“Oh,” I muttered quickly. Shit. “Yeah, it was just a quick check-up. It wasn’t anything terribly important. I went two weeks ago when I realized that I was carrying.”
Hunter shook his head and muttered something under his breath, walking away from the group and towards his Dragons.
Although they surrounded us, they were clearly trying to not eavesdrop on the commotion… or at least, they were pretending to, given that some of them looked away every time I glanced up.
“Give me a second to calm him down,” Hannah whispered into my ear.
“So,” Hannah began, crossing over through the crowd of seated, casually observing bikers, “this is the lair of the Devil’s Dragons, huh?”
A number of them cheered lightly and lifted their beers.
“I never got the chance to thank those of you who were there that day, who saved me…”
She was pleased with the whooping and cheering responses, and turned to both of us with her hands on her hips. “Well… you said that you’re a private investigator, and you’re working on a case, right?”
Hannah started thinking aloud.
“Listen, little brother, I hate to kind of crash things, but this weirdness involving the letters makes me want to stick kind of close. Do you have any hard feelings with me kicking back here for a little while? I can get out of your hair again whenever you need me to…”
“Stay as long as you like,” Hunter said.
“We’d love to have you here,” I smiled as warmly as possible. “Besides… You seem to know a thing or two about pregnancy.”
“A miscarriage will do that for you,” Hannah shrugged.
“Oh god! I–I’m so sorry!”
“It’s okay,” she replied sadly. “Anyway… What’s this investigation all about?”
Hunter
If I was going to find this container for Sarah, I’d need a little help. If not for the attack on Viboras Verde, I could have probably just called the Outlaws. Things weren’t that easy, though.
They never are…
There were a lot of angry words spilt over the money we’d snatched up during the raid on the cartel. It seemed that the rest of the Outlaws were pissed that they didn’t get a cut, even if they weren’t fucking there.
The five nearest motorcycle clubs under my banner got their hands on a piece of the action because they were in the right place at the right time. I had less than a day to get my shit together and pull whatever allies I could.
I’d almost lost my life in the desert meeting. You could definitely say that some tempers flared. The traitor who tried to destroy my club the first time I lost Sarah even had the balls to show up, ready for a chance to topple me.
He was dealt with properly.
All of my enemies were dealt with, one way or another.
I didn’t have time to think about the consequences...
The anger of the Outlaws was a hard price, and it was a price that I just wasn’t willing to pay. I had my men to think about, their livelihoods, my future with Sarah, and now my sister…
We were gonna be on our own for this one. Sarah came down to El Paso thinking that I could click my fingers and make shit happen, but reality has a funny way of slowing shit down.
It didn’t matter though… I still had an ace in the hole.
EagleEye.
EagleEye was an outlier to the organization. She joined under the pretense of anonymity, asking for what she called an “independent contractor arrangement.”
She wanted to be hard to contact, and for nobody to know who she was. That was easy – most of us went by aliases anyway. Kept the law from quickly connecting the dots. This also meant that the other Outlaws weren’t going to find out about this, which worked for me.
When I found out why she wanted things on the hush-hush so much, it was easy to understand: the kid was a goddamn college student.
She was also a fucking prodigy of a hacker.
Tired of vigilantly pointing out flaws in credit card security with major retailers, she began exposing them with the help of other hackers, breaking free millions of sixteen-digit numbers, names, and addresses…
You remember that major home construction supply company a few years back, one of the first ones to fall prey to that shit?
That was EagleEye at work.
She’d pulled back from that kind of thing – selling credit card numbers wasn’t her style. But she still enjoyed cracking her fingers and tearing apart shitty security.
Like the Port of Los Angeles computer system…
When I told what I wanted, she laughed at the simplicity of it. The whole port ran on network terminals twenty years old, green screen text and all, with holes in the software a mile and a half wide.
I promised her half a week of armed protection on the drop of a dime if she ever needed it, and the deal was set. She’d get me a name.
Sarah had made some phone calls as well. Her retired sheriff father was supportive of her career move, and he was willing to pull some favors outside his old jurisdiction to see what could be done.
We had a pretty good start.
This left us with a bit of downtime. For the moment, I could focus more on the two major changes to my life:
The first was Hannah’s return.
The second was the pregnancy.
Hannah turned out to be a godsend. She took to Sarah like a fish to water. Whenever Sarah’s pregnancy symptoms started flaring – mostly morning sickness, the odd cravings here and there, and fatigue – Hannah was there to help.
All of this was on my mind as I rubbed Sarah’s aching feet, wishing we could just stay here like this forever…
“I wish my breasts weren’t always so fucking tender,” Sarah complained.
“Do they always hurt now?”
“Most of the time,” she replied. “Putting a bra on is a real pain in the ass. Lying on my chest? Totally out of the question.”
“I didn’t realize,” I told her, moving my hands to massage her calf. “Is there anything else I can do to help?”
“You’re doing a good job for being new at this,” she smiled down at me, playfully pressing her big toe of her other foot against my shoulder.
“What can I say?” I grinned. “Maybe I’m just fit to be a father. This isn’t so hard.”
“So, what do you want to do right now?” Sarah murmured, eager to enjoy our moment of peace.
“Not quite sure. Half the boys are out, showing off for Hannah… it’s almost as if we’ve got the whole place to ourselves.”
“Yeah, I’d kind of noticed that,” Sarah chuckled, glancing around. “Hell, I think the only few bikers here are passed out in the spare beds…”
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” I asked tentatively, still weighing out the changes to her sex drive.
“I think so…”
Suddenly, there was a commotion from nearby. We turned our heads as my second-in-command, Grizz, finally walked back through the door.
“Grizz!” I called out to my old friend and trusted confidante. “Where the hell have you been?”
“Removing the cast,” he replied calmly, before turning and nodding politely to me.
“Removing a cast doesn’t take a few days…”
“I wanted to try out the arm… I’ve been away from my ride too damn long. Took a trip out eastward and scouted out New Orleans. You wouldn’t believe some of the shit going down out there. People need protection, and they’re willing to pay for it,” Grizz replied, smiling. “The club needs to get moving soon… And I’m thinking heading that way might be the answer.”
“You might be right,” I replied. “I’ve been thinking the same thing... But first, I have to deal with some shit, and I could use a hand.”
“Oh?” He seemed curious.
“My sister’s back in town.”
Grizz seemed startled by this news. “Your sister… Hannah is here? When did she arrive?”
“She showed up the day you left to
remove your cast,” Sarah answered for me. “The day that Hunter received a hoax letter from her.”
“A… hoax letter?”
“The proof of identity was missing. But the handwriting, the delivery from the Couriers, even mentioning a landmark significant to us, all of that was in place…”
“You suspect a trap,” Grizz concluded.
“I do.”
Grizz stroked his beard thoughtfully; his large and burly form was contemplative. I’d always found his foresight and methodical nature rather useful – it made him a powerful diplomat, an excellent shot, fantastic under pressure, and helped even out my wilder tendencies.
“So who sent it?”
“Not a fucking clue.”
“Interesting… what do you plan to do?”
“Nothing for the moment. For now, we’re focusing on the case.”
“The case?” Grizz asked.
“You take off for a few days and shit happens…”
“We’re tracking down a missing shipyard container from the Port of Los Angeles.”
Grizz turned towards me quickly.
“That is Talon’s territory.”
“I know,” I answered uncomfortably. “I’m not in a rush to rally up the troops and go kicking around on his turf.”