Che (Golden Glades Henchmen MC 2)

I mean, the garbage was literally overflowing with what smelled like rotting takeout from the Indian restaurant. Coffee mugs were stacked everywhere, most of them with half-crushed energy drinks stuffed inside. The bed was a wreck with sheets that looked like they needed to see the inside of a washing machine—or a garbage pail—desperately.

As for the "decor," Arty had a fold-up card table for a desk, holding up equipment easily worth thousands of dollars. The bed was without a headboard. There was one makeshift nightstand made out of a bright red plastic milk crate. As for curtains, well, Arty had used an old cardboard box to blanket the room in darkness save for the lights from his many computer monitors and a single overhead bare bulb that flickered just enough to be irritating.

The man himself looked, well, worse for the wear.

He was tall and thin to the point of nearly skeletal with wavy, disheveled brown hair pushed back away from a face that, if the man would put on a little weight, would have given Che a run for his money.

As it was, the only thing a woman who looked at him would feel was concern over his well-being.

"Art," Che called, voice raised, because Arty had headphones on over his ears, the sound loud enough for me to make out the lyrics even from several feet away. "Art!" he yelled, making the man jolt, turning to find us standing there.

"Oh," he said, pulling his headphones down to rest around his neck. "Hey."

"Your door was open, Arty," Che said, adopting on a big-brother strained patience I found immediately charming. When that had no noticeable reaction, he tried again. "Booker would not be happy to hear that."

That did the trick. Arty looked immediately contrite.

"You're right," he agreed, nodding. "I won't do that again. Why are you here? Who is that?"

"That is Saskia," Che supplied, reaching out to touch my hip for a second before thinking better of it and dropping his hand.

"Oh. Your wife," Arty said, making both our mouths fall open slightly.

"How did you know that?" Che asked, shaking his head.

"I ran profiles up on all of you," he said. "For fun. When I was bored," he added, shrugging.

"You never said you knew."

"I figured there was a reason you never mentioned it," Arty explained.

"You never told Huck."

"I didn't do the research for Huck. Why are you here? I have work."

"You've been working too hard, by the looks of things," Che said, waving toward the disgusting trash bin.

"I like being busy."

"Yeah, well, if you're not too busy, we could use some help. Saskia is being followed after a job of hers went south. And by followed, I mean with men with guns and no fear about using them in public."

"Hm," Arty said, not sounding the least bit shocked by that information. "Well, I would need more than that to go on," he said, scooting back in his rolling chair, waiting for Che to launch into it.

Not needing to hear it again myself, I went ahead and occupied myself with bagging up the garbage before the stink of it made me sick, sticking it out the front door to deal with on the way out.

After that, finding a new liner led to cleaning up the trail of clothes on the bathroom floor which led to gathering up the mugs and washing them out in the bathroom sink. Then collecting the recycling.

By the time Arty and Che stopped talking, his apartment looked halfway habitable. And the man himself genuinely didn't even notice.

Maybe I should have been offended by that, but I got the impression that he wasn't deliberately being unappreciative, but rather that he was too lost in his own head even to give his surroundings any thought.

"That was nice of you, Sass," Che said, grabbing the garbage bag as we went outside. "He struggles with taking care of himself sometimes. Huck's sister, Gus, used to drop in to make sure he was eating, and help clean up a bit around here, bringing him basic essentials he would have forgotten to get himself. But she moved up to marry one of the guys from our mother chapter in Navesink Bank. We don't check in as much as we should."

"You should invite him over for dinner or something every once in a while," I suggested. "I think he needs food more than he needs a cleaning service. Which is saying something."

"We might actually be able to get him to come if we force Booker to show up."

"Who is Booker?" I asked as we made our way back to his bike.

"Huck's sister, Gus—and now Harmon—have a best friend, Ayanna. Her man is Booker. He does security shit. Arty has always been a little starstruck by him. He won't listen to us about shit, but if Booker told him he needed to be eating three square meals a day, Arty would probably do it. Booker is someone you might need to meet eventually, actually."