Have Gun, Will Travel (The Bare Bones MC #5)(47)
Leo actually started to roll up his sleeves. “Why, you f*cking arrogant son of a f*cking bitch! Who the f*ck hasn’t heard of the Storming Skeletons?”
“Well, me, for one,” said Faux Pas, inserting himself into the family argument.
“And me,” agreed Wild Man, brave now that a senior patch holder was stating his opinion. “And he had that mortifying brain bucket on. Who the hell wears a microphone?”
The crimson tide in Leo’s face had now risen past his eyeballs, staining them the same color. “Listen, you motherf*cker. Why don’t you take your f*cking slutty nun and leave the premises? Take her far, far on the road where you can’t contaminate anyone with your putrid presence. No one wants to hear your f*cking ideas.”
“I do,” said Faux Pas, just as Sax slugged his brother.
His balled fist connected right in the middle of Leo’s jaw. His mouth was still open, flapping its gums away freely, when Sax made contact with the fierce uppercut. Like Slayer before him, Leo went flying, but he had no building to stop his flight. He landed with a whump on the asphalt, and a couple people even clapped. Sax went to stand victoriously over his sorry excuse for a brother.
“Leo fights for himself,” he growled. “I fight for all Bare Boners everywhere, regardless of affiliation or chapter. I’m making no distinction or have no prejudice”—he uttered that word with particular emphasis, thinking of Harte—“against any patched brother because we don’t patch in just any cowardly, trivial Prospect. We patch in brave men of f*cking honor, not mewling little cowards who run to the feds to get out of a rap. Our men stand together with integrity and balls, even when faced with jail or death.”
“Here, here,” said Faux Pas, and several men echoed him.
Sax continued talking to the writhing Prez. “If you want to keep turning in your brothers, you’d best be prepared to take the consequences…brother.”
As he turned on his heel to stalk out with pride, Sax saw the faces of more brothers around him. The Prez of the mother chapter himself, Ford Illuminati, was there, his face shining at Sax with honor and pride. Ford’s own half-brother, Lytton, was there, beaming from ear to ear, and so were a couple of the original founding members, Duji and Tuzigoot, reeking of fried catfish. Sax saw countless other brothers who had drifted over at the prospect of a fight. Even guys he didn’t particularly like, such as Papa Ewey and Shady Osborne, had come to show their support for Sax. It was as if they had radar embedded in their skulls, pinging whenever a fight started, wanting to get in on it.
Some men even clapped Sax on the back as he walked by, like running the gauntlet.
“Keep up the good work, bro,” said Duji. “We’ve got eyes on this guy.”
That filled Sax with satisfaction. But his main goal, now he’d dispensed with Leo temporarily, was to find Bee. To give her comfort.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
BEATRIX
“Did you make fish for me because it’s Friday?”
I grinned at Sax’s confusion. He was obviously not a religious man and of course I didn’t hold that against him in any way. It was sort of cute, his confusion. “What? Why Friday? No, I just figured you seemed like a fish kind of gal.”
I swallowed my tilapia. “You mean, a sort of fishy type of girl?” We were sitting at Sax’s dining room table enjoying the meal he’d cooked for me. I was so astounded he’d invited me to his house that I was still in shock, afraid to make a wrong move for fear the dream would evaporate. Just seeing his house was a whirlwind of discovery. Once I moved around the rooms of the A-frame nestled under ponderosa pines, I saw that everything fit him to a T, except maybe the Xbox his house sitter had left behind. He had given notice to his old family friend Lila for her to move out, a sign to me that he planned on sticking around on a more fulltime basis.
I loved his smile. “Not exactly. Just that you seem to be conscious of your diet. You’re very…trim.”
“You mean flat-chested. That’s all right. Go ahead. Say it,” I teased.
“I never noticed,” he said, straight-faced, shoveling some rice into his mouth.
I sighed with contentment and sipped the cabernet his roommate hadn’t consumed. He said he used to have quite the wine cellar but over time Lila had cleaned him out. He hadn’t added to the cellar in recent years, not having much room in his saddlebags for anything other than rocks. Of course there was an abundance of those all over the house. He said he dealt in mostly thumbnails, the smaller rocks being easier to transport, but he had several “rock cabinets” brimming with larger specimens. Amazing native copper from Michigan, silver from Nevada, gold from California, and of course plenty of Arizona turquoise, azurite, and malachite. He had fluorite from Namibia, giant cubic pyrite from Spain, and tons of different puffy white things that looked like bunny rabbits. I’d always remotely admired minerals, so I spent quite a bit of time studying his specimens. It was breathtaking.
I guess I thought this was as good a time as any to launch into the subject. “So what’s the next step with Tormenta?” I tried to make light of it. “Hey, it’s some of my money on that bounty. I need to know the status.”
He didn’t seem to mind telling me. “As long as you don’t take it upon yourself and go running out trying to help, little sister. I put a tracker on his car, and kind of a doofus mistake Tobiah made might actually turn out to come in handy. The quadcopter we used, he’d filled out a warranty card on it. Tormenta’s goons shot it down and wound up looking up the warranty information. Unluckily for Tobiah he had it registered to him up at the Leaves of Grass pot farm address, so they’ve got extra guards around the clock up there.”