Page 2 of Phoenix

“Speaking of math…I wanted to talk to you about something.”

Her eyes widened, and she pointed at her chest. “If you’re looking for help with a summer class from me, you’re in big trouble.”

“Nah.” I shook my head as I dropped onto a chair in the corner of the room. “I knocked out all of my required summer credit hours last year. That’s why I wasn’t here to volunteer.”

“Smart girl.” She beamed a proud smile at me and asked, “What can I help you with?”

I gestured toward the hallway. “Everything’s falling apart, June. The food is beyond awful. We’re always short on supplies. The building is a mess. And the kids didn’t get their field trip last week.”

June shook her head with a sigh. “I know. It’s been a rough summer. We got hit hard after the last round of funding cuts.”

“Rough doesn’t cover how bad it is.” I scrunched my nose and tried to remember a link to an article my mom had emailed me from the local paper a few months ago. “But didn’t we get that huge donation a while back? From the Iron Rogues MC? I could’ve sworn it said they gave fifty grand to the community center to support summer programming.”

June’s expression softened, but she didn’t look surprised. “Oh, right. I remember that. Nice photo op, wasn’t it? Big guy in a leather vest, shaking hands with Paul, who acted like we just won the lottery.”

“So where did the money go?” I asked, my voice sharper than I meant it to be, especially since my questions were probably better suited to the manager. Except Paul didn’t strike me as the kind of person who cared as much as June did. “Because it sure doesn’t look as though any of that donation was spent on the kids.”

“Every dollar gets stretched across ten needs. Insurance, utilities, staff hours, repairs, admin costs. By the time the programs get their piece, there’s barely anything left,” she explained.

“That’s messed up.”

“It’s exhausting, but at least Paul is the one who has to deal with all of that stuff while I get to focus on the kids we help. He’s the one stuck in budget meetings with the board, trying to make every penny count.” Her lips curved into a frown. “I just wish I could do more.”

I got up and crossed the room to pat her hand. “Give yourself more credit. A big part of how I got a scholarship to college was the good study habits you taught me.”

“Thank you, sweetie.”

I gave her fingers a squeeze. “I wonder where the money went.”

“It’s draining to always be putting out fires. But now that you mention it, I can’t remember a time in all my years helping out here when it’s been quite this bad,” she admitted.

Something shady had to be happening around here. I hated to think about anyone stealing from this place that brought such care and happiness to so many kids who couldn’t find it elsewhere, but I also couldn’t come up with a better explanation.

“I’m going to see if I can figure out what’s going on,” I said quietly.

She gave me a tired smile. “You’ve always been a scrappy one.”

“Guess I learned from the best.”

I quizzed June a little longer, and our conversation only left me even more frustrated.

Since Paul wasn’t here, I decided to do a little digging around. What I found only further convinced me that someone wasn’t on the up-and-up. I couldn’t confront Paul or the board members with nothing but my suspicions and the small bits of evidence I’d gathered. That left me with only one place I could go to for answers—the Iron Rogues. I’d never been to their compound before, but everyone who lived in Old Bridge knew where it was located.

I wasn’t sure what kind of operation they were running over at their clubhouse, but if they turned a blind eye to what their money was doing—or wasn’t, in this case—they were about to get a wake-up call.

2

PHOENIX

“You realize there’s a wedding happening, right?” Maverick asked, after poking his head into my office. He was the vice president of my motorcycle club, the Iron Rogues.

My eyes continued to scan the spreadsheet open on my laptop as I answered, “Yeah. Just wanted to double-check this real quick. The deadline is tomorrow and?—”

“The Mendoza contract?” he interrupted.

I nodded and jotted a note to myself on a sticky pad, then stuck it to my computer screen.

Maverick grunted. “Fucking hell. Get your neurotic ass outta this office and ready to party, asshole. You’ve been over the budget for that project at least twenty times.”

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