Page 11

Lacey

I showed up at work early as usual because I liked to get the office tidied up and ready for the day. Shortly after walking through the door, I realized that no amount of tidying up would make the office ready to open on time.

Someone had broken in and totally trashed the place. I pulled out my cell phone and called Rebel.

“Hey Lacey, what’s up?”

“How close are you to the office?”

“Just a few minutes. I was planning to drop in and flirt with the boss a little before heading out to see my first client of the day.” Katy Purry had gone to her new home last week, I missed her presence, but even though Rebel didn’t have a reason to come to the office since I sent him his daily work orders electronically, I had noticed that he still came in daily.

“I’ve got bad news.”

“I don’t like the sound of your voice. What happened?”

“It looks like someone broke in. Everything’s been destroyed except the filing cabinets and the safe. It looks like whoever did this spent considerable time trying to break into the safe with hand tools.”

“Okay, I’m pulling in now. Gimme a minute to park up and get through the door.”

While I was still standing in the middle of my office, trying to wrap my head around who would do something like this, Rebel rushed through the door.

“I need to clear the area.”

When I looked at him in puzzlement and asked, “What the hell does that mean?”

“For all we know, the intruder might still be here hiding in a bathroom or broom closet.”

I felt a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach, “I didn’t even think of that.”

“Stay here. I’ll clear this room first. While I’m checking the other rooms, call the cops and report the break-in.”

I nodded, feeling despondent like this was some sort of nightmare that I would soon wake up from. Rebel quickly walked into my tiny private bathroom and then the supply closet attached to my office. Finding nothing, he closed the door and went to check the other rooms.

I called the local police department, reported the break in and said that we were still checking to make sure the perpetrator wasn’t still in the building. They said they’d send a team over and that we should vacate the property and leave the securing of the building to the professionals. Yeah, I couldn’t see Rebel taking much notice of that. Just as I lowered my phone, Rebel walked back into the room.

“The rest of the office is clear, but I found muddy boot prints near the back door. I took photos of them with my cell phone in case Griffinsford’s finest don’t consider this break-in worthy of calling out the crime lab.”

Gesturing around, I asked, “How could they not consider this serious?”

He responded pointedly, “Can you tell if anything is missing?”

Getting up, I walked around my office looking to see if anything was missing. Dumbfounded, I turned to him. “Nothing that I can tell. I locked the files up in the filing cabinets. There doesn’t seem to be much effort made to breach them.” I gestured down at the safe.

Rebel squatted down and ran his fingers along a long, deep scar near the keypad. “See this deep trench in the metal. It looks like they used power tools to try and open it.”

“Why would someone break into an electrician’s office? It doesn’t make any sense. We don’t have any tools on the premises and it’s not like we even accept cash anymore.”

Rebel stood up and wrapped one arm around me. “Whoever did this might not have known anything at all about your business. There’s a great deal of damage to the building—pictures torn off the walls and destroyed, office supplies smashed and this,” he said pointing down at the safe.

“You mean like a former client who wasn’t happy with the work we did under Mark’s management?”

“That makes more sense than thinking a regular burglar did all this really aggressive damage.”

Harvey arrived right as the police were pulling up. “Oh my god, Lacey. What happened?”

I scrambled around in the mess of papers on the floor to find the schedule of clients for today while explaining, “I walked in and found the place a mess. It’s obviously a break-in. I hope the police can figure out who did this.”

Harvey took the paper I found, grumbling, “What in the hell is the world coming too?”

“I don’t know, Harvey. Try to put this out of your mind and deal with your customers. Once Benny’s finished talking with the police, he’ll head out and do his scheduled jobs for today.”

“Sure thing, boss. I’ll carry on, because the work still needs to get done.”

Patting him on the back encouragingly, I told him, “Yes it does, and I’ll get to the bottom of this if it’s the last thing I do.”

When I walked over to Rebel and the officer he was talking to, I realized they were having a disagreement.

The police officer was saying, “Like I said, there have been three break-ins in a five-block radius. This is likely the same group of people.”

Rebel shook his head vehemently. “Were all the other businesses totally trashed the way this office is?”

