Chapter 6
Tank
C ruising into the compound I let out a sigh of relief. Today was fucking exhausting. If Judge and I thought we were busy last week, then today was a rude awakening. We were so busy in and out of Devil’s Big Tow we had to call in reinforcements in the shape of Savage, Flack and Rider. Savage and Flack worked well together, getting the old tow truck out on the road while Judge and I worked the newer trucks as usual. Rider, well, his help in the office was appreciated. Even if it wasn’t as efficient or professional as it could have been.
Parking Winnie in my spot, right next to Judge, I shut her down and sit for a moment, waiting for Judge to do the same.
“Shit, brother, I think we need a couple more employees.”
Judge nods, sitting with his thoughts. “Yeah. Today ran well with Savage and Flack pitching in. But shit, having Rider work reception was a big fucking help.”
I give him a chin lift and throw my leg over my bike to stand, gathering my shit out of my bags.
“I’ll take it to church. Business has been steadily growing and you and I don’t have time to run reception and go to call outs.”
“You got my vote, brother,” Judge replies, walking alongside before stopping abruptly. “Shit.”
Parked in the parking lot is a police cruiser. Not any cruiser, Sergeant Davies’ cruiser.
“Fuck.”
A hand lands on my shoulder, giving me a little shake. “Breathe, brother.”
We head toward the door, me wanting to get this shit over with; Judge having my back. Before we even get to the door it swings open, Nitro marching out, Davies by his side.
“What the fuck?” Judge mutters, staring at the men walking past.
”You’re off the hook this time, brother,” Nitro winks at me on his way past, not a care in the world.
Davies, again looks relaxed and as with me indicates Nitro take the front seat. Nitro doesn’t look too pissed, but you can bet your ass Fox will be. Pushing through the door my brothers and the Ol Ladies are gathered in the common room. Wire on the phone most likely calling his momma, everyone else looking to Marx for instruction.
“What in the hell was that?” I ask the room, hoping someone will fill me in.
“Some fucker laid a complaint with Rose Grove PD. Same MO as you, brother,” Fox seethes.
Swinging my head toward Marx, the Pres confirms with a nod. “Someone out there is fucking with us. Was bullshit when they hauled in Tank, even more bullshit with Nitro now. Davies knows it’s a waste of fucking time, but the man has to follow all leads.”
“Why the hell does this town have such an efficient police department? Most towns would shove that complaint into some shitty dark room somewhere,” Flack grumbles. Coming from a one percent club in Roxburgh where half the force was in their pocket, I can see why this is blowing his mind.
“Don’t know. But we’ve had two fucking complaints against us now. Wire, I need you to see if you can find anything.” Wire nods, taking Remy by the hand and leading her to their control center. “We also have this whole Mira thing. Usually we wouldn’t get mixed up in civilian issues, but that package coming here is a problem. With us on the RGPD radar, we don’t need them turning up when we have a box of fucking human parts on the table.”
Chewy puts her hand up, waiting patiently for Marx to give her the go ahead to talk. He nods in her direction and she shares a look with Pops.
“Speaking of livers, we did our research and we can say that the liver was fresh.”
“How fresh?” Savage asks.
“Less than 24 hours outside of the owner’s body.” She answers confidently.
“Could the livers have been stolen from some place that does transplants or something? Something less messed up than we think?” Nat asks from her seat on the couch, where all the Ol Ladies except Remy and Chewy sit.
“There’s no sign of them being on ice or kept in a cooler and the condition they were in was consistent with the type of degradation that the human body experiences after blood stops pumping.” Pops answers.
“They’re right,” Switch says, agreeing with the Tombs.
“How the hell do they know all this stuff?” Dex mutters under his breath.
“Decomposition was a special interest of ours for a while,” Chewy answers, shrugging a shoulder.
“Mira was going to do a deep dive into her books in case this fucker is a fan and is basing his moves on one of her characters,” Marx says, looking around at us all.
The Tombs brothers step forward and I hadn’t even noticed that August and Jules were here, although I guess it makes sense. Now they’re back from whatever secret mission they were on, they’ve been here every day since. “Jules met with Flora from Flora’s Buds,” Gus says, tipping his head to his brother.
“Yeah, checked the footage. The perp was clever enough to stay out of full sight of the camera. Any glimpses we got were from behind. No way to do facial rec.”
“I spoke to Flora’s husband, he’s their delivery driver. He said he had no contact with the person who placed the order, and he just does whatever his wife tells him to do,” Gus adds.
