The woman turned and saw her kid being held safely by the cops, and nearly fainted with relief.
She went down into recovery position with her hands on her knees, her head hung low, and started to sob.
Just as I was about to move in her direction—I couldn’t handle crying women at all. They broke my heart—Bruno moved instead, looking like he was heading toward a pit of snakes instead of a crying chick.
When he got to her, he helped her stand upright then said, “Get your shit under control. You need to be strong for your kid. She sees you crying, she’s going to cry, too. And we sure the fuck don’t want that, do we?”
“I think we could’ve found someone else to send over there and console a frantic woman,” Hunt mused from my side.
“Agreed,” Laric said, coming up and taking Bruno’s place at my side. “It’s like sending in the death squad when all you need is the order squad.”
There were snorts all around, even from Blaise who had yet to meet my eyes again since we’d gotten over to the group.
CHAPTER 11
Am I packing all of my shit, or are we going out to eat?
-Blaise to Sin
BLAISE
“Oh my God!” Beckham stood up and all but body slammed into me. “What are you doing here?”
“Babe,” Trouper, Beckham’s husband, said. “Did you not notice the man whose hand she’s holding? That would be the reason she’s here.”
I liked Trouper, Beckham’s husband. I’d met him a time or two on the visits to Kilgore.
Then she’d moved, I’d gone into the Army. Then I’d come home and followed a certain someone all over the country, and life had just gotten in the way.
“I can’t believe that you’re finally back.” She pulled away and cupped my face. “You look like utter shit. Like, there are bags under your eyes, your face looks like you lost weight, and I’m pretty sure that scar is new.”
She pointed to a scar that was on my upper face, and I tensed.
The man at my side looked at me, something crossing over his face.
“Where did you get that?” Trouper asked. “That looks like a split lip.”
Fucking fuck.
“Ummm,” I hesitated.
“Just tell us,” the man at my side ordered. “We’re not leaving this spot until we know.”
Son of a cock-sucking whore!
I knew—fucking knew!—that he was going to blow this out of proportion.
He’d always hated me being a prison guard. And when I say hated, I mean, he’d despised it with every single cell in his body.
He hadn’t really mentioned me continuing to be a prison guard now that he wasn’t in the prison system—which I knew to be the only reason he allowed me to do it when I’d done it, because I would be seeing him as much as I could—but now? Honestly, I’d kind of taken it as a boon these last few weeks that he hadn’t paid attention to me.
I’d gotten to establish myself with the new prison, Bear Bottom Penitentiary, and I’d gotten to do that without an overprotective man at my back bitching and complaining that I was working at a prison. With convicted felons. Some convicted felons who, might I add, were in there for doing not nice things to women.
This particular scar had come about in a way that I knew he wasn’t going to like.
Something that had happened after my first week on the job at Bear Bottom Penitentiary.
“Ummm,” I hesitated.
“That’s new enough that I haven’t seen it in the last month,” Sin drawled, sounding for all he was worth as if he was just talking to a bunch of friends—which I guess he was—but not sounding at all mad like I knew he was. “So… where in the prison did it happen? Which one of the prisoners that has raped, beaten, or abused females in some way did it? Do they know that you’re pregnant?”
I tried to disentangle my hand from Sin’s at the same time as Beckham said, “Pregnant?”
“Pregnant,” Trouper confirmed he heard words.
“I didn’t even know that you were here until today!” Beckham cried. “And now you’re pregnant? With Sin’s baby? What the absolute hell, Blaise? I thought we were friends. How far along are you?”
“It gets better,” I heard someone call from farther in the house. “You’ll never guess where she conceived Sinbad’s baby.”
I winced.
“The last prison he was in,” someone else called out. “Bet!”
Fuck.
“Blaise!” Beckham gasped, scandalized.
“Jesus Christ,” Sin pulled me so that my attention was back on him. “Where did you get that fucking cut on your lip?”
“There was a scuffle,” I grumbled, not meeting his eyes. “And that scuffle in turn got really close to me while I was walking to the break room. I swear to God, Sin. I’m in the D unit. That’s people that are in there for white-collar crimes, and they’re wimpy men at that. Plus, I’m in the infirmary! I did everything right. I’m on light duty. The warden is super cool. I know him well. He’s good. I swear. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
That’s when he caught my chin and tilted it up so that his eyes could meet mine.
“And what if that happens again? What if the next time it harms our baby?” he countered.
He did have a point.
Shit.
“If I quit… I don’t have anything else to do,” I said. “I don’t make enough to live, and I’ll have to go home. There’s nothing here to do unless I want to drive an hour into Kilgore and work there. And, just sayin’, but the only thing I’ve ever done is work as a prison guard. I haven’t even waitressed. I don’t have a college degree. That means driving an hour for a minimum-wage job that’ll suck. While I’m pregnant. Which they’ll not look too kindly on. I know—know—that they’re not supposed to discriminate because I’m pregnant, but seriously. They will. Who wants to hire someone that they’re going to have to give time off to in eight months? Or, hell, even before that because I’ll have doctors’ appointments and shit like that to do.”
By the time I was done ranting, he was looking at me like I was crazy.
