Page 13
Lynette
“I fail to see the appeal of that car. It’s tiny and looks like it’s made out of nothing more than tin.” I turn away from the window where I was doing the big sister spy stink-eye until the classic sixties muscle car turned left at the stop sign a few houses down and disappeared out of sight.
“It’s worth somewhere around a hundred grand.”
Bullet’s hand hovers, outstretched, near my back, but he quickly drops it as I stalk past him. My heels slap against the hardwood. I have twenty thousand things I need to get done today. It’s not that I don’t appreciate Bullet’s company this morning, but I find it hard to think when he’s around.
“You’d think for that much money you’d get a few safety features, like airbags.”
“It has air conditioning and seatbelts. For the year, it’s about as good as it gets.” Bullet follows me back into my new home office. I was safely ensconced in there until I came out to say goodbye to Willa and watch her climb into Atlas’s death trap.
He slides a record from its sleeve—I notice the sleeve says Bach, and I wonder for a moment which of the club members this classical record belongs to—and puts it on the turntable in my office. The record player rests on the far end of the room. Willa practically drooled over the vintage wood and chrome and the matching large brown speakers when we got here and found it.
“I thought the point of not taking Willa to school on a motorcycle was to draw as little attention as possible. If you say people love those cars, won’t everyone be staring?”
“They might.” He shrugs, lifting the needle and setting it into place. He flips a few switches and turns the volume down. The static crackle hums for a second before the music, with a fair amount of static in it too, starts to play. “It’s not like it doesn’t rumble and purr louder than most cages, but that’s what it is. A cage. You can only ask a man to go so far.”
“Why can’t Atlas use Willa’s car?”
“You’d have to ask him. He likes his car. Next to his bike, the Mustang is his baby. Out of all of us, he’s notorious for hating cages the most. I’d count it as a win.”
“Should have just used the bike, then. What difference does it make?”
He tries not to give me a look I’m coming to recognize as the famous Bullet glower. I pretend not to see it, just so I can maintain my stern composure.
It was explained by Ella, what being on the back of a bike means. It’s more than just getting a ride. It’s like being claimed. She made sure she counseled and cautioned us yesterday.
I haven’t stopped thinking, sinfully, my emotions dark and twisted and not in line with my brain at all, what it would be like to ride on the back of Bullet’s bike.
“They’ll be fine.” He crosses his arms over his chest, testing his t-shirt’s seams. “Speed limit in town isn’t more than thirty-five miles an hour all the way there and back. Atlas is careful. He’s not a stunter and the car speaks for itself. He’s not gonna go out racing anyone just to prove something. Willa’s safety is his first priority. I think he needs this. It takes him out of his head.”
It’s hard for all of us. Just not as hard as I expected it would be. Being here and falling into this life has been almost unnaturally easy, but then, it’s only been one day.
The hardest part is going to be sharing such a small space with Bullet. It’s inevitable that we’ll brush up against each other. Probably literally.
I was vastly unprepared for a lot of things, but most of all for the absolute starvation. It’s like I’m in withdrawal going without something I never had in the first place, as per my own fucking rules.
I’m willing to shut up about the Mustang and its decided lack of safety, at least for now. I’ve trusted the club this far, and to keep harping on it will only make me sound ungrateful, which I’m definitely not.
I sink down into my desk chair, while Bullet remains standing. The soft music acts like a discordant backdrop for the images stampeding through my brain. What would it be like to fuck to classical?
“Tell me something about Ancient Rome,” I blurt.
If he’s going to be in this office, I need a distraction from the distraction in my brain.
My laptop is open from earlier. I’d started to make some notes while Bullet cleaned up the breakfast he made. Which was fabulous. Doesn’t food always taste better when you don’t have to make it yourself?
I was jotting down notes for Bullet’s upcoming court date, but unlike every other case I’ve worked, my thoughts refused to align themselves into anything orderly. I couldn’t untangle them anymore than I could sort out the complicated sensations tearing my body apart.
“Wait!” My cry causes Bullet to startle in his chair.
