Shit spiraled.
And I fucking lost my mind.
Things came to blows only to be broken up by Maze in front of all the patched members.
I learned later that he had, absolutely, talked to my father. And that he may have even informed him that I was residing in Jersey.
I sat and waited and sweated it out for days, then weeks, then months before I finally hired someone to go see if they seemed like they were making a move to come and find me.
They weren't.
And they never did.
But mine and Renny's relationship had never mended.
I knew he couldn't, for the most part, help it.
I knew that he was just fucked up and couldn't find a way to stop himself from lashing out when he got a hold of something.
But that didn't make it okay.
And he was well aware that I, unlike the rest of the members, would not let that shit slide.
"Have fun being holed up with your little Aryan princess?" he asked.
I saw red.
He knew it was coming too because he slowly got to his feet as I charged.
No words were said.
They didn't need to be.
For the next fuck knows how long, we talked with our fists.
"Huh, interesting," a distinctly female voice said, making us both freeze, my bloodied hand just seconds from slamming into Renny's nose. Her voice was musical too, with a hint of an accent that I couldn't place at all.
We both turned to find her standing just inside the back door, head cocked to the side slightly, looking us over.
She was one of Lo's.
Her gently curved, tall, long-legged body was clad in green utility pants and a white tank top.
Her long brown hair was straight and shiny, falling around her shoulders and framing her round, feminine face. She had striking hazel eyes framed with a shitton of dark lashes. There was a distinct Asian-ness to her features, but it was understated like she was only part Asian. The other part was obviously some kind of white.
She was stunning in a perfectly exotic way.
Renny's hand rose, swiping blood from his nose with his wrist.
"Well now," he said, his personality changing like a flick of a switch. "I think I might have to get a job at Hailstorm."
"Sorry," she said, shaking her head. "The position for your particular set of skills is already filled."
"By who?" he pressed, giving her a charming smile despite the blood staining his teeth.
"By me," she said, surprising us both.
"Aw, come on now. You and me though," he went on, all silver tongue despite the shit situation, "we would make one hell of a team." He paused, moving closer to her and damn if she didn't do a very slow, very thorough inspection of him from his boots to the ends of his copper-red hair. "Professionally... personally..."
Her brow went up. "Renny, you might think you're the best at what you do, but let me tell you... I'm out of your league."
"But I do so love a challenge," he said, holding his heart dramatically as he continued to smile at her, close enough that he was almost at her side.
"Get accustomed to disappointment," she said, seemingly unaffected. "I'm here to work. Keep your dick in your pants and we won't have a problem."
"Renny, leave the fucking woman alone," Reign snapped as he walked in. "This is no time to try to get your dick wet."
"No? Because Duke seems to have that post-fuck glow about him since he went off with..."
"Say one more thing about Penny and you'll be eating through a straw," I warned.
"Did these two prospect together?" the chick asked, directing the question to Reign.
"Yeah, babe."
"Don't call me babe," she said immediately, but with no inflection, like she was used to telling men to not do it. Looking like she looked, I bet she beat off men with sticks.
"Fine. Yeah, Mina."
"She has a name," Renny said dramatically.
"Only child," she shot back oddly.
That, apparently, was the one thing that could make Renny stop thinking with his dick and start using his head. Because Renny, while he stuck his nose in everyone else's business, didn't like anyone in his. And he damn sure didn't like being profiled. That was immediately clear.
"Takes one to know one. Army brat," he shot back at her, making one of her brows raise like a question. "That accent is non-distinct. You have a hint of France in there and Japanese and there's just something else. I can't quite..."
"Dutch," Mina supplied.
"That explains your face."
"My face," she prompted.
"Japanese mom. Dutch dad."
"And you..."
"Okay, foreplay at another time you two," Cash said, walking in from the kitchen. "Renny, you have blood in your fucking teeth and you're trying to get in her pants?"
"Gotta seize every opportunity. Seems like we're all on borrowed time lately."
"Alright, let's not plan our fucking funerals before we try everything we got to keep us all breathing," Reign reasoned. "I filled Duke in briefly, but just to go over. Everyone, save for Wolf, is gone. Renny, Reign, Cash, and I spent the morning talking to the cops and trying to chase down next of kin to those who were still in contact. Which was about three of them. The rest, we will be planning the arrangements for. The cops found fingerprints, but only one was in blood and didn't match any of us. But of-fucking-course it didn't match anyone in the system so we are no closer on that front."
"That's why Hailstorm is here," Repo put in, nodding his head to Mina who moved away from the wall to address us.
"Yeah, you guys have a safe full of guns in the basement, a fence, and a windowless building. And, well, that's about it. I'm shocked you haven't had people get in before this. So we are going to do the works. Surveillance in here, first of all. So in case anything does happen, you can see who did it. Surveillance outside as well. But that is just the beginning."
And it was.
The plan they laid out for us would take weeks to complete, hundreds of thousands to do, and keep me especially, with my construction background, too busy to do much more than shoot off a text or two to Penny. And her answers were short and non-descriptive, leaving me worried that she was unhappy and resentful. But there wasn't much I could do.
