Whiskey Neat (The Uncertain Saints MC Book 1)

by Lani Lynn Vale

  And then it was just the darkness of sweet nothingness.

  ***

  “You didn’t have to kidnap her,” a deep voice growled.

  “I didn’t fuckin’ kidnap her. She was fine until we pulled into the parking lot,” Griffin said defensively.

  “She’s going to think we’re a bunch of thugs who kill people,” another added.

  “We do.”

  I didn’t want to touch that one.

  Reluctantly, I opened my eyes, and immediately squeaked in surprise when I saw Griffin’s face nearly touching my own.

  His eyes were lined up with mine, and I was breathing in the air he was exhaling.

  “You okay?” He asked.

  “Y-yeah,” I croaked. “What happened?”

  His brows rose. “You passed out when we pulled into the parking lot.”

  Then the realization of what I’d done dawned.

  “Shit,” I groaned. “I’m sorry.”

  “What was that all about,” he asked, holding his hand out for me to sit up.

  I took his offered hand and sat up, swinging my legs over the side of the couch and took in the room.

  We were in a huge, open floor plan house.

  I was sitting on a couch in the middle of the living room, and directly in front of me was the kitchen.

  I knew I would find an open window that would look out onto the lake, so I stayed directly where I was, not moving a muscle.

  “Are there blinds on that window behind me?” I asked, staring at four men standing at the kitchen counter.

  “Mig, hit the blinds,” Griffin said, not waiting to see why he had to close the blinds.

  I breathed a sigh of relief when I heard them close in the next instant.

  I finally started to take in the room once I realized it was safe.

  There were five men and one woman spread sporadically around the room now, and I was rendered breathless when I took the men in.

  Every one of them was handsome.

  Every. Single. One.

  Even the older one with all the tattoos with the woman standing at his side.

  They were standing closest to the door, and watching me with varied expressions on their faces.

  Sorrow.

  Annoyance.

  Understanding.

  Anger.

  Indifference.

  Griffin, though, looked like I’d killed his pet bunny.

  “What’s wrong with you?” I asked worriedly.

  “I’m not going to fucking kill you.”

  I raised a brow at his tone.

  “I never said you were,” I countered.

  His eyes narrowed. “Then why are you passing out at the thought of coming here?”

  I laughed in his face.

  And he didn’t like it if the way his face darkened was any indication.

  “I’m not scared of you, or your big…f-friends,” I said, looking around the room at the men who didn’t hide the fact that they were listening to our conversation. “I’m scared shitless of the lake. Which you have me on. Literally on. Can’t stand the lake. It gives me heart palpitations.”

  Griffin’s brows lowered. “You were just at the lake with me at the diner.”

  I knew he was thinking I was lying, but I wasn’t.

  “First off, that was the daytime. I could see exactly where I was. Secondly, I couldn’t see the lake. Big – no huge – difference,” I informed him.

  His brows rose. “Really? You’re that scared of the lake? Why?”

  “How long have you been in Uncertain?” I asked him.

  That was probably something one should know if they were sleeping with the man, but I didn’t. We’d never got to many personal questions.

  And it was embarrassing to ask that in front of his friends.

  “Year or so,” he answered.

  I nodded, turning to the other men.

  “How about you?” I asked Mr. Pissy in the corner.

  He was really pissy looking, too.

  What had I done to him?

  But he answered. “Year or so.”

  I nodded, turning to the next man, Mr. Indifference. “You?”

  “Two.”

  Moving to the next man, Mr. Sleepy who looked like he wasn’t affected by anything, ever, I asked. “You?”

  “Six,” he said with a yawn.

  I nodded and moved on to Mr. Sorrow.

  “Five,” he answered without me asking.

  Finally, I settled on Mr. Understanding.

  “You?” I asked softly.

  “Twelve.”

  He was the oldest.

  And he was also the only one with a woman at his side.

  “Ahh,” I said. “Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner! You know who I am, don’t you?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, I knew the moment he brought you inside.”

  Most did if they lived around here.

  I was the girl who killed the largest alligator on record in Caddo’s history, an almost fifteen-foot, nine-hundred-eighty-two-point-four-pound monster.

  Out of self-defense, of course.

  “What are you talking about, Peek?” Griffin asked, finally standing up to face the man by the door.

  The woman patted his arm and walked to a computer in the corner, typing as fast as she could.

  Her fingers were a whirlwind as she typed, and I jumped when a screen started to lower from the ceiling directly in front of me.

  “Whoa,” I breathed.

  Then I winced when I saw the picture.

  It was awful.

  I looked like a big pile of shit.

  My hair was sporting dirt and twigs. I had dirt smudged on my face. My jeans. My white shirt. I’d smelled god awful that day, too.

  And directly behind me was the most massive alligator I’d ever seen in my life.

  She was being hoisted in the air by a forklift.

  Her massive jaws were clamped shut with about two thousand feet of duct tape.

  Her beady, black, dead eyes were staring off directly at the camera as I stood with the gun slung over my shoulder.

  “What the fuck. You killed that?” Mr. Pissy asked.

  I looked over to him.

