Whiskey Neat (The Uncertain Saints MC Book 1) (14 page)

“You stayed next to her?” Wolf asked.

I nodded. “I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I know for a fact that the river part of Caddo doesn’t have many lake houses. So I did the only thing I could, I got him back to the dock and up onto it so I could start CPR.”

“You got him breathing, though,” Peek supplied.

I nodded. “I did. And he came to screaming his ass off.”

Griffin’s arms went around me when the trembling didn’t stop.

I held onto him as I finished the story.

“We stayed there where we were two more hours before a boater finally came by,” I said. “The boater called the game wardens. The game wardens loaded us and the massive alligator into the boat, and we drove off back to the state park where my father was transferred into the ambulance with some pretty serious wounds. I was left to answer questions and take pictures.”

Griffin growled. “They made you stay?”

I shook my head. “No, they asked. My dad’s truck was there. And my mom had met the ambulance at the hospital. Since I wasn’t hurt, and things needed to be taken care of, I stayed.”

“So you’ve never gone to the lake again?” Wolf asked.

I shook my head. “No, I have not.” I glared at Griffin. “At least willingly.”

He pressed his lips to my forehead. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

I shrugged. “It’s okay.”

I refrained from saying, “
You didn’t ask.”

That wouldn’t be beneficial right then.

He shook his head. “No it’s not. But thank you for trying to make me feel better.”

He sighed and kissed my head, placing his lips overly long on my forehead before he stood up.

“I’ve got to go talk to them, will you be okay here with Alison?” He asked, looking down at me with concern.

I nodded, assuming that ‘Alison’ was the only woman in the room. The one who’d pulled up that ugly picture and had yet to take it down.

“I’ll be fine,” I said, patting his thigh. “As long as the blinds stay shut.”

That was a warning to all of them in the room, and I saw the other person in my line of sight nod in agreement.

They’d stay shut.

Good.

Griffin left, disappearing into a room in the side of the house we were in.

When the door shut behind the last one, Mr. Pissy, I finally looked to the woman, Alison.

“Can w-we, ummm, t-take that down?” I gestured to the picture.

Geez, I’d gone all the way through a harrowing tale and hadn’t stuttered once, but to be put under the supervision of a woman with angel eyes was making me stutter.

Nice.

She hurriedly complied, hitting a button on the wall that drew the screen up back into the holder in the ceiling.

It was still up on the computer monitor, but she hit a button, and the entire screen went black.

“Sorry honey. It’s easier to show visual proof instead of having them all question you over and over again…something they would’ve done. They’re all investigators at heart,” she said apologetically.

I waved my hand in the air as if to clear it. “It’s fine. I could see Griffin frothing at the mouth when he thought I didn’t want to come here.”

The woman smiled. “This is an intimidating place for most people. I wouldn’t have thought less of you if it had been just because you didn’t want to be in a room full of bikers,” she said. “They take some getting used to.”

I didn’t doubt it, but from what I’d noticed in the short time here, they didn’t seem all that bad.

“What were their names?” I asked.

I couldn’t keep calling them by Mr. Pissy or Mr. Indifferent.

“The one with the dark eyes and black hair is named Wolf,” she started. “The one behind you at the blinds was Mig. My husband was the one standing next to me, Peek. The last two standing in front of you, from left to right, are Casten and Ridley.”

I nodded. “Thank you.”

An awkward silence followed as we both tried to think of what to say next when we both started to speak at once.

“So how did you meet Griff?”

“So how did you meet Peek?”

We both laughed.

She held up her hand to halt my explanation.

“I’ll start,” she smiled. “I met my husband when we were both twenty-one and stupid.”

I raised a brow at her, and she laughed.

“Yeah, I’m serious. Stupid,” she snickered and covered her eyes as she thought back to something I couldn’t see. “I’d just turned twenty-one, and was celebrating by getting raging drunk.”

I could see where this was going even before she’d started, but I smiled anyway.

I loved a love story.

