Chapter 23 #2
We’d have a lifetime of rides together.
Dash came striding out of an open bay door at the garage as I climbed out of Claudia’s car.
I hadn’t expected anyone to be at the garage since it was long after closing time, but he must have had a project to work on.
Or, like me, he needed a little time alone to get his head around all that had happened in the past three days.
After dinner at Dale and Claudia’s tonight, I’d told Cass I’d needed to run a quick errand.
Really, I just needed a few minutes to think.
Three days and I was still struggling to make sense of it all.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. “Thought you were at the Clines’.”
“Claudia’s car needs an oil change and Dale’s tools are shit. I came to steal some.”
“You’ve got her car here. Why not pull it in?”
“I want to stick close to Cass, and I need something to do tomorrow.” Pacing the hallways wasn’t working to burn off my nervous energy.
Dash nodded. “Take whatever you need.”
Raiding the tool chests didn’t take long. Neither did taking a few quarts of oil from the supply room.
“How’s Cass?” Dash asked as he helped me load it all into the trunk.
“She’s all right. Pissed. Scared. Grateful. It swings back and forth.”
“Know the feeling. How are you?”
“Pissed. Scared. Grateful.”
He nodded. “She’ll be okay.”
“Yeah.”
The doctors had kept us at the hospital over the weekend to make sure Cass didn’t have any delayed symptoms from the blast. We’d been lucky that the worst of her injuries were a few cuts and some soreness in her ribs from being tossed to the ground.
They’d discharged us this morning and we’d gone straight to Dale and Claudia’s place.
My bike would need repairs. All the glass in her car was wrecked.
Our house needed new windows and new siding.
While I’d been with Cass at the hospital, Emmett and Dash had arranged for a contractor to come over and get replacements ordered.
They’d also taken care of boarding up the house so it wouldn’t be full of animals and bugs when we were finally able to go home.
My garage was another story.
The area had been roped off until Luke could close the investigation on the explosion. But even with the case open, we all knew what had happened.
Tucker Talbot’s nephew had done his best to kill me and make it look like an accident. The coward hadn’t wanted to land in prison beside his beloved uncle.
We didn’t know, probably never would, why he’d targeted me alone, but my theory was that I’d been the easiest and therefore the first. Had he succeeded, I had no doubt he would have gone after Emmett and Dash.
The bomb had been planted in the garage while Cass had been quietly working in her office. The nephew had rigged it to the door so that when opened, it would detonate.
Had Cass not opened the garage from close to the house, she would have been caught in the explosion. Had the bomb been larger, the blast wave would have killed her. It might have killed us both and made Seraphina an orphan.
Since I was the only one who went into the garage, maybe he’d hoped it would be me. Maybe he hadn’t cared that it could have been Cass.
That bastard had almost cost me everything.
Emmett was the one who’d discovered it was Tucker’s nephew. After I’d choked him, the nephew had refused to talk—either faking a damaged voice box or because he’d known he was fucked. Luke had arrived seconds after Emmett, who’d been on his way over for our ride.
Luke had taken the liberty of getting the nephew’s wallet and ID.
Doug Hamilton.
Emmett had recognized it immediately and told Luke he was Tucker’s nephew.
Doug was currently in custody for attempted murder.
Yesterday, one of Luke’s officers had found an abandoned white sedan on a county gravel road.
The registration was to Doug’s wife and the paint scratches and dents matched those on my truck.
He’d also purchased the chemicals for the bomb on his personal credit card. The dumb motherfucker.
I’d been busy with Cass, but Emmett had taken a photo of Doug to the brunette’s house—the woman who’d drugged me. He’d asked her if Doug was the man who’d paid her, and she’d confirmed it though wouldn’t agree to tell the police.
We’d never know for sure, but I assumed his plan had been to drug me, get me out of the bar and drive me somewhere my body would never be found. It was just a guess.
Not that it mattered. We had him on enough.
Doug’s free life was over.
We couldn’t prove he’d tampered with the shop’s car jack. There was no sign of him on the security footage at the garage, but we typically shut the cameras off during the day when we were there working. Maybe he’d snuck in over the lunch hour, but I was certain that had been no mechanical failure.
“Is this ever going to end?” I asked Dash.
He blew out a long breath. “Fuck, I hope so.”
“Listen,” I slammed the trunk, “about what I said a while back. About the clubhouse.”
“Forget it.” He waved it off. “That was a stressful day.”
“I shouldn’t have said it.”
“I understand why you did.” He sighed, turning his gaze down the lot. The grass around the clubhouse had been cut, something he did at night when the rest of us were gone. Dash tended to the place, even though he didn’t set foot inside.
