Page 28

(Axel)

He was beginning to love coming to the clubhouse.

That ocean of black leather vests had become the safe space the trailer used to be, before his old man had started drinking so heavily.

Faces were beginning to be familiar, like Danger’s and Doc’s, the two men the cleanest cut of all the men in the building.

They still looked dangerous, though. Even Doc, who had to be pushing sixty.

It was in their eyes—shrewd, calculating, never missing anything.

It was like they could peer into a man’s soul and see his worth, or lack of it.

Sometimes he wondered what they saw when they looked at him and if it was anything good.

After all the harsh words he’d endured from his old man over the years, he wasn’t sure if there was any goodness left.

“Hey, Creature, let me holler at you a moment,” Kat called, waving them over to the bar.

“Well, I hope I haven’t done something to actually get me hollered at,” Creature said as he leaned against the wood.

“It is if you took away the best help I’ve had in years,” she said, brandishing a bottle of rum at him.

Right before Axel’s eyes, Creature went from being the biggest badass in the room to a tall, squirming man with a flush of red over the bridge of his nose.

While Axel wondered if he was blushing beneath his beard, too, Kat arched an eyebrow, steadily tapping the bottle against her arm, like she was still trying to decide whether to crack him with it.

“Umm, uhhh, technically he’s supposed to start Monday,” Creature admitted. “A-a-and as, as a trial, you know, in case he wasn’t as good with those machines as he claimed to be.”

“Oh, I know what a trial entails,” Kat declared. “And I also know that neither you nor my husband would give him the offer of one unless you truly believed that he was better than what he said he was. You’re as protective of that shop as you are of that baby you ride.”

“I won’t deny it.”

“Good,” Kat said. “So, Scout wasn’t working for you today?”

“No, ma’am.”

She inclined her head towards the bar. “Well, he ain’t here, and he’s a half hour late. Was about to have your hide for leaving him at the shop to finish up some project; now I’m gonna take a run across the lot and make sure Teddy hasn’t gotten him into anything. You two watch the bar for me.”

Axel didn’t know fuck all about bartending, but he knew that tone and got his ass behind the wooden partition as two men bellowed for a couple beers. Beer was easy. He’d watched Scout fill glasses, always holding them at an angle.

Shit.

Okay, maybe that was too much of an angle.

He stepped back as beer flowed over the toe of his sneakers, forgetting to take pressure off the handle and making a bigger mess.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

Okay, maybe not as easy as he thought it was.

He tried again and this time got the beer in a glass, though it was a little foamy.

Hopefully that was a good enough head. His old man had never bothered with a glass, just sucked it straight from a bottle, usually so he had permanent projectiles to hurl when he got pissed off.

He filled the second glass with greater ease while Creature poured shots and bellowed for people to come get the damn things if they wanted them; otherwise, he was gonna drink them himself.

Man people moved at hearing that.

“No one’s in the cabin,” Kat announced, her phone pressed to one ear as she stormed back in. “Teddy says he ain’t seen him since he left for work this morning. I guess that was a lie then. His bike’s gone too, for the first time this week. Looks like he might have taken off.”

Axel shook his head, unwilling to believe that. When he glanced over at Creature, willing to plead Scout’s case, he saw him frowning and looking contemplative too.

“I don’t think he took off,” Creature said. “But he might be in trouble. He did have another job, said he’d have it wrapped up before Monday. I need to talk to Mark.”

While he scurried back from behind the bar, Kat caught Axel’s sleeve and pulled him through to the back, into the much quieter kitchen. Night glanced up, surprised, until he saw it was them, and then he went right back to chopping onions.

“What’s Scout gotten himself into?” she asked point-blank.

Blinking, he started blurting out the truth before he had time to consider whether it was a good idea or not.

“He’s been doing porn to help pay off this loan for the scrapyard his family owns,” Axel said.

“He’s been doing shoots in the morning, then working here at night.

He asked them to finish the shoots one after the other so he’d be free by Monday.

That’s all I know. I haven’t talked to him since the night I told Creature the truth about what happened during the robbery. ”

“And what did happen?”

