Shelter From The Storm (The Bare Bones MC Book 6)(36)

Lytton persisted. “I used to be like you, Isherwood. A coldhearted, mean-spirited toolbag. June convinced me to live and love. There’s a bigger freedom in loving someone other than yourself.”

I snorted skeptically. “A week ago, Driving Hawk, I didn’t even love myself.”

He finally took off his shades, and there was the glint of a smile at the corners of his mouth. “That’s the beauty in it. Now you can do both.”





CHAPTER FOURTEEN




PIPPA


The air was cooling down with the sunset. An unreal, magical quality hung over the scene, enhanced by the bowl of starry sky above, infused with pot smoke—of inferior quality to our Young Man Blue, of course.

We took part in a religious pilgrimage, surging forth from the One Finger Salute to the ground where they had already built a wooden pyre for the Burning of the Bike. I got to know people I’d only heard of in Pure and Easy. I chatted awhile with Roman and Gudrun. Gudrun was the club lawyer Slushy’s daughter, a nurse’s assistant. Roman had headed up the indie rock band Little Accident before giving it up with revenge in mind for his father’s murder. Gudrun had been drugged and held prisoner in the same trap house as Tracy when Roman and Wolf had busted in, guns blazing from all accounts, to save them.

Tracy had told me the romantic story as we walked to the bar. Well, the saga didn’t start so romantically really, with Gudrun’s addiction to prescription painkillers leading them into a sleazy house where they’d been drugged and held in preparation for transport as human cargo.

“This was how I knew Wolf was the one for me,” she explained. “He came in in a shower of smoke and body parts to whisk me off to safety.”

“Then why did you spend so much time with Tobias?”

Tracy had paused, screwing up her face. “You know how you get distracted by something that isn’t right for you? You’re too afraid to believe in the dramatic, romantic story of someone else.”

I remembered how Fox had told me to create my own story. That was how my story would eventually mesh with someone else’s. Had he meant his own? “Yes, exactly. Sometimes the most dramatic story strikes fear into you. It makes you think your whole life with that person will be like that.”

“Right! I knew Wolf led a life of danger. All Tobias does is play video games and design spreadsheets for the Leaves of Grass. After the trauma I’d been through, I wanted safety. Security.”

“I can relate to that.” I really could. “When I first came to Pure and Easy, I felt safe inside my little space over the biker bar.”

Tracy laughed. “That’s rich, huh? Safe space over a biker bar?”

“I know. I totally saw the irony. But after all I’d been through with Russ, it was like a safe haven. I didn’t want any complications.”

“I had a boyfriend once who hit me,” Tracy confided.

I’d always felt like a fraud with that story about an abusive ex-husband. I felt I did a disservice to women who really had been beaten by men. The way I justified it to myself was remembering that my Russ had been abusive in his own way. Certainly selling your girlfriend to a ruthless cartel was a parallel sort of abuse.

And that was a story I couldn’t tell.

“That’s terrible,” I said lamely. “Was it just once, or repeatedly?”

Tracy shrugged. “Once was enough for me. But my point is, I’m going back to the danger of Wolf now. Wolf did something for me no one else ever did. He protected me. Don’t get me wrong—Tobias is a great guy. He’s certainly the brainiest as far as computer stuff goes. And Wolf can be sort of a doofus.”

“Sort of a turkey,” I agreed wholeheartedly.

Tracy looked shy. “But you know what? He made me feel wanted. He made me feel secure. He made me feel like…”

I easily supplied the words. “Like a lady.”

Tracy snapped her fingers. “Yes! That’s it! I realized Tobias and I were more like good friends. Wolf and I are in love.” We stopped in front of a street stand where two tattoo artists were at work. One filled in a realistic back piece on a guy depicting Marlon Brando on a bike. Tracy said slyly, “What about you and Fox? He’s hellafine. Is he sticking around?”

“I don’t know,” I said, suddenly despondent. “I wish he’d stay. But his apartment is in Nogales. That’s where he works out of.”

“Oh,” Tracy said innocently. “Does he work for the Jones cartel?”

You know how they say blood ran cold in someone’s veins? Well, mine did. It was like my brain was one of those instant cold packs and some giant had squeezed both sides of it to make it pop. I don’t know how long my brain was in the deep freeze. Eventually I somehow came out of it long enough to ask in what I hoped was a casual tone, “Why would you say that?”

“That’s their power base. Or so I hear. Course, it could be the Ochoas or the Presencións or any number of warring cartels.”

I flipped my hair over my shoulder. “Oh. I heard the Jones cartel was based in Laredo, Texas.”

Tracy shrugged. “There are all sorts of routes, but they all lead to Los Mochis in Sinaloa. Anyway, look at him. He’s probably a freelancer like Santiago Slayer. Fox is a güero, a white man. Why would he work for a cartel?”