Chapter 7
Switch
Imake my way to Joy’s front door knowing that before long my brothers will have my back. Not that I think I need it when my eyes land on Willa, shotgun in hand as she points it to one sorry looking motherfucker.
“Ah, Willa, did you do that to him?” I stare at the swelling on the left side of the guy’s face.
“Did I hit him with the butt of my shotgun and loosen two teeth you mean?” She grins as she keeps her aim steady on him, one cowboy booted foot resting on Joy’s coffee table.
“Hey man - whoa, who’s this?” Rider asks, staring at Willa.
“Rider, Willa. Willa, Rider. Joy’s neighbor.” I tip my head between the two of them.
“Well, remind me never to piss you off.” Rider mutters, before his gaze moves up the stairwell. “Cleared up there?”
“Not yet. Just got here to find Willa and this fuck knuckle.” I settle my attention back on WIlla, “Anyone else in here?”
“I saw three come in. Got this guy but you’d think the other two would have come out of the woodwork by now.” She shrugs, almost looking bored.
Rider nods once then takes off upstairs, gun drawn. The rest of my brothers start filing in, all of them giving Willa confused looks. Well all of them except Mad Dog.
“Ah, sweetheart, what the fuck are you doin’?” Mad Dog asks, approaching Willa like she’s a wild animal.
“Sweetheart?” Rhodie mumbles as he and Marx stare between their father and Willa.
“Just mindin’ my own business, darlin’. Nothing to worry about,” Willa replies with a megawatt smile.
Banging from upstairs draws our attention along with Rider’s howl and I take the stairs two at a time to get to my brother. Rider may be a pain in the ass, but he's our pain in the ass.
“Rider!” Rhodie yells as he follows close behind, the only reply is more howling and banging.
I head down the hall to where the noise is coming from and then freeze in the doorway.
“What the fuck are they doing?” Rhodie growls from beside me as Tank and Judge make it upstairs and start pissing themselves laughing.
“Are they, are they stuck in the rug?” Tank asks, head tilted.
Rider has some fucker in a picture perfect jiujitsu rear choke hold but somehow they’ve gotten themselves rolled up in the shaggy rug on the floor.
“They look like a fucking tortilla,” Judge muses.
“Just get me the fuck outta here! He keeps pinching me!” Rider huffs out as he tightens his arms around the guy.
Rhodie stomps to where they’ve stopped, having rolled into the foot of Joy’s bed, plants his boot on top of them and kicks out, effectively unrolling them. They flop out in the middle of the room, Rider still stuck to the guy’s back like a limpet.
“Hurry up and choke him out for real so we can load up,” Rhodie backs around before turning to me, Tank and Judge. “How many are we looking for?”
“Willa said she saw three men,” I answer, moving to follow Rhodie.
“Oh, we got a game of hide and seek going on.” Rhodie claps his hands together, rubbing them. He moves to stand on the landing before yelling, “$10 to whoever finds the last motherfucker.”
I look between Rhodie, Tank and Judge. "You're on -”
“Hey! What about me? I’m injured! The fucker bit me twice!” We all turn to look at Rider.
“I’ll give you a tetanus later,” I yell over my shoulder as I barrel out of the room and down the hall, not even trying to be quiet.
Fuck them. They came into Joy’s house. We all know what they came here for and now they’ll be answering to Chewy. Pregnant or not there’s no way she’s going to let these guys go without answering a few questions first.
Heading downstairs everyone seems fairly calm. Well, except for the sound of heavy boots clomping around the house and brothers yelling, “Come out, come out wherever you are!”.
“You know, I expected more,” Willa says, shotgun resting on her shoulder, the man she held at gunpoint now hog tied on the ground.
“More what?”
“I don’t know, just more badass.” She shrugs.
“Well, you haven’t met the women yet,” Marx murmurs drily.
There’s some grunting from outside and whooping so I’m guessing the last of these fuckers has been grabbed.
“You owe me $10 fucker,” Fox growls at Rhodie.
“He ran into me, if anything, I stopped him first.” Nitro answers, strolling in behind Fox and the last of the fuckers who were poking around Joy’s house.
Static fills the air along with a tinny voice asking for a status update.
“Fuck,” Marx grumbles, snatching a comms radio from hog tied guy on the floor. “Target secure. Moving to secondary.”
Silence fills the air before static breaks the tension. “Negative. Stand by. Secondary compromised. Hold position."
“Fuck!” Marx growls. “Someone gimme some aluminum foil.” He turns the comms over, cracks open the back and yanks out the battery.
