Chapter 10

Amy

I can’t help the frustrated sound that escapes from my lips. “My drone’s battery is depleting. I need to make it back before the battery runs out completely.” The last thing I need is to wreck one of the drones he took God only knows how long to make from scratch.

He tells me quickly, “Use the return to home feature. The drone can retrace its own flight pattern back to the basecamp.”

I glance around seeing nothing that looks like a basecamp. Maybe the drones all go somewhere else to land, kind of like a Roomba. “Where’s basecamp? I don’t see anything but us here.”

He gestures to the controller in my hand. “That’s basecamp as far as your drone knows.”

I’m so embarrassed that I blush furiously, “Oh yeah, that makes sense.”

“The return to home feature is the button on the side.”

“Is that your own invention or do all drones have that?”

“It’s a standard function, though what I’ve done is make a slight tweak. If my battery gets critically low, the drone automatically lands before reaching basecamp, but I’ve fixed it so that the moment it touches ground it’ll send a GPS signal back to the controller, so I know where to pick it up. Once the battery is completely depleted then the GPS won’t work. Usually you want to avoid getting into that kind of situation, because that’s how you lose drones. But this way, at least I can get to it before some lucky fucker finds it.”

I carefully lay down the controller and move closer to him. “I can’t believe you just break things apart and repurpose them that way. I’ll bet you have a genius level IQ.”

He snorts a laugh as he gazes at his screen, still tracking the van. It looks like it’s slowly crawling along a dirt road that’s getting narrower and narrower.

“Where do you think they’re going?” I ask curiously.

“Wherever it is, someone’s been there before. Otherwise there wouldn’t be a dirt road.”

“Good catch,” I admit. “Then again, maybe it’s from the eighteen hundreds or something, like an old road to a railroad that no longer exists? There used to be lots of mines around here.”

“That’s possible. What I want to know is why they’re going all the way out into the middle of nowhere. If your grandfather is holding your mom away from the farm, then he could have another property out there.”

“It could be because they have to feed my mom and administer her meds.”

His eyes never leave the screen, even when he answers me. “It could be. If that’s true, at least we can rest assured that she’s still alive.”

Something painful and dark twists in my gut at the thought that she might not still be alive. No matter how hard I try, I can’t bring myself to believe that she’s dead. If she were dead, how is it that I still feel so connected to her?

Ven’s free hand comes out to rest on mine. “Don’t worry. If I have to move heaven and earth, I’ll find her.”

I lean over onto his shoulder and watch the screen along with him as he tracks that van. We’re tracking along and there are no problems seeing the vehicle, but then there’s a long line of trees for a mile or two that obscures the view, and we lose track of the van. Ven doubles back to look for it and brings the drone down lower and flies it along the side of the road.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he says intensely as he searches around.

We don’t see any side roads, nothing. Then he gets an alert that his battery is running low. He curses under his breath.

“Do you have enough power to get back?” I ask, worried about him losing his new drone.

“Naw, I don’t.”

“What’s the plan now? Will it land and do the GPS thing like you said?”

“I don’t want to risk it, the land here is too open, especially if your grandfather or his men use this road regularly. I’m gonna land it by an easily identifiable natural landmark and come back for it later. Make sure it’s hidden from view.” I watch him set the drone down next to a huge oak tree with a heart carved into the trunk.

When he’s finished, I say excitedly, “We could retrieve it now. I’d be more than willing to help. Why risk something happening to it?”

“I need to get together some of my club brothers because we’re going to be breaching private property, and I want to figure out where that fucking van disappeared to. If this has anything to do with your mother, we just might find her tonight.”

My hand comes out to land on his arm, and I caution him, “Please be careful. I don’t trust those farmhands slash so-called uncles of mine, not to make you disappear like they did to my mother.”

His expression turns warm. “You really care so much about what happens to me?”

I bring my hand up to cup the side of his face and caress his cheek with my thumb. We can’t seem to stop gazing into each other’s eyes. I tell him softly, “Yeah, I do care about what happens to you, Serp.”

A smile ghosts over his face. Before he can say something sweet, I interject some levity into our situation. “I can’t let anything happen to you because I’ve still got two more questions to ask.”

He laughs, clearly amused by my teasing.

I realize that a happy Ven is twice as handsome as a serious one. Without giving him a chance to object, I lean over and give him another kiss. “That makes three.”

“I’m beginning to think this kissing has nothing to do with wheedling information out of me. You just like throwing a lip lock down on me whenever you fancy.”

“Anything’s possible,” I tell him before hopping up, I dust off the back of my pants and help him load the small drone I was using back into the special housing he’s added to his motorcycle to transport them.

When we gear up and get back onto his bike, the sensation of having the wind blowing over me is addictive. I can totally see why these bikers in the Savage Legion love to ride the open road. It feels like a kind of freedom I’ve never realized was possible.

Having my arms around him feels more intimate now that I’ve kissed him. I’m falling for this guy, harder and faster than I ever thought possible. Meeting his lovely mother was just the reprieve I needed from the endless grind of keeping my mom’s case going.

We finally get back to the clubhouse in the late afternoon. The prospects have set up a grill outside, one of the prospects seems to be in charge of the cooking and in addition to the grilled meat he brings out trays of delicious looking canapes. I hadn’t thought I was hungry, but once I started, I made short work of my plateful.

