Page 40 of Baby Me

“Where was she when this was taken?”

“Wyoming, according to the file name,” Scout answered.

“What the fuck was June doing in Wyoming?”

I pulled my phone out as Mack asked the question. “Baby girl, we need you to answer a question for us, and I need you to think really hard about your answer.”

“Okay,” Star responded hesitantly. I realized that I hadn’t even greeted her when she picked up the phone, but it was too late for niceties.

“When you were in Wyoming, say four or five years ago, did you have any problems?”

“What kind of problems?”

“Unexplainable car troubles, getting sick out of the blue, someone knocking you around and making it seem like an accident.”

“Holy shit,” Star whisper yelled. “Do you think someone was targeting me?”

“Need you to answer the question, Star.”

“Yeah, I had to put my car in the shop because the brakes weren’t responsive. I nearly killed myself trying to stop when an elk stepped out on the road in front of me. Thankfully, I hadn’t been going that fast. When I got the car stopped, I called for a tow.”

“Your shadow didn’t show himself to help out?” I asked.

“I sort of ditched Trench earlier in the day. In fact, the only reason he was able to follow me after was because of that stupid incident and having to put my car in the shop. I was headed out of town.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“Don’t blame him. I sort of slipped something into his drink.”

“You could have been killed, Star.”

“And there would have been nothing he could do to save me if I’d been speeding out of town trying to get him off my ass as I drove.”

“Fair point. Look, I gotta go deal with your uncle and Scout.”

“Bagger is going to want to know what this was all about. He’s been listening in beside me.”

“Mack will fill him in when we’re done here. Kip too. Love you, baby girl.”

“Love you too, Dad.”

I hung up and turned worried eyes on my brother. “Get a security detail on Knox, Kip, Star, Davina and Coral,” then I turned to Scout. “And one for you too, darlin’.”

“I don’t need a security detail,” she huffed.

“If June has been following my family around that long, then she knows you mean something to my boy and me.”

“We should just arrange a lockdown,” Mack suggested.

“I think you’re right. Fuck’s sake, we’d need to call other chapters in to get security for my family and they’d probably laugh their asses off when they found it was an ex high school girlfriend causing so much fuss.” I shook my head, dismayed at the situation that we found ourselves in because of shit that happened when I was in high school.

“I don’t get it. She may have been a little possessive at the end because she didn’t want to be on the losing end, but we were already on the winddown to a split before shit went down with Kim. I never saw June as a psychopath capable of this shit.”

“People change, man. Never liked the bitch because she had designs on changing you and never intended to stick around to be part of the club, but never saw this level of crazy from her either.”

“I need to get up to my girls.”

“Put the word out about lockdown for me, yeah?”

---