Mindy sat up again, curling her legs under herself, mostly wanting to avoid the urge to start kissing Jack’s throat and ride him until they were both screaming. “And how is that different from what you guys have been doing the past month?”
He nodded, seeming pleased with her questions. “We’ve been talking privately; meeting under the radar. Here, no one knows but you and Bodhi. I’m not sure who she trusts enough to have shared information, but this will be an open meeting under a truce flag. If we’re right, and Wester is the one causing trouble and bringing all this fire down on our heads, then he’ll do one of two things. He’ll be forced to follow the truce, whether he likes it or not, and he’ll stop causing so much shit.”
Jack was silent for a while, which prompted Mindy to ask, “And what’s the other option?”
He shook his head. “The other option is that he and his followers will crash the meeting, try and kill us all and take over the entire territory.”
While Mindy wasn’t exactly surprised, the stark coldness with which Jack said this surprised and horrified her. It was like he didn’t really care what happened or what came next for him. She was fairly sure that wasn’t the case, he didn’t seem to have a death wish, but at the same time… how well did she really know him?
“This isn’t what I want,” he clarified. “I wish Lauren had been able to sort this out on her end. But she’s just not—this isn’t who she is cut out to be, and it’s not even who she wants to be. How could I possibly ask her to fight a war that she doesn’t want any part of?”
“You’re a good man, Jack Dawson,” Mindy heard herself say. “But I wish to God you weren’t right now.”
He reeled her in, pulling her down to kiss him.
“I know,” he said. “I kind of wish it, too.” He kissed her once more, then stood to go make the call that had, Mindy figured, a better than average chance of leaving her child fatherless.
Chapter Thirty-One
Lauren agreed to come to the clubhouse three days after the call. It was the same time Joanna was supposed to come and check Mindy’s vitals and check for any further bleeding or leakage of amniotic fluid. Joanna came separately, arriving at the clubhouse about an hour before Lauren was scheduled to be there with her Wardens. Jack left the bedroom office to go and prepare for the meeting, and to give Mindy some privacy for the exam.
“How are you holding up under all this stress?” Joanna asked.
Mindy made herself shrug; she’d spent most of her life putting up a good front, why would now be any different? “I’ll be glad when it’s all over.”
“I ask because your blood pressure is elevated, and your heart rate is ridiculous, even though you’re lying down.” Joanna sighed. “I’d be so much happier if you’d just let me take you to the hospital. Even just mine, whatever it takes. I’m not comfortable with you being here while all this happens. The stress could do some horrible things to you and the baby. And then Jack wouldn’t have to worry about you.”
“Except he would worry,” Mindy replied. “He would worry that Wester and his cohort would come to the hospital and find me. And that no one would be there to protect me. And to calm himself down from that, he’d send some of the patched with me to play guard dog. And then there’d be fewer people here to protect the club if Wester attacks. So, no. I’m staying here. Maybe it’s not the safest thing for me, but it’s the safest thing for them, and I care about them.”
Joanna shook her head, but she didn’t look displeased or disgusted. She looked like she understood, at least a little bit.
“I don’t like this bike stuff,” she said, after a little while. “I don’t know what Lauren sees in it. I don’t think she even knows, most of the time, but I’m glad it makes you happy. I’m glad you’ve found a family here. Family matters more than anything, I think. And you need to make a family, wherever you are, if you want to stay sane while you raise this little one.”
“Thanks for watching out for me.”
“Thanks for letting me.”
Mindy had gotten to be good friends with the other woman after their weekly check-ins. It was refreshing. Calming even. Jack was fantastic, but he knew even less about babies than she did; having an expert on speed dial was worth more than maybe Joanna thought.
Joanna was still there when the Gang rode out to meet Lauren at the edge of their territory; she was still there when the rumble of bikes in the distance told Mindy that they were returning. Joanna had gotten increasingly more nervous as time passed; by the time the bikes pulled up and rumbled to a stop, she was twisting her hands into knots.
“You could go, you know. If this is too much for you. I’ll be okay.” Mindy smiled at the other woman, trying to put a pleasant expression on her face.
“I can’t leave any more than you can,” Joanna said, and Mindy nodded. How could she argue with that? She swung her legs over the side of the bed and took a moment to let her head stabilize before she tried to stand.
“Whoa, whoa, where do you think you’re going,” Joanna snapped, with her doctor voice—or, technically, nurse practitioner voice, but who was counting—on full display. “You lay that butt back down, lady.”
“Not a chance in hell,” Mindy said. “I need to go out there and be with him. It’s important. I’ll stay sitting, I promise; I don’t want to be on my feet any longer than I have to either. But he needs me there to look strong. If I’m not there, they’ll wonder why. I need to be.”
“Goddamnit,” Joanna said. “If you weren’t pregnant, I’d sedate you.”
“But I am pregnant, so you can’t.” Mindy stuck her tongue out at Joanna, who laughed.
“Now I’m definitely staying,” she said. “Have to keep an eye on my patient.”
