Angels and Ashes (Heaven's Rejects MC Book 2)

by Avelyn Paige

  Reaching back, I pull out my cell phone and shoot off a text to Raze.

  I’m not your personal babysitter. Why do I get the honor to watch your kids?

  His response is nearly immediate as my phone chirps with the incoming message.

  Because I can trust you to keep them safe. Plus, Harley needs a kick in the ass and I think you’re the right woman for the job.

  I can’t help it—I feel a jolt of happiness from his statement and his declaration that he can trust me. Yet, his entrusting of me with his kids doesn’t mean shit when it comes to him trusting me with Brent’s information. This club and trust aren’t exactly a two-way when it comes to someone outside of the brotherhood or when you have a pair of tits.

  I’ll keep them safe, but you owe me.

  He responds almost immediately again.

  Like what? You have something special in mind?

  I know this will set him off, but I can’t help it. A fair trade is a fair trade.

  The information I gave you and the truth about my husband’s death.

  The quickness of his responses end, and it’s several minutes before my phone chimes again.

  Brent died from a bike accident, Darcy. Quit trying to make a mountain out of a mole hill and just keep my kids safe. I’ll take them off your hands soon.

  The bastard may have thought he shut me down, but that’s about as far from the truth as you can get. I’ll get my answers whether he helps me or not. He’s a charmer for sure with his muscled body and strong, chiseled chin, but I won’t let myself fall for his tricks. He has every other woman in the world fooled with his looks and flirtatious ways but this one. I know when he’s bullshitting me, and right now, the bull is full of shit.

  Over the next two and half days, everything is peaceful with the minor exception of finding Harley smoking in my spare bathroom. I’ve worked hard to keep my kids away from second-hand smoke to the point that I nearly have a sixth sense of when it’s near me. After I ripped the lit cigarette out of Harley’s mouth, I forced her to watch me take each one from the pack that she had in her hand as I ripped them each in half and flushed them down the toilet one by one. The look of horror on her face was enough justification to know that I had moved from bitch to tyrant in her mind, but frankly, I don’t give a shit. A girl her age shouldn’t be smoking at all, and it shows the kind of absentee parenting that she has grown accustomed to with Maj being out of the picture.

  Settling back into my rocking chair on the patio while I drink my afternoon tea, I think about Raze’s ex-wife as a shuddering chill spirals down my spine. Her disappearance has never settled the right way with me, but that’s his bed to lie in, not mine. The rumors of her leaving him and heading back home to Mexico seemed to satisfy everyone else, so what’s the point in questioning the fact that she left her own flesh and blood behind without a second thought? It seems fishy to me, but like I said, it’s none of my business since I wasn’t the one married to the bitch.

  My thoughts shift to the other half of that marital equation and what prompted this lockdown. Could it be the packet I found for him in Tijuana or did someone piss in his Cheerios? Heaven’s Rejects was truly a legitimate club now under his command, according to what Brent could tell me, that is, but it always seemed like they toed the line between the good guys and the bad. Thinking of Raze only reminds me of the appointment that I have today with one of the brothers in Delano. How in the hell am I going to get out from under the watchful eyes of the new club member stationed outside of my house? It’s not like I can stroll out to the garage, throw open the door, and nonchalantly just leave the house without him tipping off Raze and his band of watchmen. I wouldn’t get to the corner of our block without someone catching wind and reporting my escape back to him. Knowing him, I’d probably end up in chains next to Harley if I tried that. Hell, he would probably like that, and in a different situation, I might have volunteered as tribute for something like that.

  I rack my brain on how in the hell I am going to pull this off for several minutes before a muted scream comes from my bedroom.

  Shit. Dani.

  My cup falls from my hand and shatters against the cement of the patio as I bolt from my chair toward the patio door. Softer screams bellow from my room while I run down the hallway and burst through the door only to find Dani lying on the floor at the foot of her bed tightly gripping her belly. I rush to her side and slide on the carpet on my knees next to her. Her skin is moist from sweat and she’s gritting her teeth against the pain.