“You could work here until the baby comes,” Lynn, one of my grandfather’s good friends, said as he came into the room. “That work you did today was wonderful. You calmed that baby down. You stuck with her. I could use a few good, cool heads around here. There seems to be some missing. Plus, you could do light duty. Things that we know won’t get you in trouble.”
I blinked miserably at Lynn. Then shook my head as if to clear it.
“You can go back to the prison guard life after you have our baby.” Sin looked happy at the turn of events. “Or not at all. Because you want to stay home with our kid.”
“It really is nice working with them,” Beckham nodded her head in agreement. “And I could use some help.”
“I could, too,” Hunt, one of the men I’d met just today, said. “I’m drowning in work.”
“And you could help me,” Zach said as he came into the room.
I grinned wickedly at my old friend.
Zach, Beckham, and me all in one place.
This was bound to be great.
“Zach, will you deliver my baby?” I grinned.
Zach’s eyelid twitched. “I’m not a doctor anymore. Remember? I’m a convicted felon.”
“But you promised,” I whined.
“You promised me, too,” Beckham got in on my game. “You said that you’d do whatever we needed when you became a doctor. You promised us both when we were eleven that when the time came, whatever specialty you chose, you would help us in any way you could. And since you didn’t deliver Hiro, I’m gonna have to have another one so that you can deliver that one.”
A long time ago, during one of our many MC get-togethers, all of us Dixie Warden MC kids had made a pact. That we’d stick together no matter what. And when the time came, family took care of family.
Only, none of us had thought that Zach would go into life being an OB-GYN d
elivering babies and looking at women’s hoo-hahs all day long.
“He is not going anywhere near you,” Sin snapped as he pulled me into his side. “Over my dead body, anyway.”
“Thank you,” Zach shuddered. “When we made that pact, there wasn’t supposed to be any of that going on. I always thought I was going to be a neurosurgeon.”
Everybody laughed, and the tension that was once upon a time in the air dissipated.
My shoulders slumped right along with it.
“I have to give two weeks’ notice, or they won’t hire me back,” I told the room at large. “And my feet are killing me, I’m starving, and I’ve had to pee for the last hour. Can we go inside and do that now?”
Everybody moved at once, dispersing in opposite directions.
I really did have to go to the bathroom, though. And I couldn’t even take my time taking in the beautiful house I’d walked into.
“You pee,” Sin took my hand and led me to the door that obviously had a bathroom behind it. “I’ll go see what I can find you to eat.”
Then he was gone, leaving me alone with Beckham who’d followed.
“We’re talking later,” she promised.
I rolled my eyes. “Whatever.”
CHAPTER 12
Where did the saying ‘balls hot’ come from anyway? They’re body temperature. I’ve felt hotter.
-Blaise to Sin
BLAISE
So there was Patrick, call me ‘Trick,’ who owned and ran a bar. And Swayze, his ‘girl’ as Trick kept calling her, was a lawyer.
Then there was Trouper and Beckham, who I did know.
Hunt, the computer genius, and Wyett, his very beautiful wife that happened to be a nurse going to school to be a nurse anesthetist.
Then there was Lynn and his woman, Six. Six, who was a nature videographer that happened to be very, very popular. I’d even heard of her and I avoided social media like the plague.
Then there was Zach, my successful doctor friend.
Bruno, the man that I was fairly sure was an FBI agent, but alas he was very secretive and I honestly hadn’t been able to get much out of him besides the ‘hello’ I’d gotten, or the odd ‘same’ or ‘agreed’ here or there since we’d met.
Laric, who happened to be Lynn’s son, something I wasn’t sure that Laric appreciated all that much seeing as every time it was brought up, he scowled. Laric ran a military working dog rescue.
“There are others in our club,” Six chattered as she took another slice of pizza. It was her third. “Phelan, Copeland, and Janvier. All three are great guys, but they’re normal nine to fivers. They don’t do this dangerous shit.” She gestured to the room around her. “They all have kids and families and jobs that would require them to be law-abiding.”
That made sense.
“You don’t think I’m law-abiding?” Wyett asked.
“You are,” Six shrugged. “But your husband is shady as shit.”
Wyett snickered as she looked over at her husband who didn’t even flinch at Six’s words.
“True,” she agreed. “Beckham’s not shady.”
“I’m kind of shady,” Beckham said. “If I have to be. I’ll lie, cheat, and steal if it helps bring even one kid home.” Her eyes went to me. “Kind of like you did today.”
I had kind of done something illegal, I guessed.
If you count getting into someone’s car and locking them out of it illegal.
“Your grandfather is going to fuckin’ kill me,” Lynn grumbled as he rubbed his face with his hands. “Just say that I put up a fight, okay?”
That was aimed at me, and I couldn’t help but smile.
“I think when I tell him that I’m pregnant, and that I’m getting with the man that went to prison for me, he’ll probably forget that you offered me a job,” I admitted.
Zach snorted as he too reached for another piece of pizza.
I looked at the pizza longingly.
I’d already had two slices.
I wanted a third, but I was afraid that if I ate it, I might look like a complete fat ass.
