“Put him down Callaghan,” Amelia crossed her arms.
“Not until he apologizes to you,” I shot back. “I don’t much care for men who talk to ladies like that.”
“She’s not a lady,” Brad grumbled as I sat him back down per Amelia’s request. Reluctantly, I released my grip and Brad scurried away.
“Why don’t you save your rough and tumble for the job you are here to do and not fight with my cousin,” she said offering me a coffee thermos.
“Your cousins a prick.”
“We all know that, but he’s family and I’ve learned to tune him out over the years.”
“You shouldn’t have to.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Amelia shook her head and her long locks of brown hair cascaded around her. She had no makeup on, all natural with barely a blemish. Her work jeans held her curves and I wondered how she worked in them, contouring to her ass and the t-shirt that melted itself to her breasts. It was the same type outfit as she had been in the last two days.
Although it was only sixty-five out this morning it would be another hot one and Amelia loaded her saddlebags with extra canteens of water and she pulled a lever action Henry .30-.30 out of a case, loaded it and re-cased it before putting it in the back of the UTV.
“Pretty sure that’s in the grey area of legal.”
“Pretty sure I don’t give a damn,” she replied. “Come on, we got to check the natural water supply and the pumps, we might as well load up in the UTV.”
“I need to get a handle on these rustlers Amelia. I need eyes, camera’s something. A track, a piece of gossip from a sale barn.”
“We think they are taking them into Mexico and if that’s the case there will be no reliable gossip. South of the border people have learned to watch what they say carefully,” Amelia started up the Kawasaki.
“What about security cameras?”
“We used to use trail cameras that the hunters use for tracking game, but they never got us any images. The day the cattle started going missing our trail cameras started to come up missing too.”
“Anyone else having rustler problems?”
Amelia shook her head. “Nothing out of the normal and that’s what bothers me. It feels like it’s almost personal. Usually rustlers don’t hit the same ranch this many times. It’s too dangerous. Yet they keep coming back. Feels like they want to end either my grandfather or the Charlon hold on Homeland. I hate it.”
That I understood all too well. The feeling of someone taking a personal attack on my family. It seemed to happen at least once every couple of years to the extent of major bloodshed. Every so often, usually once every few months, someone would challenge me or Destiny, Austin too when he was living, in a barroom or on a ride. Challenge the authority of the Callaghan family.
But last year someone, a patch brother, tried to end the Callaghan reign by trying to start a war with the Apache Warriors, the Black Pride and the Devil’s Bastards. The year before that it was more of the same. And before that the person who came up against us won when Austin was killed.
“I have to protect what’s mine. What’s my families Houston,” Amelia’s voice was soft. It wasn’t the strong firm voice she used every time she tried going head to head with me. The security of her voice usually told me that she was scared. Not of me not of these rustlers or what anyone in her family thought. But now, that sweet southern drawl was laced with all of it. Fear. The girl was terrified of the unknown.
“I know the feelin’ darlin’. And I promise you, I’ll be here to help you,” the seriousness of my voice shocked me enough to make me chuckle.
“What?” Amelia asked.
I shook my headed without answering. I didn’t make promises I didn’t intend to keep and I never made promises to women I wasn’t related to. Even then, I rarely made promises to the aunts and my sister.
“I made some calls last night. I got four guys coming in,” I said, changing the subject.
“I can’t afford…” Amelia cut in.
“Don’t worry about it. We will figure something out,” I put up my hand to silence her protests not giving a damn about the financial end of it. “Two are Bastards, one’s a Hellion and one doesn’t wear a patch. But trust me, he will have the same respect for you and your operation as I demand from the other three.
“I need their skills. They are good fighters, solid headed and good with guns. The no patch is a tracker. Bonafide tracker, the real deal and we’ll need him. You have hired hands that work the cattle with you and Brad, right?”
“Three right now. They come and go when I need them.”
“You need them. We need to move the herds as far inland from your property borders as possible and make this very uncomfortable for the rustlers to get to them. They will cut the fences, but they will have to slow down. My four will run patrols. Your block of acreage gives just over a fourteen-mile perimeter. My boys won’t ride horses, but they will bring off road vehicles. I can have them run patrols, two at a time. I’ll want them to stay together since could be considered dangerous, no one will ride alone. But it should only take them an hour at the max to do a sweep. It’s not the best plan but it will lower any window a rustler can take.”
“They will be locked and loaded?”
I glared at her. “What do you take me for?”
***
We spent the day running fence lines and checking water sources and counting cattle. Amelia took neat records of every head they had in a small pocket-sized notebook sporting a feed company logo that I had read over the day before. All the mature adults were wearing the Homelands brand and most of them wearing number ear tags too.
“Helps keep track of who is here and who isn’t. And who has had successful calves, their ages and the like for culling purposes,” she explained as she noted an ear tag number.
By five o’clock when we rolled back into the ranch yard, I was beat, and Amelia was looking defeated. They had another twenty head out of the block we worked alone missing. One fence had been cut and from what was left of the tire tracks I had picked up on, it wasn’t a semi they had brought in but a regular truck and trailer.
