Chapter 8 EMMETT #2
“I hope so,” I muttered. Maybe if enough time passed, Tucker Talbot and the Warriors would forget about the former Tin King Motorcycle Club.
“We haven’t talked about it, but maybe we need to get in touch with some contacts at the prison.” It was something I thought of often these days. “Tucker gets caught in a brawl and doesn’t survive it. It’s extreme but . . .”
“Better than looking over our shoulders our entire lives,” Leo said.
Dash sighed. “If they traced it back to us—”
“Me. It would have to be me.” I had no family. No wife or kids to leave behind if I was arrested.
“Let’s just . . .” Dash shook his head. “I don’t want to go there yet. We might get lucky. Tucker’s reach might have ended with his nephew. We’re being vigilant. The prosecutors are working through the other Warrior cases. Maybe this goes away.”
Maybe. Or maybe not. But the chances of this disappearing were far greater if Tucker Talbot was rotting in hell instead of a cell.
His men were loyal but I doubted they carried the same thirst for vengeance as their former leader. If cutting the head off of the snake was what we had to do, then we’d do it. Plenty of men died in prison and if I needed to facilitate that for Tucker, so be it.
“We’ve been on the defense this entire time,” I said. “Since Draven. Maybe it’s time we move to offense.”
“Yeah.” Dash raked a hand through his dark hair. “I don’t like sitting around and waiting for the storm either. But there are too many eyes on the Warriors right now. It’s too obvious.”
“So we give it time,” Leo said. “Then revisit.”
I nodded. “Until then, we keep up the guard.”
“Enough of this.” Dash clapped me on the shoulder. “Let’s get to work.”
The three of us left the paint booth and joined Sawyer and Tyler in the shop. The day went by quickly since we were busy. That and with family in the office, we popped in and out to see what was going on, and as per usual, the office was a source of constant laughter.
“It reminds me of the old days, having them all here,” I told Dash, nodding to the office.
“I was thinking the same yesterday.”
When Dad and Draven had been alive, this place had been crawling with family members. I’d spent my childhood at this garage, coming down with Mom to bring Dad lunch. The same was true with Dash and his older brother, Nick.
This garage had been the gathering place. For our families. For the club.
Not all memories here had been good ones. A cloud had hung over us all after Dash’s mother, Chrissy, had been murdered. That same cloud had come back after Dad. Then Draven.
But the good outweighed the bad. All we had to do was make sure that cloud didn’t get any darker because the Warriors came after us again.
Presley had propped open the door between the office and the shop. We’d ordered lunch from the deli and the scent of onions was too strong for her. Draven had loved that Pres preferred the scent of motor oil and metal.
The women’s laughter and the kids’ chatter drifted our way.
After lunch, none of them had returned to the apartment upstairs.
Bryce was telling Pres and Cass a story that she was printing in the next newspaper about a teenager who’d tried to steal a package of Oreos from a convenience store on Central.
When the boy had been caught, instead of handing over the package to the cashier, he’d torn the top open and licked all the cookies.
“Did they give him the Oreos?” Pres asked Bryce.
“Yes, after the kid’s mother came down and paid for them. I guess she hauled him out of there by his ear, and he was shoving Oreos into his mouth as they walked. The cashier gave me a picture she took.”
I chuckled as they all crowded around Bryce’s phone to see the photo.
Nova would fit in here.
That thought came on so fast I jerked.
“What?” Dash asked.
“Nothing.” I waved it away and turned to the job board.
For a woman who was supposed to be a fling, Nova crossed my mind more than I wanted to admit. And damn it, where was she? Who was she?
It would only take an hour to find out. All I had to do was open my laptop, key in her license plate and I’d know everything there was to know about her. Her real name. Her address. Her job. Her social security number and how much money she had in her retirement accounts.
But I didn’t want that. Not with her. I wanted to learn those things from her, not steal them.
If our fling was over, it was over. We’d gone from meeting every night to nothing for four days. I could read the writing on the wall. Time to walk away with the beautiful, pure image of her asleep in my bed.
“What do you want to work on next?” I asked Dash.
“Sawyer and Tyler can tackle the rest of this. Let’s spend the rest of the day on the Stingray.”
“Fine by me.”
Leo and Isaiah joined us and we spent the rest of the day working on the garage’s latest restoration. The Stingray was a hot car, one Dad would have loved. Though he would have loved all of the cars we’d brought in lately.