“Well, not quite this bad, but one of the buildings had graffiti sprayed on the walls. The MO isn’t always exactly the same. Sometimes there are slight deviations and escalations. The extremely aggressive way the perps destroyed almost everything they could get their hands on might represent an escalation. We need time to review the scene. I’m afraid you’re going to have to conduct business remotely for a while.”

Rebel took a step closer to the office, but I grabbed his arm and tugged him back. “We can do that. If I give you our security code can your officers be sure to lock up when they’re finished? We still have client records and a safe on site. We need that protected.”

“Absolutely,” he responded.

Glancing towards the front door, I stated, “I don’t know why the security alarm didn’t go off when the doors were breached.”

“That’s another thing our detective will look into,” the officer stated sternly.

“It’s because the security alarm is fucking ancient. When this is all over, we’re getting a modern, state of the art system,” Rebel insisted.

“You can do as you like after we process the crime scene. For right now, we need to take your written statements. Then you’re going to need to leave the premises until we give you the all-clear to return.”

Rebel and I settled down with a stack of blank paper and wrote out exactly what we saw when we entered the building. Since both Rebel and I had been keeping everything in electronic format, it meant he could get on with making service calls when we left the office.

Once we were outside and far from earshot of the officers, he asked, “So, what’s the plan? Are you gonna work from home?”

I nodded, feeling like the local law enforcement were barking up the wrong tree regarding our case. “Yeah, that’s the plan.”

Rebel told me, “We have a spare office at the clubhouse you can use if you like?”

I smiled up at him. “If I end up at your clubhouse, you and I are going to keep accidentally falling into bed together until neither of us can walk.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“Maybe we could hook up on the weekends. I’ve been working a lot of extra hours over the weekend trying to figure out how to market the business and get things back on track.”

“That sounds like a lot of hard work. You’ll need me to relieve your stress on the weekends,” he said smugly. “Plus you lost our little bet, and you know what that means?”

I glanced down at his leather vest. “Yeah, I have to wear your cut for a full weekend.”

His lighthearted expression turned into a frown. “No, you misunderstood. I said you would wear my property cut.”

My eyes went wide. “You mean the cuts the old ladies wear that say ‘Property of’ whatever biker they’re with? No way! That sounds way too ownerish for me.”

His eyes narrowed on me. “It doesn’t matter whether you think it’s ownerish or not. We made a bet, and you lost, so you’ll wear my cut.”

“Are you being serious right now?” I asked. Rebel went from playful to serious in a heartbeat. This man was as mercurial as they came.

“Hell yes, I’m being serious. If there is one thing I can’t stand, it someone who welches on their bets. It’s dishonest and deceptive.”

“Alright, give the damn thing to me and I’ll wear it.”

“Look, just forget it. Every single woman in that clubhouse would consider wearing my cut a fucking privilege. Since you consider it ownerish, you don’t deserve to wear it.”

“Wait. I’m missing something here. Why is this such a big deal to you?”

He lifted his helmet to put it on, and just before shoving it down, he said, “It’s not. Don’t worry about it, darlin’.”

His helmet came down like a wall separating us. Then he started his bike and was gone before I could get my head around what just happened. Staring after him, I got the distinct feeling that mercurial or not, I’d just offended him.

I got into my car, pulled my phone out, and called Zoe.

“Hey Lacey. What ya up to on this glorious Monday morning?”

“My office was broken into and trashed. The police seem to be on the wrong track, thinking it’s part of some spree of break-ins. And of course I can’t work at my office until they release it from being a crime scene.”

“Oh wow, I’m glad you called. I didn’t realize there was a crime spree in your area. This seems like an interesting case for my vlog. Want to meet up for breakfast and talk about it?”

“I was hoping you would say that, because I want to talk to you about Rebel too.”

“Oh, that sounds ominous. I’ll do my best to help you out, but I don’t know how much help I’ll be.”

“Thanks Zoe. How about the diner on Seventeenth Avenue? Would that work for you?”

“Yeah, of course. It’s one of my favorites. I can be there in thirty minutes.”

“Great, I’ll get there and save a table for us.”

***

As I drove to the diner, my mind kept drifting back to Rebel. I’d seen Zoe wearing her property cut and could never understand why a modern, independent woman like her would wear a piece of clothing identifying herself as some man’s property. It never made sense to me, nor did it seem polite to ask about it. Now, with the way Rebel was acting, my back was against the wall, and I needed to know more about this particular MC tradition.

