Bad Apple (The Uncertain Saints MC #4) (24 page)

“There was a smaller sized Chevy Blazer on our street today as I was leaving,” I said. “Had a woman and a man in the front seat. Fits your description of thirty-five or forty. Our house has cameras and we can confirm. Was the feed pulled from the lot?” I asked the cop.

Another officer sauntered up, this one not in uniform, but plain clothes.

“Feed doesn’t cover this lot. It’s technically an overflow lot that’s not owned by the hospital, but the city. Which means we don’t have anything to pull,” the plain clothes cop said.

My teeth gritted, and I turned to Wolf.

“Ridley has cameras set up outside and in. They run twenty-four seven and are monitored by a company that’s out of Kilgore. Ridley shut off everything inside the house, but the stuff outside was left on because he liked the idea of having some security while he was gone,” I told him. “You got anybody that could check that for us?”

Wolf nodded and paced a few feet away so he could make the call, and I turned to Griffin.

“You think you can get your woman up here to come get Emily?” I asked.

Griffin nodded and pulled his phone out of his pocket, walking away as well.

I turned back to the plain clothes.

“You have a BOLO out on the vehicle?” I asked.

A BOLO was a ‘be on the lookout’ alert for law enforcement, notifying them to watch for a particular vehicle or person as the case may be. So every cop in the area would be looking for this Blazer and my woman now.

“What about…” I stopped and turned when he pointed at something over my left shoulder.

“We have a woman in the ER across the street they found on the road about five miles South of here. She’s telling some wild things, but there’s a blue Chevy Blazer involved in this one, too. She’s wanting to talk to a man named Apple.”

My back stiffened at the young cop’s words.

“Why?”

The young cop turned to me and said, “You Apple?”

I nodded.

“She has information about your lady,” he answered.

Five minutes later, and a pain pill thanks to a nurse who could clearly see I was hurting, I walked out of the ER doors and found the men of my MC waiting on me. We had interrogated the woman who was with the man who kidnapped Kitt.

“Whatcha got?” Peek asked, his accent thicker than normal.

“Woman is fucked up,” I blew out a breath. “Said she was thrown out onto the road once the mother fucker Jake took Kitt.”

“Jake?” Peek asked.

“Motherfucker who monitors the feed at our house,” I growled.

“Jake Carothers,” Wolf walked up with a packet of papers in his hand.

He handed them out to all of us and then to the cop that was standing off the side, Detective Mick Barrow, I’d learned.

My eyes went to Jake Carothers’ picture on the page, and I wanted to rip his face off.

“This is the same man I saw this morning as we were leaving,” I confirmed. “Where does he live?”

Wolf passed that paper out, too, conveniently leaving out the cop this time.

The cop noticed, too.

“Give me,” Barrow ordered.

Wolf held up his empty hands.

“Let’s go,” I said, hurrying to the truck that thankfully someone had pulled around for me.

I got in and Peek got in next to me.

Barrow hopped his happy ass in the back, and I wanted to scream at him to get out, but I didn’t have time.

“Lenore have my baby?” I
confirmed before I left the lot.

“Yep,” Peek nodded.

I left the parking lot, and hit seventy within thirty seconds.

“Tell me where to go.”

Rise and shine, mothercluckers.

-Coffee Cup

Apple

“Put that away,” Barrow ordered when he saw me pull a gun out from under the seat.

“No,” I ignored him.

“I’ll arrest you,” Barrow said, his eyes hard and unwavering.

I lifted my brow at him.

“I was a cop, and I am a game warden. I’m not stupid. But you’re not going to convince me to go in there without a gun. It’s just not going to happen. Now, move the fuck out of the way, or I’ll move you,” I said through clenched teeth.

My shoulder was grabbed from behind and I turned to the front of the house and saw the best thing I’d ever witnessed in my life.

I started running toward Kitt, who looked at me in horror.

“Stop!” She insisted.

I stopped.

“Why?” I asked roughly.

“Because you just had surgery on your balls!” She whisper yelled.

I blinked and a few of the men started to snicker behind me.

I would’ve turned to glare at them, but the sight in front of me was too beautiful to turn away from.

