Shades (Evil Dead MC 3)

“Yes. I’m fine. I’m so sorry.” She bent to gather her things, and he bent to help her. She frantically grabbed up her wallet, which had flipped open, a rolling tube of lipstick, a set of keys, breath mints and a multitude of other items and began cramming them back in her purse.

Slick picked up a piece of paper that had obviously fallen out of her wallet. He held it out to Skylar. “I think this is yours.” His eyes studied the paper. It was one of those strips of photos you get at a photo booth. There were four shots. He could tell they were from a long time ago, maybe twenty or more years ago. They were of a man and a woman. The woman was beautiful and could almost be a dead ringer for Skylar, except for the hair, makeup and clothes that dated the photo. The man was standing behind the woman. He had dark hair that hung down to his shoulders, a headband tied around his head, a dark goatee and light eyes. In one photo he was making bunny ears over the woman’s head and she was smiling bright at the camera. In another, he was grabbing her tit, and she was laughing. In another she was kissing the side of his cheek, and he was making a goofy face at the camera.

There was something familiar about the man. Slick could swear he’d seen him somewhere before. And then his eyes tracked back to the picture of the guy’s hand grabbing the woman’s tit. And he saw it. The ring on the man’s hand. The big, silver Evil Dead ring.

Holy shit!

His eyes studied the face again and it clicked.

That was Undertaker.

Skylar tried to snatch the strip from his hand, but he pulled his arm up out of her reach.

“Can I have my picture back please?”

“Who are they?”

“That’s my mother. It’s the only picture I have of her.”

“Your mother?” That explained the resemblance. “And the guy?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I always figured he might be my father, but I don’t know. Maybe just a guy she knew.”

Boot came up and looked over Slick’s shoulder at the photo strip. “What are we lookin’ at?”

Slick held the pictures up for him to see. “Skylar’s mom. And maybe her dad.” He nonchalantly pointed with his thumb to the ring on Undertaker’s finger.

“Fuck, is that—”

Slick cut him off with an elbow to the solar plexus. Then he handed Skylar back the photo. “You’re mom’s real pretty, darlin’, just like you.”

She grabbed it and shoved it into her purse. “Thanks,” she said distractedly.

“Where you goin’ in such a hurry?”

Just then Shades appeared over her shoulder and grabbed her by the arm, pulling her around. “She’s not goin’ anywhere. Are you Skylar?”

She looked up at him with a stricken face, and then he was pulling her along behind him.

Slick watched them go.

Then he turned to Boot. “Come on. We need to talk to Butcher.”

They made their way through the clubhouse, down the hall past the bar to the back office that sat next to their meeting room. They found Butcher sitting behind his big desk, one hand at his chin, running over his beard, appearing lost in thought.

Ghost sat in one of the chairs in front of the desk, bent forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped loosely between them.

They both looked up as Slick and Boot appeared in the open doorway.

“Come on in, boys. We’ve got some shit to talk about,” Butcher said.

They both stepped into the room, Slick closing the door quietly behind him. “Yeah, the DKs, I know, but there’s something else I just got wind of. You need to know.”

Butcher’s hand dropped. “What’s that?”

Slick leaned his palms on the side of the desk and dropped the bomb with no hesitation, as was his style. “Pretty sure Undertaker’s Skylar’s father.”

Butcher, who had begun tapping a pencil on the desk, suddenly stopped and boomed, “What?”