Page 11 of Kilo's Edge

“Damn expensive,” Flir muttered. He was the treasurer for our club and this whole business was making him cranky. He didn’t like parting with money, even if it wasn’t his own.

“It’ll be worth it,” Ruck told him, his tone saying they’d had this discussion more than once before. “It’s so you assholes have somewhere to stay when you get too damn drunk to drive home,” he answered Code this time.

“Floor’s always been good enough before, Prez,” Code said, rubbing the back of his neck. When Ruck straightened up and gave him a grim look Code shrugged. “Whatever you want. It’s not a problem.”

Code had only been patched in about a year ago. He was still young, but he was a damn good member so far. He hardly ever bitched, so to hear him asking why we’d decided—as a club—to do something was a surprise. It was the heat. Phoenix in the summer may as well be the surface of the sun. It was all the damn blacktop. It attracted the heat to this city and made it damn near unbearable.

Ruck didn’t want those apartments for the nights we partied too hard. The man was always five steps ahead of the rest of us. He’d seen the Viking’s Rampage and what they were doing down in Tucson. They were building families. And even though they still fought for their club and their city, those families were having a calming effect on the guys. They were still dangerous as fuck, the battle up in the mountains against assassins, hit men, and sicarios was a prime example of that.

Not one of them had shied away from that fight, not even Butcher’s old lady, who happened to be an assassin herself. They’d loaded up their weapons and taken the fight to the assholes coming for their own. But they had something tofight for. And that was intriguing to Ruck. He knew most of us were getting restless, and as our leader, he wanted to see us content and happy.

I glanced over at Ruck and found him watching me with narrowed eyes. “Sorry I’m late.”

“You’re not even supposed to be here this morning,” he reminded me. “What’s the face for?”

“What’d you mean, Prez?” I asked, feigning innocence.

“That stupid ass grin? Why am I staring at it this early?”

I busted out laughing. Ruck was more of a night owl. Getting up this early was making him a cranky fucker. Me? My eyes opened at five a.m. every day, like clockwork. “How did you make it through so many years of service when you hate getting up early?” I asked, dodging his question. I wasn’t about to tell him that my ‘stupid ass grin’ was because I knew what he was up to. He wanted to play matchmaker and start finding our brothers some women.

Not the bunnies. No one was about to wife up the women who hung around here. Some of them were nice enough girls, but if anyone was into them, they’d have already made them old ladies.

“Persistence,” he muttered. “You asked for the day off, Kilo. Why’re you here?”

“‘Bout that,” I told him. “Have a…friend. Window was broken out in the monsoon the other night.” It’d been three days and Camila hadn’t gotten that window fixed yet. I knew why. It was hard as hell to get contractors out to a small job like that in the dead of summer.

Despite our summers being hell on Earth, with scorching temperatures and scatterings of storms that wreaked havoc around here, it was the height of construction season. Even the smaller handymen were booked out weeks, or months, in advance. If you managed to get anyone to even answer a phone call, you were damn fucking lucky.

“Sucks,” Ruck said, waiting for me to get to my point.

“Wanted to see if I could take one of those,” I pointed over toward the windows and other supplies that were stacked inside the steel building we used as a maintenance space for our bikes.

He looked over at the windows, and I could see the gears in his head turning. He was counting out how many he had versus how many he’d need.

“I’ll pay you for it. I just didn’t want to have to wait in rush hour traffic to make it to the store to buy one.”

“You don’t need to pay for it,” he said, sounding offended that I’d even offer.

That was Ruck. The man would give you the shirt off his back. Even if it was his last. He didn’t even ask which friend I needed the window for. He just knew I needed it.

“Take whatever you need to get the job done,” he told me. “But run it all by Flir so that we can make sure to pick up more later.”

“No problem. Thanks, Ruck.”

“This for yourladyfriend?” Overdrive asked from behind me.

Ruck’s brows shot up. He’d bent over to pick up a board, but straightened up again. Staring at me, he crossed his arms over his chest. “What lady friend?”

“She lives next door to him. Cooks like an angel,” Overdrive sighed.

Ruck’s amused gaze met mine. “She made you food?”

“Tacos,” Overdrive moaned before I could answer. “Best fucking tacos I’ve ever eaten. Does she have a sister?” he asked, a hopeful look on his face.

“Yeah,” I replied. I grinned at him. “She’s like eleven.”

“That’s just fucking mean,” he muttered. “A mama? I don’t mind my women being a little bit older.”

---