“The gun wasn't random. It was registered to Larry Jane.” Danny interjected. He was met with surprised stares. “Harris told me during our little talk. I'm guessing she didn't share with everyone?”
“No, she didn't.” Royal cleared his throat. “It's impossible that the gun was here when they came. That gun was with the things that I had Rock take out of here. I handed it over to him myself. It's been inside there since the night he disappeared.”
“You mean the night that we killed him.” Buster let out a bitter laugh. “When was the last time that we actually locked that safe?” He questioned.
“It's been too long.” Royal replied. “We let our guard down, let whoever is doing this in, and now it's time that we find them and fix the fucking problem. From now on, the safe is locked and all club business is discussed in this room and only this room. Everyone agree?” They all did. “I've got two more things to bring up and then we can get out of here. First, the prospects. Without Earl, we need more bodies.”
“Rock is solid, no pun intended.” Danny spoke up. “He's really stepped up, and it's time for a vote on him anyway.”
“Edge is ready, too. He should be up and around in the next day or so.” Ace added. “I know how I'd vote on both.”
“Anyone against bringing it to a vote right here and now?” Royal questioned. Danny wasn't against the idea, but he still had a reservation about Edge. He still remembered the man having those pills in his boot when the delivery had gone wrong. Since then the prospect hadn't stepped a toe out of the line, so Danny stayed silent.
With no objection, the vote for both men was brought to the table. Both passed unanimously. “And the next order of business, I got an email from Mark Miller. They want a meeting tomorrow, they've got another job for us. Now, if we turn them down because of our current situation it will be the end of our relationship and by that, I mean that I'm pretty sure Mark will have us all killed. Someone flipped his psycho switch.”
“We continue like normal,” Buster told them. “But more careful than normal. The cops are going to be up our asses, and Royal's right, Mark is out of his mind and drunk on power so the last thing we need is to lead the cops right to him.”
“Going to need to distract the cops. We're going to need to split up.” Train's eyes were narrowed; he was already thinking and planning.
“Splitting up is a risk. Look what happened the last time,” Danny pointed out.
“You and Edge pulled it out of the fire. If it comes down to it, you'll do the same thing again. There's not much of a choice for us. This is do or die time.”
<#<#<#
It was dark outside by the time Danny walked in the front door. He'd spoken to Amelia several times. She'd assured him that she was fine and she wouldn't leave the house. He knew that she was far from fine but he hadn't pushed. Instead he'd remained at the bar, had a few drinks to celebrate Rock and Edge earning their full patch.
“Amelia?” He called out as he let the door shut behind him. The house was quiet and mostly dark. “Amelia?” Danny hung his cut before he reached under the table near the door for the gun he had hidden there. He found her in the living room, on the couch and in the dark. “Hey. Didn't you hear me?”
“Danny?”
“Who else would it be?” Danny flipped on the light, watched her shield her eyes. “What are you sleeping on the couch for?”
“I must have dozed off. I was waiting for you.” She sat up, ran her hand over her hair. “How was the party?”
“It wasn't a party, it was a few drinks. Those guys deserve an actual party after all this is said and done.” And they would have one, provided of course they survived the shit that was coming. Danny moved to sit down on the couch next to her. “Have you spoken to Jackie?”
“No. I spoke to her mother a few hours ago. She's still being observed, and she doesn't feel like talking. I think that I'll try to go and see her tomorrow.” Amelia rubbed her hands over her eyes. “It's the only thing that I can think to do.”
“That's a good idea.” Danny replied.
“I'm not sure it is, actually, but I'm going to do it anyway.” She sighed. “I've got no clue what to say to her because nothing that I say can make it better. And I'm sure that she's already sick of hearing that people are sorry.”
“You tell her that you're there for her. That we're there for her and so is Nightshade. Her and the kids are never going to want for anything. Ever. We'll take care of them.”
“When you told me about Earl, for a minute I was just glad that it wasn't you.” She blurted out the words. “As of right now, you're all that I've got left in the world. Without you I'm alone. I don't want to be alone again.”
The sudden admission and change in the conversation surprised him. It normally took some warming up for Amelia to get serious, for her to talk like this. “You're never going to be alone. I'm not going anywhere.”
“You can't know that for sure.” She shifted to lean against him. “When they took you out of the bar and you were cuffed, all I could remember was the last time that they took you.”
Danny put his arm around her as she began to cry. “Shh.” He pressed his lips to her hair. “I'm not going anywhere.”
“Oh, so you're suddenly psychic now?” She questioned. “Don't make promises that you can't keep. You want to be here. You don't want to go anywhere, but we both know what we want isn't always the same as what happens. With everything going on, it's even more obvious that we've got no control over anything.” She pushed away from him, got to her feet. “If something happens to you, I'm alone again. I can't. I just can't.”
“Amelia. Come sit back down. Talk to me.” Danny watched as she got increasingly agitated, walking a tight line from one end of the living room to the other. She was rubbing her hands over her arms over and over. It was when he heard her mumbling something to herself that something clicked in his mind. “Amelia, did you take something? Are you high?”
