“About a couple of really expensive guns you owe some friends of ours,” the playboy said, shrugging.
“Sounds like I should be talking to them, not you.”
That was a bit of a test.
“Well, see, our friends didn’t want to drag themselves up from sunny Florida to this frigid-ass corner of the world. So here we are, in all our glory.”
“What’s your friends’ names?” I asked, still a little suspicious.
“I don’t know who you talked to directly. But Huck would be the president. They have a friend named Zayn who contracted them to get the guns made. And Zayn has some friends over in…”
“Okay,” I cut him off.
He was right.
I’d spoken to two guys in the Golden Glades Henchmen MC. Huck and Seeley. And I knew just from… doing what I do that the very notorious Zayn was working with that crew now to source guns and bring them overseas.
And I recognized that patch on the leather jackets that they were likely only wearing because it was too cold to wear their usual cuts up here.
One-percenter badges.
These were bikers.
A sister chapter, probably.
Bike clubs seemed to be like that. The mother chapter, then lots of little sister chapters popping up all over the place.
“Our buddies are a little worried you ran off with their client’s money,” the guy continued.
I couldn’t stop the snort that escaped me at that.
“What? Forty grand? Seriously?” I asked, rolling my eyes. “That’s pocket change,” I added.
His gaze slid to the cabin.
And, fine, the place didn’t make it seem like I had a lot of money. But when you were in my line of work, and you needed more than one safe house location, you don’t waste a shitton of money on any of them, since they were most likely going to sit empty.
“Would you let a million-dollar safe house sit empty all the time?” I asked, rolling my eyes at him.
“Good point,” he agreed. “I’m Sway. This is Coach,” he said, gesturing toward his friend. Or… brother. Bikers called each other brothers, didn’t they?
Honestly, I couldn’t care less about crime organizations. The only interest they held for me was a way to make money doing what I loved.
“Yeah, I don’t care,” I said, shrugging, trying to play it off. Experience had told me that being a bitch kept me safe. Any small crack in your armor could and would be exploited by men like this. I never planned to be anyone’s victim ever again. “You can tell your buddies that I will get to it when I can. The world doesn’t revolve around them or their client. I have other shit going on.”
With that, I turned as if I was going to walk away, going to dismiss them, even though I knew that they wouldn’t be brushed off so easily. They never were, guys like this.
“I hate to tell you, sweetheart,” Sway started, and I went ahead and pretended that it didn’t feel good to be called a pet name instead of ‘you stupid bitch’ for a change. “But we have orders not to go back home until we have those guns.”
“Then I hope you enjoy the great outdoors,” I said, waving around. “Because I’m not leaving for a while.”
“Did you finish them?” Sway pressed.
“No.”
I also learned that short, clipped answers were more of a power move than giving full explanations.
All these stupid rules I needed to live by, this mask I wore to stay safe. Or else.
“Do you plan to finish them?” he asked, unbothered by my briskness.
“Yes.”
“Come on,” Sway said, laying the charm on a little thicker, giving me that smile. And, no, I wasn’t immune to it. But I couldn’t let him know that. “We all have people we are working for, that we need to answer to. Give me something to work with here, baby.”
“Actually, some of us have highly specialized skills that mean we get to make our own schedules and deadlines. If your boss and his buddy don’t like that, they can go find someone else to do the job,” I told him, knowing full well that there was no one else who could do this job. Which was why it was all the more absurd that we were even having this damn conversation. “I will find some bars tomorrow, and I will send the money back. I don’t need this shit right now.”
With that, I whispered out a little ‘guard’ to the dogs, who were all too happy to start barking and snarling and snapping once again as I made my way inside the cabin, watching as the girls backed the men into the woods. And, presumably, away.
While I leaned back against the door, heart hammering, hands a little shaky.
I put on a good show.
But I sucked at confrontation of any sort.
I once packed my stuff and left in the middle of the day after a guy I was seeing sent me the ‘we need to talk’ text when he’d left for work.
For all I knew, he just wanted to tell me I was kicking him in my sleep or something, but on the off chance he wanted to confront me and say that this wasn’t working, that I was too closed off, that I didn’t let him in, that I was keeping secrets, I just went ahead and ghosted the poor guy instead of having that conversation.
I did everything in my power to avoid serious talks. And arguments. And entanglements of any sort.
I just wanted to be left alone. With my work. With my dogs.
Especially now.
After… everything…
“Stop,” I hissed to myself, knocking my skull back into the door hard enough to throb, to force my brain to think of the pain instead of the memories.
I was sure the guys were going to come back.
They likely had to head back to town, find some bars of their own, and talk to their boss. Who, I was sure, was going to say that he didn’t want the money back, that he wanted the guns.
Yeah, well, I wanted a safe life that didn’t make me sleep with guns under my pillow, that didn’t make me run off to a safe house, that didn’t have horrible nightmares plaguing me anytime I tried to catch some sleep.
We could want anything.
That didn’t mean we were going to get it.
The world didn’t work that way.
So, yeah, the guys would be back.
Which meant I had a choice to make.
Stay, and have that confrontation.
Or pack up my shit, grab my girls, and hightail it the fuck out of here.
I mean, come on, there really wasn’t any choice in the matter, was there?
If it came to standing and facing someone or getting the hell out of Dodge, I was always going to run.
Decision made, I cleaned up the mess from breakfast, poked apart the fire so it would burn out faster, gathered my supplies, loaded them into the cart that I used to drag it all to my car, put the booties on the dogs, and then we all packed into the car.
There was no avoiding stopping just once in town. To fuel up the SUV while the girls napped contentedly in the backseat, likely thinking we were on our way home.
I let the car fill as I dipped inside, knowing there was no way I was going to be able to do this drive without some serious caffeine.
I grabbed a couple bags worth of junk food too, always being prone to stress-eating, and, well, I’d been surviving on healthy crap for a while already. I deserved to pig out as I uprooted our lives yet again to go to another safe house. Unfortunately, this one was much further away.