“He one of them?” Puck’s ex-ole lady had messed around with one of the peckerwoods.
“Yeah, you pulled a damn gun on his ass.” He chuckled. “I was half hoping you’d shoot the bastard.”
I almost had. The fierce protective instinct wrapped me up so tight I paused in the doorway to the chapel. I glanced across the room, more dark paneled meeting space than actual place of worship. Though the reverence we showed this room was very similar.
Preacher sat in Archer’s seat. It made me angry. I shook that off and took my place directly to his left, AP sitting across fromme. The other guys spread out around us. Not assigned seating, but everyone knew where to go.
When the thick door thudded shut and the lock clicked, I took the fat envelope from my vest, and plucked the individually wrapped stacks of cash from inside. The stack of bills was substantial and had weighed heavy in my cut. I racked the cash against the table, watching Preacher’s fingers twitch to reach for it, and then passed the money to AP to count as he always did. He split the stack, counted out most of the cash, passing that portion to Merc, and then racked the remaining bills against the table before turning to stash them in the safe.
Why would Preacher want the cash? The treasurer counted it, kept it, and put it away. Always had. He only passed the Ukrainian’s part to Merc.
When I looked up, Merc frowned just a little. He’d seen it too.
“All there?” Preacher’s voice was strained, the corners of his eyes tight.
Maybe I was imagining shit because I wanted somewhere to focus the anger that burned in my chest, and made my entire body vibrate. I didn’t know where it came from or what it meant, just that I didn’t like how shit was shaking down. I’d reached my limit with it.
“Think I’d short the Club, Preach?”
The dull murmur of conversation around the table stopped so suddenly that I almost thought it had been swallowed up by the roar of blood in my ears. To his dad’s right, Merc’s head snapped up, and he shot me a look that was half warning, half question.
Both Preacher’s bushy eyebrows flicked up in shock, but there was a callousness in his beady eyes. “Intentionally, no. But you’ve been distracted.”
“Distracted?” I enunciated the word slowly, each syllable filled with more petulance than the first. “How’s that?”
“Break in at Archer’s, the girl showing up right under your nose, now this.” He flipped his hand up. “Ain’t like you, Cam.”
I leaned back in my seat, flexing my fingers as I crossed my arms over my chest. The urge to sock him right in his smug mouth was so strong I half thought I might do it. “A bunch of peckerwoods chasing me through the desert is my fault?”
“You took the girl, put her in danger, and you rode alone to meet the Mexicans when you shouldn’t have—"
I slapped my open palm on the table. “It’s been your idea all along that we split up, make it look less like a money drop—”
“You made the call, Savage.You. Taking the girl was stupid, you were paying more attention to her than your surroundings and got made. If it wasn’t for the pretty little piece of pussy you got strapped to your ass, you wouldn’t have made that mistake!”
I was on my feet, Puck’s big arm around my chest before I could blink. I didn’t care what he accused me of, but talking like that about Riley…
“Watch your fucking mouth, Preach.” My voice sounded feral, wrong, and not my own.
Preacher stood slowly, knuckles on the large table in front of him, his arms outstretched as he hovered like a gorilla. “This isexactlywhat I’m talking about.
“You took Archer’s kid past county lines twice, alone, within weeks of his death. Ro told me about your visit when I stayed over there last night. Archer’s kid has got you thinking crazy, pissing off rednecks in bars, and starting shit you can’t handle.”
“Cam.” Merc’s voice was all warning, and unease travelled across the rest of the table, bodies shifting restlessly in the brief silence. Preacher and I were top of the food chain, the buck stopped with us. For the rest of the guys, Mom and Dad were fighting, and they didn’t know what to do.
I had to calm down before I did something stupid. The edges of my vision were clouding the way it did when…bad shithappened. When he couldn’t get close to Riley, he’d went for Ro. And she hadn’t told me.
With a hard shrug, I flung Puck’s arm off me, straightened my cut and slid into the chair. Any point I wanted to make about my relationship with Riley, he was going to make about Ro. He’d been after her for years.
I pulled out a cigarette and lit it. “When’s the damn benefit ride Dylan has planned?”
Preacher nodded, as if that was done. It wasn’t. I sat in my seat, listening to club business. It wasn’t business as usual, hadn’t been since Archer died. Preacher could blame Riley all day long, but if I was all twisted up, it wasn’t because of her. It was because Archer hadn’t killed himself, and I knew it to the depth of my soul.
The Desert Kings weren’t whole, wouldn’t be, until we did something about that.
As they droned on with the meeting, I kept replaying that day in my head. Finding out Archer was dead had rocked me, reminded me of the person I’d been when Archer had saved me. I was so close to falling back to that and then I’d found Riley sneaking around in the house and everything changed.
I had purpose. Hell, this time Archer’s daughter was the one saving me from myself.