Fox rummages through Joy’s kitchen drawers before coming across aluminum foil, tossing it to Marx who tears off a piece and wraps the square comms device before tossing the battery.
“Do the same with the other two comms, we gotta hustle.” We all stare at Marx. “If they’re telling us to hold position it’s because -”
“They’re sending in backup. Fuck,” Rhodie growls, tossing one of the men over his shoulder and stomping out the door, Tank behind him with another of the men, having already tossed his comms unit to Marx.
“Can we fit these fuckers in Joy’s car?” Judge asks.
“You could probably squeeze two.” I guess. I mean, it’ll be tight, but what do I care?
Judge nods once, following Rhodie out.
“Angel, Imma need you to come with us,” Mad Dog says gently, ignoring the look on Willa’s face. She opens her mouth, most likely to give him a tongue lashing but nothing comes out as Mad Dog huffs and throws her over his shoulder. “Ain’t leaving you here to fend for yourself.”
I watch, wide eyed as Willa doesn’t say a word, just gives me an upside down wink on her way past.
“Well, I expected there to be a bigger fight than that,” Marx mumbles, wrapping the last device in foil.
“Oh, I wouldn’t say the fight is over,” I reply, watching as Mad Dog plops Willa on the back of his sled, her smile huge as she winks at Joy through the windshield of her car. “I’d say it’s only just beginning.”
“In more fucking ways than one,” Marx sighs. “Let’s roll out!”
Joy
I’ve been chewing my thumb nail since Switch and his brothers ran into my house.
“It’ll all be fine, girly. These big fuckers know what they’re doing,” Pops says. “And if they don’t, they’ll just use their sheer size to beat whoever is in your house into submission.”
“That doesn’t really make me feel any better. What if they get hurt?”
Pops pats my knee gently. “They’ll be fine. You have to remember all of them are ex-military. They've faced down more than just three jackholes creeping around a sweet woman’s home.”
“I guess.” I eye him for a moment. “This is why you wanted me at the clubhouse, isn't it?”
Pops chuckles. “Picked up on that, did ya?”
I roll my eyes and give him a smile. “You weren’t really that subtle, you know?”
“Psh, I was as subtle as a sledgehammer.”
I giggle and Pops grins at me from where he’s sitting in the driver's seat. “Do you trust me, girly?”
I search Pops’ face, seeing nothing but goodness. “I’ve trusted you since the first moment I met you.”
“That’s because you got good instincts in ya.”
I snort so hard I almost choke. “If that was the case I would have never given Travis a chance,” I say bitterly.
“Joy, life is hard and shitty sometimes, but those things get thrown into our paths so we can learn, grow and become stronger. You have every right to isolate yourself, grow a hard shell no one can penetrate and look at everyone with suspicion, and yet you don’t.
You’re sweet, kind, would bend over backwards to help and you trust me. That means something in my book.”
I look at his profile as he watches my house through the windshield. “What does it mean?”
“You’ve given me your trust and I’ll protect it til the day I die.”
“I don’t want you to die; not on my behalf. I don’t want anyone to die on my behalf.” My mind flits to the DRMC, to the Ol Ladies and to Switch. People who in a short space of time have come to mean so much to me.
“Joy, I don’t know if you know this, but everybody dies,” Pops says with a cheeky grin.
I sniffle. “You’re terrible.”
“Oh I know! And I can’t wait for you to be terrible with me.” We share a grin before movement from my house catches my eye.
Rhodie is striding across the front lawn, a limp man dressed in head to toe black slung over his shoulder.
“Oh goody, shit’s gonna get interesting,” Pops says, rubbing his hands together before getting out of the car and literally skipping to meet Rhodie halfway.
They share a conversation, both men turning to look at me in my car. Rhodie has a frown on his brutally handsome face, while Pops is grinning like a mad man. He skips back to me, throwing open the back door.
“Sorry about this sweetheart, but we’ve picked up a passenger.”
“Two,” Rhodie adds in his rough voice.
“Two. So just stuff him in there Shitstain,” Pops says, waving at my back seat.
Rhodie does as he’s told, tossing the unconscious man into my backseat.
My stomach flutters wildly with anxiety as I think about the man coming around in the backseat of my car and becoming enraged.
This may not be a scenario Chewy ran us through at self defense class, but I have a feeling having an unconscious man in the backseat of a car is a surefire way to get regular murdered if he wakes up.
Deciding that I don’t want to be regular murdered, or any kind of murdered, I search my car for something to tie him up with.