He leaps up, yanking a gun from beneath his t-shirt.
“Oh my god! No! I—sorry. Please! Sit down!” I make a lowering motion with my hands. “Concealed carry is illegal here, need I remind you?”
“That gun Tyrant gave you is shit. You should have something small you can strap on your thigh, under your skirt, or a holster under your blazer.”
“Uh, that’s a hard pass.” I breathe slowly through my nose. “No one’s attacking the house. I didn’t mean to jump scare you. I realize how dangerous that is now.”
He tucks the gun back into his waistband. “Not dangerous to you or Willa. Ever. I know my way around a gun, and I hadn’t even taken the safety off. I’ve never shot someone by mistake before.”
Before.
I don’t want to think about that. What I do want to try to focus on is the jumbled-up information edging to the front of my brain, staying frustratingly out of reach.
“Give me some good Julius Caesar lines.”
“I’m more familiar with Mark Antony, actually.” He seems to shift uncomfortably when he says it. I don’t know what he’s thinking about, but I want to. Probably more than I should. “How about Antony from Shakespeare? I’m not good with quotes off the top of my head. I’d have to look it up.”
“Okay.”
He gets out his phone and a few seconds later, he reads one to me. “Cowards die many times before their deaths, the valiant never taste of death but once.”
“Hmm. I like that. Read me another?”
“O mighty Caesar! Dost thou lie so low? Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils, shrunk to this little measure? Fare thee well.”
I know what I just said about startling him, but my open palm smacks the desk loudly. At least this time, his hand just jerks and his phone dips. “Yes! Yes, that’s it!”
Bullet’s mystified. He has no idea that the elusive ordering in my head is starting to line up together, like stacking shipping containers with loud metallic bangs in a yard.
“Describe Donny to me. From what I’ve heard he’s spoiled, impetuous, entitled… he has the world’s most massive ego.”
“That’s about right.” There’s an edge to his voice, the planets aligning for him the same way they are for me.
“So, if you had this huge ego, would you go crying to your daddy that you got your face busted in? Would you allow yourself to be humiliated so easily in the end?”
“Keep going. I’ve read enough true crime to know where this is heading, but I want to hear your thoughts.”
“Has Harold ever asked you to babysit his kid before?”
Bullet frowns. “I can’t say that he has, but we don’t go on rides to Seattle very often. It’s usually somewhere else.”
“What if all of this was planned ahead and staged to give Harold a good reason to take down the club?”
Bullet’s skepticism shows, but he doesn’t tell me that the idea is farfetched and ridiculous. He thinks about it instead. “Why would he want to do that? We were paying him extremely well. He was living a good life. The kind of life that affords vacation properties overseas, fancy cars in storage, and a virtual mansion in Hart.”
“But what’s the one thing that men crave more than riches?”
“I don’t know. For most people, greed is pretty much paramount.”
“Come on, Bullet! What does every man want to be? The famous line!”
He finally gets it. “Immortal.”
“Yes!” I leap out of my chair and start pacing like they do in courtrooms in the movies in one of those ‘Aha! We’ve got him now, boys’ moments. “Harold knows everyone. He’s found success, sure. Wealth, certainly. He’s been practicing law for a long time. People know of him, but does the world truly know his name? I’m talking about a case to end all cases. The kind that gets a lawyer into the papers and the history books after. He’d never be able to go after a more notorious club and live to see it through, but why not go after one that he knows won’t kill him? One with a president who is opposed to violence and murder? One he already has years of insider information and evidence on?”
“Jesus H fucking Christ on a cracker.”
“Props for inventiveness, by the way.” I grasp the back of my chair and keep going. “I would say he has some fail-safes built into this. Like if something did end up happening to him, all the evidence goes viral.”
“Why not just do it out of the blue? Release all the evidence and bring us down?”
“I don’t know. Unless it’s not the fame he wants. Not the immortality. Maybe he’s got himself in trouble with someone or something else. Something he needs a great deal of money for.”
