Chapter 6
Otto
“I want you to take Esther back to town,” my dad said, stopping me by the tailgate of Rumi’s truck. “Don’t take her to your house. Go to the clubhouse. I’ll call ahead and let them know you’re comin’.”
“Why?”
“She doesn’t need to be here for this part,” he replied calmly, glancing at the back of Esther’s head in the back window. “She seems real confused, bud.”
“She’s gonna freak if I try to make her leave.”
Dad looked at me for a long moment. “You get a good look at that cabin, son?”
“Not really,” I replied. I’d glanced around, but most of my attention had been on Esther and her round belly.
“There’s no electricity,” Dad said. He paused. “I also didn’t see a generator anywhere, Otto. So, no runnin’ water either.”
I don’t know how I hadn’t put it together.
I guess I was just as fucking shell-shocked as Esther seemed to be.
I’d been surprised and furious that she was living in the middle of nowhere with no electricity but I hadn’t even thought about the water situation.
I was from the country, I knew that you needed electricity for a well to pump water inside.
I’d just been too distracted to really see the situation for what it was.
No well meant no toilet. No sink. No shower.
She couldn’t even wash her fucking hands.
Rage pulsed through me.
“You think they left her out here to guard the shipment?” I asked, glancing at the cab of the truck.
“Unlikely,” my dad replied with a sigh. “All we had to do was ask nicely and she showed us where the damn things were.”
“This is a fuckin’ nightmare,” I muttered. “What the fuck is even happening right now?”
“Did you know she was pregnant?” he asked flatly. “The way you’re lookin’ at her, I’m assumin’ it could be yours.”
I jerked my head up to look at him. “I had no fuckin’ clue. I used a condom.”
“Well that’s somethin’ at least.” He watched me closely. “You think it’s yours?”
My laughter was hoarse and painful. “She hasn’t slept with anyone else.”
“You sure about that?”
“Did you see her?” I asked dubiously. “That dress is a little more extreme than what she usually wears, but not much. She’s a church girl. I’m not even sure how I fuckin’ slept with her.”
“We’ll talk about this later,” Dad said ominously as Uncle Will strode toward us.
“Mouth’s bringin’ Forrest out with him.”
“That’s good,” Dad replied. “He’ll figure that shit out.”
“We shoulda recruited that motherfucker when we met him,” Uncle Will said, shaking his head. “Coulda used his expertise the last twenty years.”
“Tried to.” Dad huffed. “He wasn’t interested.”
“Shame.” Uncle Will looked at me. “So, congratulations in order?”
“What?” I looked at him blankly.
“That girl’s either got the worst growth I’ve ever seen or she’s gonna have a baby,” he said dryly. “Yours?”
“Mine,” I confirmed, trying to wrap my head around it.
Shit like that didn’t happen. I’d been having sex for years and I’d always been careful. I didn’t get women pregnant. I was careful. Never went without a condom. Ever.
“That complicates shit,” Uncle Will mused.
“Told him to take her back to the clubhouse,” my dad said. “She doesn’t need to be sittin’ here in the cold while we figure this shit out.”
“She shouldn’t be out here at all,” Uncle Will countered. “How the fuck did she end up here? She tell you?”
“She hasn’t said much,” I replied. “Beyond askin’ me to call her dad so we could clear everything up and she could go back inside.”
“You’re shittin’ me.”
“Nope.”
“Hell, Molly isn’t even that na?ve.”
“I don’t think she’s got any idea what’s goin’ on,” I said with a sigh. “She barely seems rattled. It’s like she thinks it’s some big misunderstandin’.”
“Christ,” my dad muttered.
“Woods are fuckin’ wired,” my brother Rumi called out incredulously, jogging toward us.
“Say what?” I barked.
“No shit, man,” he said as he reached us. “About fifty feet in. These are some paranoid motherfuckers.”
“Get her out of here, Otto,” my dad said, his voice vibrating with anger. “Go now.”
“They wired the woods and she’s been out here choppin’ wood?” Uncle Will said in disbelief as I strode toward Esther’s side of the truck.
My hands were shaking as the implication of that settled in my gut.
The idea of Esther walking into the trees looking for wood to split and being blown to pieces ran like a reel over and over again.
I was livid that we’d known where to look the night before but we’d waited until morning to come searching and she’d spent all that time oblivious to the danger around her.
“Careful drivin’ outta here,” my dad called. I waved my hand in acknowledgment.
Esther was sitting sideways in the truck seat, her rubber rain boots perched on the edge of the floorboard with her skirt tucked tightly around her legs.
