Page 52 of Baby Me

“Are you kidding me?”

“Nope, he came by to talk to me not long after you took off.”

“Shit, I wish I had been here for that.”

“That’s why he gave me his card for you. If you need to ask him questions, you can call or find out when he’ll be doing rounds again, so that you can be here.”

“Sweetheart?”

“Yeah, Tripp?”

“How about next time you lead with the amazing news and then we can slip into all the other stuff?”

Her giggle was music to my ears. I held onto Davina and we both shed a few happy fucking tears. Tears of joy, relief, fuck… Just tears to wash away the weeks and months of worry. The only thing standing in the way of our happiness as a family now was my ex-fucking-girlfriend. When I got my hands on her, I would make sure she suffered every bit as much as her victims did. Fuck Barry Whitaker. I didn’t give a rat’s ass about the man, but what she put my wife through, my new old lady, our daughter, my other children, and my whole fucking club… She’d pay for all of it.

Hours after I got to spend some quality time with my wide-awake baby girl and my woman, they were both finally fast asleep and resting. I was still up because that feeling in my gut was heavy. When it got to the point that it was all I could think about, I decided to stay up and on guard. Something was coming for us, and I didn’t know what or when, but this feeling was something to be trusted.

My cell phone buzzed, as if it was a harbinger of doom.

Scout: Need you at the clubhouse. Keys rode down yesterday, and we worked on tracking backward until we found the bitch.

Tripp: You can’t tell me what you found over the phone?

Scout: Mack requested that you be here for this. Bagger and Star are on their way to take your place.

Tripp: Anyone else around who you can send with them? I have a gut feeling that hasn’t settled in the last hour or so.

Scout: Sorry, no. Everyone else is either on a run, here where they’re needed, or on their way to look over your girls. We’re pretty thin on resources right now.

Tripp: Headed out as soon as Bag and Star are here.

By the time I got to the clubhouse, I was already over the trip. My head hurt, my gut was telling me something bad was about to go down, and there was nothing I wanted more than to get back to my girls. I would settle for ending June’s life as a consolation prize, but something told me that wouldn’t be why they dragged me down to the clubhouse.

“Whatever you have better be worth the trip I just took,” I called out the minute I walked into the clubhouse. Then I noticed a strange, red-headed woman who stood there smirking while she assessed me. “Who the fuck are you?”

“I’m the bitch who uncovered some helpful shit about your stalker,” she countered.

Her cut identified her as a member of the all-female motorcycle club located in the northern part of the state. S.H.E. MC had become notorious years ago when they took out a sex trafficking ring that was snatching Georgia girls and selling them all over the world. They had my respect for how they handled the whole thing, especially since there were other MCs directly in the trafficking pipeline who had done nothing to stop it.

“Sara Keys, Security Officer for S.H.E. MC.” The woman offered her hand to me and once we shook, I nodded my head in respect.

“Tripp Martin, President of the Savage Vipers, Danville, Georgia Chapter.”

“Well, Tripp Martin, I don’t want to keep you away from your family too long, so let’s get to it.” I followed her back to one of our meeting rooms we used when we had too many people to situate comfortably in my office but needed more privacy than the common room offered. The room we used as Church was off limits to anyone outside the club, no exceptions.

“Keys and I worked our way back from that gas station. We were able to get her on camera not too far from the condo where her ex-husband was found,” Scout mentioned as she worked the keys on her laptop for a few minutes before an image was projected onto the screen on the opposite wall from where I was seated at the head of a conference table.

“Who the fuck is that?” I was looking at a large man with dark, slicked back hair and a gnarly scar that ran down the side of his face.

“That is Kenneth Winslow, Barry’s brother-in-law. Kenneth Winslow’s real name was Anton Oslav.” Keys told me.

“Anton Oslav? Why does that name sound familiar?”

“He was one of the bastards we were after a few years ago. He was part of the trafficking ring my MC took down. To be specific, he was the spoke in the wheel that took women to be dispersed throughout the Czech Republic and various countries surrounding them.”

“What the fuck is June doing with that bastard?”

“We believe he is now working as a contract killer. In fact, he has been working as a contract killer for years now.”

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