“Scout’s brother was there. He rushed the robbers when one of them pointed their gun at Scout and took off before the cops arrived.

He was going to the shoots with Scout to keep an eye on things since the guys running the production were pushing Scout to do things he didn’t sign up to do.

Sawyer hasn’t been around since the robbery, so Scout’s been going alone. ”

Kat’s face turned a mottled purple right before she let out the most impressive stream of profanities Axel had ever heard.

“Are you telling me that my husband knows that Scout is making adult videos and that he’s not only allowed him to continue to do it but let him do it alone! I’m gonna kill him.”

When she whirled for the door, Axel did the only sane thing he could think to do, which was move out of the fuckin’ way so he didn’t get run over.

Fortunately, the man in question, flanked by Kong and Creature, burst through at almost the same time, ending in a brief showdown and a slap across the face that Mark didn’t try to block.

“I just heard,” Mark said as Kat squared off with him. “Yell at me all you want when I get back; right now we need to look for him.”

“And you tell him he doesn’t have to shoot another movie!” Kat bellowed. “Why didn’t you put a stop to it?”

“Because he was determined to do things his way.”

“And now look what’s happened.”

“We don’t know that he’s in trouble; right now he’s just….” Mark began.

“That boy nearly panicked about being a minute late,” Kat said, waving her phone, and the disembodied voice hollering from the other end, in his direction.

“Don’t you dare say that we don’t know that he’s in trouble.

He’s not here, so he’s in trouble. Now you go find him and fix whatever has gone wrong! ”

“Yes, ma’am,” Mark replied, no sarcasm, no attitude, just obedient and apologetic.

Seeing the club president contrite as hell in the face of his queen's wrath revealed another side of the man that Axel never would have guessed existed and told the true story of who really ran things around here.

“I’d like to help,” Axel said.

“You can ride with me,” Creature declared.

“Kong, go empty the place. Everyone’s riding. Kickstands up in three.”

“On it.”

“I’ll lock down once you leave,” she declared. “And I better not have to wait too long for an update, or I’ll head out hunting him myself.”

“As soon as I know something, you’ll know something.”

“I’d better,” she muttered, before hitting the red hang-up icon on the phone without even pausing to listen to whatever the person on the other end was trying to tell her.

Maybe that was the infamous Teddy. What little Axel had heard about him hadn’t been favorable, but he didn’t have time to think about him or anything else as he followed Creature out the back door of the kitchen while Night shut off all the burners and shoved the items he’d been prepping back in the fridge.

The rumbling roar of twenty bikes firing up sent a tingling sensation down his back as he clung to Creature, who rubbed his leg.

“We’ll find him,” Creature said. “You keep an eye out and holler if you spot him or that brother of his.”

“I will,” Axel said as they took off.

He’d ridden in and out of factory row hundreds of times, but never as fast as they did it that night, pulling up with unerring precision in front of a warehouse Axel had noticed a lot of activity taking place at over the past few months.

It was dark, but that didn’t stop one of the men from prying the door open and four more from heading inside.

“Search the whole place, every room,” Mark declared as they killed the engines. “Duggan, take Swirly and Pat around the left side of the building. Kong, you go right with Critter and Gray. Scout left the compound on his bike this morning. See if there is any sign of it.”

While they moved to do as they were told, Mark pulled his phone from his pocket and knelt, shining the flashlight in the grass and feeling around like he was looking for something.

Axel stayed pressed up against Creature’s back while they waited, but when Mark straightened up, he just shook his head and returned to his bike.

“Not here,” Duggan declared once they’d returned. “But someone was using it not too long ago. Found a water bottle with ice still melting inside it. Pretty sure it’s Scout’s.”

When he held up a bottle with a bright green dragon printed around it, Mark immediately spoke up. “He keeps that behind the bar with him when he works. Okay, so he was here, and recently too. Let’s fan out; he might still be out here in factory row somewhere.”

“If he is, he better have a damn good reason for not checking in,” Kong snarled as he mounted his bike.

The moon was high and bright, meaning Axel had a clear view of the mixture of fury and concern etched into his face as he swung his leg back over his bike.

“Let’s roll,” Mark declared.