“No. Just wondering if you’re going to tell me the truth.”
“I’m not here to play games.”
“Neither am I. And yet, you’re playing one,” I said.
He sighed. “Been almost a year since we sat down face to face.”
At least he took the damn hint.
“Can we talk about this now? Or are you going to keep trying to read me like a book?” Harry asked.
“I don’t know. Are you going to start acting like the Harry I know? Or are you going to keep up this squirrely attitude?”
“I’m not acting squirrely.”
“You are. You’re holding all your cards to your chest, and you never do that. You always lead with the conclusion before we backtrack and pick things apart to come to a conclusion that suits us both. This time, you’ve decided not to do that. So, naturally, I’m on my guard,” I said.
“That why you’re flashing your guns at me?”
“No.”
“Then, why are you flashing your guns at me?”
I grinned. “To let you know that I know where your guards are.”
Harry’s eye twitched. His tell. That damn twitch had been his downfall for years with me. So, he had come with guards. That was a first. I didn’t know if he’d come with them, but with the way he was acting, it wouldn’t have surprised me. I used my peripheral to scan the room. I clocked the looming shadows. Two behind him. One behind me. One shadow moving side to side just beyond the door we sat behind.
Harry had never come armed like this to one of our meetings.
Which means the phone call Notch made didn’t go well.
My phone rang out in my pocket, but I ignored it. I knew it was probably Notch, updating me on what to expect. Too little, too late. I wasn’t going to break the trance I had Harry in. My life depended on it at this point, because I was sorely outnumbered.
“So, what are we going to do about this predicament we find ourselves in?” I asked.
“You ready to talk?” Harry asked.
“You ready to call off your dogs?”
“I thought you worked well under pressure, Stone.”
“But I don’t work well under coercion. In fact, there’s no quicker way to shut me up,” I said curtly.
Then, after staring me down with those beady little eyes of his, he rose his hand and gave the signal. And one by one, his guards left the room. Leaving us alone to speak.
Though, I could only assume the room was bugged to record our every word.
“Ready?” Harry asked.
“I thought you’d never ask, handsome,” I said, grinning.
Four
Hayley
“Tell me about mom,” I said.
Dad bit down into the sandwich I’d made him. A candied BLT, with extra mayonnaise. Just the way he liked it. I picked up my pickle and took a chunk out of it, watching as my father chewed slowly. Every time I saw him, it looked like he had aged another five years. Despite the fact that he wasn’t even halfway through his life yet, sometimes he looked as if he were sixty or seventy. But as I watched him and studied the gray in his hair, he looked practically eighty years old.
With a thousand-mile stare that worried me.
“What do you wanna know?” my father asked.
“Tell me something I don’t know. Like, what was the last date you guys went on?” I asked.
“We went to eat.”
“Okay. Where?”
My father shrugged. “Someplace.”
“You don’t remember?” I asked.
“Not important, really. She’s gone now, and that’s all that matters.”
“That doesn’t mean we can’t talk about her. You know, reminisce.”
My father always struggled with this part of things. I was young when my mother died, and the older I got, the more the memories faded. I was worried I’d forget her altogether. I was worried that once my father stuffed her down so deep, he’d never want to conjure her again. I didn’t want to grow old without memories and facts about my mother.
I didn’t want to lose her again.
“She liked all kinds of foods,” my father said.
“Like what? Was she allergic to anything?” I asked.
“Nah.”
He took another bite of his sandwich and I sighed. I knew there were topics I could stick to that he’d talk about. Topics that made him light up whenever he spoke about her. It wasn’t what I wanted to know, though. I didn’t want him to recount what I already knew. I didn’t want him to retell the stories he’d told a thousand times over to me as a teenager growing up without her mother.
But they were better than nothing.
“What was your favorite part about when you guys first met?” I asked.
His eye twitched. “My favorite?”
“Yeah. I mean, I know you guys were high school sweethearts, but what was your favorite part of all that?”
I could have sworn I saw a grin trying to twist his chapped lips.
“Her outfits,” he said.
“What she wore?” I asked.
“Mhm. She had no fashion sense. Wore ripped jeans with beautiful tops and tank tops with sweatpants. She was a mess most days. And I thought it made her beautiful.”
I smiled. “I like tank tops and sweatpants.”
“I know you do. There’s a lot of your mother ingrained into you.”
“That’s why I want to know about her, Dad.”
“I know,” he said.
Brushing it off, just like he always did.
“Did you ever take her to prom?” I asked.
“You know the answer to that,” he said with his mouth full.
“Well, tell me again. Please?”
His eyes flickered up to me and I gazed into the eyes of an angry man. He’d been like that more and more these days. Angry, instead of sad, whenever I mentioned my mother. Like he was fed up with me always asking about her.
That didn’t mean I would stop, though.