  “The babies,” she weakly whispers. “It’s too soon.”

  My hands fly to her stomach while tears begin to stream down Dani’s face. I’m not a medical expert, but even I can tell something is wrong. I’ve got to get her to the hospital before she delivers these babies pre-term.

  “Stay here and try to stay calm,” I order Dani. “Just keep breathing slowly and make sure you exhale when the pain is at its greatest. I’m going to go get my cell phone and call Hero and an ambulance. We need to get you to the hospital and see if they can stop the contractions.”

  Dani vigorously nods her head and another round of contractions hits her hard. She grits her teeth as she tries not to scream. I hesitantly rise from the ground and charge down the hallway in search of my cell phone that should be lying on the counter. I fumble trying to grab it from the counter top while my hand shakes trying to search my contacts. Harley and Ky barrel down the hallway when Dani screams from my room. Their eyes are both filled with panic.

  I fumble to dial Hero’s number and anxiously tap my foot waiting for him to answer.

  Pick up, Hero. Your wife fucking needs you. Come on. Come on. Pick up!

  “Yeah,” he barks into the phone.

  “Dani is in labor and I need you to get to the house now. I’m calling an ambulance,” I verbally spew out at him in quick succession.

  He doesn’t even respond before the line goes dead. I punch in 9-1-1 and give the operator my address while the woman on the phone assures me that it will only be a few minutes before the ambulance arrives before I hastely disconnect the call. Slamming my phone back down on the counter, I rush back to Dani, ordering Ky to go out front to not only tell Irons what is going on, but to watch for the ambulance while Harley takes Roxie and keeps the boys in their room. I don’t want them seeing their aunt Dani like this if I have to help deliver the babies. Once I reach her, both of her hands are on her belly and she inhales and exhales trying to force herself through the pain.

  “Hero?” she questions.

  “He’s on his way, and so is the ambulance.”

  Dani nods just as another round of contractions hits. These are coming far too close together to be anything good, and I hope she manages to make it to the hospital before she delivers. Dani grabs my hand and squeezes the shit out of me just as the wail of the ambulance grows louder.

  “The ambulance is coming, Dani. Hold on.”

  A few minutes later, two men burst into the room with two large medical bags followed quickly by Hero. He dives next to his wife on the ground while I scoot away to give them room.

  “It’s going to be okay, angel. It’s going to be okay,” he repeats to her, not just to comfort her, but himself. The paramedics ask Hero and Dani questions to ascertain the situation before the second man leaves and returns with a stretcher. As they slide the back board underneath her, Hero and I both grab a corner and help lift her onto the gurney. The men strap her down and Dani’s hands reach out for both Hero and me when they start to wheel her out of the bedroom and into the hall. I try to hold her hand, but maneuvering though the house is difficult with her conjoined to me so I release her from my grasp when they exit the front door and wheel her toward the ambulance. She is heaved quickly through the rear door, and Hero climbs in behind her.

  “I want Darcy to come with me,” begs Dani. “Please, Tyler. I need her with me.”

  “You heard her, Darcy. Get your shit and follow us,” Hero grunts before yelling for Irons to
move into the house.

  “Are you sure he’s qualified to watch four kids and baby?” I protest just as the paramedic moves to close the doors to the ambulance.

  Hero scoffs at me with narrowed eyes. “He’s all we have, and my wife needs you, so fucking deal with it.”

  After he barks his orders at me, the last door is locked into place and the ambulance pulls out of the drive with a wail of the sirens. I spring to action and run back into the house, grabbing my purse, phone, and keys while barking orders to the man I am entrusting not only with Raze’s children, but also my own.

  “I have a two-year-old, a six-year-old, and a teenager, Mrs. Kyle. I think I can handle this motley crew. I’ve already got a call over to the clubhouse for some reinforcements, so you put the rubber to the asphalt and help our girl bring those kids into this world.”

