Chasing Claire (Hells Saints Motorcycle Club) (19 page)

Prosper took a minute.

Then he nodded. “Yeah, Diego filled me in, it sounds like a bigass mix-up to me. And while I’m pretty sure that with a little goddamn forethought on your part, the whole thing could have been avoided, I’m down with D’s assessment.”

Jules snorted.

Prosper ignored him and continued. “But there is something that still don’t add up to my way of thinking.”

“Yeah, and what would that be?” Hal tensed. He wasn’t used to his actions being questioned.

“It’s obvious that you care a lot about Glory,” Prosper said.

“Your point?” Hal’s eyes grew hard. Hearing his sister’s name roll so easily off the tongues of these guys didn’t sit well.

“His point, motherfucker,” Jules interrupted, “is that your sister’s been through a boatload of shit. The kind of shit that could have gotten her dead. How the hell did that escape your attention for all this time?”

Hal scrubbed his hand on the back of his neck. It was a fair question and something he had asked himself about a lot. “Listen, I’m not denying that I fucked up six ways to Sunday. But it was a long time ago, and Glory didn’t say anything, never said a word. And since it’s just me and her, there was no one else to drop a dime on it either. I didn’t know anything about what went down with Glory and Abbiati until just recently. Nothing would have kept me
from coming home if I had known what kind of trouble she was in. I came back as soon as I found out. That shit in Vegas, man. I’m going to kill somebody for that.”

“What shit in Vegas?” Jules said.

“You don’t know?” Hal shot back, surprised.

“What the fuck don’t I know?” Jules countered.

Hal shook his head. He would not break his sister’s confidence. “You’re going to have to ask Glory about that. But for now, just know that I am taking care of it.”

Jules scowled, but remained silent.

Hal turned to Prosper and forced his tone to remain even.

“I came here to ask you, that guy? That fucking Gino? Glory told me that the matter’s been dealt with, but I want to hear it from you.”

“The matter has been dealt with,” Prosper said.

Hal took a minute to think about what that probably meant in the MC world and decided that he was good with it.

“Any chance of that coming back and landing at my sister’s door?” he asked a final time.

Jules answered that for him. “No fucking chance.”

Hal looked from Jules to Prosper and back again. While Hal still wasn’t exactly sure what he was dealing with here, he knew that these men would be good for their word. And they seemed to care about his sister. For now, that was enough for him.

“I owe you. You and your crew.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Prosper nodded.

“We good?” Hal asked.

Prosper nodded again. Hal turned his attention to Jules and nodded once.

Jules scraped back his chair and stood up. Hal did the same.

“You and me? I’d like to get this shit out of the way before I leave,” said Hal. And because he knew there was no way of getting around this without bruising and bloodshed, he added, “You
gotta know that I cannot go back with my face looking like a fucking punching bag. So when you go for it, you go for my torso. You good with that?”

“Fucking great with that,” Jules growled.

“Let’s do this, then,” Hal ground out.

Prosper nodded. “You boys take it outside. One more thing gets busted in this room, my woman’s going to bust my head.”

It took only a few moments for Hal and Jules to reach the yard. When Jules pulled his shirt over his head and Hal saw the Marine flag inked over his heart, it gave him pause. Even here in the middle of Hells Saints territory, it went against his grain to fight with someone he considered a brother. But then Hal looked at the fire in Jules’s eyes and knew that he didn’t see it that way. Hal knew he owed him a fair fight.

Jules had clearly been waiting days for this. He was on Hal in a flash. He rammed his fist so hard into Hal’s stomach that Hal swore that he felt his spine snap. Then Hal spun around, landed his foot midchest, and sent Jules flying back against the hard ground. Jules jumped up and charged after Hal. He landed a right, then a left square into his hard-muscled stomach. That move caught Hal by surprise and knocked the wind right out of him. Hal rallied and gave Jules two swift jabs to the kidneys. Jules countered and used the exact same move on Hal that Hal had used on him that night at the lake house. The fight ended with Jules’s foot on Hal’s neck and his arm stretched in a painful hold.

But Jules didn’t apply the pressure to Hal’s neck that they both knew he could have. He didn’t apply nearly the same amount of weight that Hal, fighting for his life, had forced on Jules. Hal felt Jules hesitate just long enough to make sure that point was understood, then he eased up. When Jules reached down to offer his hand, Hal took it.

The pair eyed each other warily. Each sore, each breathing heavily, each wincing in pain with every intake of breath.

“Would have done the same in your shoes.” Jules looked Hal in the eye, and conceded.

Hal leaned over, then, with one hand on each knee, trying to catch his breath. Jesus, the fucker could fight. Hal had no idea how he had gotten the drop on him in the first place.

Hal looked at Jules with a newfound respect. “I appreciate that. And if it had been my own in that house and some dick was hovering around under the windows, I would have done same as you,” he managed to wheeze out.

Prosper, who had been watching from the deck, breathed a sigh of agitated relief. Sunday was supposed to be the damn day of rest, wasn’t it?