“What about whoever took the order?” Rhodie asks, Chomper attached to his chest, his arm slung over Chewy’s shoulders.
“Yeah, about that. Flora is, um, unusual?”
“That’s my mom you’re talking about!” We all spin to the doorway to see Sergeant Davies standing there, a dark look on his face. “But yeah, you’re kinda right in your description.” He lets out a sigh.
“Why the hell are you back? And how much did you hear?” Marx growls, stepping toward him. Fuck this cop has a lot of balls. Or no brains.
“We never got out of the lot because pretty boy here forgot his phone.” He rolls his eyes as Nitro comes ambling in, grin on his face.
“Why the fuck would he need it?” Fox asks, bewildered.
“To call one of you to pick him up?”
“You let him come back to pick up his phone?” Chewy asks, brows pinched in confusion.
“Yeah,” Davies answers.
“He’s letting me sit in the front, too!” Nitro crows.
“You are the worst policeman ever,” Chewy says with a frown.
“Look, we all know the charge is bullshit, but it’s my job to take him in and ask questions and fill out the paperwork. It works in your favor, too. Being seen as cooperative goes a long way with the department. As for how much I heard, that doesn’t matter because my mother called me, found out where I was and wanted me to pass on a message.”
“This whole situation is fucked up,” Flack whispers to Dex who nods back.
“Mama said that the person who placed the order had,” he looks down at his phone, presses a couple of buttons and then reads from the screen, “an orc build, small piggy eyes, hair like the big man from Moana with the magic tattoos that sings and has the voice of a crab.” He looks up from his phone, grins smugly at us, and gestures to Nitro to follow him. The door bangs after him and we hear the asshole’s booming laughter on the other side of the closed door.
We stand in silence trying to figure out what the fuck that even means. Looking toward Jules I ask “Did Flora say that to you too?”
He shakes his head. “No, she told me he was as wide as three rich women’s bouquets and the type of face that invites fists.”
Marx scrubs a hand down his face. “Right. So a solid man that Miss Flora obviously hated on sight. Got it. Fuck if Wire can find anything from those descriptions he’d be a fucking genius. Jesus.” His shoulders slump before he continues. “Fuck, why can’t we ever catch a break and weird shit bypass us for a change?”
As soon as the words leave his mouth, Mira comes swanning in with an arm full of books. “Whoa, what did I miss? Why does everyone look so serious?” Her gaze travels around the room. Once. Twice. “Hey, where’s your boyfriend?”
“He’s not my boyfriend!” Fox barks.
“Oh, soz. My bad. I just always see you together so I figured you were together, together. Nothing wrong with that.” She dumps her books on the nearest table. “You guys are hot individually. Together you would be scorching hot. Fire and ice.” She brings her fists together, fist bumping herself making explosion sounds, drawing her hands out making jazz hands.
The women all start talking animatedly about reverse harems, whatever the fuck they are, and then Marx’s whistle rends the air.
“Listen up, we have church in 20 minutes. Chewy, help Wire and Remy, see what they can find on all the shit we got coming at us. The rest of you ladies, would you mind reading some of Mira’s books? We need clues. Fuck, anything that can lead us to whoever is messing with Mira and now us.”
The women all nod eagerly and descend upon the pile of books on the table.
“I want everyone in church, including prospects. Gus?” He tips his head towards his office and Gus drops a kiss on Ana’s head, then his son’s, and follows after Pres.
Since the arrival of Chewy, Pres and Gus have become close friends. It’s a development I never saw coming, given how uptight Gus can be, however the man is a machine when it comes to security and safety. He may not be ex-military like the rest of us, but his training is on point. Thanks to him and his family, the MC has state of the art weapons and gadgets. I can only imagine their meeting currently will be for some new tech or shit. That’s always Marx’s number one. Keep his men and the rest of our ragtag family safe.
“Penny for your thoughts? Or maybe a quarter? What with inflation and all,” Mira quips, her arm brushing mine as she gesticulates, her soft and yet spicy vanilla scent enveloping me.
“Just thinking about security systems.”
She lets out a low whistle. “Wooooooow, that sounds very boring. Here, have a book.”
She shoves a book into my hands, the shiny cover a moody purple and blue. ‘Stabbed in the Feels’ is written in swirly gold script and I can’t help the chuckle that bursts out of me.
Looking up, Mira catches my eyes and gives me a wink, then carries on handing them out to everyone, not just the women.
“There’s too many for just the kotiro to read, so we’ll all have to pitch in. Do you guys have a whiteboard?” She asks, spinning this way and that, looking around the room. “Or, like a really big paper? Somewhere I can write all the weird and wonderful things that happened to me recently so we can cross reference and catch this sucker?”