“I somehow got the courage to ask her to prom after being teased by the guys on the football team about it. I figured she’d say ‘no’ since I was a jock and she was a wallflower. Never came to the games. Never gave a damn about sports. But one day she was talking about prom and I asked her if she had anyone to go with. And when she said ‘no,’ I just spat it out.”
“What did you say?” I asked.
“I said, ‘you wanna go with me, then?’ And she said yes.”
“That’s how you proposed to her?” I asked with a smirk.
He snickered. “You know the answer to that—”
“Daddy, please?”
He set his sandwich down and wiped his hands on his pants.
“No, that isn’t how I proposed to your mother. I proposed to her just after she graduated. When I was twenty years old and going through the police academy instead of going to college like my parents wanted. I took her out to Del Mar overlooking the ocean and we got drinks. Some food. Hung out, like we always did. And when we took a stroll down by the ocean, I pulled out a ring and got down on one knee,” he said.
I was hooked onto my father’s voice, trying to paint the image in my head.
“She had tears in her eyes before I even started talking. And halfway through the speech I’d been rehearsing in my head the entire dinner, she told me to spit it out,” he said, chuckling.
I smiled. “She did?”
“Yep. She told me, ‘I’ve never known you to be long-winded, so just ask.’”
“And did you?”
I sat on the edge of my seat, knowing damn good and well what was coming.
“I did. I halted my speech and said, ‘Freya, will you—’, and she cut me off by throwing her arms around me and saying yes.”
I giggled. “You always told me she was impatient.”
“Fucking hell, your mother was the most impatient person I knew. Probably why it worked so well with how quiet I was. I always got to the point, except that night.”
�
��Sounds like you two were made for one another,” I said.
The grin on his face faded. His eyes grew dark. He lowered his head and went back to eating his sandwich and didn’t give me another word about her. But I wasn’t ready for it to be over. I wasn’t ready to stop learning about my mother. Even if I was learning about all the things I already knew.
“Do you have any memories of me and her?” I asked softly.
He chewed his sandwich slowly as he combed over the catacombs of his mind.
“I do,” my father said.
“Could you tell me one? Just one, that’s it.”
He sighed. “What’s brought this on?”
I shrugged. “Just missing her, is all.”
“Is it because her birthday’s coming up?”
His eyes met mine and I tried holding back my tears.
“Please?” I whispered.
He drew in a deep breath. “Your mother and you used to go to the zoo all the time. Made me damn jealous whenever I was at work. She’d send me all these pictures of you posing by the animal exhibits and I’d long to be there with you guys. For years, I kept all these cute little videos of you running around and gasping at all the animals. And she’d always end the trip with your favorite exhibit. The puffins.”
“They’re very cute,” I said, smiling.
“You always wanted to take one home with you and your mother was always alone when talking you down off that ledge. It was a bi-weekly thing with you and your mother. The zoo around here knew you two by name. You did the same thing every time. Got the same lunch every time. I could practically anticipate the charges on the card before you guys even got home.”
I blinked back the tears as my father chuckled.
“When you first told me you wanted to work with animals, I honestly thought you were joking. You had just gotten that medical degree or whatever it was you did, and I thought to myself, ‘this has got to be a way for her to try and connect with her mother.’”
“Would that have been such a bad thing?” I asked.
My father wiped at his nose. “I’m proud of you for what you’ve done with your career, Hayley. I’m proud of you for finding something that made you happy. I’m proud of you for all you’ve accomplished and the job you snagged here at the San Diego Zoo. Your mother would’ve been proud, too, I suppose.”
“You suppose?”
“Yep.”
Little remarks like that were why I asked questions like the one that flew out of my face.
“How did she die?” I asked.
“You know,” my father said.
“I know it was a motorcycle accident. But beyond that, I don’t really know,” I said.
“Well, the specifics aren’t important.”
“They are to me. What happened that night?”
“Leave it, Hayley.”
“Dad, please tell me what happened—”
“I said, leave it.”
“No. For once, I’m not leaving this. I know it’s hard to talk about. It’s hard for me to talk about, too. But we can’t let her memory die. We can’t lose her again, Dad,” I said.
“Is that what this is always about?” he asked.
The harshness of his tone stopped my heart in my chest.
“Deal with it, Hayley. Your mother’s gone. And I have to make some work calls,” he said.
He tossed the rest of his sandwich onto the plate. He pushed his chair out from the table and wiped at his mouth with his napkin, then left me sitting there. Stewing in my anger and frustration. I pushed my plate away, no longer hungry for the sandwiches I’d made us. I grabbed my soda and chugged it down, then grabbed my things.
I heard my father mumbling on the phone in the living room as I passed him, but I didn’t bother saying goodbye.
I climbed into my car and drove off, annoyed at my father’s insistence. Annoyed at the brick walls he always threw up with me when all I wanted to know was my mother’s own damn life. I tore through the streets, making my way back out to the main San Diego highways. I didn't know why my father was that way. I didn’t know why the hell he didn’t want to talk about the woman he proclaimed was the love of his life. She was my mother. I lost someone, too, that night. I didn’t remember shit-all about it, and even though talking about her death sucked, I wanted to know about it.
