Dark Temptation (Dark Saints MC Book 2)(38)

There was a faded letter. I skimmed over it and saw it was signed, Tommy Bass. My heart stopped.

Jesus. That was the man my Great Granddad had put away in Port Az. Benz’s Dad.

I read the letter.



Eli,



I got Ranger D on the take. I can hole up here for a spell.

Steer clear of Texas until I get word to you.



Tommy



Ranger D. He was talking about my Great Grandfather.

I rifled through the box of papers.

There was a deposit ticket for a lot of cash. The ticket had a familiar name.

Randolph Davidson. Ranger D. My Great Grandfather. He was a hero. He’d killed the notorious outlaw Tommy Bass.

It didn’t take me long to decipher what I was looking at. The contents of this long-missing, stolen safety deposit box revealed the trail of a bribe. It tore down with numbers and facts the storied history of my hero Great Grandfather.

It was so clear that I felt the history of my family, my history, shift again.

Legendary Ranger Randolph Davidson, who had a prominent place in the timeline I was sent to preserve, was as dirty as Tommy Bass.

He took a bride from Bass and then killed him. The killing made him a hero, and it ensured that no one would know he’d gotten rich off the man he was sent to put away.

It was disgusting. I didn’t know what to feel. For the first time in my life, I was glad that my Daddy wasn’t around. This would have crushed him. It almost did me.

Almost.

I called the number on the card.

A deep voice answered on the other end.

“Yeah.”

“Who is this?” I asked, but I had a memory of that voice. I had an idea.

“Ah, this is little Miss Guffy, isn’t it? You got my package.”

“Bear?”

“Yeah. Good bit of detective work.”

“Why?”

“As I’m sure you’ve seen that box is rock solid proof that your Great Grand Daddy was as crooked as Benz’s eh?”

“I looked at it.”

“Then you’ll see Bass paid Davidson a nice bit of money. And that was the down payment, I think, on that nice house your family grew up in. Dirty as hell, eh?”

“Are you trying to blackmail me?”

“No, but that’s exactly what Kenny Bass was going to try to do to your Daddy. Everybody thought he wanted the money. What he really wanted was to prove something about Tommy Bass and the Legendary Ranger Davidson. That was fucked up, eh? But he didn’t get the chance. Your Daddy did his job, Miss Guffy. And one more thing, Kenny Bass wasn’t a Saint. He was as shit. Your Daddy did the world a favor. As you can see.”

“Why send this to me? Why now?”

“It’s a peace offering. Do with this what you will. We’ve kept it buried.”

“Why didn’t you share it? Why did you protect The Rangers?”

“Kindness of my heart,” Bear said.

“Ah, really sweet of you. I still don’t know why you sent it to me.”

“Benz is in love with you. He knows what’s in there too now, by the way. He ain’t been the same since you left. I know a little about what he’s feeling. If you’re going to be an old lady, you need to trust me. You need to trust the club. I sat on that box for a long time. I made sure the world believed the Ranger Davidson myth. Hell, and if your Daddy killed his Daddy over that box? That’s a little mess too, isn’t it? Muddy waters all around. Either way, you have it now and can keep it safe. Consider it a peace offering.”

I didn’t know about peace. I didn’t feel peace at all. Beyond that, Bear was acting like repairing things with Benz was up to me. That wasn’t true.

“Benz ended it between us. Not me.”

“Like I said. Do what you want with that box and the information. But if you do get it in your mind to be with Benz, you get us too. The whole club. It’s a complicated package, isn’t it, Miss Guffy?”

The line went dead. The conversation was over.

Bear was complicated as fuck and so was what he’d sent me.

I tried to process it all. I wondered what my Daddy had known about all this. I wished I could confront my Grandmother. But they were gone. All of them were gone.

I wondered if my Daddy was trying to protect his family legacy or was he just trying to catch a bank robber when he took that bullet?

I didn’t have those answers. But I had been assigned a job from the Texas Department of Public Safety. I was going to finish entering the primary documents so historians could compile the official history of the Texas Rangers in Port Azrael Texas.

I took the entire contents of the safety deposit box and entered it into the digital record.

I did exactly what I had been assigned to do in Port Azrael.

The Texas Ranger history was layered, rich, good, and bad. And maybe my family had a part of both sides of that. My Great Granddad was the bad and I hoped my Daddy was the good. I wanted to believe that.

The Dark Saints history, I knew less about that. I only really knew what had happened to Benz and me. I knew what Bear had ordered.

I knew that Benz and his brothers had all agreed it was wrong and changed it. Every single one had gone against their Prez to save me. It may have been loyalty to Benz or fear of the law. Either way, they stood together and I wound up safe.