The Firebird we’d fixed up, the car Leo had given to Cass as a wedding present, would have made Dad drool.
He’d taught me to love classic muscle cars and their sleek design. He’d taught me about working with my hands and how to break machines down, then build them up again. With every car and every bike we built, Dad might not be here, but he was a part of it. Every one.
At four, Dash’s boys came clamoring out of the office, dragging Bryce with them. We put the work on the Stingray aside and spent the last hour of the day letting Xander and Zeke dink around.
I found an old gear for Zeke to hammer on. Xander and Dash tore into a broken carburetor. And Leo and Isaiah disappeared into the paint booth, where Leo was teaching Isaiah some airbrushing techniques.
At five o’clock, Shaw rolled into the parking lot to pick up Presley and Nico. Leo loaded Cass and Seraphina into their Firebird, leaving for home. Isaiah left to get Genevieve and his kids. Dash, Bryce and the boys headed out at the same time as Tyler and Sawyer, leaving me alone at the garage.
The quiet was a stark contrast to the noise from the day. The silence, something I normally enjoyed here and at home, was too loud. Too obvious.
I found myself alone more often these days. A year ago, it hadn’t bothered me.
Today, I didn’t want to be alone.
So I shut the bay doors to close down the garage, then double-checked the office was locked.
I flipped on the security system, heading to my bike.
I rode out of the lot, stopping to slide the gates together and secure the chain and padlock around them.
If someone really wanted to get in, they could scale the fence or bust through the gates, but it was a deterrent.
Whatever we could do to keep safe.
Traffic through town was bustling, people coming and going home from work. I headed toward Mom’s neighborhood, wanting to stop and say hello. I parked in her driveway just as Tera and Maggie parked next door.
“Hey.” I raised a hand and waved as Tera climbed out of her SUV.
“Hi.” She smiled and opened the back for Maggie to scramble out.
Maggie went to her mother’s leg, leaning close as she stared up at me. She was still not quite easy with me.
“Heard you’ve got Xander in your class,” I told Tera.
She nodded. “I do. And I have a feeling he’s going to keep me on my toes.”
“He’s a Slater.” I chuckled. “It won’t be boring.”
Tera smiled and put a hand on her daughter’s head.
She was a beautiful woman. She was smart and kind.
For the first time, I wished I had something more than friendly feelings toward her, not just because she was beautiful but because at least with her, I wouldn’t be alone.
But there was no spark. Maybe Tera and I could have some fun, but it wouldn’t go anywhere.
And I wasn’t going to lead her on, not when there was Maggie to consider.
So I took a step back and left her alone. “Good luck tomorrow. Have fun at school, Maggie.”
The girl blushed as I winked at her.
Tera waved.
And I turned and strode for Mom’s house, calling out as I opened the door, “Mom.”
“Emmett?”
“Who else calls you Mom?”
She laughed, shaking her head as I came into the living room, where she was reading a book. “What are you doing here?”
“Just wanted to say hi.” I bent to kiss her cheek, then took a seat on the couch across from her, leaning into the back and crossing an ankle over my knee. “How’s your week going?”
She shrugged. “It’s only Tuesday. Come back and ask me Friday. I might even have dinner for you then. But you’re out of luck tonight. I ate a late lunch, and I won’t be hungry for hours.”
“That’s okay. I don’t expect you to cook for me every time I visit.”
“I know. But I like to.”
I motioned to her book. “What are you reading?”
She smiled and closed the cover, holding it up for me to see. I recognized it from the bookshelves Dad had kept filled at his room at the clubhouse. “It was one of your dad’s.”
“I know.”
“It was in a box in the garage with a whole pile of others. I decided to read them. And look.” She slid out of her chair and joined me on the couch. Then she opened the book to a page she’d dog-eared.
There were notes in the margin in Dad’s blocky script. I hadn’t seen that handwriting in ages. Not since the last time I’d bent beneath the workbench at the garage and found Stone written on the wood.
“He’s got notes through this whole book. His thoughts on the story.”
I swallowed hard. It had been so long since we’d lost Dad, but just seeing those notes brought back the pain from his death. Didn’t Mom feel it? She’d been content to leave his belongings tarped in the garage. Couldn’t they have stayed hidden for another ten years?
“It’s time, Emmett.” She must have heard my thoughts because she put her hand on my leg. “It’s time.”
“Why?”
“Because when I’m gone, I don’t want you to go through it all on your own.”
“Don’t talk like that.” I shoved off the couch and went to the kitchen for some water.