I had a right to know about it.
I zoned out as I drove down the road. I wove in and out of traffic while my mind conjured all sorts of things about my mother. I cushioned the night she was killed. I thought about what kind of bike the man might have been driving and what my mother might have been listening to in the car. I ran the image around in my head, figuring maybe he came at the side of her car. Drunk out of his mind, like my father had once mentioned in passing.
I thought about their prom. The dress my mother might have worn. Their wedding, and the dress she wore then. All details my father would never divulge to me.
All details I’d have to make up for myself.
I heard horns honking around me and they ripped me from my trance. I saw a flash of black. The sun reflected off something metallic. I swerved my car, trying to avoid whatever it was in the road. Then the next thing I knew, tires squealed and metal crunching against metal sounded in my ears.
I slammed on my brakes and my head bashed into the steering wheel, knocking me clear out.
And I could have sworn I heard the engine of a motorcycle revving in front of me.
Five
Stone
Harry’s face deadpanned and I chuckled. He couldn't stand it when I teased him like that. The man constantly had a stick up his ass, and I hated working with people like that. Always so serious all the damn time. Then again, he did work for one of the most ruthless gun runners in all of China. It would only make sense that he’d have a stick up his ass.
Better than the barrel of his boss’s gun.
“My boss and I are concerned about this supposed cop that was undercover in the club,” Harry said.
“Well, you and I both,” I said.
“We’re worried he might have gotten a hold of some sensitive information.”
I shook my head. “Not possible.”
“Oh? Not even with how close Bronx got to him?”
“Not even with that.”
“Bronx is your numbers guy. He has a lot of information on us. Such as bank account routing numbers, times and dates for payments and drop offs. Bronx could do a lot of damage to us.”
“And he didn’t. Bronx knows not to talk about any of that stuff with people. Especially prospects. Which was all Boulder was. That grunt worked in the bar,” I said.
“Where you clean and funnel your money through.”
“He wiped down tables and cleaned up vomit,” I said flatly.
Harry leaned back into his seat. “My boss wants reassurance that we aren’t compromised. We want to know you guys are still good for your regular orders and shipments, along with the sales you do for us on a bi-yearly basis.”
“We will continue to be good for it once we settle this little issue. Right now, we’re switching up everything. Burner phones have been tossed and divvied out again. Delivery routes have been switched, which you and your men will single-handedly figure out tomorrow.”
“How can you ensure our safety, Stone?”
“By doing exactly what we’re doing right now. Switching over to precautionary and emergency mode until we can wipe that pig from the surface of the planet,” I said.
“Oh, so The Lost Boys are killing cops now? You know how my boss feels about that,” he said.
“And you know we aren’t actually going to kill him.”
“Then, what will you do?”
He was looking for answers I didn’t have. I didn’t know what the fuck we were going to do about Detective Woolf. I only knew we had to do something.
“Privileged information like that shouldn't be shared unless it’s necessary,” I said.
Harry grinned. “So, you don
’t know.”
“You don’t want us killing cops, that’s fine. We don’t want to kill cops. So, we go back to the drawing board and figure out something else. But, that bust Boulder ran threw out seven dirty cops in the San Diego department in the first place. Five of which were connections we had. The first step is rebuilding those connections. Then, we can take on Boulder.”
“You mean Detective Woolf.”
I swallowed the grin I wanted to plaster on my face. So, Harry knew more than he was letting on. Not once had we given that name to the Chinese. Hell, we didn’t even use it ourselves if we didn’t have to. Pissed us off to hear it.
“Yes, that’s exactly who I mean,” I said.
“How long was this Boulder in your ranks?” Harry asked.
“He didn’t start tending to the bar or coming to any of the functions until a couple months before shit went down.”
“And before that?”
I ground my teeth together. “He pledged himself to us for five months before we gave him a leather jacket.”
“And in those five months, what did he do?”
“What every other prospect drooling over the leather cut does. He bided his time, lived his life, and waited for our call to come to the bar for an interview.”
“And nothing struck you as odd during the interview, Mr. President?”
“I take full responsibility for what happened to the club. For what happened to Boulder, and the weight it’s brought down onto your shoulders. But I can assure you and your boss that nothing has been compromised. If it had been, he would’ve already made moves. That bastard is tailing us—”
“He’s what?” he asked.
I nodded. “He was tailing Bronx there for a while, so we are taking precautions. Many of them. Driving back roads. Using burner phones to call other burner phones. And before you ask? No. I wasn’t followed here.”
“You better make damn sure of it.”
“I am. But him tailing us means nothing was compromised. If it had been, your boss and us would’ve been stormed by his lackies. He’s following us because he has nothing, and he’s desperate. Which means we can use his desperation against him.”
“Desperate cops always screw up,” he murmured.
Stone: The Lost Boys MC #2 Page 3