  “Yeah,” I croaked, turning away from the screen.

  And in doing so, I caught a fantastic glimpse of Griffin’s ass.

  His jeans were really tight.

  And I could see the gun at his back very clearly, even though I was sure it was supposed to be concealed.

  “That’s gotta be a record, huh?” He asked.

  “You don’t even know the half of it, Mig,” the man Griffin had called Peek, said.

  No, that was right.

  He didn’t.

  “So enlighten us,” another voice ordered.

  This one from the other side of Griffin.

  Mr. Sleepy who didn’t look very sleepy anymore.

  He was also the one I’d seen with Griffin at the bar.

  Wolf was his name.

  The man who’d taken over Griffin’s son’s case.

  I shivered when I thought about recounting the story, but they all looked so eager that it was hard to say no, so I didn’t.

  “When I was nearly fifteen I went to check trot lines with my father, about four miles past the one fifty-five boat ramp,” I started, my remembrance putting me back into what I’d felt that day. “It was threatening to rain, but I went with my dad anyway because I didn’t like him having to go alone.

  “His boat broke down about four miles upstream, and the skies opened up around the same time. It was raining so hard and fast that the boat started to fill up,” I explained. “It was a small flat bottom with one of those huge motors people use to get them into the places that don’t have much water.”

  “Muddy Buddy,” Mr. Indifference answered.

  I nodded, the name sounding familiar, and looked up at Griffin whose blue eyes were
watching me avidly.

  “Yeah, that,” I nodded, keeping my eyes connected with Griffin’s. “The rain just kept coming down, filling the boat, until it finally couldn’t hold any more. I was trying to bail us out, but it was useless, like trying to empty a pool with a spoon, “I replied with a sad, slow shake of my head as I recalled just how hard I had tried. “We sank.” I swallowed. “I had my father’s two twenty-three across my shoulders.”

  “So what’d you do?” Griffin asked.

  “Swam. Luckily, the life jackets hadn’t been tied into the boat, so they floated up,” I answered. “My dad made me put on the vest, and we swam until I just couldn’t swim anymore.”

  “Then what?” Wolf asked.

  “We got off on the bank, resting against on old abandoned dock,” I told them. “Didn’t notice the huge gator slides…nor the huge nest of alligator eggs that were nestled in the rotting dock.”

  “When did you notice?” Griffin asked, his face starting to pale.

  I stiffened as I recalled those first horrific moments.

  “When the gator pulled my dad off the dock by his upper torso,” I answered.

  Gasps filled the room.

  “My dad was under before I even realized it,” I said. “And I didn’t know what to do. I knew from experience that the lake was over forty feet deep, and that’s what gators do. They take their victims to the bottom and drown them.”

  Griffin’s eyes looked pained.

  “But the gator let my dad go, coming back for me, since her nest was still in jeopardy,” I whispered. “But I was waiting for her. The moment she came out of the water like those huge whales do at Sea World, I shot her head full of two twenty-three rounds.”

  “You killed her?” Mig asked.

  I nodded. “Yep.”

  I remembered how the alligator had come to rest half on, half off the dock.

  The only thing in the water was her huge, fat tail.

  “And your dad?”

  I looked over at the man who’d asked.

  “He wasn’t breathing,” I answered. “He’d floated up to the top of the water and downstream about thirty yards,” I shivered. “I had to swim into the murky water to go get him, but I managed to bring him back to the dock. I pulled him directly onto the bank next to the huge gator.”

  “You stayed next to her?” Wolf asked.

  I nodded. “I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I know for a fact that the river part of Caddo doesn’t have many lake houses. So I did the only thing I could, I got him back to the dock and up onto it so I could start CPR.”

  “You got him breathing, though,” Peek supplied.

  I nodded. “I did. And he came to screaming his ass off.”

  Griffin’s arms went around me when the trembling didn’t stop.

  I held onto him as I finished the story.

  “We stayed there where we were two more hours before a boater finally came by,” I said. “The boater called the game wardens. The game wardens loaded us and the massive alligator into the boat, and we drove off back to the state park where my father was transferred into the ambulance with some pretty serious wounds. I was left to answer questions and take pictures.”

  Griffin growled. “They made you stay?”

  I shook my head. “No, they asked. My dad’s truck was there. And my mom had met the ambulance at the hospital. Since I wasn’t hurt, and things needed to be taken care of, I stayed.”

  “So you’ve never gone to the lake again?” Wolf asked.

  I shook my head. “No, I have not.” I glared at Griffin. “At least willingly.”

  He pressed his lips to my forehead. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  I shrugged. “It’s okay.”

  I refrained from saying, “You didn’t ask.”

  That wouldn’t be beneficial right then.

  He shook his head. “No it’s not. But thank you for trying to make me feel better.”

  He sighed and kissed my head, placing his lips overly long on my forehead before he stood up.

  “I’ve got to go talk to them, will you be okay here with Alison?” He asked, looking down at me with concern.

  I nodded, assuming that ‘Alison’ was the only woman in the room. The one who’d pulled up that ugly picture and had yet to take it down.

