10. Dallas
DALLAS
The longer I stood there, the more in awe I became of her.
My sweet girl. My precious, soft, sensuous princess, out there unwrapping that bitch like a goddamn birthday present.
I felt my jaw slipping closer to the floor.
The sunlight beat down on us as it climbed over the horizon, and the colors of the sunrise crept their way over her skin. And the entire time, we listened.
We watched.
We devoured.
I even took some mental fucking notes as she continued leading Special Agent Marcie Dickerson down the rabbit hole.
“Fucking hell, she’s amazing,” Rico murmured.
“Sh,” Deac hissed.
Char had taken this woman creeping around in the darkness around us and tugged her into the light, kicking and screaming.
And the woman was so damn prideful that she couldn’t help but take the bait.
It was almost poetic, watching what unfolded.
Watching her catch that woman and spin her up in her words.
Now we had the entire police force witnessing her lies.
Now we had Sheriff Nielson wrapped up in her world.
An official officer, who could file an official report on what she did.
She was right to reach out to our only allies.
That was until Sheriff Nielson escorted her into the back of his cop cruiser.
“I thought we decided this was a club issue?” Mace asked.
I found myself stepping off the porch before Gauge placed his hand on my shoulder.
“Guess she decided otherwise,” he said.
I tried to move again, but he gripped it harder, keeping me rooted in place with the pressure of his massive palm against my body. I wanted to go after her. She didn’t deserve to be in the back of that cruiser. But then again, it wasn’t as if she was handcuffed.
I just didn’t want to watch her leave.
“Either way,” Deac said as he grabbed my arm and turned me around, “we have to trust her. We don’t have any other choice now.”
“We’re really not going after her?” I asked.
I heard their engines strike up. I turned my stare back out toward the sheriff as that woman crawled into the passenger’s seat. I watched as she stared out at us. As she locked her gaze with me and bared her teeth like some wild, rabid animal.
I watched her slam both of her fists into the dashboard of a car that wasn’t hers.
“Disrespectful cunt,” I muttered.
To say I was happy with what happened next is an understatement.
The second she slammed her fists into that man’s cruiser, I knew it was game on.
Sheriff Nielson had a love affair going on with that vehicle.
He worked on it by himself. He didn’t let anyone else touch her engine.
Hell, he even named the goddamn thing back when Axel and he used to shoot back shots in Bottle Grounds for funsies on a Friday night.
And I watched with pride as Nielson kicked that bitch right out of his car.
“Sheriff, I said I’m—no, you’re right I shouldn’t—yes. Okay. I’ll meet you back there. Uh huh. Yeah, I’ll just hop in with someone else and?—”
Before she even got her sentence out, a van came rolling up.
A black van, just like the one we were hunting, and out of the corner of my eye, Rat’s back straightened.
His features pulled taut as a police officer tossed a set of keys into that woman’s hand.
And as she stared down at the keys, I slowly turned my head toward Rat.
The pale look on his face told me everything I needed to know.
“That’s—that’s it,” he squeaked out, barely above a whisper as he nodded his head toward the vehicle. “That’s—that’s the van that—that took Bait.”
She turned toward us, eyeing us carefully before she closed her fingers over those keys.
She pivoted on the balls of her feet and made a beeline toward the van, and I knew we couldn’t let that bitch out of our sight.
I reached out for Rat’s leather jacket. I gripped the back of it, just in case he tried to take off after her.
I couldn’t help but notice the direction she went in.
“Where is she going?” Deac asked.
“That’s not the way to the police department,” Deadlock murmured.
And as the dust settled, reality dawned on me.
Char was gone.
The woman who my heart yearned for was taken from us.
“Well!” Plug chirped as he came out from around the side of the clubhouse. “That was fun. I never thought they’d leave.”
I saw him balancing his laptop in his hand while his free fingers whizzed away over the keyboard.
“What opportunity did you find?” Gauge asked.
He was silent during this entire fucking thing, and I had no clue how he managed it.
Plug pointed. “Let’s get everyone back inside. It’s safer to talk in there.”
“You heard the man,” Deac said.
I stood there for a few more seconds, watching the horizon just in case they came back. Just in case it was all a ruse to get that woman away from everyone else. But no one came back. Not Marcie with the van. Not the patrolman with their cars. And not Nielson with Char.
