Page 18

Brittany

I love how lighthearted Tusk is with Tex after admitting Tusk was his best friend. That was cute to watch. I really like Clara and Tex—their whole family is great.

We eventually make our way back to Zen’s small office. It’s more like an extra-large walk-in closet. Zen tells us to have a seat, but all he’s got is one rolling stool. Tusk holds it still with his foot so I can sit down with the baby. I thought I’d better take her with us, as Clara and Tex already have their hands full with the twins. When I lower myself onto the stool, Tusk’s hand comes out to rest gently on my shoulder. He knows I’m nervous and is trying to reassure me. God knows, I need all the reassurance I can get right now.

Zen is silent for so long that my anxiety spikes. I glance around his small office, curious since I’ve always wondered what it looked like during the years I spent as a club girl. He has a bank of monitors running across the back wall, casting a soft blue light over most of the room. I have to admit, he’s a very organized and orderly IT guy. All his cords are bundled neatly into two or three groups, running from his monitors to his desktop and a couple of laptops. He’s busy scrolling through information on the largest monitor—it looks like he might be in a county records database.

Finally, Tusk grumbles, “Can you fucking tell us something? Standing around waiting for you to pull your head out of that computer and talk to us is making me crazy.”

Zen glances up, a lopsided grin jumping onto his face. “You were already crazy. Clearly, waiting just makes you crazier.”

Tusk leans forward and states in a flat tone, “I know you think you’re funny. But you’re not. Now, tell us what you’ve found so far.”

Zen goes back to looking at his screen, still amused, but then his expression sobers. “I did what you asked—I looked into Silas Harper.”

Jerking his chin at me, he says, “Your father was a dumbass for getting involved with Harper. He isn’t just some ambitious dude trying to crawl his way up the church hierarchy.”

I hold our sleeping baby tighter to my chest as a cold chill runs up my spine. “What do you mean?”

“The Harper family is heavily involved in fundamentalist religion, just not in the way you might think. Harper, his father, and his grandfather are the equivalent of hard-money lenders for televangelists.”

“What? Silas is a bishop, not a money lender,” I say, shocked. “Our church never had anything to do with televangelists. We were taught that preachers on television weren’t to be trusted and that our tithing was supposed to be reserved for our local church.”

“Well, Harper’s family has been in the business of lending money to all sorts of preachers to start their churches for three generations. Maybe they only recently got around to approaching Mormon fundamentalist churches.”

“No,” I tell him. “You’ve got it all wrong. The deal my father made with Silas Harper was that if I married him, he would cast the deciding vote to make my father a deacon. He had tried before but always missed it by one vote.”

Zen looks annoyed. “Look, I think the leaders of your church and your family lied to you about a lot of things. For example, there is no vote to appoint deacons in the Mormon fundamentalist church. The bishop appoints them.”

Shock rolls through my mind. “Then I guess he tried to leverage me into marrying Silas so he could appoint him as a deacon. I’m not sure what the difference is, honestly.”

Zen’s annoyed expression clears. “I don’t think there is a difference. That’s what makes the lie so weird. Why tell totally unnecessary lies to your own daughter? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Maybe my father thought it sounded better.”

“Possibly. We’ll get to the bottom of this one way or another. Siege told me your big fear was that now that Harper is a bishop, he could call up large numbers of devout followers willing to do whatever he asked. Unfortunately, you’ve got way bigger problems than a bunch of brain-dead religious zealots.”

I freeze, and Tusk’s hand tightens on my shoulder. “What did you find?” Tusk asks.

“Harper and his family are very well connected in the religious community. They lend out money and take a cut of whatever the church makes.”

“What money?” I ask. “There was never any money to be taken in our church. We were made up of about thirty families, and we each gave ten percent of what we earned, but that wasn’t much. Our bishop taught that money and greed were the root of all evil.”

“Your old church is now a megachurch. Harper is the bishop, and your father is one of twenty deacons. Trust me, there’s money to be made off a congregation that size.”

Tusk says, “It sounds like someone infiltrated a small country church and turned it into a money-making powerhouse.”

Victoria begins stirring, so I rock her as Zen continues to explain.

“I hate to say it, Tusk, but that sounds exactly like what happened. Some people see church as a business, and if you know how to market it to the right people, I guess there are big bucks to be made.”

“I still don’t understand how this involves me,” I say. “I think those young guys were using church memos to get the inside track on advancement, and it was a coincidence that they ran across me in Alaska. They saw finding me for Harper as a way to score brownie points with an important person. They said the flyers were over five years old—from when I first ran from him. From what you said, it sounds like Silas has moved on to bigger and better things. Chances are, he wouldn’t want me, even if I just popped up out of nowhere and wanted him.”

“Now, hold up,” Tusk says. “I think he probably would want to seal you to him as an extra wife or publicly shame you for running off and getting pregnant out of wedlock—by some random biker, at that.”

Zen leans forward. “Here’s where it gets interesting. Harper filed a missing person’s report on you five years ago. He even held a press conference in front of the church, asking for leads and telling everyone that you were a lost sheep who might have been taken advantage of by human traffickers. He had people searching the county for you and even started an online fundraiser to ‘keep the search alive’ as he put it.”

“Fucking hell,” Tusk growls. “Are you saying he used Brittany’s disappearance as an opportunity to grift for money and build his megachurch?”

“It seems like it,” Zen replies. “From what I’ve read in old news articles, Brittany’s disappearance was the talk of her small town for a while. There were tons of sightings, but none led them to her.”

“I can’t imagine the disappearance of one teen would’ve been that newsworthy,” I insist.

Tusk squats down beside me and explains quietly, “It would, if Harper kept giving interviews about his lovely, wide-eyed, innocent young fiancée going missing.”

