Chapter 17
KNOX
Ifeel as though my breath is frozen in my chest, because it’s impossible to breathe around Maren.
I want to reach out for her, tug her to me, and yes, fuck her. But most importantly, I feel like a piece of me might die if I don’t get to kiss those lips of hers again.
Because in the last twenty-four hours, I’ve learned a lot about her, about the life she has, and the life she deserves.
She deserves friends to hang out with and have fun with.
She deserves a gallery to hang her art in and see it like it’s valuable because it fucking is.
She deserves a father who respects her and fucking cherishes her, because, if I had a daughter, that’s exactly what I’d do. And I’m not even gonna consider why the idea of being a father and having a daughter didn’t scare the shit out of me.
There was a reason I chose to wait until closing time to stop by.
My logic was that she’d have sent everyone home so we could talk in private.
But now it’s just the two of us, with me looking at the tired slump of her shoulders, wishing I could fix it, maybe having someone else around would have been insurance against me doing something reckless.
I respect the way Maren has run this business despite feeling lonely and isolated in a town that’s never been able to separate the daughter from the father.
Maren hasn’t moved from where she stands, pretty as a picture, behind the counter. Her fingers are curled against the edge of the worn wood, and I wish my presence would put her more at ease. Like being around her seems to ease me, all of a sudden.
“You said you wrote it down, the address, when Jackal’s landlord gave it to you.”
Maren nods. “I did. In the ledger because I had no other paper around.”
“The ledger?” I ask.
She taps a thick annual planner on the desk. “I know it’s silly in this day and age, but I write down everything bought and sold, and who bought it, if I know. That way, I can look back at previous years’ inventories for planning. And I also get to track repeat customers.”
That’s even better than I thought. “What was the date he came in on? And who else was shopping at that time?”
She grabs the book and begins to flip back through the pages. “Pretty sure it was before Memorial weekend,” she mutters as she skims. “And I think I wrote it on the left-hand side.”
It’s clear this is an understood standard for the shop. Every day, in different styles of handwriting, is every order and booking. There are hand-drawn columns with the same headings: Bait Shop, Marine Supplies, Airboat Hire, Miscellaneous.
It’s meticulous and detailed. Lock would be impressed. He keeps the club’s two sets of books the same way.
Maren pauses her flip through, then tips her head in the direction of a small office. “Back there, there are fifty-one books just like this one. My grandfather used to keep them.”
My unease grows the closer she gets to the date she thinks the conversation happened. I’m hoping this detailed record will tell me who was in the store that day. But I’m also dreading finding out one of my men was here then.
“Got it,” Maren says, slapping the planner back down on the counter. I step around the back of it to stand next to her. It’s impossible to not feel the warmth of her, or smell the soft scent of her that reminds me of the soap we used in the shower.
But a man who made it known he wanted me, appreciated me, loved me, even? I’d beg him.
I want to be the man she’d beg.
I want to be the man who’d give her anything, if she’d ask. It’s slightly terrifying the way my feelings for this woman have done a complete one-eighty.
“Fair warning,” she says. “Leo’s handwriting needs some interpretation.”
“What does it say?”
She points to an address at the top of the page, out of the columns.
Her hair slips forward over one shoulder, and she tucks it back behind her ear, revealing the expanse of smooth skin on her neck.
“This is the address. And I know it was morning, because I was in the middle of trying to eat a breakfast sandwich I’d brought down from the apartment.
I had grease on my fingers, so I had to wipe them before I could write this down.
Didn’t do a good job, obviously.” She points to two grease smudges on the page.
“So, what’s the window of time?”
She shrugs, and glances up at a clock that hangs on the wall above the door as if it has the answers. “I open the shop at eight. If I was still eating my breakfast, I’d say it’s got to be within the first twenty minutes of opening because egg tastes gross cold.”
Her shoulder brushes against mine as I lean in to read. The contact shouldn’t have the ability to stop my train of thought, but it does. It throws me back to the shower. How it felt to run my fingers over the bare skin I know is beneath her simple pale blue polo shirt.
Forcing myself, I look back to the ledger.
Her hand covers the rest of the names as she points to the first on the list. “The list is in time order, so I would imagine these transactions would be from around that time. We tend to be busiest in the morning when we first open. If it’s for a company, they likely need what they’re buying for the start of the day, and if people are going fishing, they’re keen to get out before it’s too hot. ”
Then, she moves her hand down the list.