“You okay?” I asked her, still not moving.

She nodded her head.

“Where’s Jake?” I wanted to know.

“In hell,” she replied through clenched teeth.

My eyes widened.

“Did you kill him?” I asked hopefully.

She shook her head again.

“No, but I’m sure he probably wishes he were dead right now,” she informed me vaguely.

“Are you hurt?”

“No,” she shook her head.

“Do you need me to carry you?”

“No,” she repeated.

With that, I took myself, and my gun, around Kitt and walked straight into the house, and immediately started laughing.

“You stupid fucker,” I snickered as I walked slowly up to the man that’d been watching my woman and creeping her out over the last year. “You’re going to die.”

The man didn’t say anything.

He couldn’t.

Not with his dick in his mouth like it was.

And literally. There was a dick in his mouth.

And, as I looked down at the mangled mess of meat and flesh between his legs, then back up to Jake, I wanted to laugh at him

Lifting my booted foot, I placed it along his groin and pressed, causing Jake to finally scream.

His balls were still there, so likely he wasn’t feeling all too good right then.

“What the fuck’s in his mouth?” Griffin asked as he came up to my back.

“His dick,” I answered.

“Did you do that?” Wolf sounded pained.

I shook my head.

“Who did?” Barrow asked, looking dispassionately down at the man’s balls that I had pinned to the floor.

“My guess is that my woman did it,” I answered, twisting my foot.

All of the men that were at my back cringed when we heard something inside his balls pop.

“I think that’s enough,” Barrow sighed. “Back away please.”

I did, but only after the second testicle popped, too.

I had Emily in one arm, and Kitt in the other, as we stood outside the house.

“We’re not going to tell Ridley a damn thing,” Kitt insisted. “Because he has enough to worry about right now without adding me to the mix.”

“He’s going to want to know,” I tried to be the voice of reason, but Kitt wasn’t having it.

“Is he your brother?” She snapped.

I held onto my smile.

“Yes,” I said, and it was true.

He may not be my flesh and blood brother like he was to her, but he was my brother. My MC brother, and in some cases, that was tighter than blood would ever be.

Certainly not in this case.

Ridley and Kitt were like two peas in a pod.

Ridley and me, not so much. But we tolerated each other, and I wouldn’t hesitate to come to his aid or even go and have a beer with him.

She sighed in defeat.

“I don’t want to tell him, because I want him to focus on what he’s doing in there. I don’t want his head to be anywhere but where it’s supposed to be,” she whispered. “Please?”

That ‘please’ paired with those big green eyes of hers, and I was a fucking goner.

“Okay,” I said. “But the moment he steps foot outside, I’m telling him. He’s not going to hear about it from anyone but me.”

“What about the rest of you?” Kitt asked, looking around at the rest of The Uncertain Saints.

Not a single one of them was trying to hide the fact that they were paying attention to our conversation.

But wasn’t that what brothers did? Butt into your business?

“Up to you, Core,” Griffin said. “You tell us what you want to do, and we’ll do it…maybe.”

Kitt growled, and it was so cute that I pulled her into my arms again and kissed her forehead.

“Chill, baby,” I urged. “He’s joking.”

“Am I?” Griffin challenged, a small smirk kicking up the corner of his lips.

I looked up to the sky where we were still waiting outside the stupid fucker’s house, and smiled for the first time in over an hour.

“By the way,” Griffin asked, changing the subject. “How are your balls?”

“Can’t even feel ‘em,” I said honestly. “That pill the chick at the hospital gave me is making me feel no pain.”

“What chick?” Kitt asked, stiffening in my arms.

“Her name was Hannah. I met her before in one of our many trips to the ER.” I said. “She took pity on me when she saw me grimacing when we were questioning the stand in that Jake kicked out of the car.”

This time Wolf was the one who stiffened.

“Hannah?” Wolf asked, “What’d she look like?”

“Blonde. Big tits. Long hair down to her ass. The bluest eyes I’ve ever seen,” I recalled.

Kitt pinched me on my side.

“You’re not supposed to say that you noticed her tits when your woman’s in your arms,” she hissed.

