Whiskey Neat (The Uncertain Saints MC Book 1) (23 page)

“I fuckin’ love you,” he growled against my lips.

“You say that now…when I beat up some man?” I asked, voice coming out high and squeaky.

“Yeah, I say that now…because I can’t hold it in anymore. I’ve loved you since you sold me a dildo I didn’t need,” he said roughly.

“This is a fuckin’ camera. How about we break up the love fest and figure out just why he needed video evidence of what went on in here,” Griffin’s father interrupted us.

Griffin didn’t acknowledge his father as he stared at me, waiting.

“What?” I asked.

He narrowed his eyes.

“Fine. I love you, too. Happy?” I asked.

He nodded and set me down on my feet.

“Casten, take her into our room to get dressed completely. Socks and shoes. Jeans, if you have them,” Griffin ordered, completely in professional mode now.

“What about you?” I asked as I started to back towards the hallway.

He looked up, and the last view I saw of his face was a seriously scary one. “I won’t be needing new clothes…
yet
.”

I started my day waking up in a pool of my own blood. Is that how you’d like to end yours?

-Lenore, period day 1.

Lenore

I sat down heavily in the chair of The Uncertain Saints club house, tired beyond belief.

And I hoped I never had to make that trip to his mother’s in a two-day time period again anytime soon.

It was torture.

My ass would never be the same…at least it didn’t feel like it.

I was surrounded by all of the Uncertain Saints, and not one of them had a happy look on their face.

“Lenore’s store was hit last night and the prospect, took a bullet to the cheek, but stopped them from doing any serious damage to the store. Luckily, it just grazed his cheek. He’s currently at the hospital getting that looked at. Your place was hit a little less than an hour later, but a couple of Ridley’s deputies had been in the process of doing a drive by so they weren’t able to set the place on fire like they’d originally intended,” Peek started, looking very tired. “Lenore’s place was burned down. Nobody even saw it happening until it was fully engulfed due to the time of night.”

“Doogan!” I yelled somewhat frantically.

I was standing and marching towards the door to do I don’t know what, but I had to see for myself.

Griffin caught me around the waist and hauled me back into his chest.

“I had Wolf take Doogan home with him the moment we left yesterday, remember?” Griffin asked soothingly.

My legs went weak at the knees, and I sank into Griffin’s embrace like he was the soft place for me to land on.

“Thank God,” I breathed, eyes closing as bile started to rise up my throat.

I missed what they were talking about as I thought about all the things I would be needing to replace. My hair products. My clothes. My books.

“…they have your ex-wife hostage,” Peek finished.

My spine stiffened as I looked towards Peek to see him staring at Griffin over my shoulder.

I could feel Griffin’s arm tighten around my belly, but he didn’t react very much at all to the news.

“And Justin?” He asked carefully.

Peek shook his head. “Can’t find Justin. Didn’t know about Noreen, either, until Wolf searched through the boy’s pockets who tried to play firebug. They had a picture of her holding a newspaper that they were supposed to tack onto the tree out front.”

Griffin took a huge, deep breath, then let it all out through his nose.

“My dad’s following behind us with the piece of shit who tried to break into my mom’s place, as well as the other four my dad took out before they could do any damage,” Griffin said. “I got a little bit of information out of the guy who says he shot my kid, but other than that, just the standard yes or no answers.”

Every one of the men in the room stiffened at Griffin’s explanation.

“
Says
he shot your kid…” Peek said carefully.

Griffin nodded, and I turned into his arms to wrap mine around his chest, hugging him tight.

He squeezed back a little harder than usual, but didn’t say anything else to Peek’s question.

“Well…” Griffin’s father said as he came into the room. “I got an A+ in the art of interrogation during Desert Storm. I think it’s time you let me at him, my boy.”

Griffin’s eyes closed, and he took a deep breath.

“I want that fucker to suffer. I want him to know what it feels like to be missing a part of himself that is so integral that he no longer knows how to live a normal life…can you give me that?” He rumbled darkly.

Grunts followed around the room, but it was Peek who answered, not his dad.

