Chapter 17
They took turns driving home, though with it raining, neither played on the curves too much. He drove the final stretch, and when he pulled through the gates and said, “Home at last,” the words reverberated in her soul.
Home.
After a lifetime of moving from city to city, with her grandmother’s house the only constant, she was finally living in a place that felt like home. A permanent home, shared with a man she’s madly in love with.
He pulled her car into the garage, and tears wanted to form low in her throat because he’d even made a place for her vehicles to have a safe haven from the elements.
She’d wondered, all these months, why he never ran with her. Why she’d never seen his wolf. Now she knew, and the knowing settled the last fragments of disquiet she’d felt about their relationship.
They could run together now, any time they wanted. Just walk out the door and run as wolves.
They made burgers and fried potatoes, and somehow turned chopping the potatoes into a competition. They finished their stacks about the same time, their knives chopping out a fast staccato while they made quick work of the task.
Shortly after they sat to eat, he told her, “I need you to make a decision. Whatever you tell me is fine, but I’ve learned my lesson about putting off uncomfortable conversations, so we need to have this one.”
Her stomach turned over, but she nodded, hoping that would be enough to keep him talking.
“If the club has businesses that aren’t entirely legal — hypothetically — would you want to know about them, or would you want plausible deniability?”
Her stomach didn’t just somersault, it cartwheeled. She gently set her burger down. Took a drink of the ginger beer Knife had made.
She’d known they had to have more than their legal businesses. Not the specifics, but she’d known. For one thing, they consider themselves a one-percenter club, but also, the cars in the garage, the smoker. There was a lot of money floating around.
“Hypothetically,” she said, “are we talking running drugs? Laundering money?”
“No drugs. No illegal weapons — we’re careful not to do anything to lose our FFL, so the gun shop is completely aboveboard. I won’t give you positives until you make a decision, but I can tell you a few extreme negatives.”
She took a few seconds to consider before saying, “I need to know your secrets, but if there’s something I can’t deal with morally—” She shook her head.
“No. I know who you are. I know you aren’t going to be involved in exploiting children, or human trafficking, or anything like that. So yeah. Tell me everything, please.”
“Okay. Once I tell you, club policy says you have to meet with our attorney. He’ll tell you what to say if law enforcement ever asks you questions.
You tell him whether you’re comfortable lying to LEO or not, and if you aren’t, which is my assumption, he’ll coach you in how to legally decline to answer, how to redirect, obfuscate.
What to say until he arrives. It’s a lot, and he holds a once-a-year reminder session with all of us — brothers and ol’ladies — to go over it again. ”
That was actually a relief, knowing she could call someone to help her if she was questioned, and that they’d made a plan for it.
“You still want to hear the truth?” he asked.
“Yes. The attorney thing is actually a relief. Not a dealbreaker.”
“Good. That’s good.” He took a breath. “We own an old motor hotel deal from the sixties, built before the interstates were put in. It’s the Rolling Thunder Motor Hotel, but everyone who knows about it calls it the Whore Hotel.
Our girls hang out in the lobby so johns can walk in and choose them.
Established customers can call for an appointment with a certain girl, and they know the wording to use on an open phone line. ”
He paused, took a drink, and Tuesday had the feeling he was evaluating her reaction before he continued. She needed to hear it all before she could truly react, so she just looked at him.
“The club only hires experienced talent who come to us wanting a job,” he continued.
“We don’t recruit, and management has to turn people away because we only have so many rooms. No one gets rough with the girls without making arrangements to do so — and paying extra for it — because a brother in a vest will beat the hell out of them if they do.
Some of our working girls are in college, and we’re flexible with their schedules so they can focus on getting good grades. ”
Tuesday wasn’t a prude and had long thought prostitution should be legal under the right conditions.
It seemed to her, women were exploited by johns in ways that could be legislated away if it were legal, and the bikers were doing it ethically.
But… “How do you keep them healthy? Unless they’re all shifters, but I’m guessing that probably isn’t the case. ”
“Some are shifters, but there are a lot of humans. We have a retired doctor on the payroll who keeps them healthy and provides their preferred form of birth control. Also, there’s a strict no-drugs policy, and mandatory condoms with only a few exceptions, mostly involving vampires.
