Stay Vertical (The Bare Bones MC #2)(37)
She stood to retrieve her pants. “Oh, I understand completely. I do have a hospice in mind but I believe it costs about seven thousand a month—”
Lytton stood too. Two figures were coming down the path toward the greenhouse. He could tell by the skinny cut of the rust-colored pants and the accompanying white belt that one was Tobiah. The other guy wore a black leather cut, making Lytton tense. “Doesn’t matter. Whichever one you choose is fine with me. Here, here’s your shirt.”
It was too late. June had barely stepped into her pants by the time Iso Weaver came barging down the aisle between the pot plants. “Driving Hawk!” Lytton knew Iso wasn’t terribly fond of him. He seemed to view him as competition of some kind, a threat. “We need to go over a few details of the Ochoa truck job. Well, hello.”
As if he hadn’t seen June from far away. As if that hadn’t hastened his journey down the pot plant aisle. Lytton bristled, and tried standing between June and Iso. “That’s fine. Let’s go back up to the house.”
“I tried to keep him up there,” Toby explained feebly, “but he saw June’s car and wanted to—”
“June, is it?” Iso stuck out a paw for her to shake, even though both her hands were tangled up in her mesh shirt, trying to get it on. “You’re Ford Illuminati’s sister-in-law, right?”
“Her eyes are up there,” Lytton barked. Now he had to crowbar himself between the two, Iso was standing so close. “Let’s take it back to the house, buddy.”
June, of course, saw no reason not to be polite to Iso. She yanked her shirt down over her boobs, but Iso didn’t tear his eyes from them. “Yes, I’m Madison’s sister. You know Ford?”
Toby chuckled. “I’ll say he knows Ford. Last time Ford and him were in the same proximity, Ford planted an IED in his warehouse, blew it all to hell.”
“That’s okay,” Iso said greasily. “We needed a new warehouse anyway. So you’re this moron’s new old lady?”
June said, “Oh, I wouldn’t say old lady. We just met. You’re not mad at Ford for blowing up your warehouse?”
“Shit happens. I don’t let it affect my business dealings with him.” Iso tried to take June’s arm, as if to escort her back to the greenhouse door. “So you’re not his old lady? That’s intriguing. We could use a girl like you around—”
“Enough.” Gripping Iso’s forearm, Lytton jerked the two apart forcefully. June looked at him with surprise, Iso with annoyance. “We’re working together, Iso, not brothers in a club who share everything. June, you got your boots?”
June had sat back down to pull on her boots, and Lytton’s phone was pinging with a call from Saul Goldblum at the health department. Fuck. Everything happens at once. He needed to make June his old lady soon, or those carnivorous vultures would swoop in for the kill before he could say “ponytail butt plug.”
“I’ll be right there,” June called out.
Lytton was more than happy to put distance between her and Iso as he shuffled him toward the door. He tried to distract the twisted biker by discussing the upcoming job.
“So obviously I can’t borrow any construction equipment from my brother Ford, but I was thinking we could just go to a safety equipment rental place and get some cones, stop paddles, shit like that. Maybe a roller or two.”
Iso said, “We’ve got a couple of little dump trucks we could drive down the hill to the meeting place. Our brother Tyke will be stationed near Vernon, so when the Staples truck whizzes by he can radio us to be prepared. Now, why don’t you make that little sweetbutt your old lady, Driving Hawk?”
“None of your f*cking business, Weaver. Why don’t we get some of those barricades with the flashing lights? It might be getting toward sunset by the time the Staples truck drives past our ambush point.”
“You could have a fake injured person on the side of the road,” suggested Toby. “Have someone waving down the Staples truck for help.”
“This is why we don’t invite you,” said Lytton. “We need the truck to stop, not speed up to ignore an injured person.”
“What’s wrong with that?” whined Toby. “Guy would be an insensitive jerk not to stop for a person whose limb is hanging off.”
“Lots of people go out of their way to ignore people with missing limbs. No, Iso’s plan is more straightforward. Gets the job done.”
“Shit. If you can’t add drama to the scene, what’s the point?”
Lytton rolled his eyes. Drama. Just what they needed more of. “We’ll just stick with our plans, thanks anyway, Toby.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
JUNE
“I’m sure if Lytton understood Ford’s reasoning for killing Cropper, he’d come around to Ford’s way of thinking.”
Madison and I had just dropped Fidelia off with Ford at the Citadel. It wasn’t hard to convince me to take a detour into the game room where a pool table beckoned. The interview with the Public Works Department wasn’t until next week and the only other possibility in the P & E area for me was a supervisory position for water agency meter readers. That was way below my skill set, and the personnel were being replaced by computers anyway.