I had already gotten us a table and was sipping on a cup of java when Zoe arrived. She looked refreshed and ready to solve another crime. I wished I could be more like Zoe, that is, I wished I had even half of her confidence. She wasn’t the type of person to continually get blindsided by guys like Rebel. She always stood up for herself and didn’t take any bullshit. Guys wouldn’t give up on a relationship with her quite so easily.

When she slid into the seat, we started talking about the break-in. I told her how they destroyed everything they could get their hands on and had clearly made quite an effort to break our company safe open. The server came and took our order.

After the server left, Zoe stated, “It sounds like your safe was the primary target. Do you remember what you keep in there?”

“Yeah, we keep all our important business documents in there. Things like our business license, copies of our business insurance agreement, our last fire marshal’s inspection, just things like that. We do keep a nominal amount of cash on hand to tip delivery drivers when they drop off supplies. That about it.”

“That doesn’t seem like much of an incentive to pull off a break-in with this much destruction of property. So they didn’t take anything?”

I took a mouthful of coffee as I shook my head, “Nope. My desktop PC and printer were still there. Okay, they’d wouldn’t get much by reselling them, but if it was about money then you’d think they’d have taken those.”

Zoe looked thoughtful, “Sounds personal.”

“Rebel thinks it’s a former client from when Mark was managing our office, someone who was pissed that their work wasn’t done properly, and they wouldn’t make it right.”

“Did your company really have problems that rose to that level?”

“Yeah, unfortunately we did. I’m doing my best to make sure we don’t have that problem moving forward, but some of our former clients even approached Rebel to correct their botched jobs before he came to work for us. Things were a real mess. If Harvey hadn’t spoken up, Mark might have bankrupted Livingstone Electrical.”

The conversation was interrupted briefly when the server brought our food. After everything was sorted and we’d taken a few bites Zoe advised, “You need to make a list of every single person who complained and start working through them.”

“Yeah, that sounds like the way to go. The thing is, Rebel found boot prints near the back exit. He took photos of them with his phone and used a dollar bill for size reference. Those boots looked huge, and they weren’t his, and Harvey’s feet aren’t large.”

“If you want, you can bring all your information to my office. We can share a workspace, and I can start figuring out who broke into your office while you get some real work done.”

“That’s a great idea. Kill two birds with one stone, right?”

“Yeah, and it’ll be fun to spend more time together. Alison and I are really glad you moved back to Griffinsford.”

“Coming back was the best decision I ever made.” I glanced down at my plate, embarrassed to bring up the property cut issue with her. Finally I put on my big girl panties and just came out with it. “Rebel and I got into a tiff today about me wearing his property cut.”

She stopped with a forkful of French toast halfway to her mouth. “What? He’s trying to put you in his property cut already?”

I felt my cheeks getting hot with embarrassment as I explained—leaving out the sex bit, “We made a bet. If I won, he had to give me a pedicure. If he won, I was supposed to wear his property cut for a full weekend.”

Zoe’s face lit up with a huge smile. “That sexy bastard has the hots for you, my friend.”

Moving food around on my plate with my fork, I told her the rest. “I might have told him ‘no way’, because it was too ownerish.”

Zoe’s smile froze on her face. “Tell me you didn’t say that to him.”

Glancing around to make sure no one else was eavesdropping on our conversation, I admitted, “I’m afraid that I did. It says, ‘Property of’ right on the back of the vest, and no offense, I don’t understand how that is respectful to the woman wearing the cut.”

Zoe put her fork down on her plate and looked me in the eye. “Wearing a property cut does not signify ownership. It’s a polite way of extending the protection of the brother and his club to the woman. When I walk around Griffinsford in Storm’s property cut I never have to worry about trouble of any sort coming my way, because no one in their right mind would piss off Storm by messing with his old lady.”

“Yeah, but I usually don’t have a lot of trouble with people, not enough to justify wearing a vest that identifies me as property.”

“We women get cat-called, and hit on relentlessly, and a certain cross-section of men get downright pissy when they’re turned down. Mechanics used to rip me off because they saw me as an easy target because I’m a woman. Cops would harass me because I vlogged about police corruption. With the exception of police harassment, don’t tell me those things don’t happen to you because I know they do.”

