Wild Ride (Wind Dragons MC #4.5)(8)

Besides Talon.

Shaking my head to get him out of my mind—as if that will work—I start my shift, looking forward to finishing so I can spend the evening at home with Rhett and Cara.





CHAPTER FIVE




Talon

I LOOK around the room and stare each man in the eye. “I don’t have many rules for the MC, but not f*cking around with drugs is one of them,” I say, tapping my fingers on the wooden table. “We make more than enough money from the guns, we don’t need to get into drugs. And if anyone is doing shit behind my back”—I flash them a threatening look—“or taking any hard-core drugs, I’m telling you now that I won’t be f*ckin’ happy. Does anyone have anything to say?”

I know that they dealt with drugs before I became president, but tough f*ckin’ shit, because I won’t put up with it. I want to lead a group of strong, powerful men, not pathetic junkies.

Everyone remains silent.

“Slice and Ranger, the two of you are picking up the next gun shipment, on Friday,” I say, looking down at the new address on the piece of paper in front of me. “Take Rep with you this time,” I add, thinking that the man should be more involved. “I think that’s everything.”

The whole time we’ve been in this room, I’ve been paying attention to all the men. Their body language, their expressions, their input. There are two of them who I’m concerned about drug use—Vik and Lash. The fact that Ranger still hasn’t explained what went on between him and Lash has me thinking that he knows something too, but I know he won’t rat out his brother. Still, when everyone else leaves, I ask Ranger to stay back so we can have a little talk.

I need to get to the bottom of this.



I hang up the phone on Shayla and her millions of questions, and rub the back of my neck in frustration. Yes, I realize that the setup with Shayla isn’t the best plan ever concocted, but I’m doing the best I can with the resources available to me. As much as it pains me to say, my clubhouse isn’t a safe enough place for my cousin to hide out in. I trust some of the men but not all of them, and there’s no way she could stay here with all the shit going on. With my plan to call in Vinnie, I do believe that she’ll be safe, and even if she gets into trouble, I trust that the Wind Dragons will step in if need be. A calculated move on my part, but a necessary one.

After getting jack shit out of Ranger, I go to my side job. I don’t really need the money, but teaching others how to ride motorbikes is a passion of mine, and one that I’ve been doing for years. The riding school is where I got my bike license, and the people there are really great.

“Hey, Talon,” Whitney purrs the second that I enter.

“Hey, Whit,” I reply, pretending I didn’t notice her sultry tone. I slept with her a few times about two years back, and now she won’t let me forget it. Drunk me and sober me had a talk about it, and we both decided we needed to cut her off.

“You’re early today,” she says, tilting her head to the side and biting her lip. “Came in to see me, huh?”

She wishes.

“Traffic wasn’t as bad as I’d thought it would be,” I tell her, but the truth was, I kind of just wanted to get away from the clubhouse a little bit. I realize how bad that is, considering I’m the f*ckin’ president, but it’s the truth, and I know that something has to give, something has to change to make me love being the leader of the Wild Men again. I love being in an MC: it’s the life I grew up in, and it’s all I know. The feeling of knowing you have the loyalty of these men, the bond, the brotherhood, it’s the best feeling in the world. It’s a f*ckin’ family, albeit dysfunctional. It’s a place of acceptance. But why doesn’t it feel like that anymore? If the men knew what I was thinking . . .

An eighteen-year-old boy comes in for his first lesson, and I just concentrate on that.

It’s a peaceful two hours.



When I return to the clubhouse that evening, as soon as I walk inside I can tell that something is terribly wrong. The men are all yelling at one another, which isn’t rare, but the atmosphere is tense, almost frantic. “What’s going on?” I yell over them, looking to Slice and Ranger, the two men I can always count on.

“We tried calling you,” Slice says in a tone that has the hair on the back of my neck and arms standing on end. Everyone else goes silent.

“My phone was on silent,” I admit, stepping closer to Slice and looking him right in the eye. “What the f*ck happened?”

Slice swallows, then nods his head to the living area, so I follow.

He points to the couch, where I see Zip lying there. Except, on closer inspection, he isn’t just lying there.

Fuck.

I bend down beside him, checking his pulse, or at least trying to.

He’s dead.

“Stabbed in the chest,” Slice says, scrubbing his hand down his face. I see the blood on Zip’s chest, so I gathered as much, but I don’t understand what the f*ck happened.

“How?”

“We don’t know,” Slice admits, looking down at Zip in sadness. “Lash and I found him; we came about an hour ago. Only Vik was here, but he was asleep. We need f*ckin’ cameras installed, because no one has any idea what happened here.”