I had orders to be on the grounds until all the work was completed.
We all were.
"Mother fucker!" I growled, throwing my hammer at the wall for the fourth time that morning.
"Hey," Cash's voice called, making me turn to find him standing there with two beers. "Take a break," he said and I reached for my beer and got back onto my feet. "Know it's been nothing but hard work, but it's to a good cause."
"I don't give a fuck about hard work," I scoffed, shaking my head. "I'm used to this shit. Different materials than I am used to, but same work."
Cash nodded. "I know you're worried about your woman. But we're all worried about our women. That's why we're doing this. We can't have them all living up at Hailstorm indefinitely. That's no life for us. But we can't bring them back here until we know there's no chance of anything happening to them. So we just gotta power through the frustration and get the job done."
"Easier for you, Cash," I said, shaking my head. "Lo is here all the time." And she was. Lo, being the badass she was, scoffed at the idea of staying away because it might not be safe.
"If they'd wanted to pick me off, they'd have had ample time to do it while I was having coffee with Elsie last week. Or when I was at the playground with Alex and Junior. Or, hell, even when I was walking down the parking lot at the food store to get supplies for you here. No one wants to kill me so I am going to come and go as I damn well please."
And she did.
So Cash got to see his woman all he wanted. She hung out and worked beside us. She slept in his bed some nights.
It wasn't the same.
"Reign barely..."
"Reign and Repo have both been up t
here a couple of times," I added, me, Cash, and Renny being the only ones never to leave. Cash was fine with it because he saw Lo. Renny was fine with it because he was relentlessly chasing the wholly unaffected by his charm Mina. Me, yeah, I wasn't happy.
"It's different because they have kids. And Summer and Maze are pregnant. You know that."
He was right.
And I couldn't fault the logic that their kids needed to see their fathers, especially given how their lives got uprooted and they were living at Hailstorm suddenly. I'm sure it was fun for a long weekend or so, but they all had to be itching to get home to their toys and own beds.
"I know."
"Lo said she's fine."
"Fine is never fine," I countered.
"She's settled in. I heard she and Summer get along well and that Lo has been giving her a hell of a time learning self-defense."
"Doesn't tell me shit about how she's handling this."
"Malcolm and a couple of the other guys have taken her to see her grandmother twice a week since she went up there."
That was comforting at least.
I knew she drew a lot of strength from the tough old broad.
It was good that she got to see her. That was more than I could have given her.
"It's something."
"And nothing is stopping you from texting or calling her."
"I do text. She's not big on the replying thing."
"Alright, mopey-ass," he said, giving me a smile. "I'll talk to Reign about you going up and seeing her."
With that, he jogged back up the stairs.
One hour and a cold shower later, I was tucked in one of Hailstorm's SUVs and on my way up to see my woman.
SEVENTEEN
Penny
So I had been warned that it was like a survivalist camp.
But I guess the image I had in my head was thinking way too small.
Hailstorm was set on a giant, cleared piece of land up on a hill, looking down on the whole of Navesink Bank. There was only one road going up to it and you could see who was coming from miles off. There was a giant fence around the whole of it, topped with barbed wire and if the signs were to be believed, electrified. As we pulled up, a small group of dogs came running toward the gates, barking loudly. They were working breeds too, the kind you could train to do things like protect and defend your land: German Shepherds, Dobermans, and Rottweilers.
"Take a breath. It's not as scary as it looks," the older, very attractive starting to salt-and-pepper man named Malcolm told me.
I wouldn't have said it was scary, save for maybe the people walking around with guns. It was just surreal, something you saw in movies, not in real life. The entire building was built out of welded-together shipping containers of varying colors, all interlocking into some massive construction. I guess it had to be huge to be able to house all of her people. There seemed to be a roof in the center, like a house stood inside all of the shipping containers, but from my angle, I couldn't be sure.
Toward the back, there were fields of solar panels and an enormous garden that was still flourishing even late in the season.
It was an impressive, over-the-top, badass looking place.
And I would be living there for an indeterminate amount of time.
Judging by all the men and women milling about in their professional attire and guns and confident movements, yeah, I was so not going to fit in.
But that didn't matter.
What mattered was it would keep me safe.
And, hell, maybe I would even learn a thing or two from staying there.
Home sweet home.
The gates slid open and the SUV drove in, going around the side of the building, then backing up into a storage container that opened for us.
"Can't be too safe," Malcolm explained with a shrug as the door closed and we were in complete darkness. "Come on. Hop out. I'll show you where all the Henchmen women are."
So then we walked up to another door and into a shipping container hallway. In about, say, two minutes, I was starting to get dizzy. Apparently the inside of Hailstorm was like a maze. I guess that was a smart tactical move, but it made your equilibrium go haywire if you didn't know the way. My escorts, of course, were completely unaffected by it.
Then, finally, we walked up to a door with a small glass cut out. But where you would usually be able to see through, there was paper taped up on the other side to block people from looking in.
