“Nineteen-sixty?”
“Sixty-one,” I correct him. “God, he loved that thing. It was his pride and joy.”
“He still have it?”
“He died two years ago. My mom sold it. She didn’t even tell me she was going to do it until it was gone. I wish she had.”
“You would have wanted it?”
I feel a prick at the back of my throat. “My dad wasn’t a very materialistic man. It was one of the only possessions he ever cared about. I wish I could have had it to remember him by.”
I loved my father so much. I wish every time I look at that picture that I could talk to him again.
“Enough about me, though,” I say. I don’t want to talk about my father anymore. “What about you?”
“What about me?” Striker rumbles.
“Have you ever been married?”
Striker bursts into loud laughter. “Yeah, no. Marriage ain’t my scene.”
“I guess that makes two of us,” I say drily. “What about your family? Tell me about them.”
“Don’t have one.”
“What? You mean, no one?” I ask in disbelief.
He shrugs. “Well, I got a couple cousins out there somewhere, I guess. But we don’t keep in touch. The club’s my family. Tank’s my best friend. So I guess he’s the closest thing to a brother I got.”
Striker glowers as he says that last sentence. It seems pretty clear that he doesn’t like to talk about himself much.
“Tell me about Tank, then,” I ask.
Striker pauses for a moment, like he’s thinking of what to say.
“Tank is one lucky son of a bitch, is what he is.” He takes a drink of water, pushes away his plate. “That was a really good meal, thanks. Tank’s got a good woman, and a good little girl. He knows the value of what he’s got, too. And that he almost lost them.” Striker stops then, and narrows his eyes at me. “You said they told you about what happened?”
“Bits and pieces. Cady told me that Wren came to them not talking. And that Tank didn’t even know he had a daughter until Wren’s mom dropped her off on Tank’s doorstep and skipped town.”
But Striker shakes his head. “That’s not what I’m talking about. They tell you about the kidnapping?”
Whoa. “What? No!” My fork stops halfway to my mouth, and I just manage not to drop it with a clatter. “Are you kidding me?”
His jaw tenses. I almost think he’s going to change the subject. But then he starts talking again.
“The two of ‘em — Wren and Cady — got taken by a guy who had a grudge against the Lords,” he continues in a low tone. “We saved them before some pretty gruesome shit was about to go down, but yeah. If we hadn’t found them…” He sucks in a breath, closes his eyes for a moment. “Well, let’s just say they wouldn’t have survived. And it wouldn’t have been a quick death for either of them.”
“Oh my God.” I gape at him, my mind reeling.
“Yeah. So he’s earned the right to be overprotective of them. He has people watching Cady and Wren, just like he has me watching you. Cady doesn’t know it, though. Or if she does, she’s not saying anything about it. I think Tank is trying to keep their lives as normal as possible, while still making sure they’re safe.”
I set my fork down, my appetite suddenly gone. This whole case has been such a roller coaster already. Now this new information, coming from Striker, makes me see it all in a totally new light. For the first time, I seriously consider that maybe Tank’s fears are warranted — that somehow, just by virtue of my temporary proximity to the club, I might actually be in some sort of danger.
I take a deep breath and contemplate the dark, inscrutable man sitting across the kitchen island from me. He seems to conceal lifetimes in that guarded expression of his. I’m realizing there is so much more to Striker than meets the eye, and I know almost none of it.
I should want to run. I should want to push this entire situation far away from me, fire Cady and Tank as clients, and refuse to have any further association with the Lords of Carnage. But I can’t. Not now, knowing what I know. I feel like I need to help them.
And I feel like I can’t betray the trust that Striker has placed in me by telling me their story.
Deep down inside, I sense that it’s already far too late to extricate myself from the universe of the Lords of Carnage.
12
Striker
In the course of having dinner with her in her house, I’ve learned a few things about December Wells.
For one thing, she loves and misses her deceased dad, and doesn’t feel very close to her mom. For another, she is married to a dirtbag who makes her feel like shit about herself, even though she doesn’t really know that part.
She’s got this habit of fiddling with the hem of her T-shirt when she’s nervous.
And worst of all, her lips part in the most fucking distracting way when she’s listening to me answer a question.
Cool-as-a-cucumber, buttoned-up December lets down her defenses with me and becomes hot-as-fuck Ember somewhere between her second and third glasses of wine. Oh, she doesn’t do it on purpose. She isn’t flirting. Not consciously, anyway. If anything, it seems like she’s enjoying just having someone talk to about some of the shit she usually keeps buried.
I get the feeling Ember Wells doesn’t have a lot of people to talk to. She tells me about this chick who works as her receptionist and paralegal, named Margot, who is her best friend but also her ex’s cousin, and so sometimes Ember feels like she can’t tell her about some stuff. Like how broke she is. Or how her ex keeps showing up in her life like he’s waiting to see her fail at shit so he can swoop in and convince her to call off the divorce.
“What sucks most,” she sighs toward the end of the night, as she’s finishing her third glass of wine, “is that I still have to see him socially from time to time. Like, there’s this charity gala in a couple of weeks that I have to go to. It’s the sort of thing the two of us used to go to together.” She wrinkles her nose. “I hated those things then, but now it’s even worse, because I have to make nice and pretend everything is fine, when I really just want to go home, lock the door, and turn on Netflix.”
“Why do you have to go, then?” I ask.
“Connections.” She rolls her eyes. “Lawyers work on referrals, especially in a relatively small community like this. I can’t afford to alienate any of the people I know. My livelihood depends on it.”
“Sounds like a shitty way to live,” I remark. “Having to make nice with people you don’t like.”
“Oh…” Ember waves a hand. “They’re not all bad. But I admit, they’re not really people I’d choose as my main social circle. If I had a choice, that is.”
I almost point out that she does have a choice. But it doesn’t really seem like she wants to hear that right now.
The hours pass faster than I realize. As well as being easy on the eyes, Ember is easy as hell to talk to. As the wine loosens her tongue, it also loosens her mannerisms. She sprawls on one end of the long couch, and I sprawl on the other. She asks me some questions about the MC life, and I answer the ones I can. I crack a few jokes, and she laughs at all of them, tipping back her head so the pale skin of her throat is exposed to the low light. Her laughter is low and intimate, with just the hint of a rasp. It’s like a gift — something she doesn’t give out to just anyone. But more than anything, it reminds me the two of us are alone in this house. It makes me wonder what she’d sound like in bed. What noises she makes when she’s turned on.