Dammit! If only I was some type of badass and not a timid mom.
Leaning back and twisting between the two front seats I rummage around the mess on the floor of the backseat, thanks to my little girl.
“Incoming,” a gruff voice says as Judge tosses another unconscious man into my backseat.
Dammit! If only I was the type of car owner who owned an emergency kit with cable ties and not the type of car owner who drives around in what is essentially a junk drawer.
Grunting, I lean further into the backseat and let out a little whoop when I come up with a long piece of glittery ribbon from one of Kit’s crafts, and her swim bag which handily has two drawstrings.
I make quick work of yanking out the drawstrings and use the length to tie their hands to their knees.
This way it’ll be harder for them to move around and I figure it must work well as I’ve seen it done on some of the crime dramas I’ve been devouring since I moved into my little home.
I stare at the two men, then figure I should probably cover their eyes to disorient them. Taking the long piece of glitter ribbon I tie that over one of the men’s eyes and then shove the Anna from Frozen swim bag over the other guy's head.
“Hey bab- whoa,” Switch says, freezing in the doorway.
“I didn’t want them to wake up and regular murder me,” I say in a slightly panicked voice.
“OK then. You did good, babe.” I grin at his praise and settle into my seat as Switch sinks into the passenger side of my car.
There’s some rocking and the sound of my trunk slamming and I swing my gaze to the back of my little hatchback, gasping when I meet the eyes of a dark-haired man who has been hogtied, his head arched back peeking over the backseats at me.
“Don’t look at her,” Pops growls as he punches the man in the face before turning and sitting between the other two in the backseat. He stares at the man wearing Kit’s swim bag over his head before grinning at me. “Nice.”
Shaking my head I face the front, watching the DRMC men come spilling out of my house and making their way to their bikes.
My mind is all over the place and my body feels fizzy and I feel like I’m going to lose it at any moment and yet, there is no fear.
Not like the fear I’m used to feeling. The kind of fear where my body feels electric, like I can’t take a proper breath because my lungs are frozen in my chest. The fear where all I can hear is the pounding sound of my own heart in my ears.
The fear I had become accustomed to is just…
not there. The absence of it makes me feel almost light headed, giddy with relief that I don’t have to do this alone.
“You alright?” Switch asks, his eyes darting to me before moving back to the road as he pulls out and points us in the direction of the clubhouse.
“Surprisingly, yes.” I say, turning to smile at first Switch, then Pops.
“It sounds crazy but I feel totally, completely alright. Even if there are three trussed up bad guys in my car and Willa is riding on the back of Mad Dog’s bike waving her shotgun in the air.
” I blink slowly making sure I am seeing what I’m seeing and I haven’t actually had a stroke.
Pops snorts. “Goody, the Love Pres loves a new project.”
“Pops,” Switch warns but Pops doesn’t care. He blows a raspberry at Switch, then flips the bird at him.
Switch rolls his eyes and pulls into the long winding drive of the DRMC clubhouse. “What the hell?” He murmurs, stopping Petal just shy of the sleek, black car already parked there.
A huge, blonde viking of a man steps out of the driver's side, moving to the back passenger door and holding it open for a dark haired man in a grey suit. I recognize them instantly although I’m not certain of their names. They were at the DRMC Valentine’s evening.
“Come on, babe. Let’s get you inside safe and sound and with Kit, yeah?”
I nod, still distracted by the men in front of me.
They look powerful, dangerous, and yet, much like the DRMC, I know that they wouldn't hurt me.
I open my door, startled when Switch appears at my side.
He ignores the two men, now talking to Marx, instead following behind me, the heat from his hand at my lower back warming me from the inside out.
He leads me all the way upstairs to the playroom before pressing a light as air kiss to the crown of my head.
“Marx is going to call Church but I’ll come find you and Kit later,” his eyes widen a fraction, “if that’s OK with you?”
I swallow, gazing up at him, it’s been a hell of a day and in this moment I decide to be brave. “If you didn’t come find me I would have found you. I, um, I like the way I feel around you. Like I’m invincible.”
His blue gaze searches mine. “You are, Joy. You are the strongest woman I’ve ever met. Tiny, brave, unbreakable.” He gives me a soft smile before turning on his heel and heading back the way we came.
I watch him until he turns the corner and I can’t see him anymore. Now that it’s quiet and I’m alone standing outside the playroom some of the fear creeps back in. I don’t know what's going to happen. But I do know that I will stop at nothing to keep my family safe, Kit, Switch and the DRMC.