She sat back and looked at her plate while she absorbed it all, and finally said, “Illegal as hell, but probably as good as it gets for someone who wants to do sex work. Not that the government will see it that way, though.”
“Right.” He picked up his burger. “And that brings us to our laundromats.
For a while, cash business at the bar did really well, but we could only stretch that so far, so we opened the laundromats.
We have a half-dozen now, and two locations have wash-and-fold service.
Cash only except for a few specialty clients.
“So you have the bike and classic car shop, the restaurant, the vertical beef supply chain, the gun shop and shooting range, and the martial arts studio? All those are legal? The laundromats mostly legal except for the money laundering bit, and then the hotel that isn’t even close to legal?”
“We’re going into business with someone for a high-end escort service that’ll include more kink options, but we haven’t even broken ground on it yet. We bought the strip mall across from the bike shop, and we’re doing reno now for a salon and tattoo parlor in two different units.”
He picked up his phone and typed into it while he said, “Brain’ll get you an appointment with the lawyer. Eat your burger.”
She picked it up and ate, thinking about Kenny running the construction company on top of the pack, and the bikers running a whole lot of businesses, not just one.
But she could see it, with Brain running the finances, Duke handling overall management, and the individual managers in control of their specific business.
“Friday at five,” he told her.
“Sounds like the attorney is fitting me onto the end of his day.”
“Probably. He likes to meet with ya’ll as quickly as possible once we tell you.”
She swallowed her bite and asked the question niggling at her. “So there’s no, like… voting for mayhem or anything?”
He met her gaze. “We don’t call the cops when we have problems. Usually we hand out beatdowns, but when someone gives us no option but to go beyond that?
” He shrugged. “I’d be lying if I said it’d never happened.
It’s rare. And those of us who run a business, who’d be impossible to replace — they work hard to keep us out of that kind of trouble.
Not always possible, but it’s the goal.”
Not the answer she was hoping for, that they do actually kill their enemies sometimes, but she worked through it in her head.
She’d met these men, their significant others, and their kids if they had them.
This was a group who put on huge charity events every year, and used the money to fund a women and children’s shelter, among other things.
She believed Knife when he said it was a last resort. The men she’d met wouldn’t view taking a life lightly.
“I’m not exactly happy with that last answer,” she said finally.
“But I don’t think it’s a call the men I’ve met would make without exhausting everything else first.” She lifted her third burger but didn’t take a bite yet.
“It’s kind of like supernatural law, right?
Survival of the fittest isn’t about being fair or civil. ”
He looked at her for a long moment, and she couldn’t read everything in it, but some of it was relief.
- - - ? - - -
A week and a half later, Tuesday rode to the clubhouse on the back of his bike. He’d taken the beef order to the restaurant and returned to get his Road Glide, and Tuesday was packed and ready to go.
The entire energy of the clubhouse was different when they arrived, with the men looking over bikes and loading the back of a box truck with what looked like parts, while the women checked off lists for snacks, drinks, first aid kits, drink cups, and lots of alcohol as they loaded them into vans.
For long road trips, some of the women rode in a van or a large, spacious RV instead of behind their ol’man. Some rode in the ‘cages’, as the men called them, for the interstate part and then got on the bike for the mountains. There would be no interstate miles for this trip, though.
Tuesday couldn’t imagine opting for the van or RV over holding onto Knife, but she figured it was probably smart for the humans to be seat belted into a more secure vehicle, which didn’t apply to the RV, where everyone apparently just sat on the sofas and recliners, or at the kitchen seating area.
She helped load the vans and the RV, tore baked chicken into pieces for the chicken salad, helped stage the coolers that would be filled just before leaving, and then went outside and watched the men look over all the bikes.
She learned there are rules about tread depth and how recent maintenance has been done on a bike, and that Bash was the final word on whether a bike was roadworthy for a trip.
Also, that the box truck had spare parts, but was also where any bikes that broke down would go.