“You two done with this shit now? Because I want to get back to the game.” Prosper pulled himself out of the chair he had been sitting in.

“Game’s still on?” Hal croaked out. “Glory won’t let me watch it at her place. Mind if I watch the last half here?”

Jesus. The guy had nuts of steel. He looked at Jules, who was busy surveying the damage done to his ribs. Despite the fact that he had gotten his own back, Prosper didn’t know if his boy was quite ready to play nice.

Jules answered for him.

“Yeah, shit. Stay. Have a beer. Then, maybe later, you can show me some more of those fucking moves. Been a long time, but I don’t ever remember learning that shit. That thing that you did when you got me in the kidneys? Man, that almost brought me down. I have got to know how to do that.”

Hal reached out and threw Jules’s T-shirt at him.

“That’s my best foot jab. Motherfucker, ain’t it? First time someone threw that one at me, I lost my lunch. You are one tough sonofabitch. I’ll show you that and a few others . . . It’s all in the ankle snap.”

Holy Christ Almighty. Prosper could not believe this shit.

Pinky, who always knew the exact time to make an entrance, hit the yard with two ice packs and a couple of cold beers.

Prosper was still out on the deck when Reno and Diego showed up a couple of hours later to catch the second game. They grabbed a couple of beers and watched the two former enemies playfully duking it out in the backyard. Jules and Hal had decided to spend the hour in between games showing each other flips, crosses, sways, clinches, uppercuts, defensive moves, offensive moves, and holds that were almost impossible to break.

After about fifteen minutes of watching them go at each other hard, Diego looked at Prosper. “You gonna explain this shit?”

“Would if I could, Brother.” Prosper took a long pull on his beer and chuckled. Then he added, “Got to agree that is some weird fucking turn of events right there.”

Reno nodded beside him and the three men lit up a smoke and watched on as Hal and Jules laid into each other.

“Game’s gonna start in ten minutes!” Pinky called from the door.

“You hear that? Time to quit this shit, come on in and lay your money down,” Prosper threw down his cigarette and called to Jules and Hal who were still in the yard.

Jules reached down and pulled Hal up off the ground. “I got a hundred says the Ravens take it.”

“You’re on. I’ll take that, but I’m gonna need a two-point spread.” Hal pulled his shirt gingerly over his head with a grimace.

Prosper just shook his head and went into the house smiling.

Hal had spent most of his leave time with his sister. He had tried his best to put together the pieces of what had happened. Hal had made some mistakes in his life and had done some stupid things, but he never would have agreed to a deal where his sister danced buck naked in front of strangers to bail him out. It hurt him deeply that his sister had thought he would have sold her out like that. Some scumbag used Glory’s love for him and turned that around to demean her and profit. It took all Hal had in him not to hop on a plane and get some immediate justice for her.

But he also needed some time with her to figure out where her head was at after all she had been through. And to see if she really was as okay as she seemed to be. And this wasn’t only about her. The last mission Hal had been on had been a tough one, worse than most. He had done things, seen things, ordered things to be done, that were the stuff of nightmares. He needed this time alone with the comfort of his sister and the serenity of the cool lake as much as he thought that his sister might need the time with him.

The two of them took some long walks and spent a lot of lazy days on the dock talking it all out. Hal had also spent a good amount of time checking out Jules and the rest of the Hells Saints. Most of them had done some hard time, the way they made their money was more than a little questionable, and their network of connections was as widespread and impressive as his own. But there was absolutely no record of any kind of child neglect or abuse from even one member of the club. And even though Hal didn’t really get the whole free-thinking kind of thing the club had going on with their women, he really didn’t see that as any of his business. No one seemed to be around the club that didn’t want to be there. As long as Glory was safe and happy, he didn’t give a shit about that. Besides, Hal had met Raine and Claire, and liked them.

As far as his sister and the club went, Hal owed them. Big time. He had no doubt that they would cash in that marker at some point. And that was fine with him. Anything that ended up with his sister alive was fine with him.

As far as what was going on with Glory and Jules, Hal now knew enough to leave that alone.

Hal rose before dawn the morning that he left. He brought his cup of coffee out onto the dock one last time and he sat for a while, just thinking. He wondered if he would ever see his sister again. He hoped that he would. He really, really hoped that he would. But if things didn’t go that way in his deployment, he knew that at least she was in good hands. Before he left her, he was going to slip an envelope full of cash under his sister’s pillow. It was repayment for the last of the money that she had worked so hard to pay off. That money was the reason that he hadn’t come home between his tours before. He had used his time off to make use of the specific set of skills that he had acquired as Special Ops. He knew he had been taking a risk with his life and career by using his knowledge to be a hired gun in the private sector, but he had been willing to take that chance. And he could not live with himself, continuing to serve the country that he loved, with the debt to his sister hanging over his head. So he had done what he had to do to make the money to pay that up. Thank God, that was all behind him now.