Page 45 of Outlaws' Single Mom
“Yes! No! I mean, I get it.” He might just die of a fucking heart attack right there.
“Good. Remember that.”
The door slams behind us, and we’re only a couple steps away before the shouting starts from inside.
“We’re taking Jay out either way, right?” Lash asks outta nowhere, just as I’ve straddled my wheels.
“Clearly.” I’d be more than willing to rid the world of him just based on the damage he’s caused for Dakota, but he stepped over a line by putting the cops on our trail. “The biggest question is just how deep he’s into this. He’s acting like a low level grunt, but everything doesn’t add up.”
“Unless he’s working for Chen’s dirty cop,” Jackal suggests. “It would fit.”
I nod. “You think it’s the one that’s been giving Dakota a hard time?”
“Or someone giving him orders.”
I’m real fucking glad Dakota and Logan are safe inside the club. I want her there for my own selfishreasons, but it’s the safest place for both of them right now. The trick is going to be figuring out how to keep them there for good.
25
DAKOTA
Logan seemsto think we’re on the best vacation ever. He doesn’t really know what happened with our apartment other than it needed the handyman to come fix some things, so he’s just happy to be living in the middle of motorcycle man headquarters. I think he could happily live here the rest of his life now that we’ve moved a lot of our things here, and Lash got him a couple of actual toy motorcycles. They’re the only things that get played with. He’s used all his wooden train tracks to create a whole driving course around the living room.
Right now, Mr. Larson is on the couch watching, with his helmet resting on the dog’s head as Logan gets the motorcycles lined up for a demolition derby versus his big pile of blocks, almost guaranteed tocome out victorious. It’s not like motorcycle men can lose, after all.
The doorbell rings, and since I now live in the middle of a biker compound, I’m not even afraid to open it. How many people can say that?
“Mommy, someone’s at the door!”
“I know, Honey. They’re here to meet us, remember? There’s a lady named Bonnie, and her daughter Anne might babysit you sometimes if that’s okay.”
He looks up. “Here?”
“Yeah, Lo. She’d come hang out here with you.”
He nods. “ ‘K.”
I have to admit, I’m dying of curiosity. So far, I’ve only met the members, and they’re all men. If I understood correctly, Bonnie was the old president’s wife, or old lady I guess—look at me starting to use the right words—before he was killed, and Anne was adopted after some mess with a rich weapons dealer that I remember seeing in the news about a year and a half ago. I get the feeling there’s a lot more to the story than the news ever heard.
So I have no idea what to expect from them.
My brain is picturing chain smoking ladies in skimpy clothes with big hair and big attitudes, but I think that’s mostly just what I’ve seen on TV. The guys weren’t at all what I would’ve expected, so I should probably keep my prejudices in check.
When I open the door, I feel like I was half right. At least a little. Bonnie is a stocky lady in her early fifties, maybe. She’s wearing ripped jeans, a leather biker jacket and while her hair color isn’t wild, I’m pretty sure that red comes out of a bottle. She smiles broadly, taking me in just as much as I am her. I wonder what she thinks.
Anne, on the other hand, looks like a regular teenager. Jeans, a pink hoodie, and long blonde curls with a single pink streak running through them. You could’ve pulled her out of any high school and not known she’s protected by a whole club’s worth of bikers. In her hands she has a cardboard box that’s closed up. Her smile comes much more naturally, especially when she spots Logan, who’s watching the front door curiously.
“Hi, I’m Anne. You must be Logan.” She looks over at Lo with a slightly nervous smile.
He gets shy, ducking his head down and focusing on the motorcycle toy in his hand.
I have to laugh. “Hi, Anne. Nice to meet you. I’m Dakota, and yes, that would be Logan.”
“Why don’t you go over and say hi? You can get to know each other while me and Dakota shoot the shit.” The slight rasp in Bonnie’s voice is almost exactly what I would’ve expected from an old biker chick.
“Sure. Nice to meet you too,” she says over her shoulder before bringing the box over to Logan. She puts it on the floor in front of the TV. “I hear you like motorcycles. Have you ever played video games?” And then she opens the box, pulling out a video game system and controllers. “They’re a little tricky to start, but there’s a motorcycle one that I think you’ll really like. We can play together, would you like that?”
And that’s all it takes for her to have Logan on her side, hook, line and sinker.