I nodded, unwilling to lie to someone I respected so much. “Yeah, that’s just all part of being a woman in a small town like Griffinsford.”

“Since I’ve been wearing Storm’s cut, I don’t get any of that because everyone knows he won’t tolerate people harassing me, cheating me out of my hard-earned money, or treating me like garbage because they don’t like me calling them out on their small town corruption. His cut was meant to protect me when he’s not there to do it himself and it functions exactly like it’s supposed to. I don’t give two hoots in hell that it says ‘Property of Storm’ because we both know I’m not his property. In fact, I consider it one of his greatest gifts to me.”

Looking up at her, I sighed. “So, what you’re saying is Rebel offered me his personal protection and I threw it back in his face?”

A short silence stretched between us, and when Zoe finally spoke, I listened carefully, hoping to glean a little wisdom from the woman married to the Dark Slayer’s club president. “It’s much worse than simply throwing it back in his face. He was offering you one of the most valuable things he has to offer as a member of the Dark Slayers, likely thinking if you wore his property cut for a few days, you’d immediately realize the value of being under his protection, now that he’s a fully patched member of the Dark Slayers MC. That’s one of the sweetest things I’ve ever heard of a brother doing for a woman he was falling hard for, and you not only rejected it, you made him feel like his property cut was some kind of personal insult.”

My chest tightened and a small ache started throbbing there. “I didn’t really understand how that worked.”

Yeah, I messed this up in a very serious way, without meaning to.

Zoe told me sternly, “The thing is, you know Rebel, or you should know him well enough by now, to know he wouldn’t do anything to publicly humiliate you. He’s probably thinking the same thing I am, so why aren’t you giving him the benefit of the doubt, or at least asking one of the old ladies to explain instead of having such a negative knee-jerk reaction to his offer?”

I fidgeted in my chair, nervous about messing things up with Rebel and embarrassing myself in front of Zoe. “I was too embarrassed to ask you about it, to be honest.”

“Why? Did you think that I’m the kind of woman to let Storm publicly shame me? Or that Alison would ever allow Grit to do that to her? You’ve seen us in our property cuts. That should have been a clue, along with the fact that every single club girl is dying to get into a brother’s property cut that something more was going on here.”

“I get that MC culture is unique and different. There is a metric ton of things I don’t know, and I need to slow down and start paying more attention to the details. I don’t suppose there’s a class you offer to new girlfriends, is there?”

Zoe shot back, “No. Just so you know, I didn’t know what was going on at first either, but I trusted Storm enough to let him teach me. What’s going on between you and Rebel? Don’t you have basic trust with him?”

“I didn’t at first, and trust doesn’t come easy to me, but I do now. I was in denial in the beginning about my feelings for him, so it feels like everything is happening too fast and that I’m losing myself the closer I get to him.”

Zoe’s disapproving expression faded away. “It’s like that when you’re with a strong man. When Storm took the lead, I wasn’t used to following. What I found was that I wasn’t losing myself, we were creating something better and stronger together. We worked it out though. I’m sure you and Rebel will as well.”

“I get the point that a new relationship is stronger than sum of its parts. That makes perfect sense to me. Thanks for explaining all that to me. Maybe Rebel and I could get away for a weekend and spend some one-on-one time getting to know each other better. We seem to do better when it’s just the two of us.”

Zoe took a sip of her drink. “Maybe there’s hope for you yet, my friend. Rebel can be exasperating at times, but I’ve only ever heard good things about him. The brothers wouldn’t have voted him in if he was deficient in any way.”

“That’s reassuring, but my gut tells me he’s honest and devoted to the things and people he cares about. He even volunteered to take my dad to his doctor’s appointment in a sidecar because we were having a hard time getting him to agree to go.”

Zoe’s expression morphed into one of approval. “Did it work? Did your dad jump at the chance to ride in a sidecar?”

“Of course. It’s all he talked about all weekend. He has a big interest in World War II and has always wanted to ride in one, so the problem was solved when it came to getting him to his medical appointments.”

“Rebel really has a good heart,” Zoe commented before digging back into her lunch.

Yeah, he does, I thought to myself as I started eating. Even though we spent the rest of lunch circling back around to the break in at the office, my mind kept drifting back to the disagreement I had with Rebel, and I hoped that I hadn’t totally messed things up between us.