ChapterThirteen
“No, no, no, no,” I pleaded as the headlights illuminated my darkened back porch, the door standing ajar in its splintered frame. Dusk had fallen on our way home, and as I bailed over Coot to get out, screaming for my aunt, we came to a sliding halt on the gravel drive.
“Sevey, wait, goddamn it!” Coot barked, unable to stop me from getting the door open and hitting the ground running. The others gave me similar orders, but I wasn’t about to slow down, not after I got closer and saw what I’d missed before.
A puddle of blood with body-sized drag marks through it.
The guys were hot on my heels as I barreled into the mud room, avoiding the blood as much as possible, and sprinted for the stairs with my gun drawn and pointed at the ceiling. Right as I started up them two at a time, Aunt Flo came from the hall, hissing at me to be quiet.
“Severine! You’ll wake Opal. Hush, girl!” She was a mess of sweat and blood smears, but she didn’t appear to be hurt.
I reversed direction, nearly knocking Lochlan on his ass in my haste to turn around. “What happened? Why is the door busted? Is there someone here? Who’s hurt?”
She waved to cut off my rapid-fire questions, answering once I fell silent, waiting expectantly. “We had a problem, and I handled it.” Sadness crept into her eyes, but she squared her shoulders before adding, “Brandon showed up, wanting me to let him in. I told him to go, but he ignored my warnings. When he started kicking in the door, I told him I had a gun… Opal slept through all of it. Little miss was fine when I checked on her before I dragged his ass onto a tarp and out of the house.”
We all stood there for a second, and at least for me it was from shock, but after a quick nod, I continued upstairs, more quietly than before, to check on my daughter for myself. When I crept in, she was sleeping peacefully, her little tummy rising and falling with each breath, reassuring me that she was fine. I was tempted to pick her up, but I needed to deal with yet another traitor’s death and get a shower before I went near her.
Backing up, I ran into Gus who was trying to crane his head to see into the room. “Here, quietly though, I don’t want to wake her up,” I whispered as I edged out of the way so he could peek in at her to get his own peace of mind.
Carefully closing the door after he’d satisfied his need, he shook his head at me. “I’m never going to be okay leaving her alone again.”
I sighed and stepped into him for a hug before pulling him with me toward the stairs. “I imagine we’ll all be sticking close for a while. It’s hard to leave her now, and I’m in the house.”
Nodding his agreement, he followed me out back until we found everyone else standing around a tarp-wrapped mass I assumed was Bronco. I really didn’t want to see the damage, so I didn’t bother to get too close.
“With the sheriff down, and almost the entirety of the police department still at the squatter’s camp, we have to wait for them to call in the off-duty officers,” Aunt Flo was saying as we joined them.
“So we’re just supposed to leave him here until someone eventually shows up?” I asked incredulously. “I can’t hold Opal while covered in blood. I don’t want her seeing any of this!” I knew I was getting hysterical, but I’d beyond reached my limit, and the thought of not being able to clean up because my fucking home was a crime scene was the last straw.
“I’ll call and see if we can get an ETA,” Jesse offered, pulling his phone out as Loch and Gus flanked me to give their silent support.
Nodding gratefully, I waited for him to get through to dispatch; they informed him that the coroner and a deputy were on their way to remove the body and document the scene. They arrived a few minutes later and weren’t too happy with Aunt Flo for moving Brandon’s corpse. Pissed, she explained that his body was blocking the door from closing, and she couldn’t just leave it open with the baby in the house, so she’d had to get it secured as best she could until help arrived. The deputy begrudgingly accepted it, not that he had much choice with it being blatant self-defense.
It was still a few hours before we could clean the mud room and repair the door, but we were all quickly cleared to clean ourselves up. Coot took a shower with me, finishing minutes before Opal decided she wanted to get up. Eventually, I made it down to the hospital where Josh was just coming out of surgery and received the good news that he’d almost certainly make a full recovery.