“I'm not high,” she turned to face him, anger etched on her features. “Yes, I took something but not to get high. I just wanted to be able to not think about all this fucking shit.”
“Who gave it to you?” Danny made an effort not to curl his hands into fists. “And what did you take?”
“No one gave it to me. It was Fiona's, a bottle of tranquilizers, guess her relationship with Royal wasn't as happy as advertised.” She resumed her pacing. “There's just too much in my head. Too much. I can't get a second where everything isn't moving at a million miles an hour.”
“Where's the bottle?” It was hard not to shout the words, not to show the sudden hot anger rolling through him.
“Fuck you, Danny.” Her anger wasn't that much of a surprise. “I've had the damn bottle for over a month, never touched it until today.”
“Where is it? I will tear this house apart to find it.” Danny got to his feet and she flinched. “I'm not saying that I don't trust you...”
“Oh, don't go there. You're completely saying that. If you're going to demand I give you the bottle, it's because you don't trust me with it. So at least be direct about it.”
“Fine, I don't like the idea of you having ready access to pills. Not after what happened following the accident.” Danny remembered it like it was yesterday. The Jeep had been in the shop, a storm had started, and she'd gotten a ride home from a friend. The ride ended with the car they were in going off the road and flipping over several times. Most of the damage to Amelia had been to her back and neck; the doctor she'd seen after the accident had prescribed heavy duty painkillers.
The months that followed had been rough. She'd become addicted and the doctor just kept writing her scripts with a smile. Danny had personally broken the doctor's hand in multiple places and he'd closed his practice shortly after.
“That was different,” she sighed. “You know what, forget it. You want the bottle? It's upstairs in the medicine cabinet. I wasn't trying to hide it. It's sitting right there. You've probably looked at it twenty f
ucking times and just didn't notice.”
“Baby...”
“Don't.” She held up her hand. “Go get the pills, flush them down the toilet or stick them up your ass. Do whatever you want with them, because if I was going to relapse, if I was going to have a problem it would have happened already. It would have happened when I had to say goodbye to my family or when I couldn't sleep after because all I could see was their dead fucking bodies.”
Danny didn't know what to say to that, but he did know the way that the fight had just died out of her eyes was a problem. His wife was really good at icing people out, hiding what she was feeling, and that was what she was doing at that moment. He wasn't going to let her. She took a step back as he approached her, her eyes on him. “I can't change anything that's happened, Amelia, believe me I would if I could. With everything going on, I can't be worried about you.”
“So don't,” She replied, arms crossed over her chest.
“Like that's going to happen.” Danny resisted the urge to sigh. He was too tired for this shit. All he really wanted to do was throw Amelia over his shoulders, head upstairs and get her naked in bed. He didn't even want sex. He just wanted to sleep, to feel her next to him. “If you say there's no problem, I believe you.”
“There's no problem,” She replied. “I'm going to get a drink, and so we're clear, it'll be a soft drink, no hard stuff for me.” Danny did sigh as she walked out of the room. Yeah, sleep wasn't something that was happening soon, and he highly doubted he'd manage to get Amelia naked any time in the near future.
Nothing ever worked the way that he thought it would. Really he shouldn't have been surprised by it, but he was. It pissed him off. Everything pissed him off. There was so much built up inside of him with no sign of relief in sight. After he'd taken a moment to calm himself, Danny headed to the kitchen.
Amelia glanced up when he walked in but quickly turned her attention back to the counter in front of her. “That looks good.” Danny smiled to break the ice, but she didn't see because she didn't look up. She put the top piece of bread on, sliced the sandwich in half and placed it on a plate.
“I made it for you. Figured that you didn't eat. I'm going to go take a shower. And no, I don't want company.” She set the plate down in front of him. “There are chips in the cabinet.”
Danny let her go. He had plenty of things he could have said to try and make her stay. The thing was, he knew his wife. Knew that she needed time to herself, time to cool and calm down. Basically she just needed space from him. Maybe he needed some distance, too, at least until he could rein in the storm surging inside of him.
<#<#<#
Danny never felt completely relaxed before a meeting with The Millers, and this was no exception. None of this was sitting right with him. Nightshade was literally split right down the middle; he was riding to the meet with Buster and Rock while Royal, Edge and Train were leading Detroit's Finest on a route that Train had mapped out.
No one had been sure that the plan would work. Maybe on some level he'd hoped that it wouldn't. The meeting was giving him a dark feeling, a feeling like nothing was going to end right. Danny tried to shake it off. He was probably just out of sorts because of last night. He'd given Amelia her space. When he'd finally gone up to bed, there was no way he was sleeping on the couch, he'd found her already asleep and curled into a tight ball.
He'd stayed on his side, and she'd stayed on hers. Needless to say, Danny didn't get much sleep because he couldn't stop wondering if the space between them was going to extend outside of the bedroom. When he'd finally managed to sleep, he woke to a house filled with the smell of coffee and breakfast. It would have been perfect except there was no smiling Amelia waiting for him, there wasn't any Amelia. There wasn't time to wait for her. He needed to be at the bar, so he'd sent her a text that he loved her and would be home as soon as he could. At least they'd avoided the conversation about her no longer being kept in the loop about Nightshade.