“I can give you that,” he said simply. “But you won’t be in on it. You’ll be as far away as you can. We don’t need your emotions to play a part in this. We need a solid head with clear thinking. This isn’t over yet. We have a few of their men, but they still have the upper hand because we don’t know who they represent and what they’re trying to accomplish. Yet.”

“I think we should just burn every one of those motherfucker’s. I know someone that owns a funeral business. He has a really nice cremator.” Mig said darkly.

I think my eyebrows rose to my hairline at that comment.

Jesus
,
these men were bloodthirsty!

Not that I blamed them.

Griffin was their brother…and that meant that Tanner was important to them, too.

“Nobody’s gonna do anything to them. I got my boss working on his end to identify all these men. Four of them have already been identified as gun transporters on multiple gun shipments,” Griffin said, finally letting me go to walk to the table.

He opened a file folder and took out four photos.

“These four are already in the system. They only need one more charge and they’re back in jail for the rest of their lives,” Griffin continued. “The one that I wasn’t able to get charges filed against was the one that shot my kid.”

“Well, I’ve got you covered there,” Wolf said, opening his own file folder. “Mickey Ramsey, thirty-two. At the scene of your son’s shooting, three witnesses said they were able to identify a tattoo on the suspects left wrist,” he said, dropping a picture of a butterfly on the table. “This is the same picture you sent me last night of the man, as well as the identifying characteristics.”

I looked at the one I’d seen Griffin send last night, then at the picture of the butterfly that witnesses had described to the police officers and then had a sketch artist draw. It was an exact match.

“With his admission to killing your son to a room filled with people, we’ve got him locked down,” Wolf said. “Already have Rider on the charges.”

Rider, I assumed, was Wolf and Griffin’s boss…but I could be wrong.

I’d never heard the name before, but who else would be ‘on the charges?’

While they spoke, I thought about the last day and a half.

We’d been to Alabama and back in less than 18 hours.

Five armed men had tried to break into his mother’s house and kill us.

Someone had burned down my house, and had tried to burn down my business.

Tried
to do the same to Griffin’s house.

Honestly, I was just plain tired.

Tired of shitty people in this world making life harder than it should be.

My phone interrupted my pity party, and I was glad.

Those thoughts could only lead me into darker thoughts, and I most certainly didn’t want to go there.

Not yet, anyway.

“Hello?” I answered my phone, making everyone in the room pause to allow me to speak.

I winced when I heard Dr. Parsons start right in.

“You were supposed to have an MRI today, but they said you didn’t show for your appointment,” Dr. Parsons said.

I closed my eyes and scrunched up my nose.

“I forgot,” I said, pinching the bridge of my nose. “Can I reschedule for tomorrow?”

“Today. They have an opening at one p.m.,” he said shortly.

I looked at my watch. “That’s thirty minutes from now.”

“I know, they had another woman scheduled, but she perished before she was able to make it to the appointment. Sad, but effective since you need it done. You can’t put these off. This is non-negotiable. We need to see if this mass has grown any, and we have to be on top of it. If we miss it even a month, and it triples in size, it’ll get invasive and we won’t be able to do a thing about it.”

I sighed. “I can be there. Thank you, Dr. Parsons.”

I hung up and turned to Griffin, who was watching me now with his arms crossed over his chest, and a scowl on his face that would make most grown men quake in their boots.

“You missed your appointment?” He asked for confirmation.

I nodded. “Yeah. But he’s scheduled me at one.”

He nodded. “One of them will take you.”

I shook my head. “No, y’all are busy. I can drive myself.”

Griffin was already shaking his head in disagreement.

“No. Not now. They burned your house down last night. They sent men after us today. You’re going with someone. End of story,” he said pointedly.

I rolled my eyes. “Fine.”

He nodded. “Who wants to volunteer?”

None of them raised their hands.

I wasn’t upset, though.

Babysitting duty wasn’t as fun as kicking bad guys’ asses, apparently.

“I’ll take her,” Griffin’s father said.

I blinked.

“Uhhh,” I said worriedly.