Bullet shakes his head. He’s not so placid or controlled now. “This fucking guy is turning into a thorn in the ass.”
I try to give him a stern look and fail horribly. I almost break down and laugh.
“We don’t know how to get his attention. He’s been refusing to contact us. Wizard thinks Harold might not even be in the country.”
“You could always go spray paint CALL US in screaming capital letters across the front of his house. No doubt he’s getting security feeds, no matter where he is.”
Bullet’s laughter is sharp with surprise. “Tyrant still wants to take the high road. And vandalism is not exactly legal.”
“You’re surprised that I’d suggest something like that?” I sit down and swipe my finger across the trackpad to turn my laptop back on. There’s no way I’m going to leave here without jotting some of my thoughts down so I can come back to them later. “I wasn’t serious, but fine. Rent out a sandwich board and stand out in front of his house. Hire one of those vans that drive around before elections with a loudspeaker and message plastered over the side, I’m sure that would catch his attention.”
“I think we might be rubbing off on you. You’re getting more and more nefarious as the days go on.”
“I’ve been trying to work this out and it’s starting to drive me crazy.” I press down hard on the pulse point in my wrist to focus, but all that does is remind me of how Bullet touched me there in my kitchen, and how much I liked it. “On the outside, none of this makes any sense.”
“Let’s go back to the red herring idea.”
“You think all of this is just a distraction.”
What’s distracting is how unreasonably handsome this man is. I thought he’d be gone by now and that Smoke would have come to stay in his place. It’s distracting how I find myself thinking about missing him.
“Or a threat.” I push the words past my dry throat. “But yes. Mostly a distraction. If it’s not for Harold, then what? If he’s not here, then why is Donny?”
“Because he’s in law school.”
“But why not just buy him a spot in some prestigious European school, if that’s where Harold really wanted him to be?”
“Maybe Donny doesn’t want to go. He might have an independent thought in his head after all.”
“Or why not Harvard or Yale?”
“They’re not here?” Bullet says, but it sounds like he’s waiting for me to tell him why. I’ve been leading him down this path and he’s a more than willing participant.
He’s far, far too easy to talk to. Most people would appreciate that, and I do, but it’s also problematic, because it makes me want more.
More conversation, more time with him, more of his smiles, his laughter, his gruff grumping, his calming, steady presence, his odd biker charm. It’s so wild that I ever thought this man was rough around the edges. He is, but I barely notice it now and I’ve been here all of five hot minutes, and isn’t that just the root of all my problems?
“The club obviously looked into Harold years ago when he became your lawyer, but what about his kid?”
“You think there’s something that would prevent him from leaving the country? Something Harold hasn’t been able to buy Donny a pardon for?”
“I doubt it. You’d either know about something like that, or it would have prevented him from getting into law school. Something small, like a DIU, doesn’t seem like it would be an issue for Harold to get pardoned.”
“Something ongoing, then?”
Bullet rubs his hands down his muscular thighs, caged in those soft, soft jeans. My breath rattles around in my lungs.
“Something that they need the money, more money than Harold has, in order to cover up?”
“If I was a brat kid with my nose so far up daddy’s asshole, what ways could I get myself into trouble?” Bullet has an odd way of putting things, and even stranger is the fact that I find myself appreciating it and wanting to laugh and be playful.
Focus . “Gambling.”
“Possibly. Loan sharks.”
It’s obviously subconscious, but Bullet keeps tracing a finger over a hole in his jeans just above his right knee, working at the frayed edges.
“I’ve seen firsthand how Donny got drunk and wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
I was thinking something along that line too. “So many colleges have frat stuff going on. Maybe it’s not just him. Maybe it’s other rich, spoiled kids in their little boys’ club, causing trouble. The kind of trouble that their daddies want hushed up, but they had the means to pay for. Harold might have needed more money.”
“He has properties all over the place. Other assets. He’s loaded.”
I type a few more lines on my document. Frat parties, primal parties? Cover ups? Cash poor? The words cause something ugly to churn sickeningly in my gut.