I looked down into her face, took in her angry eyes, and said innocently. “My woman’s not in my arms. My old lady is.”

She blinked.

“I’m not old,” she said testily.

I grinned.

“Oh, darlin’. You most certainly are. Trust me,” I said, pulling her to the truck and away from the rest of the group before this got too heated.

She took Emily from my arms and put her into her car seat, and I watched in fascination as Wolf ran past me, hopped on his bike and was out in a spit of gravel and dust.

“What was that about?” I
demanded of Griffin, who passed me to get to his bike.

His woman went to her car that was next to Griffin’s bike, but stopped and turned to say, “That was Wolf going to get
his
Old Lady.”

Then a commotion came from inside as a screaming Jake was finally pulled from the house.

Tears and snot mingled on his face as he sobbed, and I couldn’t help the full out shit eating grin that transformed my face.

“Hope you have fun in jail!” I called to him.

His eyes turned to me, and I couldn’t help the laugh that escaped my lips at seeing the blood still around his mouth. Remembering how it got there would forever be ingrained in my memory, and I chose to remember her walking out with a grin on her face rather than having to be in that position in the first place.

Fucking A.

“Apple?” Kitt called from inside the cab of the truck.

I turned and got in.

“What?” I asked.

“Does being your old lady come with a ring?” She batted her eyes sweetly.

I smiled at her.

“Fuck yeah it does,” I said. “I have some chicken rings at my place we can cook up for dinner.”

She slapped my arm in affront.

“That’s not what I meant, and you damn well know it.”

I fluttered my eyelashes at her, and she rolled her eyes.

“You’re incorrigible.”

“I’m fucking happy.”

“You may be fucking happy, but you’re still incorrigible.”

I shrugged.

“No, baby. I’m happy,” I said. “I haven’t been that in a very, very long time.”

Her eyes went soft, and I started the truck up, turning back to the road and heading in the opposite direction of home.

“Where are you going?” She asked softly.

“To
Sam’s
to get some more chicken rings for my old lady,” I said.

We didn’t go to
Sam’s
.

We went to
Jared
.

Where Kitt proceeded to tell everyone and their brother in a seemingly endless flurry of text messages.

Thirty minutes later when she walked into my pop’s place and shoved the ring in his face, I couldn’t find it in me to care that she kept repeating the same sentence over and over again.

“He went to Jared’s!” She crowed. “Yee haw!”

My pop smiled at her indulgently.

“That’s good, sweet girl,” my dad slurred slightly. “Now, maybe, he can stop fucking around and get some of that wood cut up.”

Kitt got the baby out of her car seat and handed her over to my father, and I turned to survey the woodpile my dad had just gestured to.

“You did good, boy,” my dad said to my back.

I turned back to look at my dad who was now holding Emily, then looked at Kitt who was on her phone with one of the old ladies, and I walked to the wood and started cutting it up.

The life I lead may not be perfect, but it was mine. And that was perfect to me.

Sorry I’m late. I didn’t set my alarm. I didn’t set my alarm because I didn’t want to come.

-Kitt’s secret thoughts

Kitt

Two months later

“I need you to come inside,” I whispered into the telephone.

“Why are you whispering?” Apple asked, sounding somewhat alarmed.

“Because it’ll hear me,” I whispered back.

“What’ll hear you?” Apple asked, fully alarmed at this juncture.

As he should be.

“There’s a bug. A cockroach. In the middle of the kitchen floor. He’s talking to his friend, Mrs. Cockroach,” I continued whispering.

“Jesus Christ,” he said. “Just step on it.”

“No. Come inside or I’ll scream,” I ordered.

He sighed, and hung up, and I hoped that meant he was coming.

And twenty seconds later when the door opened, I was happy to know he’d complied.

But the man who stepped into the kitchen was most assuredly
not
Apple.

“Step on them!” I ordered, pointing to the bugs.

He did, stepping on them with a loud crunch that threatened to cause me to lose my lunch.

“Where is he?” Ridley snapped.

My eyes widened at the anger in his voice.

Apple stepped in through the back door, and I turned to see Ridley launch himself at him.

“You can’t just not tell me that!” Ridley pushed Apple.