Griffin grinned. “Dad, I know you’re trying to help, but you aren’t trained like you used to be. You’re getting soft.”

Griffin’s father snorted. “I think not, son. I can take you.”

Griffin raised his eyebrow at his father.

“Yeah?” He asked, moving to his sidearm faster than I could blink.

Griffin’s dad, however, was just as fast, if not a little bit faster.

Only he didn’t have a firearm in his hand.

He’d thrown a knife across the room, and it landed in the wall about two inches shy of Griffin’s hand.

“You were saying?”

I wish I was lucky enough to count sheep when I fell asleep like I did when I was a kid. Now I count my failures.

-Hard Truth

Lenore

“Call me Carrick,” Griffin’s father ordered.

I nodded. “Okay.”

I looked down at my hands, but used my peripheral vision to study him.

He’d insisted on driving, so I’d handed him the keys to my car that’d miraculously shown up outside the club house, and got into the passenger seat without another word.

“Now, to answer your question that I can see in your eyes: no, I’m not crazy,” he answered.

I rose my eyebrows at him. “That’s not what Griffin said when he was telling me about you and why his mother had to have security.”

Carrick grinned.

“I didn’t say I didn’t used to be crazy, but it’s been a lot of years. And he hasn’t seen me in ten of them…at least until the day of Tanner’s funeral,” Carrick said softly. “I’ve been on a cocktail of anti-anxiety meds, depression meds, and I’ve been going to therapy for damn near twelve years now. I’m about as stable as the next person, I guess,” Carrick explained.

I smiled, staring down into my lap.

“So you never met Tanner?” I asked softly.

Carrick shook his head. “No. Although I knew
about
him. Rayleigh gave me updates on him. Gave me pictures. I bought him birthday and Christmas presents. I just wasn’t there because Griffin didn’t trust me.”

“Are you upset about that?” I asked quietly, turning to study him.

He looked a lot like Griffin, only he had a lot more laugh lines.

His hair was completely gray, no longer the lovely shade of blonde that Griffin’s was.

He had the same blue eyes, only in a face that was tanner.

He had the same bulky build, and the same sense of style.

And I liked it.

I liked that the two of them were so much alike.

In the fifteen minutes or so I’d been riding with him, I realized that Griffin and Carrick were a lot alike.

“No. Why berate him for doing the same thing with his kid that I wanted to do with my own?” He asked seriously.

I shook my head.

“Yeah, I guess so.”

He winked at me. “You’ll know what you’re capable of doing once you have a child of your own. Like that papa of yours, surviving that gator attack.”

I raised a brow at him.

“How do you know about my father?” I asked curiously, turning my attention back to the road in front of us when a downpour started to take over the world around us.

The skies opened up, and thunder boomed overhead, making me grateful I had a large umbrella in the backseat the size of a small Texas town.

He grinned. “I’ve got eyes and ears everywhere. Just because my son lives five hours from me doesn’t mean I don’t know what’s going on in his everyday life.”

I nodded in understanding.

“Wish I could’ve done more for him once Tanner was gone, though,” he muttered to himself, his statement barely audible to my ears. “I would trade places with Tanner in a heartbeat if it’d make Griff smile like he used to. Although, I saw a glimmer of the old Griffin this weekend after he saved that baby.”

I smiled.

“He’s pretty amazing, my man,” I confirmed. “And I’m happy he’s smiling again, too.”

Carrick pulled into the hospital and parked in the very back of the lot, as close to the exit as he could get without being in the ambulance bay.

I smiled to myself, realizing, once again, how much they were alike.

“Will they let me come into the room with you?” Carrick asked hopefully.

I shrugged my shoulders.

“I have no clue, but my guess would be no. It can’t hurt to ask, though,” I pointed out, getting out of the car and grabbing the umbrella from the back seat.

He nodded and followed me into the hospital, staying a foot behind me nearly the entire way.

Getting wet when he didn’t have to.

Once at the check in station, I gave the lady my name and took a seat where Carrick indicated.

Once again, at the closest point to the exit, with our back to the wall, facing the door.

Like father like son.