Six didn’t because she was so damn small.
But me on the other hand? I’d already gained eight pounds in a month.
If I continued on like this for the next thirty or so weeks, I’d be regretting it.
“If you want it, eat it.” Six looked directly at me. “I’ve gained literally twenty pounds, and I don’t even care. When in your life are you going to be able to eat what you want to eat and blame it on the baby ever again?”
Yeah, that was another thing I’d learned today. Lynn had gotten Six, who was muuuuch younger than him, pregnant.
I wasn’t quite sure how far along she was, but far enough that I could see the tiniest of bumps every time her shirt rode up to expose her stomach. Which it did a lot because, according to her, they were all too small now.
Sin reached for the pizza and handed it to me, and I had no other choice but to eat it.
“So good news and bad news,” Hunt said as he pulled his glasses off and placed them onto Wyett’s lap. After he got done rubbing his eyes he said, “That guy that Blaise found today was named Bronson Huffman. Thirty-three. Ex-con and all-around go-getter. I say that because he’s been in and out of prison since he was a teenager. Petty theft. Robbery. Etcetera. But he found himself a good gig that paid. Transporting. According to him and his confession today, this was his first time transporting a child. A man and woman contacted him, on two separate occasions, and set this up with him. Transporting a child from our small town to a place in Deep East Texas. Though, according to him, he didn’t know that this child was kidnapped. He thought it was their child, but they were divorced, and he was taking this kid from one parent to the other.”
“Could be legit,” Six said, giving the man the benefit of the doubt. “Other than screaming at the little girl, he didn’t really do anything to harm her. Who was the guy that gave him the kid in the first place?”
He looked at me.
“That’s where I think Blaise might be in a bit of trouble,” Hunt said, sounding hesitant. “The handoff happened at the grocery store where she first saw the girl. I hacked into the feed there. The older man handed the kid off and left. And it was not even two seconds later that you can see Blaise come into view. She didn’t see anything, but the man that did the handoff isn’t going to know that. And since Blaise’s picture is already plastered all over the news for saving this girl, having followed her from a grocery store to the gas station on a stolen bike, I don’t think we’re going to be able to keep her identity hidden from that man. Who is definitely going to think that he was seen.”
“What about the woman that he was transporting to? Or the numbers that were called from? Any luck on those?” Bruno spoke up, leaning back in his chair with his arm over the back of the couch.
“Both non-working numbers as of early this morning. They were burners from a Walmart in Deep East Texas. Purchased with cash. I pulled up records of when they were bought. A man wearing a big ass sun hat bought them. No identifying marks or anything really special about him to identify him. Cameras in the parking lot show him getting into a nondescript black sedan the moment he gets out of the doors of the building. They were really good about avoiding all cameras in the store and in the parking lot,” Hunt explained.
“Fuck,” Lynn grumbled. “Fucking shit.”
Fucking shit was right.
“The man here is the focus,” Sin suggested. “We need to find him. This is probably a base station for him. He finds the kids here, arranges transport, and sends them on their way.”
I finished off the last of my pizza, my tummy pleasantly full, and leaned back on the couch that I was planted in.
That was when I realized that my pants were way too tight, and they were pushing weirdly on my lower belly which really, really didn’t feel good.
As surreptitiously as I could, I pushed the waistband of my yoga pants—thank God for yoga pants—down until
it was on my lower hips.
My ass was probably showing on the backside, but as long as I didn’t get up too fast, I could keep that covered with my shirt.
When I looked up it was to find Beckham grinning at me.
“I remember when I was pregnant with Hiro, anything tight on my belly wasn’t ever comfortable. I couldn’t wear my regular clothes for nine freakin’ months,” she explained.
“That’s me now, too,” Six grumbled as she laid back on the couch, using Lynn as a pillow, and sprawled out with her feet on the coffee table next to the nearly empty pizza boxes. “That’s why I’m not wearing pants and I’m in this god-forsaken skirt.”
“Y’all make pregnancy sound very awesome,” Swayze drawled.
“It’s not all bad,” Wyett said as she joined in on the conversation with us, leaving the men to figure out how to deal with a couple of kidnappers. “At least from what Six tells me. She said that her sex life is on fire. That she has bigger boobs, and that she feels super good when she’s not puking.”
I grinned.
“These last four weeks.” I shook my head. “I’ve never felt like this before.”
I widened my eyes to tell them without ‘telling’ them what I meant.
Holy hell, had I been horny.
Obviously, some of that showed because I’d literally had sex in the back of a damn gas station parking lot today.
And didn’t even freakin’ care.
The women burst out laughing at my comment, and the man at my side leaned in and said, “What did I miss?”
The way his breath fanned out over my ear, all erotic and sexy and yum, had my nipples pebbling and goose bumps popping out all over the side that he spoke against.
I crossed my legs, which caused my shirt to ride up slightly, and a sliver of exposed skin had him running his finger along it.
Which didn’t help, either.
“Blaise was just telling us how horny she is all the time,” Six said as she reached for a piece of crust that her husband hadn’t finished. “And then you go and speak in her ear all sexy-like, and she got all flushed.”
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