“What’s going on?” she asked as I reached her.
“We’re leavin’,” I replied, gesturing at her to pull her feet inside.
“What?” She glanced at the cabin. “No, I can’t. My dad said—”
“I don’t give a flyin’ fuck what your dad said,” I barked, making her jump.
Instantly, I lowered my voice. I didn’t want to fucking scare her, but every second we were there made me more nervous.
It was one thing to know that there were explosives under the cabin, it was something else knowing we were surrounded by them.
“I’m goin’ to take you into town until we get this all sorted. ”
“He’ll be really angry,” she said, her voice strained. “I don’t think I should leave.”
I paused and took a deep breath and lied straight to her face. “Look, let me take you for somethin’ to eat, yeah? When we get all this taken care of, if you want to come back I’ll bring you back.”
There was no fucking way I was ever letting her step foot back inside that shitty cabin.
She stared at me and I had the really uncomfortable feeling that she could see right through me and knew that I was lying, but she slowly turned anyway, pulling her legs into the truck.
The drive back down the gravel driveway made me jumpy as fuck. Every pothole and bump made me tense even further until my knuckles were white around the steering wheel. I’d never been so happy to see pavement as when we pulled out onto the road.
I hated leaving everyone behind when I should’ve been there helping, but I couldn’t imagine sending Esther off with anyone else and she sure as fuck couldn’t stay there.
I glanced at her as we headed back toward Eugene.
She’d fisted her hands together in her lap and was sitting as still as a statue.
I couldn’t stop the pulse of mine, mine, mine pounding in the back of my mind.
It was silent in the cab of the truck for at least thirty minutes before she spoke.
“I don’t understand any of this,” she said quietly. “None of it makes any sense.”
“Yesterday,” I replied, wondering exactly how much I should tell her. “We were movin’ a shipment when someone forced a couple of our people off the road and stole it.”
“But how did they end up in my cabin?” she replied in exasperation, her words running together as she spoke faster and faster.
“Why were you shipping guns like that? Why would you think my dad took them? How did you even know about the cabin? My dad’s a deacon in our church.
He’s not going around stealing guns. He’s the most straight-laced person I’ve ever met. None of this makes sense.”
“Our crates were there,” I pointed out reasonably. “You saw them.”
“But maybe my dad had nothing to do with it,” she said, turning to look at me. “That’s what I’m saying. You should let me call him.”
“You think that some stranger…” I paused for emphasis. “Somehow knew that there was a cabin out in the middle of fuckin’ nowhere, with a hidden trap door in the floor, and also knew that you’d be conveniently gone for a few hours yesterday?”
Esther was silent.
“I’m sorry,” I said gently. “I know all this is confusin’ as fuck.”
“How did you know they were there, though?” she asked quietly. “How did you know where to look?”
“Narrowed it down,” I replied, leaving out the fact that Aces had also gone to her church and the warehouse that I doubted she even knew existed.
Someone had texted them the minute we’d found the guns and some of the boys were already headed to the cabin.
It was only a matter of time before we passed them on the road.
Half of me was still back at that cabin in the woods, but we’d ignored the elephant in the truck for as long as I could stand.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were pregnant?” I asked after it had been quiet for a few minutes. “I came to see if you were alright and you didn’t say a fuckin’ word.”
Her hand went unconsciously to her belly.
“I didn’t know then.”
“You knew at some point.”
“I didn’t think—” She paused. “We barely know each other.”
“So?”
“I would’ve told you eventually.”
“After you’d had it?” I asked flatly.
“Once I knew how to find you,” she murmured, looking out the window. “But I was more worried about telling my parents.”
“I’m sure that went over well.” I could only imagine how badly they’d reacted.
“Not really,” she replied seriously. “The next day my dad brought me out to the cabin.”
“The day after Thanksgiving,” I said knowingly.
“How did you know that?”
“My brother asked your sister.”
“Noel?” her head turned toward me sharply. “How is she? Is she okay?”
“Far as I know, she’s fine,” I replied quickly. “Missin’ you, though.”
“I miss her, too,” she said, leaning back tiredly against the seat. “I thought that I’d be excited when I finally didn’t have to share a room with her anymore, but I really miss her.”
I nodded and watched out the windshield as five bikes came into view headed toward us. Lifting my fingers off the steering wheel, I waved at them as they passed.
“Are those your friends?” she asked, looking at them through the back window.
“Brothers, yeah.”
“Brothers?”
“In the MC.”
“Oh, right,” she looked at my cut and shook her head. “I forgot your family was part of all that.”