Page 49 of Biker's Collar: Property of Scrap

Juliette turns around and kisses him. I avert my eyes respectfully, although the way she kisses her husband is extremely disrespectful. Some of us can’t have our wives in seedy war rooms…

“Gideon, Tamiya, your job is to track down the Midnight SS full roster membership. You’re the most likely to survive working with Oske, so after this meeting, I’ll send her your way.”

“I love that bitch,” Tamiya says.

Gideon scowls. “Do you remember that Oske convinced Tamiya to commit a kidnapping? I don’t like a woman who has undue influence on my wife hanging around.”

His hand reaches around to grip Tamiya’s thighs. I almost regret not leaving Anna at a nearby motel so I could access her faster at the end of this meeting. Waiting hurts.

Tamiya plants an affectionate kiss on Gideon’s cheek that turns him red.

“I’m pregnant. I’m not going to do anything crazy,” Tamiya says, prompting him to give her thighs another aggressive squeeze. I grimace as I look at her bulging baby bump.

I felt guilty enough inviting a pregnant woman to this meeting. Gideon doesn’t need to make it worse. Oske will be good luck for a pregnant woman because of her Native American stuff. Maybe.

“Oske won’t mess up. She cares about this stuff and she’s trustworthy.”

“She’s a psycho bitch,” Ruger chimes in. “She stole my cigarettes.”

“Is that enough to diagnose her?” Tamiya mutters.

I keep assigning jobs because if I stop for every moment of distracting conversation, I’ll have a full head of grey hair before I get back to Anna.

“Ethan, your job is killing a blond bastard named Dusty Haas. His family lives ten miles away from the Creek reservation, and we have good reason to believe he’s kicking around those parts. I need you to take the patched-in Hollingsworth members without a team. That is… Reed and Mason.”

Ethan grunts and salutes me. He likes any business that keeps him close to the reservation casino. I’m not entirely ungenerous with him.

“And Tanner? I need you to lead a team out West to handle the Kiefer twins, since we have it on safe authority they’re in Texas working out some type of oil deal where they shouldn’t be conducting business at all.”

“Yes, sir,” Tanner says.

Everyone has their assignment except Owen. I’m nervous about what I need to ask my brother to do but… I have to trust him with this.

“Owen? I have an assignment for you, but it’s best we handle this in private.”

Nobody bristles. We have enough trust in each other and in the club.

“With your drinks or your seltzer… let’s pledge to come together and get this done. Shall we?”

Twenty-Two

Owen

Being alone with Wyatt in the club meeting room reminds me of getting in trouble when I was a teenager. I always wanted to impress Ethan and Wyatt. I was willing to do anything for my older brothers’ approval. Dad’s death changed all of us. Wyatt took on an impossible burden when Oske rolled into his life like a chaotic gunpowder laden tumbleweed.

The truth she confessed to him only made Wyatt’s moral burdens worse.

Is this why tragedy follows all of us? Is it what we did to the Indians? I know he’s thinking some crazy shit like that. Considering the shit that follows our family, maybe it’s not so crazy. Maybe it’s the most sane opinion to have. He reaches into his pocket for a cigarette, which means this isn’t just a serious conversation, it’s one he knows I won’t like.

Cigarettes never had that pull on me, but they can be nice enough when you need to calm down.

“Light?”

Wyatt leans over and lights my cigarette. He lit my first one. By then, Ethan was already on the run from his first bad dealwith a bookie. He dropped out of high school to make it all back on horse racing and then went back to high school to be the oldest and most successful tight end our team had ever seen. So when he has it together, he has it together.

“I need you to take on a stronger leadership role.”

“Me and not Ethan?”

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