Page 6 of Property of Bull
“What the hell crawled up Mother Nature’s ass this year?” Bronco roars as he shoves the door shut behind him, before kicking the snow off of his boots. “Son of a bitch, you tell me to meet you here during this, Prez, so you’ve got me hoping you’re taking us to a beach somewhere with blow and free pussy.”
Thunder lets out a laugh, holding his head as he slowly sits up. “It’s funny, you saying that to the only man here cheaper than I am.”
“Being fiscally responsible does not make me cheap,” I drawl out the words. “Especially if it’ll let me retire to a beach with blow and free pussy someday.”
My dad’s voice echoes in my head,“Easier to get free blow than free pussy.”
“Pussy?” Edge repeats the word as he enters the room from the swinging door into the kitchen. “The Kitty Kats took off earlier today, said something about heading to California for the winter.”
He’s referring to the most recent grouping of girls who headed to Sturgis a couple of months back and were easily convinced to hang around after the rally wound down.
As usual, thenewgets old after a few months, and it’s rare that any of them stay much past the first snow fall, rarer still that they all bug out at the same time. The nine girls who had beenhanging around had, like most women do, formed into groups and were just barely keeping the peace. My stomach turns at the thought that they all suddenly left.
“They ‘all’ left? Did you know they were leaving?” I ask, turning to look at Thunder. He shrugs, then we’re both turning when Rage drops his plate and is double-timing it to our offices—obviously on the same wavelength as me.
Two of the women had left the week before Thanksgiving, and one of them had overdosed that holiday weekend, her family came to escort her to rehab shortly afterwards. One or two leaving at different times is understandable, a mass exodus screams trouble.
I’m nearly across the room when one of the girls in question, Bella, pops her head out of the kitchen, a question dying on her lips when she sees the expression on my face.
“Interrogate her,” I call out to Bronco, pointing between them as I continue to follow Rage.
“About what?” they ask at the same time.
By the time I catch up to Rage, he’s just entering the code into the pad to the right of the door to our storage room. Most of the stuff in here is pretty mundane. We get the occasional DEA or ATF raid, and it makes them feel better to find a little Mary Jane and Molly. It’s no skin off of our back to let them find a handful of pills or some blunts, we all know it’s not worth the effort for them to pull us in over that.
Except that we’ve been holding a shipment—longer than expected due to the weather.
“Those fucking cunts!” Rage bellows, continuing to tear the room apart even though we know exactly where the stash was placed.
I’m gripping each side of the door frame in my hands, running possibilities through my mind as he continues to swear.
It wasn’t a huge amount of oxy, but it was the real thing. I know I have enough cash in my safe to cover the damage, but it’s the hit to our reputation that I will not accept.
“Shut the fuck up,” I growl out the words, and he turns to look at me. “Roads are shit right now. You call everyone up, includingourcops. They went South or West, I’m guessing California like they said because they weren’t exactly smart enough to lie about that part. The storms that have hit us, have continued on East, they’re not going to chance spinning off the road and getting busted.”
“Bella…” he starts.
“I’ll handle that, you get everyone together and stock up three SUVs. Two heading out on both of the major roads until we get word about where they went, then the third one stands ready for backup.”
I turn, heading to the front room. My whole body feels like it’s on fire, not just furious that this happened but that I know who planned it.
That fucking bitch, Alli, always looking down her nose at us, even when she was pulling a train in the bar.
“You,” I growl at Bella when I see her standing behind the bar and pouring a drink for Bronco. “Sit your fucking ass down over there.”
I motion her out from behind the bar and toss the glass of amber liquid she had placed near Thunder into the sink off to the side. Bella nearly jumps out of her skin when it shatters, holding her hands up before turning to look at me.
“Look, I don’t know what happened,” she starts talking. “Can you at least tell me what’s…”
“Why’d your friends leave you behind?”
“They were hardly my friends.” The roll of her eyes has me clenching my fists before she continues. “Look, Blanca and Addie were fun and all but Alli kind of pitted them against Jade and me. So, no, none of us were veryclose.”
“Where’s Jade now?” I ask, my head snapping up when I’m reminded of her existence.
“She’s still in bed,” Bella says, pointing behind her like a portal’s going to open up, giving me a glimpse of her friend. “She’s had the stomach flu the past couple of days, so we stayed in the cabin last night. I was worried about her and didn’t really feel like partying.”
“Yeah, she looked awful yesterday morning.” Thunder readily agrees with her. “That’s when I helped her move out to the far cabin so she wouldn’t get anyone else sick.”
