Chapter 3
Chapter Three
DREW
Iparked the bike outside Wheeler’s hardware store.
Ayda had walked across the street with Kenny and was back by my side within minutes.
The three of us pushed through the front door, where Wheeler had cleared a section for all my men to stand in while they watched a part of their world go up in flames.
Kenny made his way to stand by Tate’s side, and I didn’t miss the look of relief on Tate’s face when he saw Ayda, but it only lasted a second before his relief turned to sheer anger at the sight of the swellings on her face.
I immediately hated myself for not protecting her, and for not protecting him from seeing her that way.
Moose looked like a giant locked in a rabbit hole, and the rest of them looked too dark and full of dirty history to be standing in something as everyday as a small town hardware store. In the middle of all my men stood one man I didn’t expect to see.
Howard Sutton.
Howard’s gaze turned my way. No smile came. No acknowledgment. Just a soft puff of air, which I couldn’t decipher. Was it relief or agitation?
He glanced at Ayda, flinching slightly when he saw the state of her face, and I had to close my eyes to stop myself from looking at her, too.
I swore she’d never get hurt under my watch again, and of course, I’d let her the fuck down.
Now wasn’t the time for thinking on regrets.
I could do that once everyone was safe and back in the home they belonged in.
Now I had to figure out what the fuck was going on.
“Chief,” I croaked, clearing my throat and nodding, gripping Ayda’s hand tighter in mine.
“Tucker,” he blew out, shaking his head. He looked and sounded exhausted. “What in the name of Jesus. Tell me you didn’t do this…”
“Do what, exactly?” I scowled, tired eyes narrowing in on him. “Set the whole of Babylon on fire, including my own home?”
“Well, you can’t blame me for asking. I mean—”
“I goddamn can blame you for asking. Don’t you know me at all?”
Howard looked up, blinking slowly and searching my eyes for any sign of a lie. I hoped to God he saw what I was projecting, because I was angry, pissed off, and just as confused as him.
“You don’t know anything about anything. Is that what you’re telling me?” Howard asked carefully.
“I never said that.”
“Right.” He sighed again.
“Who am I talking to right now? Howard Sutton, my friend, or Howard Sutton, the chief of police?”
Sutton glanced back at all the men around him before his eyes landed on Ayda, and then me. “Your friend. I’m your friend.”
“Good, then start fucking acting like it and tell me what’s going on with Slater, Jedd, and Deeks. And what the hell happened to our yard, the old warehouse, and Pete’s place?”
Kenny stepped forward, reluctantly moving away from Tate to stand beside Sutton. “We’ve only just heard through Howard’s radio about Pete’s tree. Is it…?”
“Gone? Yeah. Another memory set alight.”
“And you had nothing to do with it?” Sutton dared to ask again.
I took an angry step forward, only stopping in my tracks when I felt the urgent squeezing of my hand from Ayda. He was just doing his job, that’s what I’m sure she was telling me. Don’t have any regrets. Take a breath. Think, Drew.
“I swear to God, Sutton,” I growled through gritted teeth. “Don’t ask me that question again.”
He had the decency to hold his hands in the air and retreat. “Okay, I believe you. I just had to make sure. You’re sloppy when you’re angry, Drew, and I know what your temper is like. It’s worse than a toddler’s—”
“Chief!” I groaned.
“Sorry.” He cleared his throat. “All we know for now is that random fires have been started at the remains of the old warehouse where The Emps’ attack took place.”
“I’m familiar with it,” I said, low and full of judgment.
“Right.” Sutton inhaled deep, blowing it all out in one quick stream.
“The warehouse fire started not long after you left the yard, but everyone here is claiming they know nothing about it. On that, I’m calling bullshit whether you like it or not, Drew.
I can tell you’re surprised, but these men behind me didn’t dare look me in the eye when I ask them what happened.
” Sutton thumbed over his shoulder at Moose.
“And as for that big dope… if ATF or anyone else from my department questions him, they’ll see straight through the fact that he can’t lie. ”
I looked up at Moose who simply shrugged like a useless ape and then scratched the back of his neck. That’s when I turned my attention to Kenny.
“What’s going on, brows?” I asked him calmly.
