Fallon by Jessica Gadziala

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Six

Fallon

"What's the matter? You don't love us anymore?" Dezi asked, looking over my shoulder at the screen while I browsed local home and townhouse listings.

"We all have to grow up sometime," I said, shrugging, even though I wasn't all that sure why the fuck I was looking at places all of a sudden when I had a place at the clubhouse that didn't cost me anything, that didn't require any actual maintenance.

Sure, an argument could be made for the fact that with my father stepping down, and letting me step up, it made sense for me to act more like a fully functioning adult. Which meant having a place of my own. And, yeah, I had the money, thanks to low living expenses, so most of my cut from the club and the side hustles was just sitting around, waiting for me to do something with it.

It made sense to invest in a place of my own.

But what didn't make sense was why I had the sudden desire for my own home.

I hadn't given homeownership anything more than a passing thought in the past. I liked being in the clubhouse and around all the craziness and action.

Something had gotten into me, though, to suddenly go on the hunt.

And as much as I would never admit it, I had a sneaking suspicion that it had something to do with the relentless comments from a certain woman that called my adulthood and capability into question at every fucking turn.

Sure, I wanted to be able to say that the jabs didn't bother me, but I was clearly bothered if I suddenly felt the need to shack myself with a house and all the maintenance that went with that. On top of stepping up into the leadership role of the club.

"As the club grows, we're all going to need our own places," I told Dezi. "There aren't enough rooms for all of us. And no one is going to want to bunk up. I'm just thinking ahead."

"But if you're not here, who is going to tell me I'm being an idiot all the time?" Dezi said with a smile.

"I got that covered," Brooks said as he passed by, arms loaded down with cleaning supplies he dropped at Dezi's feet. "Get to work, prospect," he demanded, waving at the pile.

Dezi looked to me.

See, I didn't give a shit about the hazing of the prospects, making them do and redo shit fifty times just to give them a hard time, to break off and weed out the weak ones. But this was one of those moments where I needed to think like a president, and not just like myself.

"You heard the man," I said, shrugging.

"Alright, but I make no promises that I won't snoop around everyone's room," Dezi said, grabbing the supplies, and moving off toward the rooms.

"Thanks," Brooks said, nodding. "I know it's a small thing, but I think he needs to learn to pull his weight even when he doesn't want to. He's good with the action shit, but there's more to the club than shootouts and fights."

"That's true," I agreed. "I appreciate you being willing to lean on the prospects when they need it."

I guess it was time to start thinking about positions for my men since if my father was stepping down, so were my uncles Cash and Wolf who acted as the Vice President and Road Captain. My father had never had a full hierarchy of members, but I was leaning toward it.

And judging by his behavior lately, Brooks would make a great Sergeant at Arms—someone who acted like a policeman of the group, enforcing the rules and maintaining order. It would play to his strengths.

That was one position filled, at least.

I couldn't make anything official until I worked out the kinks of the other positions, but it felt good to have one thing figured out.

"Don't need to thank me."

"How are Slash's guys settling in?" I asked, giving the two places I'd liked best when I'd gone to see them one final glance as if it would help me make the decision, then closing my laptop.

"Well, Sway has been busy crashing at random chicks' places every night all week,but Crow seems comfortable."

"Getting a feel for them?" I asked.

"Slash is a good leader. All he has to do is let out a rumble and his men fall in line. It sounds like they have been close since they were kids. They have several other guys back home that they'd pull into a club if they get the go-ahead to open a chapter."

"You'll keep an eye on them for me?" I asked, watching as his gaze went keen, like he guessed where my mind was going.

"I will," he said, voice firm. "Need anything else from me?"

"Not right now. Aside from Dezi, the other prospects don't really need to be babysat."

Cary had been in the lifestyle for almost as long as I'd been alive, so he simply knew what was expected of him without being told. And Rowe had Malcolm to guide him, them being best friends for ages.

Speaking of Rowe, though. "Hey, have you seen Billie around here lately?" I asked, wondering if I'd somehow missed her.

"No. She dropped off Dezi's mint lemonade, but made him come to the gate to get it from her."

"Did something happen with her and Rowe?" I asked.

"I was under the impression that it better the fuck not," Brooks said, brows pinching.

"No, that's right. They're off-limits, but it's strange that Billie went from hanging around all the time, hoping to run into Rowe, to avoiding the clubhouse like the plague."

"This is a novel concept, but have you tried... asking her?" Brooks suggested, smirking at me.

