“That’s not fair,” Haven said as she debated the options. She knew Cora well enough to know her friend wouldn’t let this go until she picked. Weird thing was, back before her father had forced her to drop out of high school, Haven had liked wearing pretty, fashionable things. But that girl had been gone for a long, long time.
Pulling at the oversized T-shirt she wore, Haven huffed. “I’ll get the clothes,” she finally said. Getting them didn’t mean she had to—
“Yay! And don’t think that means I won’t make you wear them,” Cora said.
Haven’s shoulders sagged. “Sometimes I think you know me too well.”
Bunny laughed as she paid for Cora’s haircut. “With friends, there’s no such thing. Everyone needs someone who calls them on their shit. Now, let’s go get you that outfit before you change your mind.”
CHAPTER 5
“Church is now in special session,” Dare said, banging a gavel against the old wooden table. The club’s meetings, which had long been referred to as Church, officially took place on the first Monday evening of the month, but their recent activity in Baltimore had disrupted their normal routines, making them cancel May’s regular meeting. Now they needed to regroup and strategize, so Dare had called the extra session of fully patched members.
Bear Lowry took attendance. The Old Timer had a full brown beard and was round through the middle, but he’d been doing the combined jobs of secretary and treasurer for the past few years because he was good with numbers, better with investments, and someone Dare and Doc trusted without question. “We’ve got twenty-four in attendance,” he said. Decent number given the fact that everyone had been away from home more than usual lately. They never had a full house anyway because some guys had part-time jobs or worked night shifts that didn’t allow them to come.
Dare nodded as his gaze scanned over his brothers. Some were seated at the fifteen-foot-long table, and some were seated around the back of the long rectangular space that had probably been a sitting room when the clubhouse had been an inn. A mammoth stone fireplace spanned from floor to ceiling behind Dare, a carved Ravens logo like the one that hung in the mess hall centered over the mantel. At the other end of the room hung a mounted deer head wearing a brain bucket and sunglasses with its hooves placed on mounted handlebars.
“First thing I want to say is job well done in Baltimore. That situation was red hot, and all of you handled yourselves,” Dare said. Words of agreement all around. “I want everyone to stay vigilant the next few weeks. Keep your eyes open for anything out of the ordinary in our backyard. Keep your ears open for any unusual activity. Given the caliber of the conflict we were engaged in, I just want us on the lookout for any possible repercussions.”
“I put out some feelers,” Caine said, his pale gaze ice-cold serious. In addition to their racing/betting activities at the track, the other major business the club ran was a trucking escort service. Mostly this involved providing escorts for container trucks or convoys carrying sensitive cargoes of one type or another. They had a few regulars they worked with and also took on one-offs on a case-by-case basis. When the money was right. This gave the club contacts and associates not just in central Maryland, but along the Interstate 95, 70, and 81 corridors into Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Virginia. “Haven’t heard anything, but I’ll keep you posted.”
“What is it you’re anticipating?” Doc asked. If anybody considered the men around this table family as much as Dare, it was his grandfather, one of the Ravens’ founders. Frank Kenyon had gotten his nickname not because he had any medical expertise, but because he’d gained a reputation for fixing or figuring ways out of problems and had a knack for giving the kind of advice and tough love the guys needed.
“To be honest, I’m not sure, but my instincts tell me I’m missing something about what went down in Baltimore, missing some loose end. Maybe I’m being paranoid given the strength of the groups we were up against. Though the Church Gang was pretty well obliterated, someone else will rise in their place. If nothing else, that’s something to keep an eye on,” Dare said, wishing his gut could nail down what was bugging him.
Ike sat at the far end of the table, the ink on his head and neck making him look like the hard-ass he could sometimes be. “Since I’ll be heading back to the city this week, I’ll make sure any intel Nick’s team acquires gets passed on here, too.” Nick Rixey was a good friend of Ike’s and the unofficial leader of the team of former Green Berets the club had fought alongside in Baltimore these past weeks.