  “I’ll be fine,” I said, patting his thigh. “As long as the blinds stay shut.”

  That was a warning to all of them in the room, and I saw the other person in my line of sight nod in agreement.

  They’d stay shut.

  Good.

  Griffin left, disappearing into a room in the side of the house we were in.

  When the door shut behind the last one, Mr. Pissy, I finally looked to the woman, Alison.

  “Can w-we, ummm, t-take that down?” I gestured to the picture.

  Geez, I’d gone all the way through a harrowing tale and hadn’t stuttered once, but to be put under the supervision of a woman with angel eyes was making me stutter.

  Nice.

  She hurriedly complied, hitting a button on the wall that drew the screen up back into the holder in the ceiling.

  It was still up on the computer monitor, but she hit a button, and the entire screen went black.

  “Sorry honey. It’s easier to show visual proof instead of having them all question you over and over again…something they would’ve done. They’re all investigators at heart,” she said apologetically.

  I waved my hand in the air as if to clear it. “It’s fine. I could see Griffin frothing at the mouth when he thought I didn’t want to come here.”

  The woman smiled. “This is an intimidating place for most people. I wouldn’t have thought less of you if it had been just because you didn’t want to be in a room full of bikers,” she said. “They take some getting used to.”

  I didn’t doubt it, but from what I’d noticed in the short time here, they didn’t seem all that bad.

  “What were their names?” I asked.

  I couldn’t keep calling them by Mr. Pissy or Mr. Indifferent.

  “The one with the dark eyes and black hair is named Wolf,” she started. “The one behind you at the blinds was Mig. My husband was the one standing next to me, Peek. The last two standing in front of you, from left to right, are Casten and Ridley.”

  I nodded. “Thank you.”

  An awkward silence followed as we both tried to think of what to say next when we both started to speak at once.

  “So how did you meet Griff?”

  “So how did you meet Peek?”

  We both laughed.

  She held up her hand to halt my explanation.

  “I’ll start,” she smiled. “I met my husband when we were both twenty-one and stupid.”

  I raised a brow at her, and she laughed.

  “Yeah, I’m serious. Stupid,” she snickered and covered her eyes as she thought back to something I couldn’t see. “I’d just turned twenty-one, and was celebrating by getting raging drunk.”

  I could see where this was going even before she’d started, but I smiled anyway.

  I loved a love story.

  “And my best friend dared me to go get this massive back piece. So, me being me, I agreed. I was laying on the chair, ready to get a massive unicorn on my back by some man named Dolly when Peek walked in. He immediately took in the stencil that Dolly had placed on my back, my state of near drunkenness, my best friend’s giggle, and put a stop to it.”

  My eyebrows climbed. “Really? Why?”

  “When he was sixteen he got his one and only drunk tattoo by a friend that was equally as drunk,” she explained. “He woke up the next morning with it, and vowed that when he finally opened his own tattoo shop, that he’d never let anyone drunk get a tattoo. And he didn’t.”

  “I bet that pissed some people off,” I said dryly.

  She nodded. “If you haven’t noticed, my man is fully capable of taking care of himself.�
�

  I did happen to notice that.

  Although he was older, he was in incredibly good shape for a man his age.

  “What about you? How’d you meet Griffin?” She asked.

  I smiled. “I sold him some batteries from my store.”

  Her eyes crinkled at the corner.

  “Don’t you own Uncertain Pleasures?” She asked, holding the laugh in.

  I nodded.

  “I do.”

  “So he came into your store for the batteries?” She giggled.

  “Yep. He didn’t seem out of place or anything. Even helped kick out the two people screwing in the dressing rooms,” I told her.

  She snorted as she laughed, causing my smile to widen.

  “What’s with the name Peek?” I asked. “Is that his real name?”

  Alison smiled, blushing slightly. “No. His real name is Reedus. Peek is short for ‘peekaboo.’ He has a tattoo right above his, um…penis.”

  My mouth dropped open. “You’re kidding.”

  She shook her head. “No, I can’t say I am. The man is nuts. It’s literally right above his wiener.”

  “Jesus, Ali. Call it what it is…it’s a fuckin’ cock, not a wiener!” Peek yelled from the doorway.

  I burst out laughing and covered my face with my hands.

  The couch next to my hip depressed, and I fell into a hard body that I knew very, very well.

  Griffin’s body was like the negative to my positive.

  My body gravitated towards his, much like it was doing now.

  “Have a nice talk?” I asked, turning to look at him.

  His face was closed down.

  “We need to talk,” he said softly.

  Shit.

  “Talk about what?” I asked.

  I knew it had to be about what we’d come here for.

  Why I’d been practically forced to come.

  And whatever it had to do with, had to do with me.

  Dammit. Shit. Hell. Piss.

  When he didn’t answer, I sighed. “So talk.”

  Chapter 11

  I’m not saying your mom is a slut, but when she gave birth to you she tried to push you back in and out a few times.

  -E-card

  Griffin

  “Mother. Fucker,” I growled, standing up and making my way out of the room we did most of our club meetings in.

  Most clubs called this room ‘church.’