Page 33 of Vengeance

Laughing, Ty tosses his cigarette to the ground. “How’s Heidi?”

“Scared. Where the fuck can she feel safe? She got tied up in our own goddamn clubhouse.”

“Where is she now?”

“With Mel and Jace.”

Shep looks at the ground and clenches his fist. Ty stares at him, waiting, but he doesn’t say anything more. “What’s up?”

“This whole fucking situation.”

“I need a little more than that, man.”

“I hate this. God, do you know how fucking shitty I feel that I can’t make her feel safe?”

Hearing the screams of all three women as they ran out of Church makes Ty’s skin crawl. And seeing Lex tied up like that was like watching a horror movie he couldn’t turn off. He never saw her or the others in the basement, but Ty has ideas about how terrible it was. If he was Colt, he doesn’t think he could sleep at night with the leader of the sickos after Lex. If it was Tara, Ty would never be able to close his eyes out of pure fear.

“Maybe the RIO will surprise us and give us resources to help us,” Ty offers, but he doesn’t believe the words as they come out of his mouth. “They crossed a line coming into our home. Shit’s gotta end soon.”

Shaking his head, Shep sighs and looks at the ground. “I’m about tempted to ask for donations from everyone to hire a fucking assassin to take out these motherfuckers. It’s to the point this is just fucking stupid.”

“It really is. And Lex was a little too calm about everything last night.”

Shep lets out a dry chuckle. “You noticed, too? It’s starting to freak me out, and I know Colt’s scared. She acts like the fate of everything is already sealed.”

“Do you know if Brock figured out what happened with the cameras?”

“Yep. Slashers got in the back while we were on the run. Almost no one was in the clubhouse since everyone’s at home with their girls and families, which seems like a perfect plan for them. You can’t see into the rooms from the hallway, but they had drills and shit for the shackles.”

The fact the assholes got into the clubhouse undetected at all pisses Ty off. “And the doors?”

“Only Colt’s was fucked with when we were gone, which makes sense since his wasn’t blocked off. They drilled and put the hinges for the new doors in for Jace’s and my apartments, and then they put false frames over it. We were so distracted we didn’t notice, and they just had to pop those off and swap out the doors.”

“These fuckers gotta be stopped soon.”

“Preaching to the choir here. Jennings had Psycho check their cameras just in case. We were the only ones. They’re fucking with us.”

It’s not surprising to anyone they would only target Griffin’s Beach. “What’s O’Malley’s deal with Lex? This fascination has gotten creepy. Is he just trying to scare her?”

“I have no idea. Maybe he sees it as a challenge. Like, if he can scare her, he breaks her.”

“It sounds like trying to tame a wild horse.”

“Isn’t it? It’s the watching and listening shit I can’t get past. In his own way, it’s like he wants to seduce Lex. If he points out the shit he likes while she’s fucking Colt, she’ll somehow find it endearing or something.”

“He has a death wish. She was pissed. I gotta ask, though. That shit between Mel and Autumn… is that how Heidi and Lex feel, too?”

Nodding, Shep says, “It’s also how Colt, Jace, and I feel. Autumn’s playing up what she went through. What I don’t understand is why Lex lets her get away with it. She by far got the worst of everything.”

Ty wonders the same, but Lex has always been somewhat of a mystery to him. Lately, though, he wouldn’t bet money on what she’ll do because he’d probably lose. She’s half in and half out, which confuses Ty because she’s been the one to tell the women it doesn’t work like that. With the club, it’s all or nothing, but she’s not fully in. She’s also not fully out.

“I can’t tell if her ability to work out the logistics of the Slashers is good or bad. Is it something we should worry about? That she’s gotten into their heads?”

“I think we should worry about it all,” Ty says.

Shep nods towards the building. “So, what’s the plan here? What are we doing here?”

“We’re going to have a drink.”

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