“Eyes on the prize, Gentlemen,” Buster declared as they arrived at the meeting spot, a popular restaurant already filled with people. “They're going to be pissed that Royal isn't here, but we're going to make it work.”
They had to make it work. If their relationship with The Millers fell through now, they had nothing in the pipeline to replace it. While Davenport Development, which employed them all, was doing well, it wasn't doing well enough to support all of them. The only way that they lived was through the money made by smuggling whatever The Millers desired over the border.
“Let's do this.” Danny squared his shoulders and actively tried to look as nonthreatening as possible as they walked inside.
A waitress approached them, her smile hesitant. “Can I help you?”
“Sure you can, Sweetheart.” Buster turned on the charm, and Danny had to bite back a laugh. “We're supposed to meet some friends for lunch. I think that they might already be here.”
“Oh, you're here for Joe and Mark. Come on, they're already seated.”
Danny wasn't sure if it was a good sign or a bad one that The Millers were known at the restaurant. It seemed to be something that they were going to have to let play out. They were led to a table at the back of the restaurant.
“Where is Royal?” Mark demanded before the waitress could walk away.
“There's been a complication.” Buster sat down without waiting for an invitation. “Say, Sweetheart, can you bring me a beer?”
“Sure thing. Anyone else want something?” The waitress was either oblivious to the sudden tension that had cropped up at the table or she'd missed her calling as an actress.
“No, thank you, Callie. We'll need a few more minutes.” Joseph spoke with a smile on his face but it didn't reach his eyes or voice. “Now, what sort of complication are you talking about?”
Buster laid it out. All of it. Joseph and Mark listened with rapt attention. Joseph seemed thoughtful, while Mark was clearly getting more and more agitated. Danny sat up straighter, ready for whatever might happen next.
“I'd have thought that Royal would keep as tight a grip on his home life as he does Nightshade,” Joseph observed when Buster was done speaking. “Or perhaps he does and that's the reason why these complications are spilling over to our arrangement. We've had some serious discussions on this matter. Now, I like Nightshade. We've worked together for years, established a relationship. While it's been suggested that we go another route for our needs, I hesitate to start over from scratch at such a critical time, which is why you're going to get one more shot.”
“And if you blow it,” Mark interrupted, “your current troubles will seem like a stubbed toe. You'll wish for a quick end like the bitch and her kid.”
“That bitch was my sister-in-law and that kid was my niece. Show some fucking respect.” Danny ignored the look that Buster shot him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that both of his brothers did sit up straighter. If something were to go down they'd have his back. Even if they didn't, he wasn't going to sit back and stay quiet.
“Don't get your panties in a twist.” Mark laughed. “And mind your tone.”
“Enough.” Joseph's tone made Mark jump slightly. “Forgive my brother, he was needlessly crass, but that doesn't make what he said any less true. Right now, I suggest you all focus fully on getting this shipment moved without incident, because if anything goes wrong, you will all die. Your families will die. Your friends will die. We will kill your pets.”
“We've got it,” Buster replied. He waved the waitress away when she came back with the beer. “You want to give us the details or are we just going to chat all afternoon?”
Chapter Ten
The last thing that Amelia expected to find when she got to the hospital to visit Jackie was the woman not being there. She'd spoken to Jackie's mother only a half hour earlier and they'd been there. The nurses were no help, all they could say because of privacy regulations was that Jackie had been discharged.
She was nearly out of the hospital when
she heard someone call her name. She turned, surprised to see Claire walking towards her. “Hey, what are you still doing here?”
“I said that I'd stay with Jackie, and I did until that bitch cop showed up and told me to get lost. I didn't get lost, I hung around. Figured that I could wait her out, but she didn't leave—or at least she didn't leave alone.”
“She left with Harris?” Amelia felt a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. The last thing that Jackie needed was to be drilled by Harris. Jackie was a great person, but she wasn't the strongest personal emotionally, which was part of the reason that Earl had always kept her so completely in the dark about what Nightshade did.
“Harris and two guys in suits. They might have been detectives, but I didn't recognize them.” Claire looked around, lowered her voice. “I think that she convinced Jackie to talk to her about Nightshade. And I don't think that it took much convincing.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that if Jackie was awake, she was ranting about Nightshade, about how her husband was dead because of them. How her children would never know their father because of them. I chalked it up to grief but what if... what if she's agreed to help the cops?” Claire frowned; lines appeared in her face and she suddenly looked her age.
If Jackie had agreed to help the cops, even being out of her mind with grief wouldn't be a good enough excuse. Informing on Nightshade was a death sentence. “Did she say anything specific to make you think that she would?”
“No. But she did leave with Harris.”
“Now is not the time to jump to conclusions. Jackie is an Old Lady, she knows what that means.” Amelia hoped she sounded confident as she spoke the words, because as far as Old Ladies went, Jackie was possibly the most sheltered she'd ever met or heard of. The bright side of it was Jackie wouldn't be able to give Catherine Harris much, but the dark side of that was Jackie wasn't stupid, she could have figured out plenty. “You should go home, Claire.”
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