“And my best friend dared me to go get this massive back piece. So, me being me, I agreed. I was laying on the chair, ready to get a massive unicorn on my back by some man named Dolly when Peek walked in. He immediately took in the stencil that Dolly had placed on my back, my state of near drunkenness, my best friend’s giggle, and put a stop to it.”

My eyebrows climbed. “Really? Why?”

“When he was sixteen he got his one and only drunk tattoo by a friend that was equally as drunk,” she explained. “He woke up the next morning with it, and vowed that when he finally opened his own tattoo shop, that he’d never let anyone drunk get a tattoo. And he didn’t.”

“I bet that pissed some people off,” I said dryly.

She nodded. “If you haven’t noticed, my man is fully capable of taking care of himself.”

I did happen to notice that.

Although he was older, he was in incredibly good shape for a man his age.

“What about you? How’d you meet Griffin?” She asked.

I smiled. “I sold him some batteries from my store.”

Her eyes crinkled at the corner.

“Don’t you own Uncertain Pleasures?” She asked, holding the laugh in.

I nodded.

“I do.”

“So he came into your store for the batteries?” She giggled.

“Yep. He didn’t seem out of place or anything. Even helped kick out the two people screwing in the dressing rooms,” I told her.

She snorted as she laughed, causing my smile to widen.

“What’s with the name Peek?” I asked. “Is that his real name?”

Alison smiled, blushing slightly. “No. His real name is Reedus. Peek is short for ‘peekaboo.’ He has a tattoo right above his, um…penis.”

My mouth dropped open. “You’re kidding.”

She shook her head. “No, I can’t say I am. The man is nuts. It’s literally right above his wiener.”

“Jesus, Ali. Call it what it is…it’s a fuckin’ cock, not a wiener!” Peek yelled from the doorway.

I burst out laughing and covered my face with my hands.

The couch next to my hip depressed, and I fell into a hard body that I knew very, very well.

Griffin’s body was like the negative to my positive.

My body gravitated towards his, much like it was doing now.

“Have a nice talk?” I asked, turning to look at him.

His face was closed down.

“We need to talk,” he said softly.

Shit.

“Talk about what?” I asked.

I knew it had to be about what we’d come here for.

Why I’d been practically forced to come.

And whatever it had to do with, had to do with me.

Dammit. Shit. Hell. Piss.

When he didn’t answer, I sighed. “So talk.”

I’m not saying your mom is a slut, but when she gave birth to you she tried to push you back in and out a few times.

-E-card

Griffin

“Mother. Fucker,” I growled, standing up and making my way out of the room we did most of our club meetings in.

Most clubs called this room ‘church.’

I called it the room that made me feel claustrophobic with the wood planked walls and the hard wood floors.

I stopped with my hand on the handle.

“You’re sure?” I asked softly.

Peek came up to me and placed one hand on my shoulder.

“We wouldn’t joke about something like this,” Peek said as he pushed me slightly to the side and exited the door.

Wolf was next to my side, and he looked at me with fire in his eyes.

“We won’t let anything happen to her,” he told me.

I knew that.

Rationally anyway.

My heart.

The mother fucker.

My heart didn’t know that to be true, though.

“How do they even know about her?” I said roughly. “I’ve spent the equivalent of three fucking days with her so far. They’ve had to have someone on me twenty-four seven to get that.”

“Or an informant,” Wolf said, exiting the door just as Peek said something about cocks and wieners.

I was the last to exit the room, which meant I’d missed why they were talking about cocks.

Lenore had a smile on her face, though, and that meant that whatever they were talking about wasn’t that bad.

Lenore was a blusher, and right now she just looked flushed with happiness, not embarrassment.

I hated that I was about to ruin that good mood she was in.

I walked to her, finding it increasingly hard to smile in the wake of what I’d just heard, but with the way Lenore was sitting on the couch, her shoulders shaking in laughter, I found my first smile.

Albeit reluctantly.

I fell into the seat beside her, causing her body to roll into mine.

She removed her hands from her face and smiled at me, causing my stomach to flip.

