Page 29 of Venom's Sting

Relief floods my mind. “I’ll bet that kind of open honesty saves a lot of problems in the long run.”

“Yeah, we’ve got two sets of twins, three dogs and a cat to worry about. The last thing we need is a bunch of secrets and cloak and dagger shit going on.”

The pretty redhead chimes in, “Yeah, secrets are relationship killers.”

Glancing around to see if anyone is listening, I lower my voice. “Do you mind if I ask you a question?”

“Of course not. We came to check on you tonight, to see if you needed anything,” Cleo responds.

I take another sip of my drink before coming out with it. “How did you cope with knowing your husband slept with all the club girls? Did it make you insecure?”

Cleo takes a moment to gather her thoughts, running her perfectly manicured nails through her short blonde hair. “That’s a really good question to be honest. I never cared that he had a robust sexual history before me. The brothers are all healthy men with strong sex drives. It’s the reason their MC has club girls in the first place.”

“So you were fine with all this,” I say, waving one hand around at all the women and men hooking up.

“To be fair, it was a problem in the beginning for me because one of the club girls set me up to think that Siege was still having sex with her while he was with me. It broke my heart, but Siege figured out what was going on and banned her from the club. Once I realized she’d set the whole situation up to look like they were having an affair, I couldn’t very well hold him responsible for something he didn’t do. From there on out, our relationship just got stronger and stronger.”

I glance over at Brittany and then look away. Anna leans over and puts her hand on my arm. “Don’t let that one intimidate you. She gave me a hard time when I first got with Haze. If you and Ven are trying to make something good out of this situation, don’t let anyone stop you.”

I nod and we talk quite a bit about club life and how to alert the club if things are going terribly wrong at any point. I discover that Cleo is a social worker and that’s why she likes to do check-ins with all the old ladies fairly regularly. It’s refreshing to know that the MC has protocols in place for making sure the wives and old ladies are doing okay.

I notice that Brittany and all the other club girls are on their best behavior while Cleo is hanging out around the bar. That amuses me, but I don’t say anything about it. That would be stirring the pot which is beneath the dignity of someone wearing a property cut.

Chapter 11

Ven

We get to the ridgeline after dark. I wish I had my drone with the infrared camera right now, I hope it’s still safe beside the tree. As it’s a clear moonlit night and visibility is good, I send up one of my other drones instead, but we don’t see anything unusual.

“This is fucking infuriating,” Siege says irritably.

“No joke,” I respond. “I tracked that fucking van for over two hours across several hundred acres and the damn thing just disappeared into the thin air.”

“Nothing ever disappears,” Rigs says while looking through his binoculars. “Zen said he couldn’t find anything in the county records about old roads, towns, or businesses in this area. Since it’s highly improbable that there would be old dirt roads that lead to nowhere, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say someone wiped the county records.”

Several heads turn to look at him simultaneously.

I stammer, “Are you saying whatever’s going on with the vans, goes all the way up to county or even state government?” If that’s what he’s insinuating, it boggles my mind. It smacks of conspiracy, and that seems highly unlikely to me.

Rigs glances over at me, lowering his binoculars. “Never attribute to high level coordination what can be achieved by low level government employees when someone greases their palms generously.”

Now that made a lot more sense. “So what’s the plan?”

“We head down, breach the property, start where the road branches off and end where the van disappeared. This is clearly going to take the better part of the night, but it has to be done. This might solve the mystery of where these vans with the out-of-state plates are coming from, and what they’re doing in our neck of the woods.”

“I’m here to find Amy’s mother. To my mind everything else is secondary.”

Siege says, “Agreed. Human lives always come before solving mysteries and appeasing our curiosity. Let’s get moving.”

Rigs announces, “I’ve sent a message with the coordinates to both target sites. Remember, you’ve got to make the first rendezvous in order to be on the correct secondary road to reach the site where the van disappeared.”

We all murmur our agreement, mount our bikes and head for dirt road through the old man’s property. Our first rendezvous is the smaller one-lane road that branches off the main dirt road. Riding through the darkness with my club brothers on a mission to find Amy’s mom is the best feeling in the world. One way or another, I’m going to find Amy’s mother and bring her home safely.

We ride for miles under the cover of moonlight, we don’t want to draw attention to ourselves, so our headlights are off. As this is private land there should be no other traffic, and we’ll hear anyone approaching.

We all get to the first rendezvous point without incident, even the scouts we sent out in several directions reportednothing suspicious, and I managed to collect my drone, which was exactly where I landed it beside the oak tree. The only thing left to do is ride down the one-lane road into the area where the van went missing.

Rigs and Siege are in the lead position, they slow down, and we all stop at the coordinates and get off our bikes.

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