Chapter Thirteen
Wolf jerked awake, and sat up to peer at the babies on the bed. They were still and silent – at the same time for once, thank fuck – so he carefully lay back down on the floor, though he knew that sleep wouldn’t be back anytime soon, and not just because of his concrete mattress. He was beside himself with worry, and about many, many things.
Although his primary concern was (obviously) caring for two tiny humans who couldn’t communicate their needs with him in any clear language, he couldn’t imagine what was happening with Briley and the twins. They must be out of their minds with worry and fear, and he had no way of letting them know that their babies were (relatively speaking) safe. They were with someone who wasn’t going to hurt them, at least not intentionally, and if they could just know that, Wolf imagined that some of the nightmares in their heads would settle down a bit.
But the horrors playing out in his own head were pretty significant: he hadn’t forgotten Preacher’s Biblical threats, and Wolf was just waiting for the time that the cell door swung open to reveal Keira standing there, in God-only-knows what shape or condition. His heart stopped in his chest as he imagined Zee thinking that her daughter was gone, taken away. Just disappeared.
Carrying on with the worry train, it pulled up to its next stop: just what the actual hell was happening with his MC brothers and that fucking traitorous son of a bitch Bale? What was he telling them, in the guise of reporting back from his mythical CI? Wolf knew that Scars, Ice and King were smart men, lethal men, with ridiculous radars for deception and bullshit – but even they would need some time before they’d start to think that something was wrong. Well, wrong enough to go looking for answers.
And it might all be too late by then.
Admittedly, Wolf didn’t know what ‘ too late ’ meant in this situation, but if there was one thing that he’d figured out, it was the Viper was a nightmare of an adversary… meticulous, well-prepared, calculating. And fucking ruthless. He was willing to bring total innocents into his personal vendetta, and that meant that nothing was off the table for him.
Nothing .
Wolf was under no illusions about his own history of violence: there was a reason that he’d been tapped for President, after all. But even at his worst, at his absolute worst , children had been off-limits; he’d worked under some pretty vicious Presidents himself, and none of them had ever served up kids as an option. Not once. It had never even been up for discussion.
But Viper was a whole different animal, and Wolf saw now that he and his brothers had been wrong to think of Crusher Alcott’s replacement as a soft, weak option.
Dead wrong.
There was movement above him now, and Wolf quickly sat up again, saw that the baby girl was stirring. He’d put the kids on the bed, of course, since sticking them back in the cardboard box on the floor was all kinds of wrong, and had built a little fort around them with pillows and some blankets. It wasn’t much of a barrier, but Wolf didn’t think they were up to rolling yet.
Then again, how the fuck would he know?
“Hey,” he murmured as her eyes opened and she started to squeak. “You hungry again?”
Her response was a cry, so Wolf got to his feet and went to the supplies that that asshole Preacher had brought to him. He’d been initially befuddled by the bottles, powdered formula, diapers, blankets, and clothes, but he could read and follow instructions on packaging, so he’d figured out how to get the bottles ready, how to change a diaper, how to put on a onesie. He wasn’t going to win a Stand-in Dad Of The Year Award anytime soon… but he could keep these kids warm and fed and dry.
Quickly, knowing that she was seconds away from bursting into full-on crying, thereby waking her brother up, Wolf mixed two bottles with the water that he’d boiled earlier in the electric kettle, came back to the bed. He sat down on the mattress, and stuck the nipple in her little mouth. She sucked greedily, her tiny hands opening and closing, and making those cooing noises that Wolf had come to recognize as happiness.
“OK, then, baby girl,” he whispered to her. “We got this, right?”
She blinked up at him, her eyes a pure, perfect blue. Not for the first time, he wondered what she saw when she looked at him: an unshaven, wild-haired man with cold gray eyes, who sounded like he gargled with gravel. Wolf had no clue if she sensed her mother and fathers were missing, but he thought that on some level, she had to know that things weren’t right. After all, she’d gone from being fed against a warm breast accompanied by a soft voice, to this: a plastic bottle, a chilly cell, a man with a hard face and harder voice.
Bang on cue, her brother started moving around, and for about the twentieth time, Wolf marvelled at how they seemed to be connected on some weird mental level: if one woke up, the other was less than a minute behind, no matter how quiet Wolf managed to keep things.
The boy’s eyes had barely popped open when Wolf offered him the bottle. Right away, he accepted it, sucking away with an intensity that would make a random observer think that he hadn’t been fed in days. In reality, it had been maybe an hour; not that Wolf had any real sense of time.
“So,” Wolf said at a normal speaking volume, now that there was no need to be quiet. “What’ll we do today, do you think? The zoo? A park? Go swimmin’?”
They gazed at him, their identical eyes so peaceful and calm, yet somehow watchful. He didn’t think for one second that they understood his words, of course, but he did get the feeling that they responded to his tone. He wasn’t a warm man, not even slightly, but he didn’t think that growling at the babies was the way to go, so he’d adopted a modified way of talking to them. It wasn’t awesome, but it was the best he could do under the circumstances.
