Duke (The Henchmen MC 5)

"Where did the kids go?" I asked, knowing Janie and Alex were still upstairs.

"Breaker offered to bring Summer and my kids along with Malcolm, Maze, and Seth up to his place. He's on that hill that lets him see from miles off. It's safer than them being here or at our houses without us there to keep an eye. Shoot and Paine and their families likely aren't at risk so they just went on their way."

"Right," I said with a nod, not quite able to grasp how sick it must have made the men with families to be in a war, to know that their loved ones could be used against them. I guess, in a way, it was fucking lucky that I didn't have anyone I gave a shit about.

Save for the girl a few yards away from us in a pain pills induced sleep because she stopped to talk to me for two minutes.

"What the fuck is this shit?" a familiar voice asked as he walked up. I hadn't noticed that Renny had been absent most of the day until I turned to see him walking up.

He had been young when he prospected with me almost seven years before, barely over twenty at the time. He had lost some of his youthful thinness, building a bit of lean muscle and making him more threatening. He had his red hair a little shorter where he used to keep it longer. And while he had always been a tattoo fan, he was mostly covered now.

He had barely stopped his long-legged gate by us before he was grabbing a pack of cigarettes and taking them out to light one.

"Hand one over," Cash said, surprising all of us. He had stopped smoking the better part of a decade before, back when Reign had just met Summer.

"Bro, Lo is gonna flip shit," Reign said, managing an amused smile as Renny handed one over and lit it for Cash.

"She'll understand," he said with a shrug as the smoke billowed around us.

"Where's the girl?" Renny asked, looking to Reign for answers.

"In Duke's room," he supplied.

Renny's annoying as fuck penetrating light blue gaze landed on me, watching me for a minute, then nodding like he had my number.

I fucking hated that shit.

We might be brothers in the MC, but I was pretty sure we would never get over that shit he pulled years back while we were still probates, ending in a knock-down fight that fucking Maze had eventually broken up.

And I was okay with that fact.

"So we have anything to go on?" he asked, still young, still itching for a fight. Oh, to be twenty-six and invincible again.

"Not shit yet," Cash said, closing his eyes as he took a long drag.

"No one else has had anything like this happen? Anything that seemed like maybe normal street violence shit that they brushed off?" he asked, trying to profile the men, doing what he was raised to do with his sick as fuck parents.

"Not that we know of. But you know how shit is. The men go to the bars and get into what seems like random shit," Reign said with a head shake. "But no one has gone after any of our kids or women. That shit wouldn't be looked over."

"Why did they go for this girl?" Renny asked, looking at me.

"Me and Shred gave her directions yesterday. That's it. Two minutes."

"Personal?" Renny asked, but looked at Reign. "If they didn't go after Summer or Maze or Janie... easier, more definite targets..."

"True, but they're also more protected targets. Summer is almost always here or at home with that fence around the place. No one can get to Wolf's place and even if they could, Janie is a fuckin' wildcat," Reign said, smiling a little. "Beside that, she not only belongs to Wolf, but Hailstorm. And I don't think there are a lot of people stupid enough to want to take those fucks on. And Maze is more trained than half of the guys here. If they were looking for a quick, easy target, it wasn't our women."

"True enough. But it was sloppy to pick some random girl that they haven't seen around here before who only had a two minute talk at the gates," Renny insisted. "So, either they are just sloppy and haven't been watching closely enough or they just wanted to send a message quickly and this was the easiest way."

"So you can't give us anything," Reign mused.

"Not yet," Renny agreed. "Maybe when the girl wakes up and can give us some descriptions or locations or even just snippets of conversation she might have overheard."

"Right," Reign agreed.

"You're not fuckin' interrogating her," I said, voice low, lethal, eyes on Renny.

He looked over at me, one brow raised, looking me over for a second. "I wasn't exactly talking about waterboarding her here," he said with a lazy grin, flicking away one cigarette and already reaching for another. "But you had to know Reign would want to know..."