“Two pounds of shrimp for Jack D. He’s the caretaker of the school and that’s personal use.
Jimmy is the owner of Scott Fisheries and needed some engine oil.
This next one for hooks has a v next to it, which means a tourist in for the day.
Then, Sunny was in for a box of frozen bait.
I don’t remember if Ridge was with him, but the two of them usually call in on their way to fishing, so they were likely together.
And this was an oil return. Pax Rucker, I’ve seen him around but can’t tell you where he lives or what he does.
I remember, now, he was mad. Bottom line was he’d bought the wrong oil but couldn’t bring himself to admit it.
Tried to tell me he’d pulled the container from the right spot on the shelf, but when he got home, it wasn’t what he wanted. ”
A rush of adrenaline surges through me.
Gotcha, you son of a bitch.
She points up to a sign. “I wouldn’t care, but we have an ask-no-questions return policy. I didn’t need an essay from the guy.”
Maren turns, our faces so close, it would take nothing to lean just an inch and steal the kiss I’ve been thinking about.
“Do you think Sunny did it?” she asks. “Could he have overheard me and passed it along?”
I shake my head. “I trust Sunny with my life. Plus, he already knew where Jackal was. Jackal’s a well-respected nomad. At least, he was until he became Colorado’s enforcer. He wouldn’t have needed to overhear it from you. But this guy…”
I tap my finger over Pax’s name.
“If it’s because I said he was an asshole about the return…”
“It’s not. But I need to make a quick call. Stay here.”
I step outside the store and take in the parking lot. All evidence from the storm is gone; I never realized quite how hard Maren and her team work here.
North doesn’t answer when I dial it, so I call Havoc.
“Prez,” he says breathlessly when he answers after the second ring. “Hang on a minute.” There’s a muffled sound, then I hear him say quietly, “Stop fucking sucking so hard for one second.”
“Jesus,” I say. “Didn’t need to hear that.”
Havoc chuckles. “You needed to hear me coming a lot less, Prez. What do you need?”
“To bleach what I just heard from my ear drums.”
“Sooner you tell me what you need, sooner I can get back to it.”
I glance out over the water. “It’s Pax who overheard Maren and Jackal’s landlord talking about his address.”
“How do you know?”
I look back at the shop and find Maren’s eyes on me. Quickly, she looks away, grabbing a pile of leaflets about airboat tours to shuffle them back into a neat pile.
Good to know she’s not immune to me either.
“Maren kept detailed records. Just been back to the shop and demanded to see them.” I didn’t demand.
I asked, and Maren showed me. But for some reason, I need my men to not see this as anything other than a fact-finding mission.
“Figured something might be traceable by Vex, credit card transactions on the day or something. But Maren keeps handwritten records. Pax was in around the same time as the landlord.”
“Does Maren remember seeing him?”
“She does.” I stub my toe into the gravel and make a dent that I smooth over. “He was upset about something he was returning, so it stood out in her memory.”
“You want me to go bring him in?”
“No. Let’s keep watching him. I want to know what else he’s up to. But under no circumstances should he be allowed to leave the state. Switch who’s watching him frequently. I want to know if he meets up with those two men. That will help us figure out if they’re our enemy or not.”
“You ever wonder why these people, whoever they are, haven’t approached the club directly to find him, Prez?”
“Only to the extent that we’re an MC and there’s a hell of a lot more of us than there are of them. Why? You think it’s more?”
Havoc sighs. “Not sure, Prez. But if I were trying to find a guy I knew was a biker, I’d make up some excuse to go there to try and find him.”
“Are we sure they’re trying to find Paltrow, though?
I wonder if it’s Jackal they’re after, and maybe they knew Paltrow found him.
And Paltrow won’t ever be returning their calls, their trail has gone cold, so they’ve come back to the last place they knew there was any intel. Not that we’d help them, regardless.”
“Fair play, Prez. Now, I’m gonna get back to what I was doing before this boner completely dies on me.”
“Fuck you,” I say with a grin and hang up.
I should just get on my bike and ride out of here, but even as I try to force myself in that direction, I turn on my heel and step back into the shop.
Just thank her, and leave.
“Beg me,” I say, instead, closing the door behind me, and switching the sign on the door to closed.
Maren looks up from the laptop she was studying. “What?”
I march over to her. “Beg me, Maren. So that I can pretend this was all your idea.”
“What was?”
I scoop her up and sit her on the desk. “This.”