“That it is, but we need to hurry this along. If he comes back and finds us here, I don’t know that we want to deal with it.”
I’m not sure we wanna deal with it either, I’m getting too old to throw down, and I don’t necessarily want to have to use force either. Finally I feel the lock give way. “We’re in.”
“Are you losing your touch?”
“You’re gonna lose your guitar hand if you don’t shut the fuck up,” I hiss at him. “You’re on my damn nerves.”
“Somebody needs to get laid,” Jagger teases in a sing-song voice.
I turn to Drew. “I’m gonna kill him.”
“We need him.”
“Besides, if it weren’t for me, what kind of women would be stripping at Wet Wanda’s? You know they still come to see me play.”
I glare at him, my eyes slits. I know because I can barely see through them. “You’re lucky you don’t look your age, old-timer.”
“Oh that’s original. You think that bothers me?”
Agitated, I run a hand over my beard. “I wish to God it did.” Throwing a glare his way, I whisper. “Heading to the left.”
“I’ll take the right,” Jagger whispers back.
“I’m headed to the kitchen.” Drew walks straight.
There’s an eerie quietness inside; it makes my hair stand on end, like we’re not the only ones here. It’s too quiet, if I’m being honest. Taking my gun from the waistband of my jeans, I hold it out in front of me as I walk down the hallway.
On the side, I notice a door, maybe to a closet, or another room. As I creep, I see the door move. Whistling low, I let the others know we’re not alone. They come to back me up, following me down the hallway as I make motions with my hands.
When we get to the door, Jagger pulls it open, and I clear it.
“Come out!”
The last person I expect to see is Laura.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
“He’s my boyfriend,” she cries. “You guys scared the fuck outta me.”
“Where’s your car?” Her tears aren’t fooling me.
“Owen took it because his got the tires shot out of it.”
Drew and I gaze at one another. “Why did the tires get shot out?”
This time she really cries, none of the fake shit she does so well. “He was trying to buy his own turf with the drug dealer he’s been working with. That’s why he tried to steal the money from the gas station and made me help him get the deposit at Wet Wanda’s,” she sobs. “And they stole it from us.”
“Who stole it from you? Hurry the fuck up.” Drew motions with his hand trying to get her to tell us the whole story.
“I don’t know his name, the guy he’s been buying drugs from in Glasgow. When Owen went to make his big buy, it was a setup. They shot the tires out of his car, beat him up, and took the money.”
Drew and I look at each other. Chances are Owen’s not alive anymore if all of this is true. “Where’s Owen now?” I ask carefully, not wanting to send her sobbing harder.
“I don’t know!”
Drew turns away from us, pulling out his phone. I can hear him making a call. He’s telling Dakota and the teach to head to Glasgow, see what they can find out about Owen and the dealers to the north.
“How long has he been gone?” I try again.
She wraps her arms around her middle. “Two days,” she whispers.
“Two days?”
Jagger makes a noise. “Look, sweetheart, we’re not in the business of lying to people and letting them believe things aren’t bad when they are. You need some truth, and that’s what I’m gonna give you.”
Her eyes search his and she nods slightly. “Okay, I’m willing to listen.”
Thank fuck.
“Your man, Owen? More than likely if he’s been gone for two days he ain’t coming back.”
“He would always come back for me,” she argues. “We came here together, there’s no way he’d leave without me.”
“You’re not picking up what I’m puttin’ down. It may not be his choice to come back or not. From what you’ve said, he’s gotten himself mixed up with some seriously shitty people. Those people may not like the fact he was trying to buy in to someone else’s possible turf. Chances are, he’s dead.”
Laura takes it about as well as I imagined she would.
She crumbles to a heap on the floor, screaming and sobbing with dramatic flair that any actress would approve of.
Fuck my life.
Mandy
Waiting for the guys to come back, while the rest of us sit in the clubhouse, reminds me so much of my tween and teenage years. Charity and I, we’ve spent a lot of years waiting on the men in our lives. The older we’ve gotten, the more different it’s become.
Used to be they were our boyfriends. The guys who gave us their letterman jackets to wear, who took us on our first bike rides with men other than family, and taught us the ways of our bodies before we probably should have been allowed to know.
Now? Now they’re our husbands. The fathers of our children and the hierarchy of our club.
“You two doing okay?” Mom asks as she comes to have a seat beside us. “I remember waiting for Liam and Tyler to come back, it was always gut wrenching, hoping against hope that nothing happened while they were out of mine and Meredith’s sight.”
“It’s definitely different now that we’re older,” I agree. “I think we know what it means to lose the men we love now, when back then we had this air of invincibility around us.”
Charity makes a noise. “Back then, they weren’t so heavily entrenched in our lives either. I mean yeah, they were our boyfriends and we loved them, but they’re so much more than that now.”
“You’ve got a point. They’re fathers, husbands, and role models for others.”
Mom grins. “I’m not even sure when they were younger if I