“There have been times when I’ve wished the same,” he admitted. “That I’ve wished Dad had never started the club in the first place. Some days, I think you’re right and we should demolish it. Others . . . we might not be a club anymore, Dad might be gone, but I can’t bring myself to tear it down.”
That building housed more than one of my sins.
And one day, I might need that building again.
“From the outside, the nephew wasn’t a threat,” I said.
He had no affiliations with the Warriors or with Tucker. But we’d missed something.
Clearly, the nephew had enough of a connection with his uncle and that club to come after us. Maybe he’d been promised money, a huge payday that would set him up for life. All he had to do was take out three men.
Maybe Doug had been a Warrior and we hadn’t even realized it. His wife was currently being questioned by the FBI to understand her involvement, if any.
Emmett was pissed off at himself for not finding it. Though I suspected there wasn’t anything to be found. He’d since redoubled his efforts to ensure that Tucker’s ex-wife and daughters weren’t involved.
Luke had confirmed that they were all on the FBI’s watch list too.
My only hope was that Tucker’s daughters hated him as much as we did. That maybe they were glad he’d spend his life in prison.
We were all clinging to hope.
“We underestimated Tucker’s influence,” Dash said. “I think there were more members of his club than we or the FBI ever knew about.”
“They will come for us.”
Dash nodded. “They will.”
“What do we do?”
He kept his gaze locked on the clubhouse. “What we’ve always done. We protect what’s ours.”
“At all costs.”
Dash put his hand on my shoulder, giving it a squeeze, then left me and returned to his garage. Draven’s garage.
And I went to my family.
Dale was sitting outside the front door when I pulled into the driveway. His eyes were fixed firmly on the yard.
Leaving the tools and oil in the trunk, I joined him, sitting on the step at his side. The smell of cigarette smoke clung to the air. “Didn’t know you smoked.”
“I don’t often. Just one here and there. I’ll have to take a shower before Cassie wakes up. If she smells it on me, she gets upset.”
“And Claudia?”
“Oh, she does too. But Rose Petal will grant me this one without comment.”
The two of us sat in silence, the unspoken words heavy between us. We’d been avoiding them for days, too busy making sure Seraphina was cared for and fussing over Cass at the hospital.
We both could have lost her. There was no avoiding it here, where the summer air was warm and the evening quiet.
“I’m sorry,” I said, my voice hoarse.
“It’s not your fault.”
“Swore to you I’d protect her.”
He turned, giving me a sad smile. “The way I see it, you chased down that man before he could escape. He would have kept coming.”
Dale and Claudia didn’t know all of the details. They never would. But Cass and I had been honest with them that the explosion hadn’t been an accident. One mention of the Warriors and both had gone pale.
“I wish none of this had happened to her,” I whispered. My former club had put Cass’s life in danger once again. When would it stop?
“So do I.”
“I can’t walk away from her, Dale. From them. I know it’s the right thing to do to keep them safe, but I can’t.”
“I disagree. If you leave her, you’ll break her heart. I don’t want that for my daughter. Or my granddaughter. The right thing to do is stay, son. Stay and do your best.”
Son. “No one has called me son in a long time.” The last man had been Draven.
“You’re part of this family now.”
“Does that mean you don’t plan to murder me?”
“Not today.” Dale chuckled, then blew out a long breath. “I suppose I’d better mow the lawn. That’s what I came out here to do though it’s getting late.”
“I’ll do it for you tomorrow.”
“You know, I think I’ll let you. Make use of my soon-to-be son-in-law’s free time.”
Mowing was the least I could do. Until our house was put back to rights, Cass and I were staying here. Once the repairs were done, she could decide if she wanted to return home. If she didn’t feel safe there, then we’d sell and find a new place.
“Where’s Cass?” I asked.
“Asleep. Seraphina was fussy after you left so Cassie did her bath early and put her to bed. Then I think she went to lie down.”
I stood, opening the door to disappear inside, but paused on the threshold. “Thanks, Dale.”
He nodded once, then returned to staring at his yard. Maybe he was keeping watch. Maybe he was about to have another cigarette before his shower.
I left him alone and went inside, toeing off my boots before walking to the guest bedroom. Seraphina was asleep in her portable crib, her arms raised above her head. Her eyelashes fluttered, and her tiny mouth pulled at the corner into a smile.
Sweet dreams, little.
I left her sleeping and went next door to Cass’s room, finding her, like our daughter, curled up in bed. Her eyes opened when I climbed onto the mattress behind her.
“Hey, babe.”
“Hi.” She snuggled into my chest as I wrapped my arms around her.
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
Her love intertwined with the threadbare strands of my soul.
A miracle. A miracle I hadn’t earned, but one I’d be grateful for each and every day. A miracle I’d cling to for the rest of my days.
My Cass.
My Firecracker.