Page 39 of Phantom
“We’ve got it under control,” Tess said. “We’re gonna talk to the Blazing Rebels and the Raging Vipers at MiD and make sure they’re in if things go wrong, and in the meantime, we’ve got an entire fucking music festival to worry about.” Tess rubbed her hand up and down her dad’s back. “He thrives when we get bent out of shape, Dad. We have to just go about it business as usual. He can’t see us sweating. We’ve got this.”
Nick nodded. “Yeah.” He looked at Tess. “We do.” He stood up. “All right. Thanks, both of you. I’m gonna go check in with everyone and make sure the cleanup is coming along.”
“I don’t know who Taylor got to… dispose, of Adley, but he said part of him was on the way to Phoenix and the rest was on the way to Rumble.”
Nick nodded. “Fucking great. Night, kids.”
Tess stood up and walked her dad over to the door, gave him a big hug, and then saw him out. When she came back, she closed the door and leaned back against it. “That probably ruined the mood, huh?” I glanced up at her, and she nodded. “Yeah.”
“Just a little more time?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I’ve waited this long.” She didn’t come back into the living room, but instead, she turned and started off down the hallway. She stopped to tap her leg, and Lockjaw hopped up from his living room dog bed, and with one more quick, warm glance back in my direction, she continued down the hallway and out of sight with her pit bull right behind her.
My head fell to my hands as the fear that Luther was coming consumed me. It took all the willpower in my body to get me off the couch and into the guest bedroom. I fell down on my back on the bed and closed my eyes as if I was going to sleep, even though I knew good and well that I wouldn’t.
Chapter Fourteen
Tess
Seeing my dad in such a state of anguish made it very difficult to want to kill him for interrupting Colin and me yet again. Whether it was the impending threat of facing off against the Unchained Dogs or that Taylor had scared Colin more than he was letting on, Colin seemed genuinely freaked out by our conversation. He was good at hiding his true emotions, but I’d known Colin for a long time, and the past month had only brought us closer together. As much as he tried to put on a brave face, I could see his hyper-logical brain calculating all of the ways out, and regardless of whether the conversation was a mood killer on its own, I knew after seeing my dad out that Colin and I wouldn’t be going at it.
Again.
After that night, things kicked into high gear as we got ready for MiD. My dad stationed Colin in the desert permanently until the event. Though I was hoping that my dad would send me, too, he was still so freaked out by what had happened with Taylor that he kept me in Hoppa with him to help him clean up Taylor’s mess and help finish the minutiae for MiD. It’d been four long days since I last saw Colin, but tonight was MiD, and I’d get to see him again. If I was lucky, we would finally take things where they needed to go.
My dad left for the desert early that morning while I stayed back to make sure that the new members were taken care of and prepared to take care of the Taphouse in the event that someone showed up there instead of the festival.
One of the new members, former prospect Aaron Rell, kicked a chair in frustration. “I don’t get why we have to miss all the fun.”
“Keep your mouth shut. Didn’t you hear what happened to Adley?” another prospect-come-member, Vil Simmons, hissed.
“Both of you keep your mouths shut,” I barked. “Don’t bring up Adley, and don’t complain. This is a job that new members do every year. You got to go last year when you were barely a speck in our eyes, and you’ll get to go next year once you’ve earned your keep.”
Seth Hardy, the last of the new members, stepped toward me, and Lockjaw snapped at him. He backed up with a string of swear words hissed under his breath. “I was just going to say thank you.”
“Sure you were.” I grabbed my dad’s small black lockbox from behind the bar, twisted it open with the key that he left with me, and opened the lid. “Keys.”
Whenever my dad had to leave someone in charge of the bar, he had a relatively fool-proof system to make sure that those left in charge didn’t screw us over.
He took their keys.
I’d bring the lockbox with me to the desert and would bring it back tomorrow when the festival was over. The most important thing to any self-respecting member of a motorcycle club was their bike, and part of the contract that they all signed when they became members was an agreement to this particular practice. My dad was very aware of the fact that most people have multiple copies of their keys, which is why he requested all copies of the keys. He made sure to mention that since he had a copy of their keys, if they stabbed us in the back, he’d use his copy of the keys to steal their bike if he ever saw them again, and when they came to get their bike back, they’d have to face him.
No one had ever turned on my dad with this rule in place.
Seth and Vil stepped up right away and dropped their bike keys in the box. Seth dropped in three copies, and Vil dropped in two. I shifted my gaze to Aaron, but he wasn’t moving.
“Are you violating your contract?” I asked.
The look Aaron gave me threatened to melt my skin off. He pulled his gun out of his waistband as if that would scare me, then stood up and walked over to the box. He pulled out a set of his keys and dangled them in my face above the lockbox. I just sat there waiting, and in an action that could only be described as flat out stupid, he slammed the keys into the lockbox so hard that the box slammed into my arms.
“Fuck!” I yelped as I stumbled.
And that was all it took.
Lockjaw leaped from my side and made good use of his name. He opened his mouth and bit down on Aaron’s arm, and his jaw locked in place over the flesh. Aaron pointed the gun in his hand at Lockjaw, but Seth hopped up from his seat and yanked the gun from his hand. Vil stood up and swept Aaron’s legs from under him, and Aaron tumbled to the ground, giving Lockjaw all the leverage he needed to maul him without hesitation. The bones in Aaron’s arms crunched, and Aaron screamed.
I looked at Seth and Vil. “You made a good choice. I’ll be sure my dad knows.”