“No way we can get a make and model from that?” Amelia said from where she stood, her rifle draped over the crook in her arm like she was hoping one of them would be left for her to do target practice with.
“I’m not a blood hound or a forensic tech.”
“Too bad,” Amelia had replied, and we had moved on with our day.
I checked my phone when we had pulled back into the ranch yard. I had never set up a voicemail, on this phone or any other so when I noticed the missed call from Tommy Brestow, one of my nomad Bastards I had asked to join me at Homeland, I was forced to call him back.
“Missing your sister’s wedding comes at a price Callaghan,” Tommy said when he answered on the second ring.
“Security jobs always comes first.”
“Nomads don’t take jobs unless it’s back up for another charter. We do our own thing. And ‘sides, ranches don’t typically pay our protection rates.”
“We are in Texas, maybe it’s time to considering expanding. But if you’re not interested in the paycheck…”
“I’ll be in tonight, late, midnight at least. I’m meeting up with Josẽ and we will be down.”
Josẽ Gonzalez was the Hellion that I had called last night as well.
“Good. Speedy & Sticky Jones are coming in too.”
“Sticky gives me a migraine,” Tommy grumbled.
“He’s eccentric. But he’s one of the best trackers in the field and we may need him,” I hesitated. “This is club family, so I expect it to be handled accordingly.”
“Club family?”
“Tate’s family.”
***
I had declined coming in for dinner at the big house. Tensions probably weren’t the best up there still due to my arrival. The bunkhouse held its own kitchen and bath so hopefully interactions between Amelia’s grandparents and her mot
her, whom I had yet to meet, would be minimal.
As I had promised Amelia, the men I had called in weren’t to be feared by her and her family, but they were rough and tumble and didn’t exactly make great first impressions. I sat down to make a grocery and supply list. Usually when the crew was in town and set up we were near eateries or in the folds of a formal charter.
Formal charters had clubhouses. Clubhouses had old ladies like Sweetwater’s matriarchs Aunt Kristy and Aunt Stella. The two, along with the crew of wives, long-time girlfriends and the usual harem of other “old ladies” that floated around could put out a spread.
I knew nothing about that sort of thing. Supplies like guns and ammo were in my wheelhouse. Not bathroom amenities and groceries. I thought about calling home. A year ago, the thought wouldn’t have crossed my mind. My relationships with my family had been so strained that blood thirst had been the only thing that consumed me. The only thing that matter. Revenge for Austin…
Then I watched first hand as that same blood thirst consumed Destiny when Leto was killed. Sure, my patch brother’s death had only fed the fire that raged inside me, but it was Destiny’s turn to take it to that level.
Then Fabio was shot, intentionally taking bullets that were meant for Destiny. I had held my best friend in my arms as Destiny plugged the bullet wounds with her fingers. I felt his life blood soak my clothes as we raced through the night to the local hospital.
I had wrapped my sister in those same arms while she fell apart waiting for Fabio to come out of surgery, his survival unknown and at the time an unspoken un-likelihood.
A year ago, we were covered in our patch brother, our best friend, the man who was raised like family and who had sworn a loyalty to the Callaghan’s that no one else could dare to musters, blood. I watched it change the Double D. Watched it consume her like nothing, not even Austin’s death had. Watched her anger surpass anything I had ever felt.
In the few hours that Fabio’s attacker walked freely on this earth, I felt my sister fade into the darkness. Watched as she became one with it in her rabid hunt for blood, for death. I had been unable to reign her in because I never have the prayer of holding her back, that had always been Fabio’s job.
Destiny did a one-eighty that night. In a matter of hours, the woman who had grown up fierce yet nearly as level headed as Austin had been, took risks that in retrospect could have gotten us all killed. But she had been willing to risk it all. She met with leaders of opposing crews. She met with true gangbangers, the son of the Preacher, the head gangbanger who had ordered our mother’s death. Made a deal with him, came face to face with the Preacher himself, and then ended the traitor who had shot Fabio with her knife to his heart.
I knew the look on my sister’s face when she walked out of the garage that night. Destiny hadn’t regretted what she had done the way she had previously. My sister had taken more than one life in her years, but she never enjoyed it. Not like she enjoyed driving her knife in deep into Drew’s heart.
When Fabio woke up days later Destiny seemed to be cleansed of the crazed hurt. But I knew the toll it had already taken on her. Putting down traitors in the club, that was her specialty. Killing brothers, no matter how they betrayed you or your family, that could destroy the strongest solider.
I stared at the sparse shopping list and picked up my cell and started to dial. Kristy would be more than happy to give direction. But she would ask questions and then make demands about Destiny’s wedding. Then she would remind me that, once again, being nomad was without needed perks like having a family and a pack of old ladies to do the bidding. Then she would offer to send a crew in. Kristy had women all over five states that, much like how I raised the team that was coming, would answer to Kristy in a heartbeat and go anywhere to tend to men of our cut.
But I didn’t need that. Didn’t need Aunt Stella and her much of the same ways either.
Chapter Seven
Amelia
“He’s bringing more men in,” I told the family around the dinner table. Brad hadn’t bothered to come in for dinner tonight, not that I gave a damn. These conversations, any conversation, was easier to have without him.
