20. Rogue
ROGUE
All day in the heat trying to get the rest of the siding in place while intermittently taking calls that don’t give me the answers I want is pissing me off.
But I plan to get them tonight from the fucking recruit who overheard me talking about those electric fences.
I shove my cell back into my pocket and go back to helping my crew and Johnny’s carpenters to get the rest of the outside shored up.
Hayze finds me working on one of the pieces of siding. “Gotta minute, Prez?”
I scowl. My VP has known me for a long fucking time. My best fucking friend and a brother. While everyone else in this club calls me Prez, the only time he addresses me that way is in front of the crew and no one is around me now.
Hayze averts his eyes the minute I look his way, causing me to wonder what the fuck is going on.
I’ve seen a lot of guilty looking people in my day, but I’ve never seen this look on him.
I put the piece of siding material in my hand down and follow him around the back of the club house to the picnic table. Hayze climbs up on the table and takes a seat, placing his feet on the bench while I do the same.
“What’s going on?”
His eyes meet mine. “I hate like hell to be the one telling you this, but I went into the club game room a while ago. Angel was in there cleaning.”
The fact he was in a room alone with my Angel doesn’t sit well with me. He better tell me something that makes what I’m thinking disappear.
He shakes his head. “Nothing like that, Rogue. I was in there earlier, alone, making a few calls. One of the recruits needed something and I left, forgetting my phone on the chair. When I went back for it, she had it in her hand.”
The pumping of my chest slows slightly. “Is that all?” I don’t know what the fuck he’s going to tell me about the messages that she may have seen.
The look on my VP’s face tells me he’s thrown by whatever he saw or thinks.
“I’m not sure what I saw, Rogue, but the look on her face when I asked her what she was doing, it was like stark fear.
Like I had just caught her doing something that could get her killed.
Rogue. I’ve seen that look on men who’ve infiltrated our club and got caught. ”
I blow out a breath. After everything we’ve shared, everything I’ve learned about my Angel, I don’t fucking believe a word.
“Fuck! Seriously, Hayze? I thought at least you had gotten over your first impressions. She’s no more a fucking traitor than you or I.
Got me? I’m not sure what you saw but she’s been busting her ass trying to get this club cleaned up since those mother fuckers almost plowed it to the ground, because she feels guilty.
That stops now. She’s not going to keep paying for the Scorpions’ debts, you got me?
She’s not a fucking traitor. You’re wrong about Angel.
I’m not sure what you saw but she’s not fucking working for the Scorpions or anyone else. ”
My VP usually has my back unless I’m not seeing something he sees and then I expect him to push until we both see eye to eye. It’s what makes our crew better, looking at things from multiple lenses, not just mine, but in this he’s fucking wrong. “You’re wrong.”
Hayze exhales a deep breath but doesn’t change his position.
“She’s a dancer, Rogue. She’s been working at the clubs for at least a couple months that we know of Maybe Angel’s someone else’s plant.
Maybe not the Scorpions’. I don’t know but I do know what I saw.
That look she gave me she is guilty of something.
I just don’t know what. Punch me in the face, do what you need to do.
I just don’t want to see you get hurt by someone pretending to be with you when she’s really loyal to someone else. ”
My fist hits him right across the mouth, splits his lip, and sends blood pouring down his face.
“Angel’s not a fucking whore or someone’s plant.
She was a fucking virgin, man. She’s innocent in all of this.
Whatever you saw, there’s an explanation and it’s not that she’s a danger to the club. You fucking got that?”
Hayze grabs the edge of his T-shirt and draws it to his mouth to stem the flow of blood.
“Got it.” That’s all he says, no fucking apology, nothing else, just takes the hit he had coming but I can tell by his stance that he still believes every fucking word he said, and that just pisses me off. “Get the fuck away from me.”
I head to the front of the club as the carpenters are wrapping up, piling their equipment back into their trucks and heading out.
I walk up the porch stairs and into the bar to grab a beer.
I believe everything I told my second in command but still I can’t get that little warning bell in the back of my mind to go away.
There’s something I’m missing, but Angel is no fucking whore or plant, that’s for damn sure.
A couple of the guys are already tipping a few and Drifter slides an ice-cold beer down the bar my way.
“The club’s looking pretty good. A couple more days and it will look better than when the fuckers hit it.
Lucky for us the Scorpions didn’t come in from the back or the entire club would have been shot to shit. ”
His words hit me like a shit ton of bricks.
I toss back my beer and set it down before grabbing the recruit by his T-shirt.
His eyes tell me he already knows he slipped.
“I wondered why the Scorpions wouldn’t surround us, wouldn’t come in from all directions.
We had our men positioned around the entire fucking club, but they only came through the front.
They would have gotten fried if they came through those fucking wires and the only mother fucker new to our club who knew that was you. ”
The fucking rat turns white, because he sure as shit knows what’s coming next.