“What if he needed the cash fast and it was all tied up in investments? What if dumping everything would tip someone off? He’d either have to sell at a loss to sell quickly, or he’d have to pay taxes and dues. But, if that’s true, why not just ask the club for a loan?”
“Why work for it for years when you could just take it?” Bullet finally stops picking at the hole but leans forward, folding his hands in his lap in a pose that makes all his shoulder muscles ripple unreasonably, and the veins in his forearms stand out starkly. “Not steal, but that circles back to your original idea about blackmail. He was making a good salary, sure, but if he needed a massive sum, the club wouldn’t have been able to give that kind of a loan.”
“But if the club was blackmailed, they’d have to find a way to get the cash or risk having certain people go to jail.”
“Yes.”
I stop typing and reach for a pen. The club supplied the lawyerly kind—the ones you have to twist up, and so heavy they could be used as a blunt force object. Leaning back in the chair, I play with it, twisting it up and down.
“Circling back around to Donny… it’s not like they teach Hacking 101 in law school. I’m fine with technology, but I can’t just jump on the dark web, and I don’t have people I know who could do that for me. Other lawyers probably have to, or have hired a PI at some point, but I was never there myself.”
Bullet follows my messy train of thought. This has gone deeper than whatever I was trying to order in my mind earlier. “If something exists, it’s obviously been buried so deep that Wizard might not even find it. It might take some groundwork, but we can do it.”
I tap the pen on my lower lip, but stop immediately when Bullet’s eyes are drawn straight there, darkening. “If that fails, we could always go for broke and do the one thing Harold doesn’t expect.”
He waits for me to continue. I try not to go back to hiding behind my laptop now that his gaze is entirely focused on my face. I think for a moment and speak, “He knows the club. He knows Tyrant is a good man who respects his community and the people in it. Sure, the club might have some cops here on the payroll and you’ve paid people to look the other way, but the fact that you haven’t attracted attention at any other level is quite significant. Blending in with your community and helping out so that people see you as more hero, or at least anti-hero, than criminal villains is a great strategy.”
“I don’t think it’s a strategy for Tyrant,” he protests. “He grew up here. He has family here.”
“For him, it’s clearly not, but that’s just semantics. Harold thinks the club will be fair and play nice. That whatever he has that could be released could do some serious damage. What’s the last thing Tyrant would ever do to someone?”
“Disrespect them.”
“Which includes?”
“Kidnapping, torture, maiming, murder, blackmail.” He counts the points off on his fingers.
“Donny is just right there in Seattle. He might have some security and maybe even a guard, but I think they’re so confident in Tyrant’s nature—or the club being paralyzed by Harold’s implied threats—that he hasn’t felt the need to remove his son from the situation. The last thing we’d want to do, when we’re battling a court case, is to make things worse by going near the little bastard.”
“You think that if Wizard can’t find anything on him, we’d have to kidnap him and get it out of him ourselves?” Bullet asks. It’s clear how distasteful he finds the idea. I never thought he’d enjoy it, but something deep inside me still unclenches. It is clear, though, that he relishes the prospect of having this over and done, so that he and his club can stop worrying.
“Or just kidnap him and hold him for ransom. You think Harold is going to release a bunch of shit on the club when his precious son is in someone’s basement and he wants him back in one piece? The unpredictability of what Harold thought was a sure bet would send a pretty glaring message.” I can’t believe I’ve actually just suggested that the club hold someone for ransom. I’m not even officially on the club’s payroll, and already I’m thinking like an outlaw. Then again, sometimes you have to fight fire with fire.
“What if all of this is just a misunderstanding? Donny acts like a prick and whines to his father, Harold gets mad and lashes out—”
“Why not just talk it out, then? Why disappear? There’s something that just doesn’t make sense, and if it’s not Donny, I don’t know what the hell it could be.”
The low, unmistakable growl of that same sixties Mustang rumbles up to the house.