“Have a nice talk?” She asked.

I shook my head.

“We need to talk,” I muttered as she looked at me.

I just kept looking at her, unsure where to start, causing her impatience to win out.

“So talk,” she snapped.

“We have an informant who excels in the underground criminal network,” I hesitated. “He can get to places we can’t. We pay him for what he hears, and if it’s good enough, we do him favors.”

“So…what?” She asked softly.

“We owe him a favor,” I told her.

Her eyes widened. “What kind of information did he give you to get you to bring me here?”

“The kind of information that the man who was partially responsible for killing my son put two and two together to get twelve,” I said cryptically.

Peek snorted.

I flicked my gaze to Peek for a brief second before it settled back on Lenore and her worried eyes.

“So what does that mean?” she asked.

“The other day I made a mistake in going to my ex-wife’s house to get some information from her husband. He recently changed his mind and decided to back a bill that will dramatically impact the way law enforcement in this state is allowed to execute duties. He had originally been against this bill, and then he changed his mind, which happened to occur right after my son was murdered. I wanted to know why he changed his vote, and more importantly, who was behind this change,” I explained. “I assumed that being roughed up a bit and scaring the shit out of him would be enough to prevent him from doing anything stupid. But it didn’t, and I am now forced to deal with the mistaken assumptions I made.”

She blinked.

“Okay,” she replied, confusion clear in her voice. “So what did he do?”

“Three hours ago, Justin Hayes made a call that put plans into motion to have me killed,” I told her.

Her mouth dropped open.

“You’re fucking kidding,” she gasped.

I shook my head.

“No. Not even a little bit,” I growled, leaning back into the couch and placing both hands on my head, working my hands through my hair.

“So what…you’re going to go into hiding?” She asked.

I shook my head. “No. I’m not going to hide out. I still have a job to do. I’ll just have to be more careful.”

Her eyes started to burn with anger.

“And you’re a fucking superhero? Do you think that whomever he called to have you killed won’t just bring in a sniper to take you out from a thousand yards away?” She hissed.

“A thousand yards is unlikely to ever happen,” I told her. “But yeah, a sniper has crossed my mind.”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “So what are you going to do?”

“Find the fucker before he finds me,” I snapped.

“What does that have to do with me?” She asked slowly, sensing there was something else.

“It means that I’m going to have to let you go…and hope that they didn’t find out about you in the short time that I’ve been with you,” I said slowly, willing her to understand.

She looked like I’d punched her in the gut.

“You’re… you’re letting m-me g-go?” She asked softly.

I felt like the biggest asshole in the world.

Doors opened, signaling the club members leaving as quietly as they could, and I hated myself for wishing they were still here.

Lenore would’ve tried harder not to break down had they still been here.

But now with the room empty of just her and me, she started to cry, ripping a motherfucking hole in my chest the size of China.

“God,” she whispered. “
God
.”

“I don’t know if they’ve even found out about you…this may all be for nothing. But I have to try. I want you to be safe. I need you to be safe,” I told her. “Nothing will happen to you.”

Her lips tightened.

“And if they do find out we were together? What then?” She replied.

“Then we’ll go from there. Our informant said he hasn’t heard so much as a whisper about you yet. So we’re going to go on the fact that they don’t know we were together. Because they’d use you to get to me. They’re going to try to lure me out by taking my ex, first. When that doesn’t work, they’re going to go for something else. Look for a current girlfriend in hopes that I’ll come out for you. But when they don’t find one, they’ll have to think of something else. And I’m hoping with that time, it’ll allow me to find them before they get to me.”

“That’s insane,” she whispered, moving until she was straddling my thighs.

My hands went to her hips, and I tried extremely hard not to stare at her unbound breasts.

“That’s all I’ve got for now,” I said. “We don’t know enough yet to get him.”

“You know who he is?” She whispered, leaning forward.

Her breasts pressed against my chest, and I had to close my eyes at the look of need in her eyes.

“Yeah, we have a fairly good idea who he is,” I answered evasively.

The less she knew, the better.