"The girls have always related better to Malc, not me. Maybe I can ask Hope when I see her next." But she'd been weirdly absent lately too. It wasn't strange for her to fall off the face of the Earth when work got crazy, but it had been a couple months since I'd even seen her.

"Speaking of the girls. Has Chris come to you with any more information about the shooting?"

"No," I said, shaking my head. "Seems like everyone has hit a dead-end. And there hasn't been anything since then," I said, shrugging. We'd been on high-alert for a few weeks, but nothing had happened.

Maybe it never had anything to do with us in the first place. Maybe we'd been mistaken for other people. Hell, maybe some trigger-happy idiot just wanted to play a real-life shooting game. Who the fuck knew?

"It was in a crummy area of town," Brooks said, shrugging, like maybe that explained it, like we'd gotten caught up in something that had nothing to do with us.

"Yeah," I agreed. "Alright. I am going to head out for a bit. Text me if anything is up. I think some of the OG guys are coming later to plan the next run."

Which was a big one. The biggest one we'd had in a while, and to a newer client, one we'd only dealt with twice before, but one that could mean big money for the club if we kept him happy. I was a little disappointed that I wasn't going to be a part of the drop, but my father had suggested he go for this one, since he'd been the one to work out the client in the first place. It was smart to make things seem status quo for a bit with newer, more skittish contacts. For the next drop, I would go with my father, and introduce myself.

"Sounds good. I'll hold down the fort," Brooks said, hopping up, likely to go check and make sure Dezi was doing more cleaning than snooping.

With that, I got on my bike, wanting to get away for a bit to clear my head. Which, lately, had been occupied far too often with thoughts of a certain blonde with a bad attitude.

I had no business thinking about her.

It was a one-time thing. Alright, fine, one and a half. But each incident had been a mistake. There was nothing else to call them. If my club had found out what I'd done, they'd blow gaskets. You didn't fuck the woman who had your father kidnapped, who threatened the livelihood of your club. That was a line no leader crossed.

For fuck's sake, it wasn't something a halfway decent son did, considering the circumstances.

Regardless of all of that, though, I couldn't keep her out of my head. Not when I was up and trying to focus on daily tasks. And damn sure not when I was asleep, leaving me waking up hard and frustrated.

And that frustration? Some sick, masochistic part of me refused to get relief from it by taking a woman home from the bar even though there'd been many to choose from.

I didn't know what the fuck was wrong with me, but it needed to stop.

I wasn't sure why I figured a long ride might be a good idea since all that did was leave me alone with my thoughts that kept circling back to her.

An hour later and with a mind no more clear, I turned the bike back toward Navesink Bank.

Everything was fine, normal. Until I turned down the shortcut I always took to avoid the highway to get back to Navesink Bank.

It was there that something—no, someone—darted out of the woods in front of my bike. There was hardly any time to do anything but jerk the bike to the side to avoid a collision. The second I did it, though, I knew I overcorrected.

But it was too late.

The bike was spinning.

And then I was flying.

Up over the handlebars, my stomach dropping, my heart leaping upward as I shot forward in the air before crashing down on the ground.

The impact stole my breath even as the pain ricocheted through my body.

My shoulder screamed as the skin on the back of my hands scraped across the asphalt.

"Fuck," I hissed as soon as I threw myself onto my back, disoriented for a moment before my gaze landed on a hoodie-clad figure approaching.

My hand went for my holster, grabbing my gun, adrenaline surging through my system. "Back up," I demanded with as much ferocity as I could muster when it felt like there was a crater on my chest from the impact. "Back the..." I started, trailing off when I saw a flash of metal in the figure's hand as they got closer.

I didn't stop to think.

There wasn't time.

I was too injured to fight someone or get up to get away.

I had one choice.

And that was to shoot.

So I raised the gun as best I could with my dominant shoulder being the one I'd jacked up on landing, and I squeezed the trigger.

Once.

Twice.

Both shooting off into the woods behind the figure as the gun in their hand raised.

"Fuck," I snapped to myself, sucking in a deep breath as I raised my arm as high as I could, and fired again.

Once.

Twice.

I watched as the second one slammed into their shoulder, making them drop the gun in shock.

Before I could pull the trigger again, they were turning and running from where they'd come from, leaving me alone on a rural road.

"Goddamnit," I growled, folding upward, trying to swing over to stand, but nearly face-planting at the pain that shot through my knee when I tried to put weight onto it. "Fuck," I snapped again, pressing a hand to the ground to push myself up instead.

Phone.

I needed my phone.

