Page 25 of Property of Baffle
I could picture it sitting outside the clubhouse.“We can ask her but no pressure.She’s already been through enough and still has this beautiful beast to finish.”
Grunt inspected the piece and rounded it a few times as he squatted down to see underneath and then lifted back up to his full height to glance over the top.“I think we need to drop a few ratchet straps here, here, and over there to keep it stable while we move it.It’s sitting pretty even on the pallet, so it should be an easy move with the forklift to get it into the truck.”He glanced around and tipped his head off to the side of the studio space.“I see she has one here.Do you know if that’s hers?”
“Far as I know this whole place is hers,” I answered.I texted Nell anyway to be sure.
Baffle: Do you own everything in this studio?
It only took a minute for her response to come back.
WIFEY: I own the whole building plus everything in it.Why?
Baffle: We’ll have to come back for some things like the forklift.There’s not enough room to grab it all and I’m assuming you want the big centerpiece in here.
WIFEY: Yes, that is the most important along with the paperwork that goes with it on the bench.Anything else you have room to salvage, please bring.I’ll worry about the rest later.
Baffle: Okay, see you tonight.Everything going okay?
WIFEY: Yep.Quiet day at the clubhouse.Thanks again for taking care of everything for me.
Baffle: No thanks needed.See you soon.
“She said everything in here is hers, including the building.Priority is the Chevy and the paperwork that goes with it, everything else is icing on the cake.”
“We won’t have space to bring the Chevy and the forklift back on one load, but the Chevy will fit, for sure,” Grunt informed me.
Knuckles walked over to us and tapped me on the shoulder.“I’m headed to do a round outside to see if there’s anything else on the property we might have to pack up.Thought I saw a little birdie perched close by and need to let Squeak know.”I nodded my head and he walked away to go do his thing.If he had seen Johnny Culver sitting on the place, then we needed to get packed up as quickly as possible.There was no telling if he would call the Devils in or if the bastards would even show up on his word.
Grease moved in closer and got a good look at the piece Nell was working on.“Your woman have mechanical experience?It feels like she knows what she’s doing even though some of the parts are in the wrong places.The way she used them makes everything fit almost seamlessly.What she did here is fucking wild.”
“Don’t know what her background is with this stuff yet.”It pained me to admit that.I needed more time to spend with my woman so we could learn all the shit we were supposed to know about one another.It fucked with my head every time I had to admit that I didn’t know enough about the woman who captivated me enough to put a ring on her finger.
As we got everything packed up, I knew I needed a destination for it and didn’t think we had room anywhere at the compound.At least not in a place that would protect her work from the elements.The only place I could think of close enough to be convenient for her to shuffle back-and-forth to work was on Sammy’s family’s compound.I thought about texting Brady but figured it would be harder to turn us down if we showed up in person and he got to see what my wife was up to with his own eyes.
“Your wifey is a badass, man,” Knuckles said after everything was secured in the truck.
“Yeah, I already knew that.She’s loyal to the bone, too.This, her art and the talent behind it, that’s next level shit I wasn’t expecting.”
“Wonder how much she’s being paid for that piece?”Knuckles asked.
“We probably don’t want to know until we’re done transporting it,” Grunt informed him before he lowered his voice and tipped his head so subtly that I almost missed it.“We have company.Spotted a Sportster roll up near the fence.”
“On it,” Knuckles called as he walked off in that direction while I finished locking up.
I turned to Grunt.“The dick rides a Sportster, so that’s probably him.Get Squeak on it and make sure he knows to hang back and report in on movements.He is not to engage unless he doesn’t have a choice.”
“On it,” Grunt said as he pulled his phone out and started shooting texts to the man.
I turned back to Grease then.“Thanks for the help, today.”
“Not a problem.I’d love to get her in a garage one day and see what kind of ideas she might come up with for bike mods.”I nodded.If that was something she was down for, I wouldn’t stand in her way.It would probably be a hell of a bonding experience if she was helping to customize rides for my brothers.Of the five of us on the run, Grease and Squeak were the only non-officers.Squeak was perfect for tailing someone because he was so unassuming that a lot of people looked over him at first.Grease was a gear-head, mechanic of the club, and I wasn’t sure what we were walking into with Nell’s art other than she welded metal together.After hearing what he had to say about potentially collaborating with her on customizations for our motorcycles, I was glad we brought him along.Still, I needed to spank my wife’s ass for downplaying what she was working on.
“Where are we taking your wife’s stuff?You have a place of her to set this up?”Grunt asked as we rounded the truck and each glanced around to see where Knuckles was.
“Gonna go straight to Sammy’s family’s place.They have their businesses shuttered to the general public after everything that went down with Brian and his wife.”
Brian was our club president’s father-in-law.Colleen, the wife, died in our basement after Sammy stabbed her stepmother in the thigh and one of our men removed the knife that happened to hit an artery.The bitch had hooked up with Sammy’s dad year’s earlier, playing the long game, to try to get her hands on the family’s property.After everything went down, and it was discovered that Colleen and Brian’s son wasn’t actually his biologically, Brian took off and left the boy with Sammy.He also forfeited any rights to the property when he did.That left his brothers, Josh and Brady, along with Sammy, as the sole owners.We had at least one of three votes on being able to lease some space from them, but I had a gut feeling that Brady would be onboard, too.Josh was an outlier, but he had recently started to help the club with some problems we had with our psychedelic mushrooms in the grow house, so he might be inclined to allow it as well.
“Brady has the RV shop cleaned out at the moment.He has four bays divided up there, and one of them would be big enough for Nell to use.I can pay him rent on the space like we do when we run our bikes in for maintenance at his other garage.”
