Chapter Nine
Caymen
Did I care that half the damn club could watch the way I’d been eye-fucking Noa since we walked through to the kitchen? Nope. Not at all, as it turned out.
The first and obvious reason was that the woman was a knockout.
But more than that, everything I’d learned about her so far just added layers to her attractiveness.
Which was new.
I liked women. Liked being around them. Hearing them talk.
Watching them interact with each other and us.
But it was always a surface-level kind of thing.
I wasn’t Velle. I didn’t want to learn the secret corners of their minds, their deepest secrets, their oldest emotional scars.
I was just looking for a good time. And the kind of women who hung out at the club were often looking for the same.
So I’d never really gotten a chance to explore the layers of attraction I could apparently feel toward someone.
But every new thing I learned about Noa only managed to make her hotter.
Escaping through a car window, getting out of cuffs, getting me into them, her experienced hold of a gun, her evasive driving, her confidence even when walking into a clubhouse full of outlaw bikers, even her fucking love of bird watching, of all things.
I even liked how shamelessly she admitted to not knowing how to cook.
So I didn’t care if everyone else saw how much I clearly wanted her.
That said, I wasn’t playing down the seriousness of the situation. It turned out I could think with my brain and my dick at the same time.
I mean, I’d been in that apartment when the bullets came crashing through the windows. Once I climbed off of her, I saw just how close one had come to slicing through me, but lodged in the footboard of her bed instead.
If I hadn’t shown up, if Dixon hadn’t been outside, if she’d been alone in there, that situation would have gone very differently.
I didn’t know where she was in her head about the whole situation—if she was trying to convince herself that if not for my interruption, she’d have been long gone by the time the drive-by happened, or if she was accepting the very real reality.
But either way, she had to be freaked the fuck out that it got that close.
Everything about Noa suggested she carefully planned every aspect of her life and career. But something got by her. That couldn’t be sitting well in her mind.
So this shit was pretty fucking serious.
And it needed to be handled.
But as soon as it was, she and I were finding a bed, a shower, a couch, a nice patch of grass to occupy, and fuck until we were both too dehydrated to go on.
“When I got the call from Zayn about a possible shipment of guns sitting in a camper but unable to get across the border, I immediately went into research mode,” Noa started.
“The United States is the biggest gun exporter by far , so it was suspicious to have that kind of shipment coming from Mexico which ranked, what, thirty-sixth in arms exports?”
“Yeah, had the same thoughts myself,” Huck agreed. “It wasn’t adding up.”
“Except, when I looked into it, it was legit. In just a purely twist of fate kind of way. This wasn’t an actual arms trade operation. This was a group of buddies who’d been on vacation in Mexico and happened upon the stash.”
“How the fuck does someone happen upon millions worth of guns?” Huck asked, dubious.
“That was my next question. The best any of us can guess is they stumbled into an old cartel headquarters. There’s no telling if it was abandoned, or if the people who ran it simply weren’t around at the time. But the guys… they decided to take the opportunity and load up their camper.”
“With goods stolen from a cartel,” Velle said, brows lifted.
“I said they were opportunistic. I never said they were smart.”
“Okay. So they got to the border. And that’s where you ran into a problem.”
“I have a lot of contacts. Almost all of them are in the States, not at the borders. That’s not really my area of expertise.”
“That’s where we came in handy,” Huck said.
We didn’t have a lot of assets on the border either.
What we did have was a sister chapter in Texas who had their own contacts and were willing to use them to help us for a cut.
“Yeah. So, your friends got them over the border. They somehow managed to make it here.”
“Two weeks late,” Huck mumbled.
“Yeah, well, it’s hard to drive when you’re as stoned as they always are. But they did make it. I had the warehouse by then. We unloaded the goods. And everything was supposed to go to plan. And then you needed an extra few days.”
“Careful, that’s starting to sound like an accusation.”
“Careful, that’s starting to sound like a threat,” she shot back, cold as ice. And it got a lip twitch out of Huck. “Look, whatever the reason, it threw a wrench in things. If we’d been meeting up the next morning, the guns would be in your hands.”
“Instead, someone else got their hands on a million-dollar payload.”
“Um, no,” Noa said, casting a quick glance at me before she looked back at Huck.
“How no?”
“This wasn’t some third party. This was them. The guys.”
“The stoners? They stole back the guns?”