“Good,” Dare said. “That’s real good.”
“How worried do you think we gotta be?” came a deep, quiet voice from the back corner of the room. Sam “Slider” Evans, his nickname earned almost a dozen years before when his back tire hit a patch of gravel on an old country road and he went off into a ditch. He’d missed a huge tree by inches, skidded over the root system, and ultimately laid down his bike in a gully. Not a single serious scratch to rider or machine. For years they’d referred to him as one lucky SOB for coming out of that wreck without sustaining any damage, but no one had said that about him since his wife died of breast cancer three years before, leaving him with two young sons to care for on his own. Slider even attending a club meeting was noteworthy, as he’d nearly withdrawn from everything but his job and caring for his boys.
“Not worried, just cautious,” Dare said. He fucking hoped he was right.
Wearing a black doo-rag knotted around unkempt, light brown hair that probably hadn’t seen a haircut since before his wife died, Slider heaved a breath, a troubled frown on his face, but he said no more.
“One other thing we probably ought to hash out while everyone’s here,” Dare said, his shoulders heavy with the weight of this topic. “The guns we picked up during the ops in Baltimore.” The Ravens had taken the hardware in partial payment for providing muscle in the Hard Ink team’s fight—that was back before losing two of their own had brought the Ravens into the fight of their own free will. No payment required.
Doc sighed and scrubbed his hand over the whitish-gray hair of his beard. “Guns stolen from the Church Gang. This is dirtier shit than normal, Dare.”
Dare nodded, knowing Doc hadn’t agreed with the club taking possession of the weapons captured during an ambush of the Church Gang a few weeks before. It had been one of their most heated meetings and most divided votes. And Dare understood why. From the very beginning, going all the way back to when Dare first pushed to rebuild the Ravens’ membership in the years after he’d arrived there, he’d made a commitment to Doc that he wasn’t trying to recreate the Diablos’ way of life in Maryland. That meant he didn’t want to turn the Ravens into One Percenters who prized violence as proof of loyalty and a rite of passage, and who fought and killed to defend territory, usually because they wanted to control drug and gun sales in that territory. Dare’s father’s full embracing of the hardest parts of the hard-core MC culture was what had created the ice-cold rift between Doc and his son when Dare was just a snot-nosed kid.
So those had been easy commitments for Dare to make—because he didn’t want to become his father. Ever.
None of that meant the Ravens were squeaky clean, though, because they weren’t. But Dare was more than comfortable with the places where the legality of their actions became blurred or outright crossed the line, because it made the protective work they did possible. Ends justifying means and all that. Sometimes doing a little wrong allowed you to do an even greater good. His version of morality probably seemed like splitting hairs to some, but Dare had lived both lives—he knew there was a difference, a big one. And it mattered a helluva lot.
So, yeah, Dare wasn’t in love with having these guns or needing to sell them. But the club had voted on it, and now they had to deal with that. “I don’t disagree. But now that we have them, I don’t want us holding on to them longer than we have to.” That weight he’d been feeling on his shoulders pushed down on him ever harder as the tension in the room thicke
ned.
Phoenix sat up straight in his seat and jabbed his finger into the table. “I say we should keep a small cache for ourselves. Just in case. And when we sell them, we do it way outside of our own backyard. We don’t want all that heat on the market here. We don’t want it associated with us. And we sure as fuck don’t want it used against us.”
“Amen,” Ike said. “And keep it out of Baltimore while we’re at it. Don’t want it traced back to the original source with the Church Gang either.”
Nods all around, though not all of those nodding looked happy about it.
“You gonna take this on, then, son?” Doc asked Phoenix. “If we gotta have our hands in this, then I agree with your thinking on it. As Road Captain, you’re best positioned to make the contacts and orchestrate the sale. Maybe Caine, too.”
