But I knew Tack hadn’t forgotten those three hours the Russian mob had me.

Chaos was setting up for something. I just hadn’t been let in on what. And I was beginning to get a little antsy because, even though the guys were planning a hog roast, the vibe was constantly alert. There were lots of close huddle discussions all over the forecourt and garage. Tack and the boys had a number of “sit downs” and, lately especially, I went to bed alone because Tack was “seeing to business”. Business he didn’t explain. Business I’d cautiously began to ask about. Business Tack brushed off giving me explanations with his “laters”.

And since this business involved the mob, my man, his brothers (who I was also getting to know and like) and vows of rivers of blood, I was getting a bit impatient with “later”.

Although this made me antsy, the boys hanging with me I liked. They didn’t hang for hours. They were funny. They liked and respected Tack openly (except, of course, Arlo and High but they hid it well, mostly). They didn’t mind if I worked while we chatted. And, it must be said, it broke up the day.

They also made me feel weirdly like I was part of a family. An unusual, scary, badass biker family but a family all the same.

This gave me a sense of why they pledged their lives and loyalty to the brotherhood. There was an honor to it, a beauty. It was nonconforming and some might think twisted, but it was there all the same.

And I liked that too.

“Roscoe’s in charge of gettin’ the hooch,” Dog told me and I came back into the room.

“What can I be in charge of?” I asked, thinking party plates, napkins and red Solo cups for beer.

“Wearin’ a short, tight skirt, showin’ cleavage and strappin’ on a pair of high heels,” Boz answered, his lips surrounded by his full, salt and pepper beard tipped up.

“And inviting your friends who’ll wear short, tight skirts, show cleavage and strap on heels,” Hound added.

I mentally drew a line through the item on my to-do list that said I needed to go to Costco.

“I’ll see what I can do,” I muttered, smiling at Hound, thinking that Gwen, Elvira and the girls would like a hog roast. I thought this because, before my time, a few of them had already attended one or two. And I thought this because I’d spoken frequently on the phone and I’d twice shared drinks with my new posse since our first night. I had found they were pretty much anything goes types of gals. Though Mara was kind of shy and Tess was settled in home life with her and Brock’s two boys, still, they’d be up for it.

I heard Dog’s phone beep.

He pulled it out, looked at the display then his gaze cut through the group.

There it was. The alert vibe made its presence known and it did this when, with only that glance from Dog, the boys quit lounging around on my chairs and the beat up couch under the window, their faces got serious and they all started to make a move.

They’d been called to action.

“Business, Cherry,” Dog told me what I already knew. “Later.”

“Later,” I replied, lifting my hand to flick it out when the phone on my desk rang and I could see the display said “Tack Calling.”

I reached for it, calling out laters in response to laters as the men shifted out my door. They were still filing out when I flipped the phone open and put it to my ear.

“Hi, handsome,” I greeted.

“Hey, babe. Just checkin’ in to tell you you’re at your place tonight. I’ll meet you there but I’ll be late. Probably way late. Called Tug, he’s takin’ you home. Go to bed without me.”

“All right. So you’re saying I’ll wake up with you?”

“Do you ever not?”

“No,” I whispered, liking that.

“Then no.”

“Okay.” I heard the boys’ Harleys rolling out of the forecourt when I reminded him, “Tabby and I are shopping tomorrow.”

We were and I was looking forward to it.

Rush and I were forming a bond.

Tabby, on the other hand, was melding herself to me.

I didn’t question it and I didn’t mind it. Her relationship with her mother was strained (to say the least), something it wasn’t hard to notice at first because it was so out there, it was in your face. But since then I’d discovered it was more. From what I could tell, Naomi loved Rush and showed it. Her daughter, not so much. Why, I didn’t know. But it was happening.

Therefore Tabby had latched onto me as the woman in her life. I liked it because I liked kids so I just liked it but also because Tabby was sweet, charming and funny. I enjoyed her company immensely and we had a good time together. It helped that I was giving her that. It felt good. A good woman in a teenage girl’s life was important and it was cool as all heck she chose me.

Tabby was shopping for school clothes. I was still on my mission to dress like Brandi from Storage Wars, a show that Rush now taped for me so I didn’t miss it and caught up on episodes when I was at Tack’s. So I needed Brandi clothes. They were probably going to be one size bigger than what I normally wore but… whatever.

