Stay Vertical (The Bare Bones MC #2)(38)
So Madison, Turk, and I were shooting a little pool, enjoying the freedom from crying children. We’d already spent hours at a children’s birthday party. Parties for two year olds were incredibly stupid. The kids were probably like “Um, who are these other kids?” Madison claimed Fidelia would feel left out and ostracized if she didn’t go to the party, but do two year olds really feel offended by social gaffes like that? It wasn’t like they were familiar with their own social circle. Seemed to me the parties were mostly for the parents, and I didn’t know any of those women. It was an ordeal.
Every moment I didn’t spend with Lytton was an ordeal, but he had that “truck job” with that Isosceles Weaver guy today. I loved the freedom I felt up at Lytton’s farm, and I couldn’t wait to get back up there. Being with him was a happiness I wanted to last forever.
Maddy leaned on her pool cue. “What makes you think he doesn’t understand Ford’s reasoning? Maybe Ford’s reasoning doesn’t matter to him.”
I waited until I’d finished my shot. No good. I had no patience for this sort of nitpicky game. I leaned on my cue stick, too. “Well, maybe because I don’t know the reasoning behind it? I’m in the dark, Maddy. Maybe if I knew, I could convince Lytton to go easy on his brother.” I hadn’t breathed a word about Lytton’s involvement with The Cutlasses. As Lytton had instructed me, I was to pretend I hadn’t heard a word of any of his business dealings. At the very least, I was consorting with his cannabusiness enemies by hanging with Turk and Madison.
Was it my imagination, or did Turk shy away to the far side of the pool table to take his shot? He clearly wanted none of whatever the answer was. Madison even looked out the window at the red rocks in the distance. “Let’s just say, Cropper wasn’t the most delicate of people. He saw nothing standing in the way of putting his hands where they didn’t belong.”
I didn’t get it at first. “So he was sticking his finger in someone else’s piece of the pie? Isn’t that what bikers do?”
Turk scratched big-time, completely knocking the cue ball off the table. “Fuck!” he cursed, and had to crawl under a cocktail table to retrieve it.
Maddy came closer to me and lowered her voice. “Cropper molested me, June. Not just once, but several times.”
My heart thudded. I’d always seen Cropper as sort of creepy in that caveman sort of way, as though he had played too much without a helmet. I’d seen him strike Ingrid a few times, although I hardly felt protective of her when she’d done the same to us so many times before. I never felt any warm stepdaddy feeling from him, and was glad when he left, even though it meant Ingrid was in the lurch again.
But molesting Maddy? No doubt she didn’t want to dwell on it, and I in no way wanted to force her to relive anything, but of course I was curious. I had to step lightly. “Molested? As in—”
“Grabbed and fondled, yes,” Madison said quickly, taking the cue ball from Turk and setting it on the table.
“You don’t have to talk about this,” Turk said. “Just that June knows Ford had every good reason to do what he did.”
“Oh, I understand completely!” I said brightly, setting my hand on my sister’s shoulder.
Her look was dark. “Do you, really? Did he ever touch you?”
My hand on her shoulder became a dead weight. “Well, no, but I always got creepy feelings from…him…” Madison was right. How could I ever really know what she’d been through unless it had happened to me?
Turk said softly, “She didn’t tell Ford for a long time because she was afraid he’d kill Cropper. Rightfully so,” he added, before going to take a turn at the table that wasn’t his turn.
This was all too heavy for me, and I wanted to change the subject. Luckily, Maddy did it for me.
Suddenly cheerful, she said, “Listen, do you have any of that stuff you give Ingrid? Let’s take it out to that dog’s head rock at the end of that runway before it gets too dark.” Quieter, she leaned in and told me, “Don’t let Ford know we’re smoking Lytton’s stuff.”
Turk added, “That’s where the vortex is supposed to be.”
Pure and Easy was littered with psychic vortexes, columns of purified, concentrated energy that could cleanse your soul. The old airfield the Citadel was situated on was supposed to have several of them, and The Bare Bones were constantly having to deal with hippies toking up right where they wanted to wash their motorcycle or bang some chick. Having lived with some animist African tribes, I could probably fall for that woo-woo crap more gullibly than most people, so I agreed. “After the game.”
More steel-toed boots were clattering down the hall by the time I sank my last ball. Ford was on his cell, being trailed by Ziggy, Faux Pas, and Tuzigoot, who had become the new sergeant-at-arms after the disappearance of Cropper’s scary right-hand man, Riker. There were rumors that Ford had buried Riker as well.
“Man, this is going to blow back on us,” Ford was saying angrily. He stopped suddenly in the doorway to the game room, and Ziggy and Faux Pas nearly ran into him from behind. “That f*cker has his own agenda. We need to be united now more than ever, Duji. We’ve got to shut those f*cking Cutlasses down.”
Maddy and I exchanged a look that said uh-oh. I had my own reasons for being afraid of what Ford was talking about. As far as I knew, The Bare Bones had no idea Lytton was working for The Cutlasses.