Phoenix’s brown-eyed gaze cut from Doc to Caine and back again. “Count on it. Whatever the club needs me to do. Always.” To look at him, you might think Phoenix was just a laid-back player, joking and rarely serious. But the guy had a deep-seated sense of loyalty and protectiveness as intense as any man Dare knew. When it mattered, he was solid through and through and knew how to get shit done while staying shiny side up. Dare didn’t doubt his word for a minute.
“I’m in,” Caine said.
“Then Phoenix, Caine, and I will stay in touch on this and keep everyone informed,” Dare said. After that, they moved on to less divisive business—this Friday’s escort run, next Friday’s return to racing, and the restoration of open betting. “Anyone have anything else?”
“I had a Hang-Around express his interest in being considered for prospect status. Mike Renner,” Maverick said.
Hang-Arounds were friends of the club who were sizing up whether they were interested in applying for membership while the club evaluated the guy’s likely fit for the club in return. Some guys hung around and never applied. Some hung around and either they or the club realized the fit wasn’t there, especially if they weren’t on board for whatever reason with the club’s mission. Once they were out, they were out. Some guys went on to become prospects and later fully patched members.
Every single man around the table had gone through the latter process. A lot of guys who gravitated toward the Ravens were looking for a place to belong, like maybe they didn’t have a lot of that other places in their lives. Some were hard-core bike enthusiasts looking for like-minded friends. Others were specifically attracted by the Ravens’ protective mission for reasons of their own. It took all types.
“Discussion?” Dare asked. Taking on a new prospect was serious business. It meant they became a lifetime member of the family, could expect the club to have their back, and could be counted on to have their brothers’ backs, too. It also gave them an in on sensitive information and brought them into the fold of the club’s businesses and income streams.
Caine fingered the gauge in his right ear. “We already have two prospects. Is Renner someone we definitely want?” Blake Green and Jeb Fowler were prospects who’d come in at about the same time, nearly six months before.
“He’s given time and money to the club the past few months, and even helped on one of our protection details when we were understaffed on a double-run night,” Phoenix said. “Seems serious, reliable.”
“He can be a sloppy fucking drunk, though,” Bear groused as he tapped his pen against the table. A low rumble of laughter ran around the table, and a few guys shared stories. Given his father’s drinking problem, Dare didn’t have much tolerance for guys who couldn’t handle their liquor, but as club president he only got a vote when there was a tie, which wasn’t often. Didn’t mean he couldn’t work to influence that vote, though, which he did when he needed to.
“Hell,” Phoenix said, “if that’s a determining factor, more than one of us would be in trouble.” His comment met with more laughter, and Dare was glad to see the guy joking around.
“Let’s put it to a vote,” Dare said. The yays won the question, eighteen to six. “Let him know, Mav.” Sitting at Dare’s right, his cousin nodded. “Anything else?” Dare asked. When no one said anything, the meeting adjourned.
Guys spilled out of the meeting room at the back of the clubhouse and made their way into the rec room and front lounge to play pool or shoot the shit.
Bunny found Rodeo hanging at the bar in the rec room and gave him a kiss on the cheek. With his deep dimples, Rodeo always looked like he was about to break into a grin, but never more than when he was in Bunny’s presence. The two had been together for the better part of fifteen years. Dare couldn’t imagine what that kind of commitment would be like, and was more and more sure he wouldn’t be finding out, either.
“Hey, Sugar. What’s up?” Rodeo asked.
She put her arm around her man’s waist. “I have something you all are really gonna like,” she said, looking from Rodeo and Doc to Dare and Maverick, all gathered around the bar with glasses of whiskey in their hands.
“I know you do,” Rodeo said with a wicked grin. “But I hope you don’t think you’re sharing it with these sorry fuckers.”
Bunny elbowed him in the side, and Maverick shook his head at the older couple’s antics just like he always did. He’d long ago given up on being embarrassed by his mother and Rodeo’s public displays of affection. He was too happy that she’d escaped from his abusive prick of a father to begrudge her any happiness now. “Trust me,” she said, nodding her head and encouraging them to follow her.
