“Whenever I’m with you,” I told him.
He beamed. “Glad to fuckin’ hear it. Now, we’re late, which is your fault ’cause you’re so fuckin’ edible but we’ve got to hightail it or we’ll miss our appointment and Axe-Man will be fuckin’ pissed.”
“Our appointment?” I echoed as he swung back onto the bike.
He ignored me as he reversed out of the alley and took us back onto the highway and onto the Main Street of Entrance. We stopped in front of a revamped Street Ink Tattoo Parlor, brand-new without a sign of the Nightstalkers trauma.
Zeus got off the bike then plucked me off and put me down on the pavement.
“You wanted a tat for a while now, this is as good a time as any seein’ as mine’ll take ’bout three hours. Just cleared it with the Doc and you’re good to get one now, if you want one,” he explained.
I blinked at him.
I’d wanted a tattoo since Mute died.
He’d come to me in a dream, as he often did, silently standing off to the side of my adventure packed dreams like a sentry. And one time, he’d shown me what he wanted me to get inked on my skin to remember him by.
But, “What are you getting done?”
He grinned at me and for the first time, I thought he looked like his son in all his boyishness. “You’ll see.”
And I did. Because two hours after Nova finished giving me a Mute symbol on the inside of my left wrist, Zeus appeared bare-chested in the main room of the shop and I got my first look at his tattoo.
It was an angel, one inked right over his heart. Her small, detailed face was mine and her hands were raised to cup the scar of the bullet wound Zeus had taken for me nearly eleven years earlier.
“Z,” I breathed as tears compressed my chest.
He wrapped an arm around my waist and brought me into his right side. “My fallen angel.”
“My guardian monster,” I breathed into his mouth as he lowered it onto mine for a kiss.
I needed to tell ’er.
In fact, I’d needed to tell her for fuckin’ weeks but she was so goddamn happy and healthy for the first time in over a year so fuck me if I wanted to be the one to ruin it.
But I knew Danner wouldn’t wait for much longer.
My girl was eighteen years old now, celebrated her birthday in the hospital with an ice cream cake from Dairy Queen that she couldn’t eat because she was avoidin’ sugar so the dozen of brothers and their families had indulged while we pumped AC/DC into her hospital room.
Shit birthday but she’d told me she loved it anyway ’cause it was her first with me.
Girl still gave me a fuckin’ toothache, she was so sweet.
And now she was mine in a way that was permanent.
I watched her black diamond ring glint in the light as she waved it in the air to punctuate her story about what Sammy had done at the Autism Centre the other day. She was gearin’ up to work there full-time after graduation after decidin’ against university. I’d pushed for it. Lou was smart and if things had gone a different way—as in I wasn’t in her life—she woulda gone for sure. Told her I had enough money to send her to the best university for twenty fuckin’ degrees if she wanted.
She didn’t.
My girl didn’t want to commute to Vancouver or be away from the club and me for any length of time. She liked her new family too much to let ’em go.
I loved that so I’d shut up about school.
Besides, she’d be happy as fuck at The Autism Centre and the club had just done a charity run down the coast to raise money for it. Raised enough to add an after-school special needs tutorin’ program, one that my girl was going to set up.
H.R. was leanin’ toward her, captivated and nearly as in love with her as I was. It was weird as shit that my daughter’s stepmum was her age but we made it work and the way we did that was through lovin’ each other like we’d never be given another chance to love again.
Fuckin’ cheesy shit but we’d embraced it after Mute’s death and Lou’s long battle with cancer.
The only shadow over our fuckin’ heads was the Nightstalkers.
There’d been no vengeance for Mute’s death.
No opportunity to extinguish the fucker MC for good.
Until now.
And that opportunity was hangin’ on Lou.
“You’re quiet, old man,” Loulou said as she leaned over her stool to nip my chin. “Please God, tell me I’m not boring you already? We’ve got a long marriage yet to go.”
I grinned at her but my heart wasn’t in it ’cause the door was openin’ and two men I’d rather not have seen walked into Eugene’s.
Seemed my time was up.
“Evenin’ Garro, Loulou,” Danner hesitated when he noticed my kid sitting on her stool in little shorts that made her look practically naked and a deep cut tank. His eyes darkened in a way only another man could understand. I let a low growl work in my throat and watched the officer swallow. “Harleigh Rose.”
My girl nodded at him in a cool way she’d learned bein’ raised by biker babes.
Lou grinned at him. “Lionel, how are ya?”
The cop’s face softened. My wife had that effect on people. “Better question is, how’re you?”
Lou grinned at me and placed a palm over my heart where her tattoo was still bandaged. “Cancer free and ready to graduate.”
“Married and in high school,” Danner mumbled. “Never a dull moment with the Garros.”
I raised my brows at him and stuck a toothpick in my mouth wishin’ it was a cigarette. “You’d be outta a job if there was.”
He laughed. “Touché. Speaking of, I was hopin’ you’d had time to talk to your wife about the situation.”
Lou’s head spun to me.
I glared at the cop. “No.”
Danner frowned over his shoulder at his partner Gibson who crossed his arms over his chest and scowled at me.
I scowled back harder.
“Talk to me about what?” Lou asked.
Danner looked to me, which was the only reason I wasn’t fuckin’ stranglin’ him. I tipped my chin at him ’cause the damage was already done.
Once Lou knew she had the power to help bring down the Nightstalkers, there would be no talkin’ her outta it even if it meant puttin’ her life on the line. A-fuckin’-gain.
“We got a lead on the Nightstalkers,” Danner explained.
Immediately, Lou sat up straighter and the glimmer of vengeance I saw in my own face every mornin’ when I brushed my teeth appeared on hers in full force.
“We got the opportunity to smoke them out. Thing is, we need your help,” he continued.
“How can I help?”
“We have reason to believe that Mitch Warren is involved with the Nightstalkers. We’d like it if you could get close to him. We’d outfit you with a wire and hope to get a confession out of him,” Gibson explained.
I snorted. “Like I said, this fuckin’ plan is held together with a hope and a fuckin’ prayer.”
Danner’s eyes flashed and his voice was low like a man at the end of his rope and seekin’ retribution. Finally, he was talkin’ like a man I could understand.
“It’s as good as we got, Garro. I know you want justice even more than I do and you give the okay for your woman to do this, I may just see it in me to let you overhear a conversation that lets slip where the Nightstalkers have been holding up.”