Page 13 of Ash

ASH

Ieagerly reached for my phone when my text alert went off late the following morning. But instead of Nora, it was King reminding me about our rescheduled meeting.

“Dammit,” I muttered. I’d been in the middle of an incredible dream starring Nora where I stared at my handprint on her sexy little ass while I fucked her from behind. Stiffly, I climbed out of bed and stomped into the bathroom for an arctic shower.

After grabbing a quick breakfast, I hopped on my hog and rode the short distance to the clubhouse.

Kevlar, Cross, and Shadow sat at the bar with Wizard standing behind it. Shadow—an enforcer and one of the best “cleaners” in the business—saw me first. He lifted his chin in greeting before shooting back his drink.

Wizard cocked his head and stared hard at me. “Don’t look like a man who was up all night fucking,” he said with a grin.

I narrowed my eyes and muttered, “Shut the fuck up, asshole. Not all of us are so hard up we have to go at warp speed.”

Wizard snorted. “Don’t pretend you haven’t been celibate as long as I was before Thea.”

He had a point. This MC was probably weird as shit to outsiders. Most of us older guys had gotten sick of the garbage that went along with dating or friends with benefits. The upside was that it meant our previous actions weren’t gonna bite us in the ass if we finally met the right woman.

“You fuckers gonna stand there or get on with this meeting?” I growled, walking past them to the hallway that led to offices that belonged to King; Blaze, our vice president; Ace, our treasurer and money guy; Wizard; and me.

King was sitting behind his desk when I tapped on the doorjamb before entering at his nod. Blaze lifted his chin from where he was sprawled on a couch in a small sitting area. A large conference table was on the opposite side of the room, and two chairs sat directly in front of King’s desk.

Echo and an enforcer, Cruze, came strolling in as I dropped onto a stuffed chair by Blaze while everyone else found a seat. Wizard sat at the table, then pulled his glasses from his pocket and slipped them on before setting up his laptop.

“Sent you all the dossier,” he grunted as he typed on the keyboard. This meeting was about our newest prospective client. I’d been digging into his legal situation.

King tapped on his iPad, presumably to bring up the document.

“Read it last night,” I muttered. “Lines up with my research, but there’s more. This idiot is in deep shit. Drugs and hookers mostly. But no records of any violence or scamming.”

“Neighbors didn’t have anything bad to say about him,” Echo chimed in. He’d been doing surveillance on the guy, watching him and nosing around to see what the people he interacted with thought of him. “Mostly kept to himself, but friendly if they spoke to him. Never saw the cops there. Basically, he was just a typical guy…forgettable even.”

“Probably because he was an informant,” I remarked.

Wizard and Echo’s eyebrows shot to their hairline as they stared at me.

“No, he wasn’t,” Wizard disagreed vehemently.

“Yup,” I replied, letting the P pop.

“Woulda found the records when I was digging into the legal shit for you,” Wizard argued.

At the same time, Echo protested, “Woulda caught him talking to a cop.”

I rolled my eyes. “Ever hear of the term ‘off the books’? Means there’s no record.”

Wizard narrowed his eyes at me but huffed and started tapping on his keyboard with harder strokes than normal.

“It was lost in a bunch of useless, legal mumbo-jumbo. Codes and shit that would be hard for even a good lawyer to decipher. Lucky for the Hounds”—my expression turned smug—“I’m far better than fucking good.”

Echo huffed, but I ignored his pouting.

“Charges against him aren’t all bullshit, but some of them are obviously meant to be leverage. Gotten himself so deep that it wouldn’t take more than a phone call to put him behind bars for a long stretch.”

“Won’t all that go away if we erase him?”

“Not when some of that leverage includes threats against his daughter.”

“Daughter?” King growled. “He’d be leavin’ his kid behind?”

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