“Great.”
“Zeb Blackwood got himself into some big trouble, killed a bunch of people out on Route 66.”
I feel a flicker of irritation and then mild concern.
I’m one of the founding members of the beta chapter out East, at least I should be.
This whole situation with Tylee has me beyond fucked in the head, and I haven’t gone out to do any work for Ethan for longer than a few days.
They claim that there’s room for me to take my time and sort out family shit, but I feel like a goddamn bitch for not having my house in order.
I hate it. I especially hate that I seem like the last one to know about the Zeb situation.
“Ethan didn’t tell me.”
“He sent whoever was out there to handle it,” Wyatt says. He glances over briefly at Hunter. “And Tamiya just got back to us with information about the dead guys and their jackets. Zeb’s suspicions were right.”
“Department of Homeland Security,” Hunter says, raising his eyebrows as he drops the bad news on my lap like it’s nothing. That can’t be possible.
“So we just killed a bunch of federal agents?”
“Not quite,” Wyatt says. “We killed the ones fucked up enough to get the pink slip. Tamiya has a conspiratorial mind. She thinks they’re working with the government to handle their shadier business. Like mercenaries.”
“Going after us?”
“Seems like it,” Ryder says. “Those men must have been following Zeb all the way from Boston.”
“Not following him anymore,” Hunter says.
“Nope,” Wyatt says. “Not anymore.”
I have plenty of questions about the bikers, but my children are a bigger priority for me than club business.
Part of the reason I’ve been so checked out.
I try to sip more beer but I’m done with my can.
The nearest bottle of hard liquor is so far away that I’ll have to stay plastered to this chair drunk for a few more minutes before I stand a chance of getting up.
“What about Tylee?” I ask. “The kids?”
There’s a flicker of irritation across Wyatt’s face.
I try not to let it get to me. He warned me about Tylee probably a hundred times over the years.
She’s his sister. Maybe I should have listened.
But Wyatt doesn’t understand. He’s not a gruff, unlikeable bear like I am.
Women are drawn to him. The only woman who ever had the courage to be near me was Tylee.
I’ve always felt like a beast out there in the world.
The only thing I ever wanted was to have a wife and kids for security. Love. Family.
I thought Tylee wanted the same thing. I thought she had her flaws, but in the end she would put love over everything.
She’s changed – and not for the better. I didn’t think this would happen when we got married.
Wyatt’s irritation bothers me, but I’m in no position to argue with him and utterly resentful of my vulnerability.
Does he think I want to be in this position? I need to know what’s going on with my family and my ex-wife…
“Tylee has fucked off somewhere,” Wyatt says. “She has the kids with her and I’ve tried calling everyone, including Selma to ask about her.”
Selma. That’s my mother, and one of the most frustrating women in my world.
I hate the idea of Wyatt talking to her without me.
Selma can be… tricky. She hates every Shaw she’s ever met too because she thinks that gambling is the devil’s vice.
(She doesn’t mind liquor as much, but she hates it too.)
“What did she say?”
“That she hasn’t seen Tylee. Then she started crying and worrying that Tylee would drown her babies one by one.”
I hate that I feel a chill.
“My mother has a way of making me feel better,” I mutter under my breath.
“Sorry,” Wyatt says. “Tylee wouldn’t do that, but I was very specific with Selma that if she wants her holiday money from the club this year, she’ll tell us if Tylee comes through with the kids.”
“Great.”
“We have no idea where she is, Isaac. I know that’s not what you wanted to hear.”
He comes right out and says it instead of dancing around it, but that doesn’t make the news any easier to hear. My ears burn.
“And the Zeb situation?” I project a sense of calm that I don’t feel. Where the fuck is Tylee and more importantly – where the fuck has she put my children?