Mindy stood, steadying herself on her feet. She felt good, better than she had in weeks, but barely walking for days at a time would do a number on anybody’s sense of how to walk.
Bodhi had said he’d take care of everything, and as she made her way down the hallway in her maternity shirt and elastic waist jeans, feeling more like an uncomfortable sea mammal than she’d ever thought she would, she was so grateful he’d gotten everything set up. All she had to do was sink into the comfortable chair he’d pulled out, put her feet up on the ottoman, and relax. He’d put a table nearby with snacks and water. Ostensibly it was for everyone in the area, and there were more chairs placed around, but it was still a considerate thing to do. She’d heard that some of the other girls were joking about how they should get knocked up too, get some of that relaxing treatment. There was a point in time where Mindy thought she might have made that joke as well.
Now, with swollen ankles and clogged sinuses and the boredom of bed rest, she would give anything in the world to be done with this whole process. As long as the baby was safe.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Jack strode through the front door of the clubhouse, and at least one knot in Mindy’s back eased. He’d gotten back safely; that was the first step. The next would be getting through this meeting; the last would be seeing the hostility actually dial back. Those were her three key wishes. She was sure they would come through because, without them, she didn’t know how to make things okay.
The rest of the Gang honor guard came in the door, followed by the Wardens who had come with Lauren, and then finally Lauren herself. The woman wore a very different expression than she had in the hospital when Mindy had seen her. There, she’d been half smiling, almost sardonic. Now she was tight and cold, an expression on her face that Mindy couldn’t help but read as fear. No wonder the Wardens weren’t following her; if she’d picked up one thing from Jack in the past few weeks, it was that you can’t ever let them see you shake. Fear was for other people, or maybe for later, in your room, alone, in the arms of your wife. Never, ever, where the club could see you. This was Lauren’s opportunity to make a show of strength, in a relatively safe environment. She was completely terrified.
She glanced at Joanna and saw that the other woman
had the same read. Joanna looked like she wanted nothing more than to go to her lover and wrap her up in a hug. That would have made Lauren look even weaker, however, and so Joanna held back. Mindy wanted to take her hand and squeeze it, say she understood, but it wouldn’t have helped anyone, and it probably would have made Joanna feel worse, so she held back too.
As soon as Lauren walked into the clubhouse and Mindy saw her face, she felt sure that it was just a matter of time until the Wardens, led by Wester, attacked. But even then, she didn’t anticipate that it would happen so fast. Jack had pulled the conference tables out into the main room so that the peace talks could be open to anyone who had chosen to come along. He’d barely even gotten to the table before there was a huge booming sound outside of the clubhouse. Some of the men yelped, some of the women screamed, but everyone reacted in fear. Absolutely everyone. Jack recovered quickly, however, and bolted for the door. Mindy tried to rise to her feet and was stopped by Joanna’s firm hand on her shoulder. Bodhi followed Jack, and Lauren hesitated for a long moment before going after them.
That was when Joanna’s grip released, as she went to follow her lover; Mindy went after Joanna, barely slowing down at all. She felt a sharp twinge in her belly, but that had been more common since she’d been getting bigger; standing up could be painful. Round ligament pain, Joanna had said. Mindy put it out of her mind and kept moving.
She wasn’t sure what she thought she’d be running into. Guns? Fire? Someone’s hand around her throat? It didn’t matter. Maybe it made her a bad mother, but she had no hesitation; Jack was outside, and she absolutely had to be with him, no matter the cost. She couldn’t even think of turning and running away. It made no sense; there’d never before been a situation where she’d been willing to put her life on the line in this way. She’d always understood that she was fighting for herself, just herself. But she also believed, with her whole heart, that walking away from Jack would kill her just as dead as any bullet. So, she rushed out there, skidding to a stop as soon as she could, and would be able to see what was happening.
Some of the Wardens had come out of the door after Lauren and arrayed themselves around her. There was a cluster of Chain Gang patched around Jack as well. And facing them was the man Mindy remembered so clearly from the diner, and from the most frightening night of her life. Wester. He had his arms crossed over his big chest, and a gun was clearly visible in a waistband holster. Was it the gun that had shot Cook? Jack had done his best to dig up information for her, but he hadn’t been able to track anything down. He hadn’t said so, but they were both terrified that the man had been dragged out into the desert and left for the animals. It would make sense, after all, as much as she hated to say it. If he hadn’t died on the spot, why leave a witness?
Cook had tried to sell her out to save his own skin, but she didn’t want to think of him as dead. She just wanted to be safe. She wanted all of them to be safe. For one, long moment, she wished that Jack had never pulled her free from Wester that night in the diner. She could have put up with his mauling, it wouldn’t have been the first time it happened, and it definitely wasn’t the last. Jack grabbing her hand and her running out into the night with him, it hadn’t helped anything; it just made things worse. She should have stayed away from him, known from the way that the other waitresses talked that Jackdaw, Mr. Big, was nothing but trouble. She should have kept herself safe like she had all the years before.