All was silent on the western front as we dragged ass to get back inside. We followed Deac and Plug, who led us back into our sanctuary. Not that it really mattered any longer.
Get your fucking head in the game, of course it matters. Char’s strong, she’s got this.
“Dallas,” Deac said.
I whipped my head up. “Yeah?”
He nodded. “Get the door.”
I reached my hand back and pressed the button. “Got it.”
And after the door was done hissing closed, a sound that pissed me off, Plug sat his laptop down in front of his seat before he rushed to the back of the room.
“Well?” I asked.
“Just give me a second, I gotta get the projector hooked up.”
“Why?” Gauge asked.
Plug simply smiled, though. “Let me enjoy the moment.”
“There’s no moment to enjoy,” I murmured.
“Get off it, Dallas. What’s done is done,” Deac glowered.
I scoffed. “Yeah, you would.”
He whipped around and got in my face. “What the fuck did you just say?”
Gauge slipped in between the two of us and shot me a look before turning to Deac. “That’s enough. Let’s let Plug get set up so we can figure out our next move.”
“Our next move is to get Char back,” I said flatly.
“It might not be,” Deac said.
“The fuck does that mean?”
“It means exactly what you think it means.”
“Enough!” Gauge exclaimed.
“And we have power!” Plug said as he thrusted his hands into the air. “Mace, will you do the honors?”
The man walked over to a light switch on the wall that, when flipped, descended a projector screen from the ceiling.
Deac, Gauge, and I stepped away, moving toward the rest of our men as the whirring mechanisms lowered the stretched white fabric.
Plug sat down, clicking around on his laptop as the screen came into focus.
And by the time the projector got its fucking life together, there was a topographical map stretched out in front of us.
It had a blinking red dot that seemed to be on the move.
“Let’s see where she’s headed, shall we?” Plug asked.
“A distraction,” Rat whispered.
“Holy fucking shit, you didn’t,” I said as I whipped around on the man.
He linked his hands together and placed them behind his head. He kicked his feet up onto the table like whatever head honcho he thought he was. But I had to admit, if there was any time to bask in the glory of what he just accomplished, it was then.
“Did you know about this plan of hers?” I asked as I looked down at him. “Did you know this was gonna happen?”
Plug shook his head as he leaned his gaze back to stare up at me. “No, she’d already put the wheels in motion. I just watched from around the corner and waited for an opportunity, like Gauge said.”
I cleared my throat. “Deac?”
“We’re moving with her, not fighting her,” he said as he came over, grabbing my shirt, and yanked me upright. “I suggest you get on the same page if you want to be part of this plan. Got it?”
I shoved him away and slid my hands down my shirt. “Keep your hands off me and we’ll be fine.”
“She gave us a fuckton of information that frames what’s really happening, too,” Gauge said as he turned toward the screen. “More than we’ve come up with in the last few weeks. I just wanted to make sure that, whatever she was doing, it meant something.”
I heard him. I understood him. In some ways, I even sympathized with him. But I wasn’t sure I was ready to forgive anyone for simply letting her go with Sheriff Nielson.
Not even myself.
“All right,” Deadlock said as he sat down and kicked his feet up like Plug, “let’s see where this bitch leads us. Because if she’s just a cover story for what’s really happening, maybe her whereabouts will give us some answers.”
Plug pointed at the man. “Exactly.”
Rat took his seat at the table. “Maybe it’ll show us where she’s staying around here. Give us a place to raid for some information.”
Even Deac took a seat as he leaned his elbow into the table. “Plug? Make sure to lock everywhere she is for more than a few seconds. I want to know everywhere she stops.”
“I’ve already got the program logging that. Any stop for more than ten seconds, and it logs the information.”
“Make it five,” I said.
Everyone looked up at me as I took my seat. And when I looked over at Deac, he nodded his head.
“Make it five seconds, Plug,” he said.
“On it,” Plug said as his fingers danced around the keyboard.
Then we all sat there watching that little red dot blink and beep around the map.
Waiting for her to stop. Waiting for her to rest. Waiting for her to do something.
Anything that might be of value. Anything that might give us answers.
And the entire time, I thought about Char.
The kinds of questions she was being asked.
The things the sheriff would have to know now, because he certainly wouldn’t let something like what just happened stand without some answers.
Not with what happened at our mechanic shop.
I just hoped it was all worth it.
I hoped that the sacrifice Char just made didn’t put a bigger target on her fucking back.