“Yep. That’s what got me out of bed. I got an alert on my phone about motion detected on one of my security cameras. When I checked it, I saw them. No masks. No nothing. Just breaking in and taking the shipment back.”
“Isn’t that a good thing, then?” Dixon asked. “It’s not like they’re a threat.”
“They aren’t, no,” Noa agreed.
“But if they decided to sell to someone else, they are a threat,” Huck explained. “And, clearly, someone dangerous is involved if there was a shooting and a car chase.”
“And these guys aren’t capable of that?” Velle asked.
Noa looked over at him. “Absolutely not. They’re actually really sweet guys. But sweet can mean easy to manipulate.”
“And everyone wants more money,” Huck said.
“Weed ain’t cheap these days,” Dixon said with a shrug.
“If the guys haven’t sold the guns,” Noa said, “I can convince them to give them back. But we need to track them down. And we need to question them. Nicely. They’re… a little delicate.”
“Well, you can handle the soft shit,” Huck said. “We’ll be there to keep an eye while you talk. And handle shit if it needs to happen.”
“I can work with that.”
“Do you like the syrup shit in your coffee?” York asked as the scent of bacon and sausage started to fill the kitchen as Eddie got to work. “We got… the entire grocery store aisle of them.”
“Caram… oh, you really mean that,” she said as she walked closer. “Caramel, chocolate, and hazelnut.”
“Like a Snickers?” I asked.
“I have a sweet tooth,” she shot back. “You want to try one?”
Nope.
“Sure.”
“I mean… if you’re making them…” Dixon said, shooting Noa one of those boyish smiles of his that made a lot of the club girls swoon.
The look she shot back at him was that of a big sister, though.
I didn’t realize something in me had tensed until that look made me relax.
Huck’s phone rang, and he took the call in the other room, allowing me the chance to move in at Noa’s side as she worked on making five different Snickers coffees.
“That go how you thought it would?” I asked.
“Your president is more chill than I thought.”
“Yeah, Huck has seen and done it all. He’s hard to get a rise out of. He just wants the guns back to make shit right with Zayn, who can make shit right with whoever the weapons were promised to.”
“Yeah, trust me, I get that. Here. Try,” she said as she handed me a coffee. She turned to pass out the others. Only when she turned back did I try it. “Thoughts?” she asked.
“You might not be able to cook, but you can make a pretty good dessert coffee.”
“Dessert,” she scoffed. “I drink at least four of these a day.”
“How the hell does that not take up all your calories for the day?”
“Well, sometimes I use the sugar-free ones,” she admitted. “But that’s why I do Pilates, yoga, and cycling every week—to allow for my liquid calories.”
“No,” Eddie barked. The scold was followed by a smacking sound and then Dixon cursing.
“What was that for?” Dixon asked, rubbing his knuckles where it seemed as though Eddie had whacked him with his spatula.
“Ladies eat first, you monster,” Eddie said, turning to pass a plate to Noa.
“Oh, thanks,” Noa said, her smile warm.
“In my defense, we never really ate around any women when we were coming up,” Dixon said, looking chastened.
More often than not, Dixon was the only one eating. There wasn’t always enough food for the both of us. And in those situations, he ate. I’d been mostly grown at that point. And thanks to our parents, I was accustomed to that clawing feeling in my stomach.
I snatched a plate as soon as Eddie filled it.
“Wanna eat out by the pool?” I asked.
“Sure,” she agreed, grabbing her coffee.
“I like this one, Cay,” Eddie said beneath his breath as I passed.
I was starting to agree.
“Oh, wow. This is nice. It must be nice on the really muggy days,” she said as she lowered herself down at the edge of the pool and slid her legs in.
“You’re not from around here, right?”
“Right.”
“Are you going to tell me where you were from?”
“It would be easier to tell you where I wasn’t from. We traveled a lot when I was growing up. Lived the longest in upstate New York and in Wyoming.”
“Two very different places.”
“Are they?” she asked, shrugging.
“Why’d you move around so much?”
“My father’s work. He did… consulting.”
“Are you being vague on purpose?”
“My father is ex-CIA. And he had a lot of very unique and in-demand skills.”
“Hence how you turned out.”
“Pretty much.”
“Only child?”
“I know you haven’t met my father, but I don’t think there’s a second woman in the world who would be willing to be tied to him for eighteen years.”
“Was your mom in the picture?”
“She didn’t really want to be a mom. I was a whoopsie baby. She was really into her career. Which, as an adult, I respect.”
“But it hurt as a kid?”