  I race out the door toward the driveway and slide into Brent’s car. I throw the car into reverse and zip down the streets, taking care to not go over the speed limit. California police cars have this unique ability to blend in and catch you completely off-guard, and because of their stealth, I had four tickets under my belt in the first year I lived in Upland alone. Slow and steady is the way to win the traffic jam race around here. Just as I turn into the hospital’s emergency room parking lot, a text beeps on my phone. Parking as close to the doors as I can, I reach into my purse and grab my phone as I push down the lock on the driver’s side door.

  Trax: You here? I ain’t waiting all fucking day.

  Shit, I can’t leave Dani to meet him, but an idea pops into my head as I rush to type a response as I briskly walk toward the rotating emergency entrance.

  Dani’s in labor. Meet me at San Antonio hospital in a couple of hours and I’ll get your money.

  Leave it to Dani to give me my opportunity to seek the truth. I just hope both of us are as lucky as I hope we are.

  “What the fuck do you mean that you haven’t found anything yet?” I yell at the men surrounding my table. “It’s been two Goddamn days and you haven’t found a fucking thing. How can there not be any evidence? She’s not that fucking good. There has to be a paper trail. A bread crumb. Something!”

  The men sit in silent solitude as I pace the front of the table. Anger flows through me like a flooded river seeking a new place to wash over the shore. The men that sit around this table are some of the best trackers in the security business and they’ve found jack shit on my ex-wife. I knew she was smart, but there’s no fucking way that she was this careful. She couldn’t even cover up her string of lovers from me, so how in the hell can she hide her connections to the cartel so well?

  “Prez, I know. I looked at every account in that stack you gave me and came up either empty-handed or on a money trail so long that even an army of hackers would take months to get a pin on the money’s location,” Voodoo retorts as he drums his fingers on the table. Large bags have formed under his eyes, and even someone from the outside can see that he hasn’t slept since I gave him his orders. I can’t fault him for this being outside of his skill set, but it still pisses me off that we aren’t closer to finding out where the fuck the money is or the reasoning behind their infiltration than we were two days ago.

  I rake my hands over my head in frustration as I let out an exasperated scream. The tension in the room only continues to rise with each passing second, and the boiling point will soon be reached.

  “Does anyone have anything to share? Hero? Tyson? Ratchet?”

  Each man’s eyes are downcast onto the table and their lips never utter a word.

  “Jesus, how did this bitch cover her tracks to the point we can’t find a scrap of evidence?”

  “I don’t know, Boss, but short of riding down to Mexico and finding them walking down the street, we’ve got nothing to go on at this point,” Hero says. “I wish we had better news, but even the police chatter about the Manuel Cartel isn’t giving us any leads.”

  A knock comes from the door as Slider’s head pokes through the opening. I glare at him, and a look of fear flashes over his face.

  “What the hell do you want?” I question him.

  “Prez, there’s someone here to see you. I know better than to interrupt Church, but I thought you’d want to know that Trax is here to see you. Says he has information for you.”

  I feel a flash of confusion cross my face before I motion for Slider to open the door farther and let our guest enter. Slider steps out of the way as Trax pushes past him. His boots stomp heavily on the hardwood of the meeting room before he trudges straight toward an open chair near the front of the table, plops down into it, and throws his muddy boots on top of the table.

  “To what do we owe this unexpected appearance, Trax? Last time I checked, lockdown meant you stayed your ass at the clubhouse until you got the all clear or a call to round up the posse.”

  Trax pulls out a knife from the holster on his thigh and grates it underneath his dirty fingers, tossing the dirt onto the floor. He slides the knife back into its place on his thigh before he even looks back at me.

  “I figured with your little on-going domestic problem that you might want to know some of the intel I have since one of my men fucked your ex-wife. The limp dick bastard squealed during his punishment for touching something that didn’t belong to him.”

  There are less than five people in this entire world that know about Maj’s infidelity, and he just announced the issue to every one of my brothers. So much for keeping that part of the story on the down low. It’s not that I didn’t want them to know, but it doesn’t exactly fill my heart with pride knowing that I couldn’t keep my wife’s pussy where it belonged.

