“You’re goddamn right it isn’t going to be nice to see me right now. Just like it wasn’t nice to see you last night. When you fucking blew a three-week-long stakeout I’d had going on that was finally going to get me the evidence I needed for my client.”
Fallon exhaled a deep breath, his gaze slipping to me. “Why don’t you head out, man? This is my flaying, but she’s pissed enough to start peeling off your skin just for being here.”
I didn’t need to be told twice.
I got myself out of there.
I liked Hope.
She was a hardass with a tough shell to crack, but she was a fiercely loyal friend and family member with a heart of a romantic underneath it all. Though she’d go to her grave denying that.
But despite how much I liked the woman, I didn’t want to be anywhere near the kind of fury that was going to come out of her when someone got in the way of her job.
Did she maybe take her work too seriously? Especially considering how terribly they treated her, no matter how often she proved herself? Yes. But it was important to her. So it didn’t matter what any of the rest of us thought about it. It mattered. And Fallon had—inadvertently, I was sure—fucked it up for her.
If the man could walk right after she was done, I would be shocked.
Besides, I didn’t exactly have a lot of time to waste.
See, I didn’t have my own place.
A lot of the brothers eventually did so. Usually when they found a woman, or were thinking of starting a family.
That was never going to be the path for me, though, so I’d seen no reason to get a house or apartment of my own. I had my own space at the clubhouse. And since they were, essentially, my family, there was no reason to move out.
But if Fallon wanted Abigail out of the clubhouse—and I understood his reason—then I needed to get my ass in gear and find a place as quickly as possible.
Even if I was just going to rent a place, it was going to take at the very least a couple days for paperwork and shit to get drawn up. So I’d have to get her in a hotel until then. Which wasn’t ideal, but was relatively safe.
It wasn’t like a cartel was going to come shooting in a hotel on foreign soil.
But, in my head, hotels had a certain connotation to them, even if I made sure I got two separate beds. I didn’t want to make the situation more uncomfortable for her.
Though, I had to admit that a part of me was happier than I had any right to be about the idea of being stuck in a hotel with Abigail.
It was wrong in every way, and I knew there was no way I could make any sort of move on her. But I couldn’t seem to help the thought either.
“Hey, you,” Jazzy called as I finally made my way up to the counter at She’s Bean Around.
I didn’t actually want any more coffee.
But the fact of the matter was, if you needed to know something about anything in Navesink Bank, you took your ass down to the coffee shop. Because Jazzy and Gala were the gatekeepers of the inside track of all things Navesink Bank. I was sure that was partly from just overhearing people talking all day long, but it was also because they were talkers themselves, always getting information out of people. Add on the fact that Jazzy was settled down with a detective on the NBPD, and there was almost nothing that went down in the town without the She’s Bean Around chicks knowing about it.
“Heya, Jazz.”
“Did your old friend find you?”
“She did,” I agreed. “Thanks for pointing her in my direction.”
“I wouldn’t normally point anyone toward your organization without asking you guys first. But that woman had a kicked puppy look to her. I didn’t think you would mind this one time.”
“Not at all. Actually, she’s why I’m here.”
“Ah,” she said, giving me a slow nod that said she suddenly understood things were heading toward somewhere important. “Come over here,” she invited, walking behind the counter toward the corner, and waiting for me to follow, getting us away from the crush of the crowd that was always present at She’s Bean Around. “She’s in trouble, isn’t she?”
“She is. And it’s really important that you don’t tell anyone that you’ve seen her.”
“Honey, this is Navesink Bank. We protect our women here. You see that look once and you can recognize it forever,” Jazzy went on. “I wouldn’t tell anyone that she was here.”
“Not even Lloyd?” I asked, meaning her guy.
“Listen, my man and I have an understanding about this kind of thing. He doesn’t care who I talk to and get friendly with in this town so long as I’m not doing anything illegal myself. Are you asking me to do anything illegal?”
“No.”
“Then we’re good. I won’t say anything.”
“Okay. Thanks. Well, I need someplace to put her,” I said.
“And that place maybe needs to be unexpected and relatively safe without a bunch of people seeing the comings and goings?”
“You’ve got it,” I agreed.
Jazzy pursed her lips as she tapped a nail on the counter. “Okay, I might know something. I mean, I can’t get you someplace private like out in the woods somewhere. But I can get you somewhere off the books in town. Up high, so you can see anyone coming and going.”
“Sounds like it would work.”
“You know Vic, the old guy who used to run the print shop in town?” I didn’t, but it didn’t matter. “Well, Vic passed. And his son doesn’t know shit about the printing business. So he had to shutter the store while he figured it all out. He needs the cash. And the place above the store is an apartment. Vic used to live there, but I saw the moving and charity trucks there the other day, cleaning it out. That could work, right?”
“That would be perfect actually.”
“Good. Then head your fine silver fox ass over there and set it up before someone else snatches it off his hands.”
“Jazz, you’re a lifesaver, hon.”
“Don’t I know it,” she said with a big smile as she gave me a little wave before moving off.
I’d never really been attached to a town before. I’d moved around a lot as a kid and then a young adult. You kind of just saw each town as the same as the last.
There was just something about Navesink Bank, though. I couldn’t put my finger on it. And it wasn’t just because I’d stuck around it for a while. I’d lived in other towns for much longer than I’d been in Navesink Bank.
Maybe it had to do with the, well, thriving less than legal empires all cooped up in one space. It created a sense of community you didn’t often find in places anymore.
From there, you sprinkled in a few familiar mom-and-pop establishments like She’s Bean Around, Chaz’s, and Famiglia—the kinds of places where the owners and workers got to know your name and story—and it brought everything in even more tightly. In a comfortable way. Like an old favorite sweater.
If I lived out the rest of my life in Navesink Bank, I would be a happy man.
The old print shop was on a side street along with a salon and a pet store. It was a simple brick building with the typical picture window that was currently boarded up by wood and then doubly protected by the metal security door pulled down.