Realizing what he’s implying, I add, “I ran from him, and he used that to solicit money and lure people to his church. That makes me feel awful—knowing that he manipulated so many people by using me. I don’t even know how to begin to make that right.”

“There’s nothing you can do,” Zen says. “People make their own decisions. No one is forcing them to be part of his megachurch.”

“This ain’t on you, sweetheart,” Tusk adds.

With grim determination, I tell them, “I want this asshole out of my life. What can we do to make that happen?”

Tusk cups my face. “I say we lure him in the same way he lured all those people in. We dangle something he can’t refuse—like money or make him think you want to talk to him again. When he shows up, you’ll be a million miles away, and he’ll get the rough end of some biker justice.”

Sitting here, looking into his handsome face, I can’t quite tell if he’s joking or not.

Zen speaks up. “I have a better idea. We learn everything we can about this man—who he’s working with, and how deep his grift goes. Then we feed him bad intel and set him up to take the ultimate fall. I want to humiliate him so badly that his local community will still be gossiping about him fifty years from now. I want to drain his accounts and make sure he ends up in the slammer.

Something clicks in my brain, and I tell him, “I like this plan better. We get his money, and he gets to rot in jail for a nice long time.”

Tusk perks up. “Yeah, and we can always give him biker justice if he ever gets out of prison, right?”

Zen responds, “Oh, hell yeah.” Turning to me, he asks, “Did you make a list of everything and everyone you can remember being associated with the church?”

I pull it out of my pants pocket and hand it over to him. My small, neat handwriting covers the front and back of a sheet of paper. “I put everything I could remember about my church—their special terminology and all their rituals. They always used to be super-secretive, so I’m not sure if you’ll find any of this online. If you have any questions, just ask me. I’ll do whatever it takes to bring Harper down. Maybe we could even give back the money he fraudulently solicited.”

Zen shrugs carelessly with one shoulder while reading over the sheet. “Yeah, if he saved information on who donated what, we can do that. Otherwise, Siege gets to decide what we do with it. If you prefer, we could let him think he won. You could marry him, and we could immediately spring the trap—meaning you would control everything when he gets hauled off to prison.”

I open my mouth to object, but Tusk cuts me off before I can get a word out. “No, no, no, and hell no. My old lady is not going to marry a fucking predator for money.”

“It was just a suggestion,” Zen says mildly.

I nod in agreement with Tusk. “I don’t want to lay eyes on that man for the rest of my life if I can help it.”

Tusk leans over and gives me a kiss on the lips. “Don’t worry, sweetheart, you won’t have to see him again. I’ll see to that myself.”

I pull him down for another kiss—one that leaves him with a raging hard-on, and he totally notices that I notice. I give myself away by letting my eyes linger on his crotch a moment too long. His chest puffs up with male pride, knowing I still can’t resist him.

Zen gives an awkward cough, bringing us both back to the present. “As I was saying, give me a few days to process the new information Brittany just gave me, and I’ll call a club meeting so we can come up with a plan of action we’re all comfortable with.”

I stand to leave as Victoria begins to fuss. “Thanks, Zen. I know you’ll leave no stone unturned.”

“I’m nothing, if not thorough. You okay if I let Lexi help me do a deep dive into your background? She’s really good at digging for information and in a matter like this, two heads are better than one.”

I get excited. “Of course not! Lexi’s a smart, capable woman. Any help she’s willing to give me would be much appreciated.”

His face lights up with pleasure. “That’s great. She loves working with me on projects.”

We say our goodbyes, and Tusk takes me to Siege’s office. As always, the door is open wide. Though out of politeness Tusk knocks and sticks his head into the room. Siege, Rigs, and Rider are sitting around with their feet up, kicking around ideas for a group ride later in the year.

“Come on in,” Siege calls out.

The moment they catch sight of me, their feet immediately come down, and they stand to greet me.

While they don’t rush to hug me, the smiles on their faces sure feels like a warm hug.

Siege gestures towards Victoria. “You brought the baby. Let’s have a look at her. Tex told us she’s fucking adorable and almost never cries.”

I step forward and pull the baby blanket open for them to get a good look. “I’m almost sure all the calmness comes from me,” I joke.

Rider laughs as he leans over to gaze into Victoria’s face. “She definitely takes after you. Have you met Tusk’s boys? They’re hell on wheels.”

Tusk scowls, even though what they’re saying is true—I know it because Tusk has said so himself—something seems to be bothering him, and I don’t think it’s Rider’s jokey comment about his kids. He asks gruffly, “Did Dutch leave a box for me?”

Rigs reaches back to grab shirt-sized box off the shelf. Holding it out to him, he says, “It’s about time. Congratulations in advance, brother.”

All of Tusk’s irritation falls away. He responds, “Thanks, Rigs. I should have done this a long time ago. Would’ve saved no end of trouble.”

Rigs’ gaze turns affectionate when he looks at me and tells Tusk, “I couldn’t agree more. I’m glad Miss Brittany finally found a man who understands her worth.”

They come over to where we’re standing with Siege and Rider, who are currently having a stupid face contest to see who can make the baby smile.

Tusk reaches out and runs his finger around the shell of her ear, and she breaks out with the biggest smile ever. He’s silently telling everyone in the room that this is his tiny daughter, and he knows her better than all of them.

I glance down at the box tucked under his arm and ask, “What’s in the box?”

He replies casually, “A gift for my favorite girl.”

We look at each other for a confused minute. He’s been calling both me and Victoria his ‘favorite girl’, and it’s a little confusing. I know, all the way down to my bones, that he just realized he was doing this and is going to have come up with a different descriptor for one of us.

I’m pretty sure our daughter is going to win the favorite girl contest, and I don’t mind one bit.