***

When Ven and a handful of the other brothers leave to retrieve his drone and search for the van, I decide to hang out in the bar area to keep from worrying myself sick. I dared not get my hopes up that they would find my mom tonight for fear of getting let down. I hope and pray they do find her, because I need to know she’s safe and not being abused by her asshole father. My grandfather has always been flat-out mean.

The bar is filled with brothers who didn’t go with Ven. There are more club girls than I remember, and all the prospects are hard at work. It seems like business as usual. My reason for heading to the bar is to learn more about what bar tending here involves. I have to learn, because I need the job they offered me. My request for time off was answered with a curt reply from my boss telling me not to bother coming in again. I’d been upset and had wanted to argue since I got injured working there. But in the end, I just let it go, I have more to worry about right now.

I turn my gaze to the young prospect behind the bar, I like Evan—he’s polite, respectful, and enjoys chatting. Quite the opposite of some of the surly teenagers who used to come into the coffee shop.

“Are you here just to hang out?” Evan asks.

“Nope, I’m here to learn how to mix drinks,” I say chipperly.

He glances up at my bruised face and the cut on my lip and responds doubtfully, “If any of the brothers found you behind the bar in your condition, they’d skin me alive. I’m supposed to be protecting the old ladies not exploiting them when they’re still healing up from a beatdown.”

The last thing I want to do is get Evan in trouble with the brothers. Arguing with the young prospect also seems kind of rude, so I slide onto one of the barstools. “Alright. Tonight, I’ll learn by watching.” Remembering what he said the other day about not being old enough to pour drinks, I ask, “Should you be behind the bar?”

“It’s all cool,” he says looking proud as punch. “I’m just helping out, I’m not serving alcohol.”

I nod, though my eyes go to the bottle of beer in his hands.

Before I have a chance to say anything a woman’s voice calls out, “Evan, how many times have I told you, get out from behind the bar. Do you want me to tell your mom?”

Quick as a flash Evan hops over the bar to join me on the other side. I turn to look at who spoke and see two women wearing property cuts coming towards me.

“Don’t tell mom,” Evan says sheepishly. “I wasn’t serving alcohol, honestly. I know you’d get into trouble if I did. I was just gonna hand Warren a bottle of beer.”

The woman, who’s super pretty with short spiky hair raises an eyebrow at him, “I’ve got four kids and taught for years. You think I can’t spot a lie? You know the rules. It’s not just me being a party pooper, the club and your parents could get into serious trouble.”

Even hangs his head, but then the woman ruffles his hair, “I’m not gonna tell Mattie, but seriously, no working the bar. Vapor and Haze are round the back, I think they’re looking for you, something about designing flash for the tattoo parlor.”

With that Evan skedaddles off with a grin on his face, the woman sits beside me and her friend on the other.

She turns to me and puts her hand out for me to shake. “My name’s Cleo and I’m the club president’s old lady.”

I shake her hand and respond, “I was introduced to Siege the other day. He seems like a nice man.”

“Yeah, he is. All the brothers here are good, decent men.” Gesturing to the other woman, she says, “This is Anna, Haze’s old lady. We’re both wives, but as you’ve no doubt realized, not all old ladies are wives.”

Glancing down at my property cut, I nod. “Yeah, I think I fall into that category myself.” I can’t help but wonder if she knows that I’m in a fake relationship with Ven. I hate being deceitful with these nice ladies. As if intuiting what I was thinking by the expression on my face, she winks at me. “Yeah, Siege tells me almost everything. Most MC presidents don’t, but we’ve learned to trust each other that way.”

Relief floods my mind. “I’ll bet that kind of open honesty saves a lot of problems in the long run.”

“Yeah, we’ve got two sets of twins, three dogs and a cat to worry about. The last thing we need is a bunch of secrets and cloak and dagger shit going on.”

The pretty redhead chimes in, “Yeah, secrets are relationship killers.”

Glancing around to see if anyone is listening, I lower my voice. “Do you mind if I ask you a question?”

“Of course not. We came to check on you tonight, to see if you needed anything,” Cleo responds.

I take another sip of my drink before coming out with it. “How did you cope with knowing your husband slept with all the club girls? Did it make you insecure?”

Cleo takes a moment to gather her thoughts, running her perfectly manicured nails through her short blonde hair. “That’s a really good question to be honest. I never cared that he had a robust sexual history before me. The brothers are all healthy men with strong sex drives. It’s the reason their MC has club girls in the first place.”

“So you were fine with all this,” I say, waving one hand around at all the women and men hooking up.

“To be fair, it was a problem in the beginning for me because one of the club girls set me up to think that Siege was still having sex with her while he was with me. It broke my heart, but Siege figured out what was going on and banned her from the club. Once I realized she’d set the whole situation up to look like they were having an affair, I couldn’t very well hold him responsible for something he didn’t do. From there on out, our relationship just got stronger and stronger.”

I glance over at Brittany and then look away. Anna leans over and puts her hand on my arm. “Don’t let that one intimidate you. She gave me a hard time when I first got with Haze. If you and Ven are trying to make something good out of this situation, don’t let anyone stop you.”

I nod and we talk quite a bit about club life and how to alert the club if things are going terribly wrong at any point. I discover that Cleo is a social worker and that’s why she likes to do check-ins with all the old ladies fairly regularly. It’s refreshing to know that the MC has protocols in place for making sure the wives and old ladies are doing okay.

I notice that Brittany and all the other club girls are on their best behavior while Cleo is hanging out around the bar. That amuses me, but I don’t say anything about it. That would be stirring the pot which is beneath the dignity of someone wearing a property cut.