“How many more?” Grandpa George asked over his roast beef and potatoes.
“Four, they should be here in the next day or so. It’s a solid plan Grandpa, as solid of one that we got.”
“Facing rustlers is a dangerous game,” Grandma Eloise added.
“These men who are coming to help could be as equally dangerous. I don’t know what you’re thinking,” Susanne, my mother, added.
“Yes, facing rustlers is dangerous. But the Charlon family has been doing it for nearly two centuries. We can’t back down now and risk losing it all. And these men that are coming, they are dangerous. That’s the point, but they won’t be dangerous to us.” Every time so much as a word about rustlers was spoken, my family’s response drove me further into frustration. Maybe once we made headway in stopping the cattle thieves, then they would see. See that I was making the right call keeping Houston around, that I was capable of doing this no matter what was between, or lacking between, my legs.
“You have no guarantee they won’t harm this family. That they won’t harm you. I don’t like the idea of you being alone with that Houston,” Grandpa George’s tone was firm, Lord he was as stubborn as I was.
“You don’t have to like it for it to happen. Houston promised me we would be fine. Besides, if Houston wanted to harm me he would have back in Amarillo. Instead he had my back. He’s Tate’s best friend, his club president. They see each other like family. That means something to Tate and it means something to Houston. To Houston that makes us his extended family and the men he is bringing here will honor that and the promise Houston made to me.”
“You really think he can control his men enough that they can stop this cattle rustling?” Mom asked.
“Have you seen him Mom? He’s two-hundred and forty pounds of solid muscle. The man can make anyone toe a line if he puts his mind to it!”
“Fine. We will let you try your way. But I will be spending more time on the range with you,” Grandpa George conceded.
I stared at my plate to contain my annoyance. It was an old song and dance. At twenty-three I wasn’t the incompetent infant they took me for.
We finished our dinner in near silence. I helped clear the table and then made Houston a plate, wrapped saran wrap over it and headed for the bunkhouse.
It was already pushing six-thirty. We had been back at the ranch yard for over an hour now and I expected to find him collapsed in bed. Instead, he was sitting on the small back porch, hair wet and slicked back from a shower, his jeans slung low on hips, and shirtless.
His body was more impressive than my very overactive imagination had painted in the nights since Amarillo. Naked arms bulged like boulders, his stomach was flat and hard, not sporting full six pack abs but close. His skin, covered with tattoos. The ones that I knew about, which climbed up his arms, and now I could see the ones that peeked out of the collar of his t-shirt and decorated his chest. I was sure his back was more of the same.
I fought to hold the plate in my hands steady and tried to hold my composure as well. I forced my eyes to drag themselves back north and away from the extremely impressive and dangerous “V” that dipped beneath the waistband of his jeans.
“Um, I, I brought supper,” I finally managed to force out and Houston grinned. Oh crap! He knows the effect he has but does he have to be amused that he has it on me as well?
“Smells good,” he said standing up. “Please, it’s your place, feel free to join me on the porch.”
I walked up the two steps to the porch and handed him the plate. “Just roast beef, potatoes, green beans and gravy. Grams cooked, I made the plate, nothing special but you didn’t come to the house and our lunch sandwiches were hours ago,” I stopped short, realizing that the annoying childhood habit of rambling had chosen now to make an appearance.
“I’ll l
eave you to it,” I muttered backing away as Houston unwrapped the plate.
“Actually, I was wondering if you knew of anywhere in town I could go for supplies. A few of my guys will be riding in late at night and they’re like me, they travel light, so I’m going to need some staples in here,” Houston paused eating his dinner and motioned to the shopping list he had started.
I picked up the scrap of paper that sat on the small outdoor table that perched on the porch. “It just says supplies: food and bathroom stuff.”
“You have seen where I live. I’m not exactly Martha Stewart.”
“How have you functioned your whole life?”
“Fast food, strings of girls and my aunts.”
“Girls, of course. No mom?” And there’s the rambling again, I winced. “I’m sorry that was rude and intrusive.”
Houston laughed. “I expect no less from you. And no, no mom. She died when I very young.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It was a long time ago,” he shrugged, and I watched him push his food around with the fork for a moment before diving back in. Apparently, little halted his appetite. “Anyways,” Houston continued, “as you can see I could use the help. Do you mind coming into town with me?”
“Sure. Don’t exactly care to hang around here tonight.”
Houston finished eating his dinner, put his plate and fork in the small kitchen sink and grabbed a shirt from his bag on the kitchen table. He pulled the dark t-shirt on and walked back out onto the porch, stuffing his pistols into his shoulder holsters and pulled his cut on.
“Do you go everywhere with that thing?” I asked staring at the leather.
“Honey I only take it off for two things.”
“And that is?”
Houston walked up close enough to where I had to look up at him to not be staring directly at his vast chest. “Showering, obviously, and having…”
“Never mind!” I cut him off with a blush. Damn me, blushing like a virgin. His deep chested chuckle made my ears burn.
“Course that’s ladies’ choice.”
“You are cocky and arrogant you know that, right?”
Houston Callaghan: The Devil's Bastards MC Page 4