“Hey, I know what we can do.” Wolf gave them a smile, hoped that it wasn’t terrifying to them. “I ain’t got a clue what your Mom and Dads named you, but I can’t really go on callin’ you ‘hey you’ and ‘baby girl’ and ‘little boy’, right? How’s about I come up with some names for you? Just temporary names, until we get you back to where you belong, which ain’t gonna be too long now, I promise. What do you think?”
They stared at him solemnly, and he nodded as if they’d answered.
“OK, then. That’s a plan.” He picked up the baby girl, wrapped the blanket around her chubby legs, held her against his broad chest and started to pat her on the back with one hand, still feeding her brother with the other. “So… what do we call you ?”
She immediately released a massive belch, and Wolf huffed out a laugh. For such a small thing she could burp like a goddamn sailor, and Wolf actually found that kind of funny.
“ That ain’t much of a name for such a beautiful little girl,” he chided her, still patting gently. “I was thinkin’ somethin’ more like… uh…”
He paused, mentally running through the women that he knew intimately, which was pretty much the only way that he knew women besides Zoe, Jo and Elle. His mind ran through the quite lengthy list of his former bedmates: Crystal, Ginger, Brandy, Kitty, Bambi.
“Huh. Funny thing,” he told the babies. “I just realized that most of the girls I hang out with kind of have stripper names. I mean, nothin’ wrong with that, and I swear they’re nice girls, but… well… I can’t see your Mom bein’ too thrilled with callin’ you somethin’ like ‘Tawny’ or ‘Chardonnay’, even if it’s just temporary, right?”
The little boy sneezed and then farted, and Wolf grinned at him.
“I see we’re in agreement about your sister’s name, then. OK, so… maybe back to some basic names? I ain’t a traditional man, which might surprise you to hear, but it’s true, so I might struggle comin’ up with a more old-fashioned kinda name. Ummm…” He stared at her sweet little face, and a kid’s story swam up out of his hazy memory. “How do you feel about Alice?”
She burped again, gave an indignant yell.
“OK, OK, not that one.” Wolf rubbed her back. “Ummm… maybe a princess name? Elizabeth? No? Uh – Charlotte?”
She kicked him, but it felt like an approving kick.
“OK, little princess. Charlotte it is.” He carefully stroked her peach-fuzz head, amazed all over again at how small and delicate it was in his rough hands. “I might call you Charlie, when we get to know each other better.”
She yawned, and Wolf laid her down again on the thin mattress, covered her with the blanket. He picked her brother up now, repeated the patting and rubbing circles process on his back.
“Now you, big man,” Wolf said. “Who are you gonna be, even just for a little while?”
The baby frowned up at him in a way that strongly reminded Wolf of his Dads: he had the thunderous scowl down pretty well, which amused Wolf to no end.
“You say you ain’t a traditional man? OK, fair enough and just between you and me, your Dads ain’t super traditional either, so you come by it honestly, kid.”
The baby burped, not as loudly as Charlotte, but still pretty damn impressive.
“So somethin’ a bit off-beat, huh? Like a road name?” Wolf rocked the baby a bit, then had a thought. “What about Rocker?”
The baby’s frown deepened.
“OK, that was clearly disappointin’. My apologies.” Wolf cocked his head at the severe little face. “Ummm… maybe Judge? ‘Cause I swear you’re judgin’ me right now, kid.”
Those blue eyes gazed at him straight-on, just held Wolf’s own stare, and Wolf nodded.
“Yeah, Judge it is, and for damn sure.”
He put the little boy down next to his sister, and placed a hand on each of their stomachs. They lay still under his touch, just looking at him.
“Charlotte and Judge, I’m Wolf. I’m kind of your… well, I guess I’m your uncle. A bit. Like not by blood, but in all the ways that matter, I am.” He took a deep breath. “And as your uncle, I’m makin’ you a promise: I’m gonna take care of you, whatever you need, as long as we’re here together. I would never be anyone’s first choice for this job, and I know it damn good and well, and I’m gonna screw this up in too many ways to count, and I’m sure that I already have – but I’ll lay down my life protectin’ yours. You got my word on that. I’m gettin’ you back home to your Mom and Dads, whatever I have to do to make that happen.”
The babies blinked at him and waved their hands, and he felt like warmth and light had just moved around the dim little room.
“OK, good talk.” Wolf got up. “So… who needs changin’ first?”
**
Viper threw his beer across the bar, narrowly missing some pass-around slut in a skirt that didn’t cover her ass cheeks. She gasped and the glass shattered on the wall behind her, but she said nothing. Viper was in a terrifying, terrible mood and had been for the past few days, and everyone knew better than to say a single word about it.
He stormed out of the bar and down the hall to the President’s office. The girls and the MC members watched him go, then exchanged loaded glances. Still, nobody spoke, though a few of the men shook their heads. They knew that things in Denver hadn’t gone even remotely to plan, and Viper was seriously pissed about it.
