Ozzy put the rubber bands back around the box to secure it and nodded. “Yeah. I’ll show them to her tonight.”
“Like I said, report back. Can’t imagine her pop was an Original but look what happened with Liz. And I keep sayin’ there are more of us out there.”
If this box of photos turned out to be a dead end, he wasn’t sure what to do next.
Maybe nothing.
And maybe that’d be for the best.
“What’s that?” Ozzy growled as he entered the bedroom.
Shay quickly shut her laptop. She had wanted to check her email quick to make sure she hadn’t missed anything important. “Nothing.”
“Ain’t nothin’. It’s work. Got Monday through Friday to do work.” He approached the bed with an old shoebox in his hand. It was circled by a couple of rubber bands. From appearances, those may be the only thing keeping it together.
“Out of anyone, you should know owning, or managing,” she raised an eyebrow at him, “a small business, isn’t a Monday through Friday nine-to-five endeavor.”
He put the box down and grabbed her computer from her lap, placing it on top of the only dresser he had in his bedroom. And, of course, out of her immediate reach. “Don’t mean you can’t take some time off.”
“I do, when I don’t have any work on my schedule. Do I have to mention that whole sunshine and hay thing again?”
“Fuck no.”
“Good. Because that would mean you didn’t listen.”
He huffed. “Listened. Heard you. I thought you heard me, too.”
She smiled at all his grumbly goodness. “Are you demanding me to take time off for you? Or for me?”
“For you, but yeah, I’m also bein’ fuckin’ selfish. Our time’s limited and wanna make the most of it.”
“Maybe I’ll come back for my twenty-fifth class reunion.” She rolled her lips inward at that joke. Because she was definitely not attending any more class reunions. The last one was enough, thank you very much.
He grunted and climbed onto the bed next to her, dragging the box closer.
“Should I ask you the same question that you asked of me?” She lowered her voice and growled, “What’s that?” with her eyes on the shoebox.
She expected a chuckle out of that, but instead his face remained serious. He grabbed the box, removed the rubber bands and then dropped it in front of where she sat cross-legged against the headboard.
Photos. A whole box of them.
Her pulse began to quicken. In that box might be proof that her father was somehow tied to the Fury before his disappearance. “Is he in there?”
“Don’t know. A few of us went through them and your father’s name don’t ring any fuckin’ bells, so you need to go through them and see if you recognize him. This ain’t everyone, of course. It’s only the photos Dutch happened to have, so it ain’t much but it’s somethin’. And as Trip always says, somethin’s better than nothin’.”
She shot him a quick glance, then turned her focus back to the box in front of her. She began to pull the photos out one by one, carefully studying each, and when she didn’t recognize her father in it, put it to the side in a neat pile.
Most of the photos were old, faded Polaroids. Some of them were developed when using film was a normal thing. Unlike now with digital cameras and cell phones.
Some were blurry, but she still found them fascinating.
The men looked rough and left no doubt that they were bikers. She could also see the camaraderie between the club members in some of them and wondered what happened to tear that closeness apart.
She lifted her head and glanced at Ozzy sitting next to her on the bed, wearing old cotton shorts with his bare legs stretched out in front of him, his gray eyes glued to her. “How many members did the Fury have back then?”
He did a sloppy shrug. “Don’t know. Never counted. But includin’ the prospects, gonna guess at least thirty. Changed all the time, though, and not everyone was around all the time. Club runs and most pig roasts would usually get everyone in one spot.”
“Thirty? Holy smokes.” That was a small army. “You don’t have that many in the Fury now, right?”
He shook his head. “Fuck no. Thinkin’ Trip would like to get it to that number but it ain’t even close. Only got five prospects right now. Those will add to our numbers but it takes them a year to get patched in and every prospect don’t make it. Some leave on their own. Some get voted out.”
“Being a prospect is tough, huh?”
“Yeah, ain’t easy, that’s for fuckin’ sure. Pretty much a slave for a year. You do shit jobs and are treated lower than dog shit. Wanted to walk away a few fuckin’ times but was determined to get my full set of patches.”