My eyes shoot straight to my mom’s watch, which I’m never without, unless I’m showering. It’s only been an hour since Willa left. At the same time, holy shit, how has an hour already gone by? It felt like we were in here for no more than ten minutes, venturing further down this crooked path. I’m starting to feel more like a detective than a lawyer.
Bullet and I both leap up at the same time.
“I didn’t think they’d be back already. I know they were just going to familiarize themselves with the college’s layout, and it’s small, but that was fast.”
“We’ve been in here for a while,” he responds, just as astounded as I am at how much time has passed.
The front door opens, and Willa’s cheerful voice fills up the house. Bullet gets there first, like he’s afraid the door opening poses a threat. “Hey, Bullet. Where’s Lynette?”
I appear behind him immediately. Willa gets this sheepish look when she’s done something bad, but it’s always edged with smug triumph, because she knows she’ll be able to talk her way out of it.
The car rumbles away from the house and Bullet moves back from the window. Willa takes my hand and leads me to the kitchen. “Sit down, Linny. We’re going to talk over tea.”
“It’s that bad?”
“I just have a craving for jasmine this morning. Let me make it.” Bullet is still in the living room, trying to give us some privacy, I guess, but she calls loudly. “Do you want tea, Bullet?”
“I suppose I might.” His footfalls seem to shake the house. He stops in the kitchen doorway, filling it out and leaning there like he’s stuck.
Willa gets the kettle boiling and tosses enough leaves in the pot to make the tea strong enough to put hair on our chests, as my mom used to laughingly joke when she’d tell us to eat something we didn’t want to, like onions. Bullet stays in the doorway, surveying the situation to be certain there’s no trouble, but clearly wanting to give us space.
Willa leans against the counter, that sheepish expression back on her face. “Atlas and I talked as we walked around the campus this morning, and he mentioned that Hart has quite a few old warehouses like the one the clubhouse is in.”
“Okay…” And here I thought my mind was hard to follow.
Excitement traces Willa’s face. “Yeah. So, we might have left and driven around so he could show me them. I found the perfect one! Oh my god, it’s so beautiful. He said he has the money to buy it! He’ll be my landlord, and I can open the vintage and antique store of my dreams!”
I study Willa without narrowing my eyes, trying to keep my emotions off my face. I need half a second to think before I speak.
“I want to do this,” Willa presses. “I know I can do it. You always told me I’d find my thing in life and when I did, nothing could stop me. This is it. I want to go picking and stuff. I miss working in Seattle, but that never felt like it was going to be it for me. I learned so much about everything old, about sourcing, and about sales, that I know I can do this. I’m sorry. I know you’re pissed, and I promise I’ll pay you back for my tuition.”
“It’s just a few months.” Finally, I’m able to make words. “Can’t you go until December and then start your business? You could use that term to purchase the building and make repairs or set it up. Source your items. You’d have to work around school and studying, but I’m sure you could do it.”
Willa’s doubts flash across her face, but there’s also a heady dose of incredulity. “Are you serious?”
“Did you expect me to shit all over your dreams and tell you no?”
Yeah. That’s exactly what she thought I would do. Hurt wells up like a spilled bottle of syrup slowly leaking out, sticky and messy. I have never tried to crush Willa’s dreams. I’ve only ever wanted to guide her and keep her safe.
Willa’s face softens. “I guess so, but only because I know how much you wanted me to go to college and everyone spent so much effort and money on it. I never thought you’d support this.”
“If you’re passionate about it, then you should do it. Maybe, in time, you could hire some staff and go back to school or take night classes, if you feel like you’d want to continue your degree.”
Willa has always cried so easily, over everything. She has a lot of emotions, and she feels them deeply. Sometimes, she’s so overwhelmed by a single emotion, it brings her to tears. Other times, it’s a combination of many different things.
The tears start coming, dribbling down her cheeks. I shoot up and hug her without hesitation. I know she’s crying because she’s happy, and that makes my heart full.
“I shouldn’t have forced you to enroll in college when I knew you didn’t want it.”