“At least twice a year,” Knife told her, “Someone is stuck in a van with their bike riding in the trailer. The Sport Glide is only a year and a half old, and I’m consistent with maintenance, so it’s fine, but the XR750 is fifty-four years old, and no matter how much maintenance I do on it — and I do a lot — things are going to break unexpectedly.
I keep parts on hand for a handful of repairs that can be done roadside, and I rarely take it on long trips…
” He shrugged. “Probably won’t be taking it on any trips at this point, so I should probably look at selling it and buying a racing bike I can put a passenger on. ”
She counted the bikes in the line. Thirty-seven.
“We’ll have five more,” Bash told her when she reached the end, despite the fact she’d been counting silently.
She also learned one high-level member had to stay home to handle any problems that might come up. That person’s ol’lady was responsible for a whole lot of the kids, too. This weekend, Gonzo and Connie would have most of the kids at their house.
“How often do ya’ll do this?” she asked Knife after he’d fucked her nearly to sleep, and she was curled into him, completely relaxed.
“Road trips? Twice a month in the spring and fall, and at least once a month in the summer. Winter, we might plan a quickie during the week if the forecast is sunny and not stupid-cold on the coming weekend. Spring and fall, we do a day trip, and a weekend trip every month. We also do two to three longer trips a year, taking five to ten days. I should share my calendar with you, so you can see what’s planned farther out. ”
His alarm went off at seven the next morning, and Tuesday got ready to go up and help with breakfast.
By nine, everyone was on their bikes, waiting for Duke to start his engine.
And then they were forty-two bikes clearing the gate one at a time. A few miles later, the sound multiplied between the downtown buildings into a chest-deep, resonant roar.
They traveled a few miles below the speed limit down McFarland Avenue into Georgia, making their way to 193, which she’d never been on before so the scenery was all new.
They were in Georgia a long time on the winding, two-lane road, and she wouldn’t have known they’d passed into Alabama if Knife hadn’t told her, “Welcome to Alabama,” on a straight-ish section of road.
She’d seen the route that morning, and she knew this meant they were close to the canyon.
Everyone pulled into a parking area, and as soon as the bikes shut off, she heard the falls.
Two prospects stayed with the bikes while everyone else traipsed down wooden walkways with railings to the falls. Tuesday understood why the decking underfoot was necessary, with so many people taking this path to the overlook, but she hated it. She wanted to hike in the woods. Not walk.
But the falls were gorgeous, and then everyone scrambled down into the gorge to get a view of them from head on, and this made her happy.
About a quarter mile after they were back on the road, she saw a sign showing hairpin S-curves with “Next 11 Miles” below it, and she smiled inside her helmet. This was going to be fun.
She’d looked at Knife’s calendar and saw a trip six weeks out to the Tail of the Dragon. She hadn’t told him yet, but she’d be following the bikes in her car for that trip. She loved driving the Dragon’s Tail.
Later, when they stopped at Mushroom Rock, literally in the middle of the road, she couldn’t help but grab hold and pull herself up. She kept doing it, working her way around and up until she was standing on top, and then felt a little silly when everyone below clapped.
Knife was standing with his arms crossed, smirking, and she had a feeling he was happy she was showing a little of who she is to his brothers.
She heard Gen gasp when she started down, but she was fine. Daisy actually hugged her the moment her feet touched the ground. “OMG! I was so worried, but that was awesome!”
She hugged her back and told her, “I love climbing. It’s kind of a hobby.”
“I know who we’re calling the next time someone needs to crawl onto Duke’s fucking roof,” Bubbles said with a laugh. “Damn girl, that was impressive. I mean, you don’t weigh much, but shit, that took some skill.”
They stopped at a dozen overlooks and took a few short hikes to see waterfalls. She loved Greg’s Two Falls, and took her boots and socks off to do some rock hopping below the falls.
They ate a picnic lunch at Canyon Mouth Park — piles of sandwiches sorted into chicken salad, tuna salad, ham-and-cheese with mayo, with mustard, or both.
Tuesday had helped make the chicken salad and tuna salad, and knew the other ingredients were available, but she hadn’t realized the ol’ladies in the RV would be assembling it all into sandwiches on the ride down.