Exhausted and shell-shocked, I still had to deal with calling a club meeting. Word had already spread, and I’d received dozens of calls and texts that the guys were helping me field, but I couldn’t keep that up for long. The meeting needed to happen sooner rather than later if we were all to move forward and heal from the loss and betrayal of our friends and leaders of the club.
* * *
“Hey, I could have handed them shovels and told them to start digging,” Aunt Flo snarked the next morning when Josh asked her what she’d been thinking to move a dead body.
We’d just come from the club meeting, which had mostly gone as I’d thought it would. Only a few had wanted to leave, and I'd let them off with the reminder to have their tattoos removed, but the majority of the club had chosen to stick by me. I had almost expected them all to abandon me, so I counted my blessings that they still had faith in my leadership. When presented with evidence of their loyalty and qualifications, the announcement that the guys would be filling in the gaps only garnered a few grumbles. I thought that their demonstration to help around the clubhouse and their willingness to go to bat for me had also gone a long way to gain my crew’s acceptance. All in all, the meeting had ended on a positive note when it started with such devastating events.
“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that, Florence,” Josh said, rolling his eyes at me. He was sweaty and flushed, probably from the pain meds and exertion of sitting up, but he’d insisted on hearing what he’d missed. Poor dude obviously hadn’t gotten more than a whore’s bath since he still had streaks of dirt and blood here and there. I chalked up the twinge of something that I didn’t need to be feeling to the fact that I was grateful I still had my friend and loved ones. As if he’d picked up on it, he leaned in close while Aunt Flo went to the waiting room to relieve the guys from Opal duty. I didn’t think she’d caught on yet that they were more than happy to bear the responsibility for her. “Glad you have them, Sevey, but if you ever change your mind and want a more traditional guy, let me know. I’ll be at the station, trying to pretend I’m not carrying a torch and hoping they fuck up so I can get that second chance I was working on.”
My mouth worked like it wanted to say something, but I was having trouble getting anything out. I hadn’t expected him to be quite so blunt, but the pain meds and near-death experience were probably influencing him.
Finally, I just nodded and patted his hand, then changed the subject without answering him. “I’m going to let you get some rest, but I’ll stop by later with some soup so you don’t have to eat whatever invalid food I’m sure they’ll try to serve you.” I stood to leave, turning back to shake a finger at him. “Don’t give the nurses a hard time, or I’ll kick your ass when I come back.” He laughed as I’d hoped he would, though it ended in a groan at the pain, which I felt a bit bad for, but with three bullet holes in him, he was bound to feel some pain, narcotics or not.
When I walked into the waiting room, I found Lochlan holding Opal and a broad smile on Aunt Flo’s face. I had no idea what they’d been discussing, but her “Welcome to the family, boys,” had me thinking they’d declared their intentions or some shit—in a hospital waiting room, for fuck’s sake. I’d have facepalmed, but there were witnesses, and I wasn’t about to give them more gossip than I was sure they’d already gathered from the rapt attention the guys garnered.
“Mama, here!” Opal squealed over Lochlan’s shoulder, holding her arms out.
In unison, they turned to grace me with welcoming grins, and had we not been in public, I might have handed Opal off to Aunt Flo so I could drag them all off for some private time. As it stood, I’d have to bide my time ‘til the little miss went down for a nap.
“You ready to head home, darlin’?” Coot asked, holding an arm out to me in welcome.
“Yeah, more than ready, actually. And maybe a nap too,” I hinted, pointedly glancing at Opal who was once again content to cling to Lochlan now that I was within arm’s reach.
Jesse sighed, then gave me a wink. “A nap can be arranged, but we’ve really got to do something about that tiny-ass bed of yours. It’s going to be a tight squeeze to get all of us on it.”
He tried hard to keep his lips from curving up at the audible gasp from the woman eavesdropping next to us. All I could do was shake my head and make for the exit before one of them, or Aunt Flo, said something else risqué.