West (The Henchmen MC 19)

"No one is small. Do the best you can. And bring back pizza. And drinks. Coffee. It's going to be a long-ass forty-eight hours," he added, half to me and Seeley, half to himself.

Seeley took off, leaving us watching him pull away.

"Why do I get the feeling he's going to be hard to shake?"

"Not bad to have someone doing the grunt work."

"Except I can't even give my own men any sort of stability right now."

"Have you talked to Reign?"

"Yeah, called 'em as soon as I knew you had the girls."

"Is he on his way down?"

"Not yet. I asked him for time. To handle this shit myself."

"You're gonna have to go back to your place. Talk to the cops."

"Yeah," he agreed, raking a hand down his face. "I was waiting until I was a little more sober. Teddy is going to bring me back in an hour or two."

"You've got an alibi. Couple dozen people saw you tonight. If they think you did it for the insurance. You fucked in the heart about it? I know it belonged to your father."

He snorted at that.

"You've been spending enough time with my sister to know our father was a dickhead," he said, making me jolt back. "Think I didn't know?" he asked, giving me smirk. "Nothing goes on under my nose, West. I just let it slide unless I need to confront it. I'm a pick-my-battles sort. Who Gus spends her time with, that isn't a battle I need to fight. But no, I don't have any sentimental value toward that building. If anything, fuck," he said, sighing, refusing to say it.

"It almost felt good hearing it was gone," I supplied for him, getting a flashback to the time just after my father's death that I drove his old truck around a bend and plowed it into a tree just to see something of his bent and broken and pulled away for parts.

"It's fucked," he said, shaking his head. "But true. I'm more concerned about all the shit we all lost tonight. I'm hoping the cars didn't get it."

"Pretty sure they did," I told him, wincing for him, knowing how much Che and Remy liked their cars.

"Well, we had to switch to bikes eventually anyway," he said, rolling with the punches. "Hope you didn't have anything valuable in there."

"Just the guns," I admitted, a little thankful I had moved them into the apartment instead of leaving them in my bike. If those survived, one of us or all of us would have been charged. "I didn't bring much down."

"Good. One less thing to worry about. Remy is freaking out about the cat," he told me. "The dog is still with the walker. Thank fuck that bastard is ridiculous about that thing being walked every hour on the hour. He'd have gone up with the place if not."

"Didn't he let Ozzy out before we left?" I asked, having vague memories of seeing the cat hanging out on top of a pile of old rims in the backyard. Remy tended to let him wander around the fenced grounds, chasing mice and bugs and his own shadow, claiming it felt cruel to leave him locked up in the small apartment all the time.

"Yeah. But I can't imagine the grounds got out unscathed."

"As soon as you sort the shit with the police and fire chief, we will go look for him. Any chance you will be working with your cop friend?"

"We can hope. Who knows? I'll be glad to get this part over with though," he admitted. "Got other, more important shit, to handle."

"Are you thinking Adrian? Think he recovered enough to come out and track down leads?"

"We were careful about leads. But anything is possible these days. But that's why I want the cop shit over with, so I can get to work on that. And finding a new fucking headquarters."

"Clubhouse."

"What?"

"You're going to call it a clubhouse. Or compound. When you guys officially open up. I figure if you can handle this situation, Reign will give you the final go-ahead."

"No pressure, though, right?" he mused, sighing. "Is Gus alright?"

"Yeah. Booker said he would keep them all there until he gets word from us."

"She's got a life," he said, looking off down the street. "She's not going to stay in hiding. Not when she's got her old people to sponge bathe and smuggle porn to."

"We'll figure it out. I think she'd probably be relatively safe at work. She was telling me yesterday that they are going to be doing a lockdown. To protect the old people from the virus going around. That would work in our favor. No one goes up but staff. So as long as one of us is there to pick her up and take her back to secure shelter, she will likely be safer than all of us."