Page 11 of Gatling
He jammed his boots on, then grabbed his cut and helmet.
“I won’t scrub your toilets forever, you know.”
“Keep mouthing off and you can kiss that patch good-bye,” I replied. “Now move it. I’ll text you instructions. I expect a report every hour on the hour, is that clear?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Crash called over his shoulder as he marched out of the room.
I blew out a breath and shook my head. The kid was pissed, I could tell. And I didn’t really blame him. He wanted a place to belong so badly, but we kept dangling the carrot in front of his nose, squeezing every ounce of manual labor out of him instead of treating him like a brother.
I’d have to deal with that later.
For now, I needed to take care of Kelsie’s situation first. I still had the sunglasses she found in her apartment. Dusting them for prints would probably be a dead end, but at least it was a start. Scrubbing the gritty exhaustion from my eyes, I went in search of coffee.
As long as that stalker was out there somewhere, lurking, I wouldn’t be getting a good night’s sleep any time soon.
Chapter four
Kelsie
At the day care center, I pushed the outside world to the back of my mind. There wasn’t time to think about my stalker. Or my complicated feelings for Ryker. Or the fact that I’d lied my ass off to my brother this morning, claiming that I was dropping off breakfast for my landlady before I left for work.
I sighed and rubbed my forehead. Why couldn’t Noah just be cool about stuff for once? Every little aspect of my life was shoved under a microscope and scrutinized to death.
I knew a stalker was serious business—I wasn’t making light of that in any way.
But if Noah found out, it would destroy the marginal amount of personal space that I’d worked so hard to gain in the first place.
I wanted to deal with this issue on my own terms. And Noah would never allow that.
So, I couldn’t tell him. Not yet anyway. It killed me to keep secrets from him, but maybe this is what growing pains felt like.
The noise levels of the main play room reached ear-splitting levels. With nearly a hundred kids to look after, ranging in age from infants to five years old, I always had my hands full.
I didn’t mind the chaos though. The kids brightened my day when they crawled into my lap for story time, or gave me gifts that they made. I had a giant box in my apartment full of drawings I’d received over the years, rendered in chunky crayon lines and a rainbow of colors.
The bell over the door chimed, and I glanced up to meet the new arrivals.
Then my breath caught in my throat.
I recognized the man standing on the threshold as one of our regulars, Clint Atwood, with his son, Colby. They were carbon copies of each other, with chestnut curls, Wrangler jeans, and cowboy boots.
Today, instead of his plain clothes, Clint wore a leather cut with a patch over his heart that readBlackjacks MC.
Ryker had a cut just like it. That was his club.
Noah had warned me to steer clear of them. Trouble tended to follow them around town, and my brother didn’t want me getting tangled up in that.
It seemed the Blackjacks were creeping into my life anyway though.
There was Ryker, of course.
Then I met Vlad last night.
And now, it turned out that Clint was a member, too.
“Mornin’, Miss Kelsie,” Colby chirped. He held out a slightly crushed bouquet of wildflowers in his little fist. “These are for you, ma’am.”
My heart squeezed with gratitude as I accepted the flowers and inhaled their sweet scent.