Reaching into my back pocket, I felt a sinking sensation when I felt a curve that should not have existed. "For fuck's sake," I sighed, pulling it out to find it bent at cracked. Useless. Fucking useless.

I made my way across the road, grabbing the other gun, checking it for bullets, then tucking it into my holster as I held onto my own, the weight and feel comforting in my hand as I wobbled over to my bike, trying to ignore my knee and shoulder, so I could see if there was any way I could drive it back to the clubhouse to get some reinforcements to try to search the woods.

But the fucking thing was a loss.

Totaled.

I was just trying to steel myself to the idea of half-dragging myself into town when I heard a bike rumbling up the road from Navesink Bank, making hope surge up, figuring it was one of the guys from the club heading home after the meeting.

I moved out into the road, holding up my good arm, waiting for the bike to slow and stop before lowering it.

It wasn't until the rider reached up to pull off their helmet and shake out their long blonde hair that I realized it wasn't one of my men. It wasn't a man at all.

It was fucking Danny.

"For chrissakes," I snapped.

"Always such a charmer," Danny grumbled, looking at me, then the bike, then back at me. "You probably shouldn't ride it unless you know how to," she suggested, shaking her head. "Maybe daddy can put some training wheels on it for you," she added.

"Just got run off the fucking road, Danny, I don't need your shit right now."

"Someone ran you off the road?" she asked, straightening, then climbing off her bike, glancing up and down the road.

"From the woods," I explained. "He came running out in front of my bike."

"Where'd they go?" she asked, moving closer.

"The woods. Took a bullet to the shoulder and ran."

"Well, at least you hit them," she said, coming to stop in front of me. "That road burn looks nasty," she told me, looking down at my hands. "It's going to burn like a motherfucker as it heals. This your first crash?" she asked, voice going a little softer, a little sweeter. But no. That didn't make sense. Danny wasn't sweet.

"Yeah." I mean, I'd taken a couple small tumbles at barely-there speeds when my father and uncles had been showing me how to ride. But this was my first time going over the handlebars, and crashing onto the ground with enough force to actually hurt myself.

I wouldn't admit this aloud, but I was freaked about the whole thing. My insides felt like they were shaking. And once the adrenaline wore off, I was pretty sure everything was going to hurt ten times worse than it did right that moment.

"This is a good helmet," she said, reaching up toward it, unfastening it, then pulling it off my head. I was too shocked to do anything but stand still as she removed it, then watch as she turned it to face me, showing the spot where I'd landed on it. There was one large dent and a shitton of scratches from where, it seemed, I'd rolled. "You'd be in intensive care right now if not for this," she added. "How's your neck?"

"Not great," I admitted. "It's my shoulder and knee I jacked up though," I admitted.

"Bad?"

"Not good."

"Hospital trip bad, or just bandages, ice, and a couple pain pills bad?" she asked, dropping my helmet, then reaching up again, her fingers teasing over the hot, sweaty skin of my neck to pull the material of my tee wide enough for her to look at the shoulder.

"I don't know," I admitted.

Her gaze lifted from my shoulder to my face. Close. So close. Close enough for me to notice little starbursts of gold in the center of her blue eyes.

There was that strange heavy sensation in my chest again, only this time I wasn't sure I could blame the accident.

"It's the adrenaline. Once it wears off, you will be able to feel how shitty it is. Or isn't." It didn't escape me that her hand was still on me, rested gently on the space between my neck and shoulder, a soft, almost reassuring pressure. "What do you—" she started, then stiffened.

If I'd blinked, I would have missed it.

One second, she was looking at me, something resembling concern in her too-pretty eyes.

The next, her gaze was on the woods, her arm was lifted, her hand was holding a gun, and she was squeezing four shots out of it before I could even grasp what was happening.

But sure enough, there was the hooded figure, coming back out of the woods a little further down than they'd been when they'd gone in.

"Jesus Christ," I hissed as I watched the bullets land, the person's body jolting with each shot before toppling, and falling backward.

"No need to rush," she said when I pulled back to move across the road. "He's dead."

"You can't know that," I insisted.

"If the two shots to the chest didn't do it, the two to the head sure as hell did," she told me, following me across the street, keeping her pace as slow as my own. "Told you," she said when we got to the body. The chest was not rising or falling.

"I can't bend down," I told her, shrugging my good shoulder, but waving toward the figure's head, needing to see who it was.

Danny squatted down next to the body, reaching for the hood, yanking it backward off their head. "Christ. He's a child," she said, looking down at the wide-eyed face of someone who couldn't have been older than twenty. "Does he look familiar?"

