Sinner's Steel (Sinner's Tribe Motorcycle Club #3)(52)
“You want to keep your presence hidden, you got to breathe through your nose, quiet like. Become one with the room. Even then, people can sense when they aren’t alone, so standing in plain view isn’t the best plan.”
“I wasn’t trying to hide. I was just seeing if you were awake.” Ty’s eyes drifted to the gun. “Is that real? Can I hold it?”
“Yeah it’s real. Can’t protect you if I got a play gun.” He pulled the gun from its holster and removed the magazine, then handed it to Ty.
“Who are you protecting us from?” Ty pointed the gun at Zane and pulled the trigger. Sweat beaded on Zane’s brow, and he silently congratulated himself for having the foresight to remove the magazine as opposed to just putting on the safety, even as he fought the urge to dive behind the couch, an instinctive response after what seemed a lifetime of gunfights with the Jacks.
“Bad guys.” He gently pushed Ty’s hand down so the gun pointed at the floor. “This isn’t a toy. You point a gun at a man, you gotta be prepared to kill him.” His pulse slowed and he wiped his brow. Lesson number one. Kids didn’t have a lot of common sense. Or maybe his son wanted to scare him to death. So far he was two for two this morning.
“Aren’t you a bad guy? I thought all bikers were bad. I see them on the news ’cause they blow up buildings and set fires and hurt people.” Ty handed the gun back to Zane, then spun around and walked around the room, holding his fingers in the form of a make-believe gun. He aimed at the vase on the kitchen table, then the window, then Evie’s bedroom door. “Pow. Pow. Pow.”
“Sometimes people hurt you and you gotta teach them a lesson so they don’t do it again.” Zane shifted on the couch. Did Ty need to learn those lessons yet? Wasn’t he too young?
“Pow.” Ty pressed his fingers to the back of Zane’s head.
“Jesus Christ.” Zane leaped off the couch, heart thudding in his chest. “You gotta learn to be careful with weapons. Even pretend ones.”
Ty’s face fell, and his bottom lip quivered. “Sorry.”
Fuck. Five minutes and he’d already screwed this up. He handed his gun back to Ty. “Here. I’ll show you how to handle it properly.”
For the next half hour, he showed Ty how to hold and carry a gun and load the magazine. He told him about the safety and how to aim at a target. He explained about recoil and how someone without much strength would have to brace against the backward thrust after a shot. Ty caught on pretty fast, considering he was only eight years old. When he held the gun perfectly balanced, his stance relaxed and his arms braced for an imaginary recoil, Zane felt a sting of pride. His son was no pansy. He’d get him out to a shooting range and—
“What’s going on? Ty! Put down that gun.”
Maybe not.
*
By the time Zane reached the clubhouse, the executive board was in session. Shooter and two senior patch members were at the safehouse keeping watch. Zane had checked all the locks and run a perimeter around Sparky’s shop before he left to make sure there were no Jacks hanging around. Evie had been more bemused than angry to find Ty learning to use a gun, and after Zane cooked them breakfast she seemed to forgive him. Still, there was an undeniable tension in the air, and he wondered if she regretted what they’d done last night.
He hadn’t intended for things to go as far as they did, and although he had relished the feeling of being intimate with her again, it was the time after, when she’d come to him for comfort, that told him what he wanted to know. She needed him. And even though he’d f*cked up, she trusted him with her body, and maybe even with a little of her heart.
Jagger gave him a curt nod and brought him up to speed. Tank and two of the junior patch had been out all night, hunting down leads on T-Rex. Their sources suggested Viper had an underground dungeon at his clubhouse, but because no one had ever left it alive, they didn’t have any details.
As expected, Viper refused to trade Doreen for T-Rex. Undeterred, Jagger had tabled a motion to defy National, the Sinners’ mother chapter, and go ahead with a raid on the Jacks’ clubhouse, not just to rescue T-Rex but to put down the Jacks for good.
“All in favor.” Jagger lifted his hand and all the board members followed suit without hesitation.
“We need someone inside now,” Gunner said. “We can’t wait for National’s approval. I know Cade’s been working up local Black Jack suppliers, trying to find someone who owes us a favor—”
Cade shook his head. “No luck so far. A favor isn’t worth the risk of being caught by the Jacks.”
“What about Mario?” Zane rocked back in his chair. He hated board meetings. They were the worst part of his role as VP. Give him his bike and the open road and he was a happy man, but sitting around the table, taking hours to make a decision he and Jagger could have made in three seconds, grated on him something fierce. Gunner shared his view. Always on the move, the club’s sergeant-at-arms could rarely sit through an entire meeting, and he was already on his feet, pacing the room as he spoke.
“We burned down his restaurant,” Gunner said. “He won’t be taking any risks for us.”
Zane would have killed to pace the room with him, but as VP he was forced to maintain decorum. “I had some of the junior patch check him out when we first talked about getting someone inside. The only reason the Jacks took over his restaurant, aside from the fact he’s a good cook, is ’cause he owed them fifty large that he gambled away. Even though the restaurant is gone, the Jacks won’t wipe out the debt. They still think he owes them.”