  “That true, Raze? Your old lady run out on you with one of the brothers?” Hero asks.

  “Yeah, man. Found out right after we got Dani back. I wanted to keep that part to myself, but apparently shit for brains over here doesn’t know how to keep his fucking mouth shut.”

  “Shit, Prez. I can’t believe she’d do that.”

  “Yeah, there are a lot of things I didn’t think she was capable of doing, but it took Jagger dying to find out just what kind of woman she really was.”

  Nodding appreciative thanks toward Hero for his concern, I turn my focus back to Trax and his declaration of knowledge

  “So, Trax. What did the cocksucker have to say?”

  “Oh, not much. Just that your old lady has loose lips in the sack. He kept going on and on about Tijuana and how she had told him that’s where she was headed to when her job was finished with the club. Brute also mentioned that Maj had a blue cell phone that she carried at all times that she guarded like her life depended on it.”

  Thinking of all of the times I saw Maj with her phone, it was never in a blue case, but a red one. That bitch had a second phone. That’s how she hid her communications with the cartel. A fucking different cell phone. God, I hope it’s not a burner phone because that will add a whole another level of complications if we can find it. The damn thing must be back at the house, because before our little trip out to the desert, I made for damn sure she didn’t have a phone or anything to identify her. Just thinking about my actions that day make me sound like a cold-hearted son-of-a-bitch, but what happened was necessary for this club to survive. I only wish now that I knew all of this bullshit I could have kept her alive so that I could squeal about her wrongdoings before I killed her again. I don’t think I would have had quite the same problem with pulling the trigger and ending her life the second time around.

  I tell my brothers the suspicions of the phone still being at our house before I adjourn Church. As we exit the room, I call out to Ratchet and Hero to follow me out to the house and help me tear it apart. We can cover more ground if I have two extra set of hands helping me.

  Just as we make it outside, Hero’s phone rings, and the look on his face as he hangs up signals to me that something is wrong.

  “Dani’s in labor,” is all he says before jumping on his bike and flying out of the parking lot. />
  Ratchet and I stand in the blowing dust from his peel out in frozen silence, neither of us knowing what to say next. This kind of news is never easy to hear, and I know that Ratchet is fighting the urge to take off after him.

  “Shit, I thought she wasn’t due for a couple of months,” is all Ratchet can muster before looking to me for orders. He knows where he needs to be, but his loyalties and friendship with Hero are ripping him up inside.

  “Ratch, I need you go get Slider and have him head over to the house to help out Irons. You and I will head on to my house and see what we can find.”

  “You sure, Raze? What if Hero needs us?”

  “The last thing that man needs is for us to be butting in his business. If shit goes south, he knows to call me and his brothers will be by his side.”

  Ratchet nods before heading back into the clubhouse to give out the orders. I’m far from a religious man, but I say a silent prayer for Hero and Dani anyway. Losing a child is far more damaging to a man than anything else besides losing their wife. If things go bad, he could risk losing everything that he worked so hard to get this year. He deserves the chance of getting to hold his children in his arms and watch them grow up. It would be a cruel twist of fate if something were to happen now.

  Ratchet stomps out of the building a few minutes later and slides on his bike as Slider spills out of the door and does the same.

  “Irons called, Boss. Dani wanted Darcy with her, so Irons and I will be in charge of the kids.”

  It doesn’t bode well with me that Darcy isn’t there, but Irons is a family man, so the kids should be fine under his watch. I make a note to swing by on the way back from my house to check on them. I love my kids, but having them at Darcy’s has given me a bit of a well-deserved break. Trying to run the club and our security business has always taken away my time with the kids, but it has been a learning curve on how to balance out my life now that I am a single dad. Maj may had given birth to them, but I know now they were raised far more by the other women in this club than her. I can only hope they are both learning from the experience of being around a real mother like Darcy.