Pulling out my cell, I stalked down the hallway toward the door, nodding at Lena on my way out, and winking at Nell.
I needed to shower and get changed, and then everyone would meet at my place to discuss the updates.
I needed this shit dealt with now.
Chapter Seventeen
Nell
I’d updated Lena on what was going on with Taras on the way to the club, and now she was sitting staring at me wide-eyed.
“Wow,” she breathed. “I’m not sure what to say.”
Shrugging, I fiddled with the frayed patch on the thigh of the jeans I was wearing, avoiding the eyes of the two men in the front of the car.
“There isn’t anything to say. He’s married and he’s the father of my sons. That’s where it ends.”
“It doesn’t sound like it ends there, honey. It sounds far from that.”
Using the distraction the arrival at the Club gave me, I got out and waited for her to join me at the back of the car. The frustration and hurt I’d felt talking about Taras lifted slightly now that we were here, and Lena was finally getting to meet the people she’d heard so much about from me.
“I can’t wait for you to meet everyone,” I told her as we started walking toward the door. Pulling it open, I waited for my eyes to adjust to the dark room and saw Dad sitting at the bar talking to Rider. “Come on.”
Introducing her to them and all of the other guys went as smoothly, as I knew it would do. Looking at Lena, you wouldn’t expect her to be as easy-going and accepting of everyone as she was.
She was a model for a well-known lingerie brand called the Twisted Saints, even though she never let on to people who she was unless they guessed, and she looked out of place here. But she genuinely liked everyone—even a bunch of bikers, who were rougher than cracked asphalt.
Then we were outside at the shooting range, Lena and Sniper teasing each other about their shooting skills.
“Darlin’, I was in the army for twelve years. That shit beats tin cans.”
Crossing her arms over her chest, she looked down at the ground, like she was only just realizing she was going to lose. It was complete bullshit, though. She was just trying to make him think he was right.
Raising her eyes back up again, she bit down on her lower lip. “You’re probably right, Sniper. I mean, I still want to give it a go, but I know I won’t be close to your level.”
Sniper’s responding smile was only slightly smug. “Ok, honey, let’s see what you can do.”
Digger arranged the targets as she bumbled through loading the gun, her actions the total opposite of Sniper’s smooth ones. Behind us, I heard the sound of the men’s boots as they all increased their distance between the fumbling woman with a now loaded weapon and their bodies.
“Can you go first?” Lena asked Sniper, still looking unsure of what they were about to do.
Getting into position, he raised his gun and fired off three shots, then lowered his weapon as he waited for Digger to go and check the target.
“One dead center, one two inches below, and one an inch to the left,” he yelled, running past where he’d previously been standing by about fifteen feet.
Copying Sniper’s moves, Lena moved into position and raised her weapon, firing her own shots in quick succession.
“Put the safety on, baby,” Sniper told her, sounding way too confident.
“Oh yeah,” she giggled, and then brought it close to her face and turned it side to side until she found it. “Done.”
Waiting for the nod to say he was safe, Digger ran forward to the target in front of Lena, leaning in close to it when he got there. “Oh, shit!”
“Did I hit the red thingy?” she called, clapping her hands together with the weapon still in them.
It took everything in me not to let the laughter building inside me out. She was just too good at this.
“One dead center, one half an inch up, one a quarter of an inch to the right,” Digger called back, looking at Sniper wide-eyed.
“Is that good?” she asked, still sounding like she didn’t have a clue, and getting a glare from Sniper.
And that’s when the big guns came out. Literally!
Twenty-five minutes later…
“I take it back. Now, this is a southerners’ dream,” she breathed, looking at the rifles and guns Sniper had just laid out on the table in the firing range.
Running her hand down one, she listened as Sniper told her about it. “That’s a Heckler and Koch 416. She can fire around nine hundred rounds per minute if you had a magazine big enough. This one over here is an M4A1, a variant of the M4 Carbine. Show me what you can do with them, and I might let you try this one,” he pointed at one that had legs.