“Slater set fire to the training room.”
“Motherfucker!” Sutton snapped.
“Sorry, chief. I needed to tell Drew first,” Kenny explained.
My eyes widened and my brows rose. “Slater?”
“He was under instruction.”
“From…?” I didn’t need to hear the name.
“You know who,” Kenny confirmed.
I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose with my free hand.
“But I swear to you, we don’t know who is responsible for the rest. Pete’s tree, the old warehouse… none of it makes sense.”
It made sense, all right, and I knew exactly who was responsible for all of it. It was the wisest move he could have made—if it was him.
Misdirection. Distractions. Magic. It screamed of Eric Tucker.
The tactics of a true leader, but ones that had cost me a lifetime of memories and a place I clung to and used to restore my sanity on my darkest of days.
“And what about Slater, Jedd, and Deeks?”
Right on cue, the doorbell above old Wheeler’s hardware store door rang out, and the sounds of heavy boots hitting the floor had all of us turning around. In the doorway, framed by the light of outside, yet somehow looking darker than ever, were my sarge and one of the club’s founders.
Deeks and Slater were back, staring at me with fire in their eyes and frowns on their faces.
“What the hell?” Sutton whispered on behalf of all of us.
“Slater?” I croaked, my eyes wide with surprise and confusion. “I thought…”
“We need to talk,” was all he said.
“Why? Where the hell is Jedd?”
Slater and Deeks took one look at each other before they crossed their arms over their chests, and Slater stared back at me. “He’s not coming back, Drew.”
The fire department wasn’t willing to let any of us back inside the yard for a few hours until they could confirm we were no longer in danger.
Our home was cordoned off, and a bunch of feral Hounds were left to roam the streets of Babylon, knowing we couldn’t keep Wheeler’s place occupied the way we were doing.
It was like trying to cram elephants into a drainpipe.
Ayda had phoned ahead to Rusty’s place, and just like that, the guy who barely said two words without waving a spatula had closed the place down to the public, and it was now being used as The Hounds’ safe haven.
I was sitting in a booth with Slater and Deeks opposite Ayda and me, while Kenny and the guys lingered close by. Howard had left us, choosing instead to head back to the station so it didn’t look like he was a part of this brotherhood.
“We’d barely taken a foot inside the place when Jedd asked to speak to that Winnie chick alone,” Deeks told me, his face full of confusion and an aching sadness that made my own heart squeeze tight.
“Next thing Slater and I know, we’re being ushered into a cell together and told to wait.
We didn’t even have to wait thirty minutes before the ATF woman was rattling her keys and telling us to be on our way. ”
I couldn’t make sense of it, but one of my greatest fears was that yet another one of my brothers was about to throw themselves in front of a moving freight train in order to save me. Pete and Harry: Take Three. I couldn't let it happen. I wouldn’t.
“Explain to me everything that happened the second Ayda and I left the yard to head to Sinclair’s place.”
Slater’s nostrils flared at the mention of Owen, his jaw tensing as he failed to hide his feelings of betrayal and hurt.
“Don’t worry. He paid,” I assured him.
Slater nodded once and leaned forward, resting his forearms on the surface of the table between us.
“You two were getting Owen in the truck when Eric pulled me aside. One minute you were there, and the next you were riding out, and Eric turned to me and asked me to torch the training room.”
“Why?”
“He wanted rid of all the evidence of what we’d just done to Sinclair, but more than that, I think he wanted it to look like Owen had turned against the club, and he’d set fire to it to hurt us, and then he’d run. He was covering his bases. Our bases. I don’t know.”
“And after that?” I asked, fisting my hands together in front of me. “Once you’d agreed to it?”
Slater shrugged. “I got to work.”
“And what did Eric do?”
“He…” Slater stopped and frowned, taking a moment to think. Deeks, too, looked lost in concentration, his eyes searching the surface of the table.
“Last I saw of him, he was talking to Jedd and the kid,” Deeks answered.
“The kid?” I sat forward, my heart rate picking up speed. “Rubin?”
Deeks lifted his eyes from the table to me, offering a small, understanding nod for my obvious concern. “Yeah. Rubin.”