Rodeo shrugged, and they all followed her through the lounge and into the mess hall—where one of the tables was covered with four big trays of cookies. “Well, hell, Bunny. You’re outdoing yourself lately,” Rodeo said, grabbing a big chocolate chip cookie.
“Yeah,” Doc said. “What’s with all the treats? You trying to sweeten us up for something?” The question met with laughter as more guys caught word that there was food and made their way into the mess hall.
“Can’t a woman just do something nice for the men in her life?” she asked, looking way too innocent.
A loud, collective “no” followed by a round of raucous laughter filled the room. God, it felt good to laugh. And Dare really liked seeing his brothers have a reason to laugh, too.
“Well, screw y’all, then,” she said, grabbing one of the trays and making like she’d take it back into the kitchen.
Dare got in front of his great-aunt—the only mother figure Dare had known since the day he fled his house—and lifted it out of her hands. She gave him plenty of shit, and he loved her for it. “That won’t be necessary, Bunny,” he said with a wink. “You know we’re just giving you hell.”
“I know you are,” she said. “And you know I know what a giant sweet tooth you have, Dare Kenyon. So you better be nice to me.”
Grinning, Dare nodded and returned the tray to the table. Peanut butter cookies with peanut butter chips, complete with the lines caused by mashing a fork into the top before baking. Shit if that didn’t resurrect a long-buried memory.
Him and Kyle and Mom in their kitchen back in Arizona, making Christmas cookies. Dare couldn’t have been more than six or seven. And not only had they made his mom’s famous iced sugar cookies for the Diablos’ big party, but she’d made a batch of peanut butter cookies—with chips like these had—just for Dare. Because they were his favorite. As he took a bite, the rich salty-sweet of the peanut butter flavor sucked him back to the moment when she’d surprised him with the dough and then let him have the fun of rolling it into balls and mashing the fork tines into it to make the design.
Stupid fucking thing to remember, wasn’t it? Getting all sentimental over a goddamned cookie. Dare finished the one in his hand.
Fucking good cookie, though. And he wasn’t the only one who thought so, judging by how fast they were flying off the trays. If it was one thing they could do in this club, it was pack away some food. A crazy big part of their monthly expenses went to food bills for the clubhouse—not that Dare minded. Sitting down to meals togethe
r made them feel even more like a family, and some of the guys didn’t really have anyone to be going home to at dinnertime anyway.
Like, for example, you, Kenyon?
For fuck’s sake.
Shaking away the thought, Dare elbowed his way to the table. “Y’all are a bunch of goddamned vultures,” he said, diving in for another and taking two more for good measure.
“Asshole!” Maverick yelled to another round of laughter and name calling and cookie grabbing. Put a tray of cookies out and the Ravens were like a bunch of eight-year-olds, not a clubhouse full of hard-ass bikers.
But Dare liked seeing his brothers like this—happy and just kicking back. What did he need with a family of his own to go home to, when he had these motherfuckers to hang with and worry about?
He didn’t. Not at all. Dare had everything he needed.
CHAPTER 6
Haven sat at the kitchen table with a small plate of cookies in front of her—the product of another restless night. Her sleeplessness had been less caused by anxiety than by excitement over the shopping spree for baking ingredients that Bunny had taken her on after they’d left the mall the day before. Haven had never been given such free rein in her life. And though a part of her felt guilty for spending money that wasn’t hers, at least it was being used for the benefit of the club. She just got to have some fun along the way.
Peeking through the swinging door into the mess hall, Cora nibbled on a cookie. “They’re a huge hit with the guys. Not that I ever doubted it,” she said. “The trays are wiped clean. Annnd it’s entirely possible Phoenix just picked up a crumb off the table and ate it. The ridiculously hot idiot.”
“Wow,” Haven said, a warm satisfaction curling through her belly. “That was almost ten dozen cookies.” Not counting the ones they’d kept in the kitchen for themselves.