Chapter 10
Ten
:):
—You decide
Creed
“She’s not home.”
I looked over to find Boone, one of the Dixie Wardens who lived on the same street as Birdee, staring at me thoughtfully.
“Where is she?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Some guy in a fancy Tesla came to pick her up. She had a suitcase.”
Immediate disappointment assaulted me. “Damn.”
I’d been avoiding her hard the last few days, and I shouldn’t have.
She’d done nothing wrong.
It was me who’d stayed away for my own stupid reasons.
The shock of finding out that my sister was pregnant, and I couldn’t be a part of my niece or nephew’s life, had hit hard.
I was so fuckin’ lost in my own damn brain that I’d even missed a couple of meetings at the clubhouse that were mandatory.
“You got somethin’ going on you need to talk about?” he asked.
I scrubbed at my face with my hands, cursing the way that my life had been laid out for me.
“My sister is pregnant.”
Boone sighed. “You’re going to have to figure something out there.”
The Dixie Wardens, as well as the men that’d followed me here, all knew about my sister. We all knew about each other’s shit.
It wasn’t something that we could’ve hidden.
The president, Denver, had asked for it all. The club had taken a vote on everything—because no way was he allowing people he didn’t trust one hundred percent completely into his and his club’s life—and they’d agreed to allow us to come.
But that meant that they all knew my every transgression. My every failure in life.
And Bernice was definitely one of my biggest failures.
“Nothing to figure out,” I admitted.
“Clearly there’s something to figure out there if you’re hiding away for two days, and missing your own…” He shut up fast.
“My own what?”
“You’re gonna have to take that one up with Denver,” he muttered.
I pinched the bridge of my nose.
Shit was just not going my way the last few days.
“If it makes you feel better, I wasn’t in my home wallowing in self-pity,” I admitted. “I’m dealing with a bunch of bullshit with this poaching case. We’ve had three adult male moose killed in the last three days alone. And one caught in a trap that we had to euthanize.”
His gaze sharpened.
It would.
He was the local vet who serviced three counties. And when he wasn’t doing that, he moonlighted as the spare park ranger.
“Why haven’t I heard about this?” he asked.
“That I can’t tell you,” I said. “But I’m currently up to my eyeballs in these cases, and I’m trying to get it all figured out but it’s seriously a pain in the ass, and all the other game wardens are busy as fuck, too. Meaning, we’re spread thin.”
“Which I’m sure Denver knows.” He winced. “Sorry, man. I had to euthanize a family pet today that bit a little girl, and let’s just say I’m pissy.”
I jerked up my chin. “It’s fine.”
It wasn’t.
I should’ve been there last night. And the night before since they’d rescheduled to accommodate me.
“Fuck.” I looked at the door once again.
“What’s got you hung up about the girl?” he asked.
A whole lot of things.
None of them good.
“Probably nothing I should be pursuing,” I admitted.
He studied me for a long moment while I studied Birdee’s house, and then surprised me when he asked, “Want to come to the clubhouse with me? Then we can go grab dinner at Hopps?”
Hopps was owned by the club, and one of the only places in town that was local.
“Sure,” I grumbled as I gave the door one last glance.
Shit.
I had something wrong with my head.
I walked to my old truck and hopped inside. Boone followed suit in his own truck, then we both drove to the clubhouse.
It took nearly a half hour to get to the gated ranch that was quite a bit outside of town.
As we parked and got out, my eyes gazed longingly at the horses.
I liked to come out here quite a bit and ride.
That was one thing that I’d missed like a second skin when I was locked up.
When I’d gone on the run, so to speak, with Bernice, I’d landed at a cattle ranch right outside of town. I’d worked for both Bernice’s and my room and board, and made a pretty hefty paycheck while I was at it.
I didn’t know how much I’d love the ranch life until it was ripped away from me.
Now that I was out of prison, I found myself coming out here a lot just to spend time with the animals.
Though, I went to Romeo’s place a lot because of that, too.
Romeo had horses that came with his place when he’d moved up here.
He’d taken to the horses, which was why he wouldn’t sell them to me when I’d moved out here myself.
It worked out well in the end, though. When I started my job as a game warden, I hadn’t realized how much spare time I wouldn’t have.
“Get in here already, it’s cold,” Boone grumbled as he stood at the ranch house’s door.
I walked inside and shut it, sighing when the warmth hit me.
I hadn’t realized how damn cold I was.
I moved to the fire almost on autopilot.
“Well if it isn’t Mr. Missing In Action.”
I looked from the fire to find Major and Denver on the couch that I’d just walked past.
“Sorry,” I muttered. “I have a boss on my ass.”
Major chuckled. “Find anything new?”