“Gotcha,” Tack replied.

“I’ll call her and tell her to come down the mountain and meet me at my place at ten.”

“Make it noon.”

“Malls open at ten, Tack.”

“And my woman’ll hit them after I have plenty of time to hit her.”

Oh.

Well then.

“Right,” I said into the phone through a smile. “Noon then.”

“Right. Noon,” he confirmed and I could hear his smile. “And do me a favor. Top drawer, back, in the dresser in my room in the Compound is an envelope. Go in, grab it and bring it home. I’ll need it tomorrow.”

A mysterious envelope.

Hmm.

“Got it,” I replied. “Top drawer, back.”

“Right, darlin’. You leavin’ soon?”

I looked at the bottom right corner of my computer screen to see it was ten after five. Part of being Tack’s woman, him being my boss and living the biker life with a biker, my eight to five workdays became nebulous. Weeks ago, Tack told me my responsibility was to get the work done, how I saw about doing that was up to me. It didn’t matter what the office hours said on the door, I went in when I went in, I left when I left and as long as the work got done, he didn’t care. If I didn’t happen to be there to take a call, customers would have to deal and I found they did. They knew they were dealing with bikers.

Bikers didn’t do office hours.

This I liked a lot. I didn’t take this freedom and fuck over Tack, Ride and thus Chaos. I got the job done and these days that meant actually getting it done without fucking up, finding or calling Tack to ask how I’d fucked up and then redoing it properly. Sometimes Tack rolled in with me on the back of his bike at seven, seven thirty in the morning and I’d get started then. Other times, or, say, after energetic mornings it was closer to nine (or even ten). Sometimes, we swung out of the forecourt close to six at night. I worked until I didn’t need to anymore and if Tack wasn’t ready to go or he wasn’t around and I didn’t have my car, one of the boys took me home or I hung in the store, in the office, in the Compound common area or outside it with the boys.

Life was, except for the upcoming rivers of Russian mob blood, entirely stress free.

And thus life was, except for the Russian mob, entirely good.

“Yeah,” I answered Tack. “Closing up shop now.”

“I’ll call Tug, find out where he is and either he or I’ll call you back and give you his ETA.”

“Thanks, honey.”

“Later, babe.”

“Later, Tack.”

He disconnected. I flipped my phone closed and then I shut down the office. I grabbed my phone and my purse, headed out, locked up and clicked on my high heels to the Compound.

As I moved over the tarmac of the forecourt, I noticed there was only one bike outside the Compound. This I found surprising. It didn’t take a master strategist to figure out that Dog’s text and Tack’s call stating he would be late meant Tack had given them the order to be on some mission. Their missions didn’t always require every member in attendance, this was true. But if it didn’t, there were always at least two or more bikes outside the Compound.

I’d never seen only one.

Well, whatever. It wasn’t as if I had the comings and goings of the members of the Chaos MC down pat.

I walked into the deserted common area of the Compound, an area that looked a lot like a seedy bar except seedier. Tatty or chipped mismatched furniture including chairs, tables, couches and armchairs. A pool table. A long, curved bar that started almost at the front door and curved around toward the side wall. A door at the back wall beyond which held the boys’ rooms. There were neon beer signs on the walls but not many of them. Most of the adornment were pictures of boys in the Club, past and present, all candid. There were not a few but several framed Chaos emblems. One of them was a large, white flag tacked to the back wall that had the Chaos emblem in the middle with the words “Fire” and “Wind” on one side and “Ride and “Free” on the other. This same flag, incidentally, was flying from a flagpole on the top of Ride underneath an American flag. And last, there were a number of Harley Davidson insignias here and there, framed, tacked and some were stickers randomly stuck to the wood-panelled walls.

It wasn’t clean. It was, as I mentioned, seedy. Still, for some reason, I thought it was cool.

I headed across the room, my heels clicking on the wood floors and made it into the back hall. I turned right and moved down it toward the end where Tack’s room was.

My timing was bad for many reasons. Me just being there was one. Me hitting the hall opposite an open door when the noise came out was another. And what the noise meant had happened at that exact moment was the last.