But then she pushed away all of those thoughts. What was done was done, and she had thrown her lot in with Jack. There was no escaping it now. She took a stance just as strong as those around her. The only one who looked tired and already beaten was Lauren.
“Nice to see you, Wester,” Jack said, his tone making it very clear that seeing the other man was anything other than nice. “I’m surprised you chose to come out here with your goons, armed to the teeth, given that your president is here to talk peace between our groups.”
Wester spat on the ground, the moisture aimed to land just shy of Lauren’s too-shiny boots.
“She ain’t our president,” he said. “You killed our president, and another one ain’t been chosen.”
Mindy could almost feel Jack waiting for Lauren to answer, but she didn’t seem to have the words she needed. Or any words at all. Her feet were planted, and her arms were crossed, but somehow there wasn’t any real commitment to the pose. She was just… present. As if that was all she could manage.
“Wester, you keep insisting that I killed Grim, but you don’t have any evidence. No more than I have that you killed him. For all we know, the old bastard tripped and shot himself in the head. After all, no one seems to have been there to see it happen. And the Gang here is tired of having Warden blood on our hands.” Jack cracked a mirthless smile. “After all, blood and brains are awful hard to get out of leather. As you know.”
Lauren filled with fire at all of that; perhaps Jack had known that she would. She braced up a little bit, and Jack glanced at her, seeming almost surprised that she had finally found some motion. “Wester, I know you don’t respect me. I don’t care. I’m the elected president here, and if you’re not going to fall in line, then we’ll run you out of town.”
Mindy managed not to groan; most of the assembled patched members looked like they were about to start giggling into their hands. In the first place, Lauren sounded like a bad western. In the second, she was maybe 150 pounds soaking wet; she wasn’t running anybody anywhere unless she had some amazing hand to hand fighting skills. Maybe she’d been a field medic in the military or something. But other than that… no, there was no way. And if there was anything Mindy had learned about big, vicious men, it was that you never made a threat you couldn’t back up with every ounce of your body. If you gave them an inch, they’d take a mile, as the old saying went. And Lauren had just handed Wester a country mile.
He threw back his head and laughed. Jack tried to hide his wince but didn’t quite manage it.
“Wow,” Wester said, his voice like gravel scraped over rock. “For absolutely no time there was I scared of you.” He took a menacing step towards Lauren; to her credit, the woman didn’t give ground, but there was also absolutely no way that she was going to win any kind of confrontation.
Chapter Thirty-Three
She knew it was going to happen in the moments before it did. She knew it would, and she used everything in her heart and soul to try and make it stop. It didn’t stop, though, and she wasn’t actually surprised. Jack stepped between them, protecting Lauren with his body, just like he’d protected Mindy once. Just like he kept protecting those who were weaker than him. It seemed to be just who he was and how he knew to be. She loved it about him, except for right now. Right now, she hated it all the way through herself. But she managed not to scream his name, or fling herself at him, or do any of the things that would make him look even weaker in front of Wester. Protecting one woman was more than enough.
She swayed on her feet, her belly aching. She didn’t remember the last time she’d stood for even this long. Joanna grabbed her arm and helped support her weight. Mindy found herself wishing for a chair, anything to sit down on. Someone brought something, and she let herself collapse, all thoughts of showing weakness gone. There was a pain in her belly, a dull ache that wasn’t fading like it should. She forced her face to be calm and steady. She would be alright. She had to be alright. Whatever was about to happen, Jack needed her to be there, watching, silent, supporting him. If she disappeared, he would be distracted, and if he were distracted, a man like Wester wouldn’t even pause before he killed. She could see it in his eyes, in the way that he shook his head, looking down at Jack.
“Just can’t help yourself, can you?” Wester asked. “Can’t stop yourself from stepping in where you don’t belong.”
“You think you’re good enough to be their leader?” Jack bristled, but his voice was low and soft. Mindy had to strain to hear him. “You think you’ve got what it takes? Fight me. You think they’ll fol
low you if you fight a woman and win? Man, come on. You fight me, that’s a real victory. You hear me?”
Wester looked down at the six-foot plus frame of the man the Chain Gang called Jackdaw and rumbled a laugh. “Come on, shithead. Let’s dance.” He threw a punch before he said another word, or gave any kind of notice. Jack’s first move seemed awkward and ungainly until Mindy realized what was happening. He was pushing himself out of the way of Wester’s punch, but more importantly, he was pushing Lauren back with him, getting her out of the way. Then, the fight began.
Wester was big, throwing solid punches that Mindy thought could probably kill a man, rocking his head inside his brain so hard that he’d die of the internal bleeding, or breaking his nose up into his brain and killing him that way. She wasn’t sure she’d ever thought of Jack as particularly nimble; he was tall and broad, but compared to Wester, he looked like a boy playing with sticks in the backyard. He dodged and dove, ducking punches and landing his own blows against Wester’s solid form, but none of them seemed to make much of a difference. Without the ability to make much of an impact on the bigger man, it was only a matter of time.
BIKER DADDY_The Chain Gang MC Page 14