“Nothing.” I gritted my teeth. “I did get a hit on the fletching, though. Apparently, they’re custom-made by a guy in Montana.
Expensive because they’re a new design. The design was recently patented, and I was able to look up the patent information.
Dude that registered the patent—I called him and left a voicemail. ”
“Good.” Major looked toward Denver. “He’s here now.”
“He sure is,” Denver agreed as he stood, downing his beer as he moved.
I followed him with my eyes and felt my lips kick up at the corner when I saw the leather cut he picked up off the side table in the kitchen.
“Since you were so busy…” he tossed me the jacket. “The rest of the guys got a party. You get a congrats and a beer before you go.”
“Thanks,” I said as I touched the leather. It felt good to be a part of something. A family. “I thought we had more time?”
“Time is irrelevant,” Denver said. “Each of you has proved yourself over the last couple of months in your own way. Though none of y’all were able to get Romeo to join. That was a downvote on Grady’s end.”
I chuckled.
Grady worked with Romeo at a logging company—Paul Bunyon’s.
He’d been half in love with Romeo ever since he met him.
I slipped on the cut over my jacket and laughed. “How do y’all do this again?”
“We put it on underneath our jackets, dumbass. It’s too cold to do anything different up here,” Boone said as he came into the room with two beers and handed me one. “Where’s Claudine at today?”
Claudine was the resident cook for the ranch that Denver ran. She cooked for all of the club members, plus the ranch hands. She was fuckin’ phenomenal, and it would leave Denver in the lurch if she was gone for very long.
“Claudine is visiting her family in Kentucky,” he said. “Though, she said that she had her best friend’s daughter heading our way. She’s a world-renowned chef and said she’d cook tomorrow until Claudine got back next weekend.”
“You can go to Hopps with us for dinner then,” Boone suggested.
“I can’t.” Major stood up from the couch and stretched his arms up high over his head. “Gotta get home to my girl.”
I grinned. “Ask her to make me some more cookies, please.”
Major rolled his eyes. “You have to stop asking that. You know she’ll keep makin’ ’em. And I have health issues.”
“You do not.” I rolled my eyes. “You’re one of the healthiest men I know.”
And he was, too. He was the most in shape fifty-year-old man I’d met in my life. And that was saying something since I was in prison with a lot of in-shape fifty-year-old men.
“Gotta keep myself in good shape because my woman has needs,” he joked.
Denver gagged.
“Fuck off.”
Sorcha was also Denver’s sister, though they weren’t close in age. Sorcha was ten years older than Denver, even though she didn’t look it.
“Have a nice night, gentlemen,” Boone called. “I’m going to eat.”
Denver and I followed him out the door while Major stayed back and called his wife to let her know he was on the way home.
We arrived at Hopps just behind a group that I knew well.
I walked up to Vito once we got inside and slapped him on the back. “Hey, man.”
Vito grinned. “Hey. I see you got the cut finally.”
“I did.” I studied his family. “Where did Birdee end up going?”
Because I couldn’t stop thinking about her.
Which was fucking insane, seeing as I was the worst possible person she could let into her life.
Well, maybe one of the seven worst she could let into her life. Escaped convicts weren’t something you played around with—even if she didn’t know I was an escaped convict.
Mable frowned. “Birdee’s gone?”
I don’t know why that particular question coming from her “sister’s” mouth pissed me off so badly, but it did.
My brows rose. “You didn’t know?”
“Why would we?” Cody asked. “She doesn’t tell us anything about her life.”
Because you don’t fucking ask.
“I don’t know.” I shrugged as I looked over at Vito and Grace. “I guess I just assumed that since you were her sister, Mable, and you were her father, Vito, that you would know what happened in your sister’s and daughter’s life. Guess I was wrong.”
I left them standing there after that, fuming.
I hated how they didn’t care about her.
I hated even more that I did.
When I got to the bar, I ordered a drink and downed half of it before turning to find out where Denver and Boone ended up.
I found them near the corner where we usually sat—there were several booths in the back with a view of the mountains that were always kept open for the club members—and headed that way.
“What the hell was that about?” Denver asked.
I gritted my teeth, unsure what to say.
“Nothing,” I lied.
Denver’s brows lifted in challenge.
“She’s under my skin,” I said eventually.
“All this shit went down with her and her family. I’m not privy to all of it, but I know that they had something to do with her mother’s death.
I know that there were a ton of fucking misunderstandings.
And I know that ‘father’ figure over there was supposed to have her back and didn’t.
So I’m a little on edge. It pisses me way the fuck off when I see them out without her. ”
Denver grinned. “You like her.”
“I shouldn’t,” I countered.
He shrugged. “We don’t always get what we want.”