They heard the office door slam, and the men cautiously sat down together at a table with their own beers. The woman in the barely-there skirt started sweeping up the broken bottle pieces, and another club pass-around got a mop to finish the cleaning.
“Fuck me,” a man with a scruffy blond beard said. “Our Prez is losing it.”
“He’s losing nothing , Bullet,” Preacher said sharply. “He’s just angry that Eyeball and Cruiser screwed it all up in that parking lot. I mean, how hard is it to run down a kid and her mother?”
“Yeah,” Bullet said morosely. “Turns out the bitch is pretty good with a gun.”
“No excuse,” Preacher said crisply. “She should never have had a chance to reach for it. Eyeball should have done it clean and simple on the first try, and if he messed it up, Cruiser should have backed him up and finished the job.”
The men fell silent again, and for one, Bullet longed to ask what had happened to Eyeball and Cruiser when they’d returned to Utah, and reported their failure to Viper. They’d gone into the President’s office and hadn’t been seen since; it was like the room had just swallowed them up. For all anyone knew – well, anyone except Preacher, who’d never say a goddamn word – they were still in there, decomposing in a closet, possibly missing their heads.
“Anyway,” Preacher continued. “Viper always has a Plan B, and C through F, so he might be angry now, but he’ll pull it together. It just takes a bit of extra time.”
“Yeah, but,” Mad Dog said. “I mean – what was the whole of Plan A in the first place? None of us really know. Any chance that Viper will clue us in any time soon?”
“If Viper hasn’t told you, then you don’t need to know,” Preacher snapped and got to his feet. “Got it?”
The men nodded and watched their Vice-President walk outside, then they all looked at each other. Every man’s disquiet was reflected back at him, but they knew that being unhappy wouldn’t make Viper or Preacher talk to them any sooner, if at all.
“Well,” Mad Dog said reluctantly. “I mean – we still have Wolf Connor down in that bunker. That’s something , right? Maybe Viper hasn’t fucking lost the plot after all?”
“I’d say that’s a lot,” Bones agreed. “But…”
He broke off, peered at his MC brothers from under his wild eyebrows. The truth was that Bones Gallagher wasn’t at all supportive of kidnapping, or running down five-year-olds with vans, or anything to do with minors whatsoever . He thought, actually, that involving kids was a huge fucking mistake, if only because it meant that fury-filled parents would be after them, baying for blood. Bones had never had any interest in being a father, but he knew that if he were one, he’d go to the ends of the earth for his offspring. He’d maim and torture and kill for them… and Viper had just put The Highway Hellions smack in the path of a Road Devils MC rage storm.
It was a very uncomfortable place to be, and Bones saw no upside to it at all. In fact, he thought that Viper had brought a clusterfuck down on his club the likes of which Bones had never seen, not in his thirty-eight years of MC life. He’d been on the scene when The Hellions were in war after war with other Utah MCs, spilling blood for every inch of property and every dirty Kirk Jensen contract. Bones had been through it, and had done for a while – and he’d never had anything to do with fucking kids, and there was a reason for that. More than one.
Bones had a bad feeling that every reason why was about to come crashing down on their heads… and he, for one, wasn’t sure that he was prepared to pay the price for his President’s actions. Maybe not this time.
“But what?” Animal asked aggressively.
“Nothing.” Bones shook his shaggy gray head. He had the respect of most of the guys, just because he was the oldest and longest-serving MC member and was due that as a matter of course, but some of the new boys like Animal were unknown quantities. They’d been brought in by Viper personally, so it had to be assumed that their loyalty to him was unwavering; it also meant that Bones had better not voice any of his misgivings anywhere around them the way that Bullet and Mad Dog just had. “Just wondering how long Wolf Connor can be MIA before Scars Innis comes looking.”
Animal shrugged. “Viper will deal with that.”
Bones nodded affably at the brainwashed young moron, but he saw Mad Dog and Bullet looking at him speculatively. They knew him, they’d known him for almost twenty-five years, and if he was saying ‘but’ about something that his President had done, then he was worried, and probably with good reason.
They said nothing, though. Like Bones, they knew that the ground had shifted under their feet, and the three of them as old timers were on their way out. Not physically, of course, but in terms of influence, of being voices of reason or perspective. Even Crusher had asked their opinions and thoughts on things, and listened and acted on their ideas.
Viper was taking them down a path that Bones was sure was going nowhere good – and he had to just go along with it all, just merrily and mindlessly follow even if Viper marched them over a cliff. There was nothing to be done, because doing something meant going against his President – and Bones had never done that, not once. It had never even crossed his mind, not even when bullets were flying and he was up to his old, tired eyes in the blood and bodies of his own brothers.
But as he exchanged glances with Mad Dog and Bullet, and saw their own unspoken reservations and concerns, Bones considered that there was a first time for everything.
Maybe even mutiny.