Reeve (The Henchmen MC 11)

At least I had gotten a name.

Reeve.

And, judging by the fact that he must have come from the fancy classic car garage where I had heard a lot of banging and cussing when I passed it, I had a feeling I knew who he was. Or, at least, who he ran with.

The Henchmen.

They were a local gun-running MC.

Outlaw bikers.

I knew this because, well, you saw them all the time around town. But also because, as family legend went, my mother had a one-night stand with, well, three of The Henchmen back before I was born.

Clubwhore for the night, my babcia once told me when I was all of ten years old, she never being one to sugarcoat the truth.

I guess, technically, she was my great babcia, but to me, she was just Babcia. My grandmother. Really, the only mother I had ever had.

So I knew a thing or two about outlaw bikers.

And how they treated women.

Like they were disposable.

But then again, one couldn't be upset about it because any woman who walked into a biker compound and secretly wanted flowers, candy, and lovemaking was simply asking for the heartache.

I had to get him his jacket back.

It was currently swishing around in the washer along with all my bedding, never one to run a cycle that wasn't full. I had gotten the cat hair off before I stuck it in.

But once it hung dry, I needed to return it to its owner.

Which meant I needed to go into an outlaw biker compound myself.

Though, unlike my mother, I was not looking to spread my legs for anyone there. I just wanted to thank a man for a good deed done.

When you saw good being done, it was important to recognize it. It was rare these days, it seemed.

Heck, it was only last week I caught some jerk teenagers using their Airsoft guns to try to shoot an innocent little opossum.

Unfortunately, a good part of the time, a lot of people simply sucked.

It was why I generally spent my time with animals.

They didn't judge.

They didn't act out of cruelty.

And no person, I was convinced, ever loved as deeply as an animal did for the person who cared for them.

"Right, Gandalf?" I asked, tossing a handful of lettuce on the floor for the tortoise that had been dropped off outside Babcia's door before I was even born from an owner who likely got it when it was a baby and super small and cute, not realizing how big it would get. He lived outside in the summer, but it was too cold out now. He lived in the kitchen and laundry room all winter.

Things like that still happened even though Babcia was gone several years now. They showed up, cutting the lights like I wouldn't hear their cars, open a door, and kick out whatever animal they had that they no longer wanted to care for.

It was chronic enough that I had an alarm set for two and four in the morning just to go outside to check and make sure some poor creature wasn't freezing to death on my front step, often locked in cages they couldn't escape from to try to go find somewhere warm to sleep.

Going three weeks with no poor soul needing a new home was a miracle.

Most of them, I didn't keep. I didn't have room for dozens of bunnies bought on a whim for Easter then discarded when their dirty cages started stinking up nice houses. I cared for them until the local bunny rescue - or bird rescue, or dog or cat rescue - could find permanent homes.

My dogs I had saved when visiting high kill shelters, knowing they didn't stand a chance at life just because they were 'too ugly' or 'too old' to get adopted. I had a few 'barn cats' for the same reason. They lived outside in a shed and kept the mice away that came sniffing around because of the outdoor bird feeders I had all around.

I had a few animals, like Gandalf, that I inherited from Babcia. There was also a beautiful harlequin macaw and a scarlet macaw in a guest room upstairs that had belonged to her late husband that she had lost when she was only about twenty-seven.

They all had a special place in my heart.

It was going to rip a part of me out when Frank and Bing - the macaws that had belonged to my dziadek - passed on. I would be lucky if I got another twenty years with them. And I had known them my entire life. I had a nice scar on my thumb from where Bing got me when I was eight.

"What do you think, Ford?" I asked as I brought him his morning meal. "You think you can keep yourself occupied for an hour so I can go return his coat?"