Oz poked his head into the room. "Church in five. Bring me coffee!" With that he was gone.
"I'll fix him one." Annie moved next to Loco, shooting Colton a look over her shoulder. "I'll fix you one, too, Baby."
That left Sax and me staring at each other. "You going to attend church without a shirt and boots?" I ran my gaze over his torso, trying not to be obvious about it. The sight of him took my breath away and got my libido running. Sax had always been lean and muscular, but he'd added some bulk since I’d been gone. There was a prominent bulge in his pants, but I knew from experience that it wasn't a hard-on.
"My shirt and boots are out in the bar."
His smirk told me that he'd caught me ogling him. He looked tired. I hadn't noticed it before. I didn't want to think about the possibility that his tiredness was a result of a night spent in someone else’s room and someone else’s bed.
"You can have your room back, Sax. Ava and I can sleep somewhere else."
He ran his hand over the whiskers on his lower jaw, his eyes not leaving mine. "No, use it. Plenty of other places for me to lay my head."
No doubt. Ava was beginning to whine, a clear sign that she was hungry. Sax's eyes moved to her, and my heart jumped at the tiniest sign of softening in his hard gaze. It happened quickly and was gone, but I knew what I’d seen.
"How old is Ava?"
His question caught me off-guard. "Six months."
Ava was gnawing on her little fist, and I knew that if I didn't feed her soon, she was going to let out a wail that would wake everyone in the clubhouse.
"From the looks of it, you'd better feed her."
With that, he left me standing there.
Chapter 17
Sax
By the time we’d finished with the Knights, we didn't get back to the clubhouse until two. Snake and Colton weren't the only ones who came away with wounds from the confrontation. LD's VP, Cappy, got hit in the shoulder, and Trip lost one of his soldiers. During the ten-minute long shootout we took out Stretch and his brother, Hank, and the few of their men. The fact that none of Stretch's other blood brothers had been there meant that there was more trouble to come.
I glanced around the table. Not all of us had gone to fight, and it was clear which of us had. We hadn’t gotten much sleep, and it was apparent in the bloodshot eyes and haggard expressions. Some of us had come back and gone straight to the bar to drink away the angst and the adrenaline required to take another man's life, while others had fucked the images out of their heads.
I'd done neither.
I'd spent the night in Goldie's bed after ignoring her invitation for more and sending her away.
"We're not waiting for the fucking Knights to come to us," Demon growled from where he sat at the head of the table.
He looked disheveled and rough, and if I’d had to guess I would have said that he'd done a whole lot of fucking his woman and drinking before coming down. It didn't look as if he'd gotten any sleep.
"Once the Dunlap brothers find out about Stretch and Hank, they'll come gunning for us," Chewy said, speaking aloud what we all already knew in our guts.
Stretch's blood brothers included Screw, Hank, Radar, and Freak. Freak was the youngest at about eighteen, and seemed to be MIA. He hadn't been seen since we'd used him as a bargaining chip to strike a deal with the Knights that required them to stay out of our territory and stop causing trouble. They'd been quiet until recently.
"That's what we want," Cole said, leaning back in his chair with a semi-smirk on his tired face. "Pissed off assholes make mistakes."
"Makes them dangerous, too," I added.
Demon and several others nodded their agreement.
"We're not going to give those fucking bastards time to catch their breath. We're going to hit them hard and fast and without mercy, especially now we know they're dealing in flesh, too."
The mother and daughter that Toledo had tried to get rid of had gone to Trip's clubhouse with him and his brothers. They couldn't very well return home, knowing how badly Toledo wanted to get rid of them. They weren't safe. Trip was going to help them sort shit out.
Demon cut his eyes to Dancer, one of the brothers who hadn't come with us to the warehouse. Dancer had been an Explosive Ordinance Disposal Specialist in the army, or EOD Specialist. The brother was on the small side, thin and darkly tanned at about five-feet-four, with blonde hair and sharp blue eyes. He liked being outdoors and working with his hands. I knew that he was twenty-eight, but he didn't look a day over twenty. Poor asshole still got carded when we went to places that didn't know him.
"What do you have?"
I didn't see any of Dancer's usual cockiness show through in response to Demon's inquiry, which was good, considering the seriousness of it. He took a minute to think before leaning forward and folding his hands on the table.
"Got some C-4. I can rig up some remote detonators."
"We'll need Molotov cocktails, too,” I suggested. “For the drive-bys."
Demon showed his agreement by giving me a nod. "Gonna start out by hitting their porn studio, give them a taste of their own medicine. When they come running to see what the fuck is going on we'll pick them off."
"What about the cops?" Reid questioned.
"What about the cops?" Cole returned with a grin. "Won't be any cops showing up at their studio. At least not until later."
Reid wasn't convinced. "How do you know?"
"The studio is a fucking trailer in the desert, Brother, twenty miles from anywhere. Hell, they use fucking generators for power," Oz laughed.
"So why the fuck we wasting time on a dump?" Loco's question was valid.
"To send a fucking message, asshole, and the porn business is lucrative. Any place they're making money is a target."
Loco held his middle finger up at Chewy. "And how do we get to this place that's out in bumfuck nowhere without being seen?"
Demon crossed his arms and looked at Oz. "Tell em what you found out, Brother."
"While some of you were out having fun last night, I was here on the computer. Found out the Knights have tapped into an evil business venture that sick fucks in the world thrive on. They're making a shit-ton of money with very little coming out of their own pockets."
"What is it?" I growled, losing patience.
Oz continued, unfazed. "Mondays and Thursdays they get a delivery of fresh, young girls, two or three at a time, tops. That's why Toledo thought Stretch could get rid of his sister-in-law and her kid for him. He knew about it. The Knights video those girls while they're being raped and beaten. Then the girls are sold and never seen again."
The thought of that happening to the thirteen-year-old girl from last night sickened me.
"They're taken across the border?" Colton scowled.
"No, Brother. They’re purchased by one of the sick fucks watching them on live stream while they're being assaulted."
"Fuck!" I snarled, feeling my blood pressure rising.
"Are any of those girls there willingly?"
Oz shot Loco a twisted scowl for even asking. "Yeah, because being raped and beaten is a dream all women have, dumb ass." He shook his head with disgust. "I checked out some of their porn, and the girls are switched out almost weekly."