Malcolm paused, knocking hard a few times. "Ladies, got another addition for you."
There was shuffling and, to his credit, Malcolm did not open the door, but waited there patiently for it to be opened from the inside.
"Penny!" A pretty, pregnant woman with red hair and an endearing smattering of freckles said as she pulled the door fully open. "We've been waiting for you. I'm Summer. I'm Reign's wife," she said, still smiling.
Duke had told me that Reign's wife was the one from a more normal background, who just found herself thrown into a messy situation that ended with her being tortured for months. He thought she and I would get along.
"Thanks for dropping her off, Malc," she added, giving him a smile. "We'll settle her in."
It was a dismissal, but Malcolm just gave her a warm smile, touched my shoulder with a squeeze in a very paternal way, and moved off, taking the others with him.
"This is weird, right?" she asked, shaking her head. "But we're lucky enough that Lo gave us the medical ward to move into so we don't have to sleep in the barracks. Though, after a couple hours with all the kids begging you to play cars, Barbies, or color, you might decide you want to go live with all the grown ups. Maze," she called as she moved back so I could step in.
"Ferryn, put that Barbie head back on," a woman with long purple hair said as she walked past her, shaking her head a little.
"She doesn't want to be in a pretty pink dress," the girl objected.
"So change her clothes. Don't decapitate her," Maze laughed.
"She doesn't want to be a Barbie at all. She wants to be a dinosaur," she declared in a very 'duh' voice only kids and teens can seem to pull off. And to demonstrate her point, she stabbed the Barbie head onto a long neck dinosaur. "See? Much better. Now she can stomp on things."
"Your daughter is a piece of work," Maze said, but with a warm smile as she made her way to us. She was also sporting a rounded belly, though hers was much smaller than Summer's, obviously just barely out of her first trimester.
Summer held up a hand. "You don't need to tell me. The day before we moved up here, I caught her scratching at her Barbie's face with a scissor. When I asked her what she was doing, she told me that if boys don't need makeup, then girls don't need makeup either. She then chopped all the poor things hair off too."
"I swear sometimes she speaks, and I hear Lo and Janie's words coming out of her mouth," Maze agreed. "Hey," she said to me, giving me a smile. "Welcome to the most efficient form of birth control known to man," she said, waving a hand out toward the room as a whole.
I looked around then.
It was a typical medical-type ward with white sheeted beds all lined up perfectly against the walls, nightstands between them, and a long, wide path in the center. There was a station toward the end with cabinets and a sink and a bathroom in the rear.
But, unlike a typical medical-type ward, there was stuff everywhere. And I meant everywhere. There were Lincoln Logs under the beds. There were Legos in the pathway. There were Barbies sitting around the rim of the sink like a swimming pool. Kids clothes were strewn about, socks here, sweaters there, shoes mismatched and all over. There were various forms of electronics- laptops and e-readers in a corner by a TV that had two different gaming systems hooked up to it.
"I swear to God we're not slobs," Summer said, defending the mess. "But there are only so many times you can throw shoes back in the shoe bin before you have to say f-it and go have a cup of coffee. Even if it is decaf," she said, curling her lip up and I smiled.
"So you
know that is Summer. I'm Maze. The nine year-old feminist is Summer's oldest, Ferryn. Fallon is hers too. He's one of the one playing with the Legos. The smaller one," she added, and I looked to see a boy of about six years old who looked just like his daddy knocking down something he had been working on. Beside him was a boy who was likely of the same age, but taller, wider, with the kind of shoulders that would make for a linebacker one day, dark hair, and the honey-colored eyes I recognized immediately. They were Wolf's eyes. "That's Janie and Wolf's son, Malcolm."
My head turned at that, thinking of the man in the hall. "Is he named after..."
"Yeah, Malc has been like a father figure to Janie," Summer said with a smile.
"And then that one playing with... oh, great," she grumbled and I looked over to see a little dark haired, dark-blue eyed three year old drawing on the wall with a crayon. "That's mine. Seth. He's got a little cabin fever lately," she added, walking over to him, taking the crayon and directing him over to the other boys.
"We do get to go outside so the kids can blow off steam and we can get some fresh air or watch the self-defense training. Or even target practice on occasion. But their lives, our lives are just a little bit more restrictive than they used to be. Everyone is... adjusting."
"It won't be too different for me. Actually, I'll probably have more freedom here than I did at the compound," I said, watching as Ferryn brought her dinosaur abomination over to the pool party Barbies.
Summer nodded. "Well, we are giving you the bed right here," she said, gesturing to the one right inside the door. "It will make it easier for you to come and go as you please without worrying about waking anyone up. Lo said we have free rein of the place so long as we stay inside unless told we can go out. Though, I still get lost when I try to do it without someone to guide me."
"It's like a corn maze in here," I agreed.
"I hate corn mazes," she added and I nodded.
Behind me, another voice broke in, familiar. "See, they never tell me when they're on the way so I'm a bad host and don't get to greet you," Lo said, shaking her head.
Duke (The Henchmen MC Book 5) Page 18