Fuckin’ cheesy shit but we’d embraced it after Mute’s death and Lou’s long battle with cancer.
The only shadow over our fuckin’ heads was the Nightstalkers.
There’d been no vengeance for Mute’s death.
No opportunity to extinguish the fucker MC for good.
Until now.
And that opportunity was hangin’ on Lou.
“You’re quiet, old man,” Loulou said as she leaned over her stool to nip my chin. “Please God, tell me I’m not boring you already? We’ve got a long marriage yet to go.”
I grinned at her but my heart wasn’t in it ’cause the door was openin’ and two men I’d rather not have seen walked into Eugene’s.
Seemed my time was up.
“Evenin’ Garro, Loulou,” Danner hesitated when he noticed my kid sitting on her stool in little shorts that made her look practically naked and a deep cut tank. His eyes darkened in a way only another man could understand. I let a low growl work in my throat and watched the officer swallow. “Harleigh Rose.”
My girl nodded at him in a cool way she’d learned bein’ raised by biker babes.
Lou grinned at him. “Lionel, how are ya?”
The cop’s face softened. My wife had that effect on people. “Better question is, how’re you?”
Lou grinned at me and placed a palm over my heart where her tattoo was still bandaged. “Cancer free and ready to graduate.”
“Married and in high school,” Danner mumbled. “Never a dull moment with the Garros.”
I raised my brows at him and stuck a toothpick in my mouth wishin’ it was a cigarette. “You’d be outta a job if there was.”
He laughed. “Touché. Speaking of, I was hopin’ you’d had time to talk to your wife about the situation.”
Lou’s head spun to me.
I glared at the cop. “No.”
Danner frowned over his shoulder at his partner Gibson who crossed his arms over his chest and scowled at me.
I scowled back harder.
“Talk to me about what?” Lou asked.
Danner looked to me, which was the only reason I wasn’t fuckin’ stranglin’ him. I tipped my chin at him ’cause the damage was already done.
Once Lou knew she had the power to help bring down the Nightstalkers, there would be no talkin’ her outta it even if it meant puttin’ her life on the line. A-fuckin’-gain.
“We got a lead on the Nightstalkers,” Danner explained.
Immediately, Lou sat up straighter and the glimmer of vengeance I saw in my own face every mornin’ when I brushed my teeth appeared on hers in full force.
“We got the opportunity to smoke them out. Thing is, we need your help,” he continued.
“How can I help?”
“We have reason to believe that Mitch Warren is involved with the Nightstalkers. We’d like it if you could get close to him. We’d outfit you with a wire and hope to get a confession out of him,” Gibson explained.
I snorted. “Like I said, this fuckin’ plan is held together with a hope and a fuckin’ prayer.”
Danner’s eyes flashed and his voice was low like a man at the end of his rope and seekin’ retribution. Finally, he was talkin’ like a man I could understand.
“It’s as good as we got, Garro. I know you want justice even more than I do and you give the okay for your woman to do this, I may just see it in me to let you overhear a conversation that lets slip where the Nightstalkers have been holding up.”
“Oh, yeah?” I asked casually, leanin’ back in my seat to play with the ends of Lou’s hair. “Not sure why I’d care about somethin’ like that.”
“Yeah, me either,” Danner played, his eyes shrewd.
“Let’s do it,” Loulou said like I knew she would and then added, “Can I bring my gun?”
The tape between my breasts itched but I tried not to wiggle as I sat in McClellan’s Bar waiting for Mr. Warren to show up.
He was the “Mitch” my dad and Danner had spoken about in the parking lot of EBA after the basketball tournament. We still didn’t know who Jack was but it was clear that everyone else at my parent’s frequent dinner parties were in on the plot to take down The Fallen using the Nightstalkers to do it.
Mitch Warren. It was stupid of me to have forgotten his first name but everyone, even his friends, called him Warren.
When I’d called him to ask him to meet with me and discuss my options for a future after EBA, to say that I was feeling hemmed in by my relationship with Zeus and that I wanted an out, he’d been thrilled.
Mr. Warren liked young girls and I was a young girl with a biker mentality. Catnip to pervs and rebels alike. Mr. Warren was the former.
When he showed up, he was wearing one of his stylish suits, this one navy blue over a blue, red and white plaid shirt with his signature bow tie, this one yellow, at his neck. His thick brown hair was pushed away from his forehead and he could have been handsome if his chin wasn’t so weak and his eyes weren’t filled with false pride.