“Gimme a minute,” Takoda says, disappearing into the storeroom behind the bar. Within moments he returns, carrying a big ass whiteboard.
“Shit, who even knew we had that?” Rider says, pointing at it. “Why do we have that?”
No one seems to know the answer, not that it matters as we all watch Mira draw bullet points on the whiteboard and then in large, pretty handwriting the weird shit that’s happened to her.
“Rescued from a rogue dog by a fighter pilot?” Judge asks, brows in his non-existent hairline.
“Found a strange garden gnome in your petunias?” someone else says.
“She’s an interesting one, your little writer,” Jules’ monotone voice says to my left.
“She isn’t my anything.” He raises his brow at me. “Fine. We’re friends. I like her. She’s … comfortable with herself” “
He stares at me a moment, assessing, his gaze uncomfortable. I’ve stared down worse men, but something about Jules Tombs makes it feel like he sees straight through you. Unlike his siblings, he isn’t quirky like Chewy, or anal retentive but controlled like Gus. He’s not even friendly and congenial like Tav. Jules Tombs is more intense, reserved, and because of that fact I know he would be one hell of a man to have at your back.
He looks toward Mira, then turns back to me. “Weird friendship. You say fuck all and she says too much.”
I grunt at his comment. “Works for Fox and Nitro.”
Something glints in his eye, and his lips twitch. “Yeah, guess it does, doesn’t it?” With that, he saunters off, leaving me more confused than when he arrived.
Typical Tombs.
Mira
“Girl, what the hell type of life do you lead? This shit is nuts!” Nat exclaims, Savage chuckling as he stands behind the couch she’s sitting on, rocking their little girl in his huge arms. He leans forward, gently passing Rosie to her and drops a kiss on the top of Nat’s head. It’s all very swoon worthy.
“Be good, baby,” He murmurs before following the rest of the men into church. Apparently today is their usual church day, and given the livers and whatever happened with Nitro, they could be in there for a while.
“Accidentally ran into Old Man Matheson on my bike,” Lovely reads out loud.
“He would have deserved it too. That Old Man Matheson is a total asshole,” Blanche loudly adds, causing Lovely to gasp.
Both of them are sitting side by side on the small two seater couch, Nat, Ana and their babies are sitting on the other. Chewy is sitting on the floor cross legged with Chomper on her lap. Remy is perched on a bar stool between the two couches and Mama Debs is on Pops’ knee in the recliner.
“Blanche is right. He is an asshole,” Pops adds over a yawn.
“Can I ask you all a question?” I say, looking at eight pairs of eyes. Or sixteen eyeballs. Seventeen if we count that I can only see one of Rosie’s, the other side of her face nestled into her mom. Who has a fantastic rack. I wonder if it was like that before Rosie?
“Nah, they were way smaller. Ana here has an amazing rack both pre and post Junior.” Nat says, giving me a wink. Dag nabbit, why inner monologue, why!?
“Oh yeah, she does too! Here, look, poke her in the boob,” Chewy says in what I’m guessing is her excited voice. “They feel amazing.” Ana slaps her hand away and Chewy frowns at her.
“You wanted to ask us a question, kotiro ?” Mama Debs asks gently, getting everyone back on track.
“Oh, yeah. Were you all friends before becoming Ol Ladies, or did you become Ol Ladies and then friends?”
“I didn’t have any friends when I first got here. Then Rider and Wire became my besties and Rhodie became my lover,” Chewy says, side eyeing Ana.
“Ugh! Stop referring to him like that. It grosses me out.”
“Why? He is my lover.” Chewy answers in her flat voice.
“ANYWAY, I met Chewy when she freed me from a trafficking ring,” Nat says. Wait, what? “And Remy and I were friends because we came from the same MC.” Remy nods in agreement, smiling at her friend.
“I met Chewy when the MC and Bratva were working together,” Ana adds.
“I met all these women pretty much at the same time. Including Lovely. I didn’t even know she existed until she broke out of Eden’s Keep.” Hold up, aren’t they sisters? Between that and Nat’s revelation, we are definitely circling back to this conversation.
“And now we’re all part of Chewy’s girl gang,” Lovely beams.
Chewy stabs her finger in her direction. “Yes! We need to induct Mira into the gang! Pops?”
“On it girl.” Pops answers in his rough voice, like he’s been gargling rocks all his life.
“Wait, what are you planning?” Remy asks, looking a little worried about the whole thing.
