Page 15 of Has-Been
We sat and ate our omelettes, drinking coffee, and chatting idly about what it was like being in the clubhouse on lockdown, and when my phone suddenly buzzed with a text message, Cammy was savvy enough to realise two things.
One, it was still on the floor in the living area, and two, I’d frozen up in a panic.
“Babe, you okay?”
I swallowed the last mouthful of my coffee, even as my stomach threatened to send it back the other way.
“Uh, yeah. Of course.”
She glanced over at my phone on the floor by the sofa, waving a hand in its general direction.
“You want me to get that?”
I tried to hide my shudder, and shook my head.
“Nah. Whoever it is can wait, right? I have company right now.”
She scrutinised me for a few moments, looking way too closely at me, and then she got up and picked up my phone while I clenched both hands and held my breath. Not more horrible messages, please.
“You have eight text messages waiting. Don’t you want to check them?”
I shook my head vehemently. God no, I didn’t want to see any more of that sickness. She swiped the screen before I could stop her, and her face paled.
“What the fuck is this? How long has this been going on, Elise?”
I squeezed my eyes closed, against the burn of sudden tears, because even with a good night’s sleep this would have been a lot to bear, but exhausted like I was from no sleep? It was impossible. I burst into tears, and dimly heard Cammy speaking, but I didn’t answer her, because I had no answers.
Ten
Tesiohadmoreinfothan we had expected, and knew things about several members that we didn’t, but there were only three members that flagged up for him, and we narrowed it down again from three to two.
Torch might seem like a depraved fucker on the record, and off, but he only hurt the people who threatened the club or our business, and he might be into group sex and other kinky shit, but he wasn’t a rapist.
The other two were more concerning, especially what he found on Tommy, our prospect who mans the bar and cooks for us. Rocket had a past that we knew bits of, but honestly, I wasn’t aware that he’d been a suspect in a previous sexual assault. I felt like I knew him well enough that I could say without a shadow of a doubt that it wasn’t him, but wasn’t that how people got away with this shit time after time?
Tommy, he was only twenty-four, and was nearing his one year as a prospect, and due for a vote in a few months. Finding out that he’d been convicted of a sexual assault, with a minor, no less, was shit he should have divulged when he applied to the club. Of course, he’d never have been accepted as a prospect if he had, would he?
More to the point, why hadn’t Ice found that information? Because it had been expunged from his records. Whatever the fuck Tesio had managed to access had led him to that sealed file, and he’d found his way into it.
We had to get back to the clubhouse to brief Reacher and Stitch, so they could decide what to do about these findings. Tesio was going to expand his searches to look outside of the club while Ice focused inward for now.
As we were helping ourselves to a buffet breakfast in the kitchen of the mafia compound, we both received a message that had us dropping everything and heading back again. A call to arms from our President. What the fuck had happened back at the clubhouse? That message was pretty clear on one thing.Get back now, and don’t ask questions.
We got back on the road within a few minutes, and headed for home. I prayed that everyone was okay, and it was just an update or something, but a message on our call to arms channel wasn’t something we were used to seeing, and it had us both freaked, and moving faster on the road than we probably should have been.
We had to make a brief stop for fuel, and that was the only delay on our journey, which was still more than a damn hour, during which I wished we could just pick up the fucking phone and ask what the hell was going on.
When we arrived back at the clubhouse, we headed straight for Reacher’s office, figuring if he wasn’t there, we’d try the room we bikers called ‘Church’.
He was in the office and he wasn’t alone. Stitch was with him, cursing and pacing, and generally looking edgy, and his old lady Cammy was also there, holding on to a tearful Elise.
“What the fuck happened?” It took every fucking ounce of restraint for me to not haul Elise into my own damn arms, and hold her until whatever made her cry was the furthest thing from her mind.
Stitch reached behind us and kicked the door shut.
“Took you long enough.”
Elise
