Page 27 of Outlaws' Dirty Secret

Crap. “What?”

Grace laughs at my expression. “Since I know where you were last night, I suppose I have a suspicion where your mind is right now. Am I going to want a biker of my own by the end of this book?”

“Hey!” Terry yells in the background. “Do I need to get tattoos and a motorcycle?”

She rolls her eyes. “You're fine the way you are, baby. I married you for a reason. Now shut up while I talk smut with my friend.”

He laughs, not sounding worried. “I think I could pull off a tattoo.”

Thinking of what Dragon said about bikers and commitment, I feel a little wistful. I've always wanted to find someone who gets me and that I can really be myself with and the first guys in a while that I’ve really felt a spark with are ones I shouldn’t be thinking about as anything but temporary fun.

For now they seem set on corrupting me as much as possible, but in a few months, maybe even weeks, will the novelty wear off?

There’s no point in worrying about it.

For now we’re having fun, and having breakfast with Dragon this morning was… really nice. Cozy. At least until he got called in to work?

I giggle a little at that thought, like being a biker is his nine-to-five job.

“What's so funny?” Grace eyes me curiously through the phone.

“Nothing.” I force myself to keep a straight face. She raises a skeptical eyebrow, but it'd be hard to explain, so I move on. “So you think it's good enough?”

“Send it. Write more. And send that to me. That last chapter did both me and Terry a favor.”

“Loved it!” Terry yells in the background.

“Oh God, is he reading it, too?” I'm not sure I'm ready for that.

With a shake of her head, Grace lets out a little laugh. “Nope. I just liked it that much.”

And then it clicks. “Oh! Ew! I don’t want to hear about your sex lives!”

“Aaaaaanyway, I need to get out and get started on errands, and you need to keep writing while you've still got the mojo. I've sent you the few comments I have, but it’s pretty solid. I see a bestseller in your future.” The video sways as she picks her phone up. “Love you, babe.”

I blow her a kiss and disconnect.

I finish sorting the photos into stacks of either people and places I recognize or stuff I’ll probably never identify but will live in the attic forever just in case. I want to get everything digitized eventually, but in the meantime it’s fun to go through it all. Tothe side I’ve saved a picture of me and Grace playing in an open fire hydrant when I was about eight and staying here for the summer. Getting a nice framed print made of it would be perfect for her birthday.

My desk waits for me, but I'm a little unsure where I want to go next so instead, I brave the attic. There’s enough stuff up there to give me years’ worth of procrastination.

The attic space is hot, dusty, and with such a low ceiling that I have to almost crawl around. I grab the first box that looks likely to have more memorabilia and haul it to the ladder. It’s lighter than I expect, so when I get it down safely, I pull the lid off to check. Inside is a black leather jacket, folded neatly, with darker patches where something must have been covering the leather to keep it from sun damage. I've seen enough biker jackets in the last couple of days to recognize it as one, or that it at least used to be one. Why would Grandma have this?

I pull it out, only to find a random assortment of personal belongings. An old pair of sneakers. A t-shirt from a local annual music festival dated fifteen years ago. And below that, there are some knickknacks in a plastic bag, like an old steel lighter of the type where you flip the cap off the top, a couple of pens for some reason and… a box of ammunition. Mom and Dad are enough into off-grid living that they taught me how to fire a gun, but it’s the last thing I’d expect to find here.

No seriously, why would Grandma have this?

There's also a silver pocket watch with an embossed dog’s head on the front. The name 'Brutus' is stenciled underneath. On the back, 'L. Tanner' is engraved. Is that the owner's name? Grandma never mentioned anyone named that, at least that I can remember. But when I flip the jacket around and see there'sstill a patch on the breast that also reads 'Tanner', I guess that must be it.

Was he an Outlaw Son? Why are the patches torn off? And why was it all sitting in my Grandmother’s attic? It has to be related to the dog buried in the backyard, right? So many questions, and no Grandma around to ask.

As I put all of it back in the box for safekeeping until I figure out what to do about it, a faded Post-It note flutters out of the jacket. There's a phone number on it in my grandmother’s handwriting. Tanner's?

This feels like a story just waiting to be written. A girl inherits a house, finds an old box full of mysterious things and an unlabeled phone number. I can’t call it.

Can I?

No. Who knows how old all this stuff is? If that was his dog, and it was in the ground long enough to decompose to bones, it has to have been years. I should show this stuff to the guys. Maybe they can explain what it's about. But I mean… I do have a phone number. By now it’s probably someone else’s number, but what if it isn’t? If someone called me about things they found from my past, I’d at least think it was a fun little side quest.

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