“Fuck,” Slater whispered.
“Did Eric take Rubin anywhere when he left the yard?”
“No,” Deeks answered with absolute certainty. “No, Eric left not long after you. He was with Slater before he moved to Jedd and Rubin, and then he threw himself on your bike like it was a Playboy pussy, and he rode the hell out of there.”
“Was Rubin around when you set fire to the training room, Slate?”
He reached up to scratch his beard, blowing out a long, tired breath.
“Not a clue, Drew. I was lost in wondering how the fuck I was going to do what I had to do without fucking it up. I ran to Deeks to tell him what Eric had asked of me, and the next thing I know, the yard is half empty, everyone’s running into The Hut, and Moose, Kenny, and Deeks are heading my way to help me.
I think Deeks went into the pawnshop to get some of the documents out of there in case it spread farther than we wanted it to. ”
“That’s right.” Deeks nodded slowly.
“And no one saw where Rubin went?”
“I did,” Moose called out from behind us. I raised my head to look at him, trying to recollect how many times I’d actually heard him speak before.
“Where did he go, Moose?”
“I don’t know, but he had his pushbike with him, and it wasn’t long after Jedd went back inside The Hut to grab something that Rubin was pedaling out of the yard as though he was trying to win some kind of race.”
I leaned back in my booth, throwing an arm over the back of it and glancing Ayda’s way. There wasn’t anything I could say to her or ask her, so I simply stared into the beautiful blues that sat hidden behind her marred and swollen skin, still needing that connection, despite seeing her wounds.
“What the fuck is going on, darlin’?” I asked her softly.
Ayda took her time before answering, her glance bouncing around the faces that surrounded us in the booth. The men she’d come to love as her family were mostly all here, but her confusion was still obvious. It looked like she was trying to put two and four together and coming up with one.
“I wish I knew,” she finally answered. “Rubin would do anything for any of you, so I know anything Eric asked of him he’d do without hesitation, but that’s all I’ve got.”
I turned back to Slater and Deeks. “Did they give you any idea how long they planned on holding Jedd?”
“None.” Slater shook his head, but I saw something on his face: a twitch of his nose, a subtle shift in his gaze as he tried to side-eye Deeks before looking back up at me.
“What was that?”
“What?”
I slammed a hand down on the table, making Ayda and the men around me jump before I leaned forward and ground my teeth together. “Slater Portman, don’t lie to me.”
“Calm down, Drew,” Deeks interrupted, shifting a hand to move on top of mine and trapping it there. “Calm down.”
“Then tell me why the hell Slater looked at you that way. What is Jedd doing?”
“What he thinks is best, I imagine.”
“Yeah? Like Pete did? Like Harry, too?” I pressed. “Well, fuck that. I’m not losing any more of my men, do you understand me?”
Neither one of them answered, and I yanked my hand out from under Deeks’ and looked up at all the men standing in Rusty’s diner.
“Do ALL of you understand me? Are you fucking listening? Can you hear the words coming out of my mouth? I am your president. I run this show. I make the final decisions whether there’s a gavel in my goddamn hand or not, and I am telling each and every one of you here who thinks their life is worth less than mine…
it isn’t. Cut that shit out, and if I find out any of you are trying to save me by hurting themselves, I’ll fucking kill you myself.
It’s my job to protect you. Mine. I’ve lost too many brothers to bear any more grief, and I cannot, will not—I fucking refuse to have this conversation.
If anyone is going to die for this club, it’s going to me.
” I let my raging eyes drift down to Ayda.
“I’ll fall before this club does. It’s what I was born to do. It’s who I was born to be.”
Ayda didn’t say anything. Her hand tightened around my leg, but it was the only indication at all that she’d felt the words and the weight behind them.
She was letting me be who I needed to be.
My brothers had been around from the beginning, through the worst, and they’d be there come rain or shine because they took the honor of their patches seriously. No part of me wanted to consider a future where I’d have to make the call, but it was part of the job.
Turning back to the men, I took in a deep, steady breath and released it with just as much control.
“Now, I’m going to ask this one last time: does anyone in this diner know what the hell my VP is planning while he sits in that shitty little cell all alone?”