“I know why you did it,” she sniffs. “I’m sorry about the partying and the sleeping around. It’s not so much that I was doing those things, but doing them with a complete disregard to my own safety. None of it meant anything, and I know you just wanted me to be okay.”
“Yes.”
Willa wipes her eyes when I let her go, then pours the water into the large brown teapot we brought with us.
“The thing is,” Willa mutters as she reaches into the cupboard for mugs, her back to me. “I know it would mean me staying here in Hart.”
I swallow back my doubts, but there’s one thing I can’t keep inside. “I don’t mean to imply that you’re insensitive.” I touch my sister’s shoulder, squeezing just a little. She turns, the lingering tears reflecting the sunlight, making her eyes seem a lighter blue than they are. “You care deeply about other people’s feelings. I’m not saying you haven’t thought about what Atlas is going through, because I know you have. You care very, very deeply for the people you get close to. That’s a great thing.”
“You’re worried we’ll get too close and he’s at the place in his life where I’d be nothing more than a rebound, we’d both get hurt feelings, and then being in business together would be a disaster. Or maybe that he’s not thinking clearly and I’m taking advantage of him to do this for me.”
“No. Not that last bit. Being in business with someone is hard. This would be a lot for anyone to take on. We could sit down and discuss contracts and setting up your company together, or with Wizard and Raiden this afternoon when they come to do my incorporation documents. We could ask him if he’d be willing to take on the job of building you a website. Something he could transfer over to you and teach you how to use it when you’re ready.”
Willa was bracing for me to start talking her out of this, but now she brightens. “That’s a really good idea.” She drops her voice, conscious that Bullet is right there in the doorway. “You don’t have to worry about Atlas. Really. We won’t sleep together and complicate things. I promise, he’s just a friend.”
Who am I to lecture my sister when all I think about is getting railed in every position, every way, in every part of this house? I always thought I wasn’t a sexual person, but all it took was a subtle shift in my circumstances and the right man at the wrong time to cause such a monumental shift.
Willa notices. She grins that signature triumphant grin, but she looks happy. Not just for herself, but for me. “Get the trial wrapped up already. You’re clearly both dying.”
With that, she pours the tea, takes her mug, and walks to her bedroom.
“I’ll put together a business plan up here and be down soon!” she calls from upstairs, voice echoing in that weird way that it seems to only do in old character houses.
It must be the building materials. New ones echo too, but not the same way. It’s not as melodic, not like our voices are joining with history’s ghosts.
Willa doesn’t mind drinking her tea with floaties in it, but I use the small strainer. Bullet comes to pick up his mug, his proximity like slipping into meditation during an earthquake. He sniffs it experimentally and pulls a face.
“Would you prefer Earl Grey again?” I ask.
“Nah, this is okay,” he says and sits down at the table across from me.
I tip my head to the ceiling, searching for answers, but it probably looks more like I’m trying to find patience. “I’d like it very much if this all could work out.”
Bullet rests his hand on mine for a few seconds. He takes it away quickly, as though it’s worse than trying to touch the business end of a cattle prod.
“I’d like that too.” His quiet voice fills up the kitchen. Another trick of the house, or just his larger than life self, magnified still? “I’d like to find out if there’s happiness waiting on the other side of all of this, or as close as we can get.”
Happiness . The elusive myth I haven’t dared to hope for, the dream I haven’t ever allowed myself to visit. Happiness is about as real as a unicorn.
But I’d take anything close, and that’s what Bullet said. .
“I’m making no promises about our next steps, but I need to call Tyrant right now.”
“Those were just thoughts—” I start to protest, but he stops me.
“Logical thoughts that should be explored.” I wish we were at a place where he could take me in his arms and offer touch that would solidify his words, but we’re not.
It’s the wishing that’s the most brutal part.
Just like hope.
At least we’re bound together by that common thread. We both hope that this will be over soon, and that we can find our path, whatever that looks like.
I’m starting to shuck off my solitary shell and wish more and more that it looks like six foot three, crazily muscled, wearing jeans and leather, with an epic beard and soft as suede brown eyes.