“A surprise. Trust us,” Chewy says and I can see everyone does not, in fact, trust them.
“Every time we let you and Pops organize girls’ night we get into trouble,” Remy replies.
“Oh it was one time I hired police strippers. You make out like I hire them every girls’ night,” Chewy huffs.
“I double dog dare you to. With the brothers being taken in all the time and Mira’s body parts they’ll be all on edge. Police strippers would be the perfect way to settle everyone down,” Blanche says with a sly grin.
“You really think so?” Chewy asks, head tilted.
Blanche nods her head vigorously up and down while Ana and Remy try to hold her still. From where I sit I can see Pops’ phone screen and it looks like he’s researching male strippers in the area.
I’m very intrigued and kinda want to see how this turns out, but my brain is screaming that we should be working on the matter at hand. I don’t really want any more body parts turning up. Especially not here, they’ve already got a mystery person trying to frame them for things. An evil doer trying to destroy what the men have built here. An unscrupulous person, a formidable foe that we’ll all have to pool our resources and fight on all fronts to keep the MC safe. Oh that’s good stuff, I quickly note that down.
Putting my pencil down I turn to look at the people still arguing about police strippers. After a long time alone, and a lifetime of very few real life friends, I’m really hoping I can keep these women. I peek around and note they haven’t paused their bickering, meaning my thoughts must have stayed in my head that time. Yay for me! I don’t want them to have to be my friend just because my brain can’t use an inside voice. Anyway, I shake that off and turn back to the whiteboard, racking my brain for other weird happenings. I guess I could add the time I met Tank, so I do. Only the incident, not the actual meeting. The meeting is something I like to keep to myself. For a short moment in time that big, blonde sexy biker man was part of my life. I mean, he kinda still is, but I enjoyed having him all to myself. Men like him don’t look twice at a woman like me, so to have him to talk to, and then help me home, well, that was the highlight of the year, maybe even decade. I may have even bashed out a novella with a sexy blonde convict and tall, curvy woman. Shoot, I better get back to the task at hand. It’s bad enough these people have been lumped with my crazy fan. They don’t need Brain Mira drooling over their quiet MC brother at the same time. I take a breath and think.
“Oh! I remembered another one!” I definitely say out loud and write ‘Accidentally killed a chicken escaping from a bad date’, the whiteboard pen making an annoying squeaking sound.
“No, like seriously, what is your life? How does all this weird stuff happen to you?” Nat asks.
“Did you take it hostage, threaten to kill it and when the bad guy called your bluff you were forced to kill the chicken?” Chewy asks, almost looking more excited than when she sees her gator.
“Oh nice one, girl,” Pops says, giving his granddaughter an appreciative nod.
“We need the details. On all of these actually. Because there is no way these all happened to you. Like over how long a period?” Blanche asks, pointing at the 19 bullet points of weird things that is my life.
“Um, since just before the first delivery, so maybe, 4 months?”
There’s a squawk and exclamations of “spill!”.
With the spotlight on me I try to explain to the best of my abilities. Which is harder than you think for an author. Where in my books I can tell the story in a linear fashion, lay out the characters, their motivations and deep dives into hot sexy times, in real life with real people, my story telling is not linear at all. These poor people, my prospective real life friends, sit in confused silence as I let them into the inner world of Mira. The good stuff like Mrs Crispin’s delicious pies that she makes me because I’m a “good girl”, right through to two weeks ago when I returned a lost kitten to a hoarder and accidentally bumped a stack of newspapers from 30 years ago and it caused a domino effect, knocking over four more piles. By the time I finish telling them I accidentally killed a chicken by jumping over it to escape the farm maze my boring date took me on, they all sit silently in shock.
“So, let me get this straight. This shit happens to you all the time?” Pops rasps.
“Um, yeah. But I’m pretty sure this stuff happens to everyone every so often.”
They all look at each other, as if to wonder what the heck is wrong with me.
“Whatever you say dear,” Mama Debs soothes.
“OK. So we have to track down some of these people. That’s easy work. The hard part is figuring out who these people are, if any of them has it out for you, if they would hate you enough to threaten you in any way and if any of them are fans of your work. Only fans would know about the liver stuff. We also need to cross reference some of these other weird things -” Chewy points to things I’ve found inside my house or garden that I know weren’t there before. “with your books and figure out if any of them could be coincidental.”
“Oh when you put it like that it’ll be easy,” I quip, rolling my eyes. “We may as well solve whoever’s trying to frame the MC while we’re at it.”
“Trust us, Writer Lady, we’ll figure this out.”