Page 70 of Panther's Magpie
“Not at all. He is a strong and capable man. He is safe for you. He would protect you. Those are good traits to have in a man.”
I lean against the counter, contemplating what I want to do. Part of me really wants to tell her. If Aspen were here, I would have already spilled the deets with her. I don’t know Rain that well, though, and well, Aspen probably wouldn’t want to hear about me having the hots for her brother.
“I can feel you staring at me,” she says as she shuts the fridge, giving me her full attention. “What else happened?”
“What? How do you know anything happened?”
“You have that guilty look on your face like you got caught with your hand in the cookie jar.”
I sigh. “We kissed this morning. It was pretty hot and heavy. Then he got a call and told me I could stay here. He probably kisses lots of girls, though, right? It probably meant nothing. I mean, I’m not special.”
She snorts. “Sure, Panther has kissed plenty of girls. I’m not going to lie to you.”
My stomach sours at her words. I mean, I knew it, but I didn’t need the confirmation. I would have rather lived in my fantasy world.
She doesn’t notice my peril and continues on. “However, he doesn’t bring girls here. This is his home. Trust me, it’s special that you are here.”
“Well, you know where he lives, so you must have been here.”
She laughs. “No. Not even once. I only know where he lives because everyone on the compound does. You want to act like this doesn’t mean anything, but it does. It means a lot.”
I sit there reeling from her words.
Could they be true?
Could Panther really feel the way I do?
PANTHER
I hated leaving Maggie at the house, but no matter how badly I wanted to keep her in my arms, I had to go. Club business will always come up, and it’s my job as president to handle it when it does.
Doesn’t mean I have to like it.
“What have we got?” I ask Eagle as I climb off my bike.
I’m staring at my bar. The one I bought so my brothers would have somewhere to let off steam without ruining the home we were building now sits with vandalism all over it.
“It is going to need some renovations. There is kerosene everywhere in there. The whole place needs to be hosed down and aired out. I can’t tell yet if we will need to actually replace the tile or walls.”
I grimace. If they poured kerosene everywhere, the walls will need to be replaced. I don’t even care about the money or the amount of work. I care about the disrespect.
I should have expected it, though, when we burned their place to the ground.
“Why didn’t they light it up?” I ask Eagle.
“Oh, they were going to. I think they were waiting for some of us to be here. Hawk got here first, though, and smelled the kerosene before he went in. He brought Renegade with him in the truck, so he ran him around the building. They found the explosives.”
Fuck.
Hawk used to be EOD in the military. His dog, Renegade, is a retired bomb-sniffing dog from the service. When he was discharged, they let him take Renegade with him due to his age. The dog has to be like fifteen years old now. It was lucky Hawk brought him tonight and that it was he who found the bomb. None of us would have been able to disarm it the way he could.
“They are trying to hit us where it hurts. This bar means nothing, but had they gotten any members? That would have hit us hard,” I tell him.
He nods. “I know. Had it been twenty minutes later, the place would have been crawling with our guys. Hawk said it was set to a cell phone. He thinks they didn’t realize he was one of us. That’s the only reason he can think that they didn’t blow it the moment he showed up. They tried to after about five minutes of him being there, though. He had already disarmed it by that time.”
“I don’t like this. They could be watching us now. They are playing games. You know we haven’t been able to catch a single one of them out and about since Aspen went missing? Even the guys at the bar when Maggie went were lower level. They couldn’t tell us shit.”
I don’t need to tell him this. He was there when we grabbed the guy who hit Maggie and beat him half to death. He didn’t know anything about Aspen. He was only told to stay at the bar with his buddy and report anyone who came in. Eagle is the one who helped me dispose of the body.