"No."

"Yeah, I don't recognize him either. Why the fuck would he come back? After he saw someone else pull up?" she added, shaking her head as she searched his pockets.

"Maybe it seemed like fate when he realized it was you," I suggested, watching as her head angled up to look at me, recognition hitting.

"Maybe," she agreed, producing the kid's wallet. "Kevin Olsen," she read off of his license. "Twenty. There's nothing else in here, really. A Visa gift card. A couple bucks. This is a nice gun, though," she said, grabbing it out of his hand, and tucking it into her waistband as she stood.

"He had a Bodyguard on him too," I said, waving toward my holster where it was tucked.

"What would some twenty-something kid want with us?" she asked.

"I don't know, but we can't leave his body here on the side of the road," I said, looking up and down the street.

"Right," Danny agreed, taking a deep breath, then squatting down to grab the body under the armpits, then yanking him back into the tree line with more than a little grunting and cursing. "He's heavier than he looks," she explained, coming back. "Alright," she said, exhaling hard. "What now?"

I wasn't sure if she was asking me, or thinking aloud, or both.

"We should call in our clubs."

"Should," she repeated, rolling the word over in her mouth.

"What?"

"It would be a pissing contest over who gets to hide the body and shit," she said, shaking her head.

"Well, the body needs to be dealt with," I insisted, even though I knew she was right. There would be a lot of bitching and chest puffing if our people rolled up on this scene.

"What if—" I started, then felt my stomach clench as headlights started coming down the road.

"Don't tense up. You had an accident. That's all. The body is pretty well hidden from the road. If they offer to help, say the cops are already on the way," Danny said, having her wits about her more than I did at the moment.

But the SUV didn't just slow down.

It parked.

The door opened.

And the driver got out.

"Oh, for fuck's sake," I sighed, watching A move in front of his headlights, casting him mostly in shadow. Just what we needed. The town's new cartel kingpin involved in our already messy situation.

"'Sup, lil' mama, big man," he said, surveying the scene. "Looks like you had a bit of a mishap, yeah?" he asked.

"Everything's fine, Andres," Danny said, tone light.

"Fine, huh?" he asked, bending downward, then moving back up, holding a bullet up to the light. "Doesn't seem fine to me. Seems more like there should be a body here," he went on, moving forward toward the woods.

"Andres..." Danny said.

"Naw naw, check your... friend over for wounds," A said, searching the tree line. "I'll just be, oh there you are. Young fucker," he called, nodding toward us. "Seen him around."

"Where?" I asked.

"Does he work for someone?" Danny asked at the same time as A moved back toward us.

"Seen 'em in your neck of the woods," A said, nodding toward Danny. "Doesn't seem to run with any crew. Saw 'em shoplifting some vodka once. Cheap shit, too. If you're gonna steal something, why not go for the good shit?" he asked, shaking his head. "Well, it's lucky I was on the way back. Don't see any backup showing up for you two."

"We were just discussing that."

"I can handle it for you," A offered.

"No." That came from the two of us at the same time.

"I'm hurt," A said, pressing a hand to his heart.

"No offense, but I don't know you well enough to owe you, Andres," Danny said.

"And last time I saw you, you were fresh off of kidnapping one of the club princesses."

"Hey, she's no worse for the wear," A said. "If anything, I believe I'm owed a thank you for getting her and that cage fighter together."

"Yeah, sure," I said, snorting.

"What? You think I'd put it on ice to use against you in the future?" A asked.

"Well, now I do," Danny said, rolling her eyes, getting a low chuckle from A.

"Why don't you come with then?" A suggested. "I'll drop you in a location. You handle it from there."

"Why would you help us?"

"Hey, everyone has allies in this town, why can't I work on some good relations with the locals?" A said, shrugging.

Danny's gaze slid to mine, and I swear we had a whole conversation with one look.

If we wanted this done, and done without too much fuss from the clubs, we had to do it ourselves.

"I'll ride with him," I offered. "You want to follow behind on your bike?" I asked.

To that, she took a deep breath. "Had other plans than hiding a body with the enemy tonight, but we gotta do what we gotta do," she said, waving a hand, then moving toward her bike.

"Enemies, huh?" A asked, shooting me a smirk with knowing eyes before turning back toward his SUV, and climbing inside.

I limped behind, watching Danny slip her helmet on, then turn over her bike, all the while thinking about her riding me on that bike.

Enemies, huh?