Chapter 37
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Selkie
Eight is side-eying me as we drive towards the police station but stays tight-lipped.
After a few minutes of the silent treatment, I say, “What?”
He shrugs. “No point in sayin’ what you already know.”
“I know a lot of things. Could you narrow it down?”
He sighs as he takes a right turn without signalling. “You’re nuts. Right? We get our kids back and instead of doing the mom thing, you gotta pick up a bounty and go to the copshop.”
“She doesn’t fuckin’ know how to be a mother,” Sadie pipes up. “And the kid? Probably crawled out from under a rock. None of them are Einstein.”
I twist around and peer at Sadie. “Sure. Because you’re a genius.”
“Shut up, you fucker,” Eight says at the same time.
“Me or her?” Sadie replies.
Eight says nothing which seems to be enough to make Sadie shut up.
I turn to Eight. “You said yourself that the clubhouse is safer than anywhere else, so why does it matter?”
Again, silence, so I add, “If it will make you feel better, when I get back to the clubhouse, I’ll hug my little bag of thorns and tell her how horrified I am that she dressed weirdly and seemed like she was having a good time.”
Eight’s voice deepens into that mansplaining tone. “The problem is that you don’t know if she’s been traumatized. Maybe she needs you right now.”
I want to ignore him, but well, it’s me, so I reply, “Have you met my daughter? And if we’re going to be critical, it didn’t take a lot of persuading to send Oscar with her.”
His voice gets louder. “Jesus Christ, you didn’t give me much choice. You were gonna fuckin’ pick up that mental giant in the backseat by yourself if I didn’t help.”
“Hey,” Sadie snaps. “I’m not so dumb.”
I say to Sadie, “You robbed a goddamn candy store and took a measly $500 bucks and half-a-ton of Twizzlers. You are so dumb.”
Then I turn to Eight, “And you. There’s such a thing as free will. You didn’t have to do anything.”
“You don’t really get it, do you. We’re together. It would…” He glances at Sadie through the rear-view mirror, “…make me unhappy if you got injured or worse.”
The whole conversation is absurd, then he adds, “The kids were safe. You weren’t.”
I start laughing too hard to reply.
Sadie sighs loudly. “The point, you failure of a biker, is that you just made your point.”
“I’m gonna pull over and make another point all over your face,” he snarls at Sadie
“He likes golden showers?” I say as I get my giggles under control.
“Fuck off,” Sadie says to me as he kicks the back of my seat. “And you fucker,” he says to Eight. “You better never let her out of your sight, or I’ll make her so ugly, you’ll have to put a bag over her head to fuck her.”
Eight screeches to a stop in the middle of the road, turns toward Sadie and punches him the face.
Sadie yelps, “Fuckin’ hell!”
Eight punches him again.
I grab Eight’s arm. “One of the rules is that I’m not supposed to fuck up the merch once I have it secured.”
“You’re not fuckin’ him up,” Eight says as he rips his arm from my grip. “I am.”
He faces forward, then squeals the truck’s tires as he roars down the road.
I want to say so many things to Eight, like quit being such a man.
I don’t need you to protect me. I’m my own woman.
But I don’t want to do it in front of Sadie and frankly, I’m needier than I thought because I’m kind of turned on by his protectiveness.
This is a first for me, having a man care enough to fight for me.
I press my lips together and say nothing until we’re at the Reno police station.
It’s a two-minute drive and a new record for me.
It's quiet at the police station, but then the sun’s coming up and all the bad guys are sleeping by now. There are six cop cars outside the front that we bypass as we wrestle Sadie inside the station.
Chris Pringle, who looks like he’s two years older than Henri, stands up from his chair behind the bulletproof glass and looks us over. “Hey Selkie,” he says. Yeah, we know each other. I’m on a first name basis with most cops in Reno.
“Hey Chris,” I say back. “Finally caught the asshole.”
He glances between Eight and Sadie. “Which asshole do you mean?”
I go girlfriend bear on him. “Eight is not an asshole. He’s helping and he’s not in the system anyway.”
“So if I were in the system, would you hand me over too?” Eight asks.
“I gotta think about that,” I reply with a smirk. “I mean, wouldn’t this be a great way to lure you in.”
“Selkie,” he warns.
“I’m kidding. If you were in the system, I’d go on the lam with you.”
Miracle of all miracles, Eight finally cracks a grin. “I feel safer already,” he teases.
“Jesus Christ,” Sadie chirps. “You two are giving me a toothache.”
Chris looks up from his computer screen. “Ironic,” he murmurs. Then to me he says, “He was hardly worth the trouble of tracking him down.”
I shrug. “I’m all about law and order. Keeping criminals off the street. Doing my civic duty.”
“And yet, you’re hanging around this guy.” Chris nods his head towards Eight.
“How much is the bounty?” Eight asks, ignoring Chris’s feeble zinger.
“It’s not important,” I say quickly. “What counts is that we got this slime off the street.”
“This is slap-on-the-wrist shit,” Sadie sneers.
“Then why’d you run, asshole?” I reply.
“How much?” Eight repeats to Chris.
“Five bills,” Chris says.
“Judas!” I snap at Chris.
“You risked your life over $500? Are you fucking nuts?”
“It’s not about the money!” I lie. “My bounty hunter oath binds me to not pick and choose.”
“That’s not actually true,” Chris starts.
“Shut it,” Eight and I say at the same time.
“Whatever,” Chris says with an eyeroll. He reaches for the intercom. “Malcolm, we got Steve Irwin out here.”
“Who?”
“Steve Irwin. Sadie.”
“Right,” Malcom replies. “Who brought him in?”
“Who do ya think? Selkie Fleming.”
“She gone yet?” Malcolm’s voice crackles back at Chris.
“Not yet,” Chris replies.
“Can it wait until she’s gone?”
“No. I need you down here to process Steve.”
I hear a heavy blow of breath. “On my way.”
A minute later, a portly cop comes from the back. He glances from Sadie to me and then to Eight. “Which asshole is it?”
“Eight is not an asshole,” I reply, feeling the girlfriend bear rage building. “He’s—”
“It’s been established I am an asshole,” Eight interrupts. “Could we fuckin’ get on with whatever has to be done, so we can go?”
“You didn’t let me finish,” I protest.
Eight stares at me with his dead eyes, then turns to Chris. “Get the fuck on with it,” he growls.
Chris nods quickly, as if he just realized that he has a Hell’s Jury member in the station. “Right. It’s too early to process the check, so we can either mail it or you can come back later today and pick it up.”
I think about it, but Eight grabs my bicep. “Mail it.”
“No. I want to pick it up.”
“And if I said, ‘pick it up’ you would have said, no mail it.”
“Maybe,” I murmur, realizing I might be a little bit contrary.
“Fuck’s sake,” Malcom snipes. “Sign the form and get out of here.”
As I sign the form, Sadie says, “I want my phone call.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Malcolm grumbles as he grabs Sadie to haul him out of the lobby.
When we get outside, Eight says, “You know this coulda been a five-minute drop-off?”
I glance at my watch. “Yeah. If you’d stopped interrupting.”
I say it with a smile though to show him how self-aware I am.