Inflamed: A Shadow Riders MC (34 page)

"There ain’t a single motherfuckin' member of this club who’d--"

"What about Tiny?" River suggested.

He furrowed his brows. “Are you outta your goddamn, motherfuckin’ rabid ass mind, boy?” asked Wolf. “With the way that motherfucker laps up pussy--”

“I don't think he'd pull any kinda Nikko shit with this asshole, but I’ve never trusted him any farther than I can fuckin' throw him."

Wolf shook his head. "Tiny wouldn't pull this shit. Motherfucker knows better than that shit, they ALL fuckin' do."

"How are you so goddamn fuckin' sure when it comes to this son of a bitch or any of the rest of 'em, old man, given what’s happened here before?" asked River. "Aside from Blue and maybe a few others, none of these assholes have been on board with this shit from the first fuckin' moment we walked into that goddamn room and I told 'em what the fuck it was all about! Tiny's been the most vocal motherfucker here, spoutin' shit against it every goddamn chance he gets. And between him doin' all the shit he could to get rid of Mia and her kid, to fuckin' questionin' you about the Dragons in the first goddamn place, and you think that motherfucker wouldn't have some kinda motive to go runnin' off to the enemy to make deals that could somehow advance him within this club or maybe even another charter? Fontaine ain't as powerful as he used to be, physically speakin', but the asshole has clearly bucked up on his smarts while bein' locked up. If you don't think there's even a snowballs chance in hell that Tiny or one of these other motherfuckers said somethin'--"

"I'll talk to him again," he said, his voice slightly shaking as the nerves took over and the anger crept up inside his chest. "Alright?"

River grimaced. "And what the fuck good will that shit do when we continue to see the results that we’re seein’ from it? You honestly think he's gonna tell you shit after the way he's been comin' at you lately and actin' like he should be runnin' this club instead? I'll talk to this fuckin' asshole. Beat the fuckin' goddamn truth and piss outta him if I fuckin' have to. I don't give a flyin' fuck."

"You ain't talkin' to nobody, Riv," said Wolf. "'Cause you'll be too busy hikin' your ass back up to Tampa tonight."

His brows flinched and he snarled. "What?"

"We need to know how the fuck that son of a bitch Fontaine was able to escape from a Maximum Security Prison! 'Til we know that shit, we can't go any further than what the fuck we have already."

"Then have the motherfuckers already on your goddamn payroll out there take a goddamn look! There's no way in fuck I'm leavin' Mia and Avery here with the chance that that sick son of a bitch is on the loose--"

"THIS AINT JUST ABOUT MIA AND HER KID!" hollered Wolf. "No offense to you, darlin', but it's a whole lot fuckin' more than that shit now, shit this asshole didn't fuckin' think about when he first agreed to helpin' you out." Wolf stepped over to River, who pulled his head back and snarled the moment he was in his face. "You dragged the club into this shit, which makes this not only a problem about your girl and her kid, but it makes it a problem with us too, and the Dragons and Miami and Orlando charters and now his goddamn sister that you brought into the fuckin’ mix!" He adjusted his cut and pointed in River's face. "You don't run shit around here, motherfucker. I don't know who the fuck swelled your head with such SHIT in thinkin’ otherwise, but that's
my
goddamn position and it'll
be
my goddamn position until
I
feel like passin' it onto you, which at this point Riv, ain't lookin' too motherfuckin' likely, son, not in the goddamn least. Now I want you to take your ass back to Tampa
tonight
, along with
that
motherfucker," he said, referring to Blue, "so that he can watch your back, 'cause it's clear those two eyes inside your own goddamn head just ain't enough for you anymore." Wolf stepped back and River sneered. "Now I've gotta go back and make some goddamn phone calls to see where the fuck we're at with the other charters now that this fucker is openly crawlin’ the goddamn streets like some kinda wild animal."

"What if this asshole is already back in Crescent Beach? Son of a bitch could be hidin' ANY fuckin' place in goddamn plain sight and you think it's a good idea to leave the bitch he's comin' after, right along with her kid without any kinda goddamn protection?"

"She'll be protected," said Wolf, "with Styx--"

"Son of a bitch is already watchin' Courtney," he quickly replied. "And we got no choice but to keep her safe now since she's the only other person we know he'd contact."

Wolf arched a brow, then turned his eyes to his wife, who sighed. "Then hand
pick
a motherfucker to look after Mia and her kid, asshole."

River grinded his teeth. Leaving Mia and Avery here without him, all while knowing that sick bastard was on the loose was the last goddamn thing he wanted to do. But he knew what it meant to go against Wolf. And being as vulnerable as they were as a club at the moment, he knew he couldn't risk it this time, not in the same way he often had in the past.

"Slim," he grumbled. "Slim and Trucker."

"River." He turned the second he heard Mia call his name. "I promised Avery that she could stay with Alisha and Meghan tonight. The idea of Ricky being back like this scares the absolute shit out of me like you wouldn't believe, but I've been thinking about it a lot over the last few weeks and, I don't want my child growing up in the same kind of fear that I have had to live with for the last eight years. I want her to be able to live without the idea of a threat hanging over her head. I know it's not possible to stay like this forever, but she deserves to have at least one night or two with someone her own age. And I want to be able to give her that. So I'll keep Slim with me, if Trucker agrees to go to Meghan's."

River inhaled a sharp breath, then let it out slow and made his way back over to Mia. As he stood in front of her and looked down into her eyes, all he could see was his entire goddamn world staring right back up at him, with every hope and possibility of it getting better suddenly fading from existence.

"You sure about this shit?" he asked her.

"No," she said, a weak smile stretching her lips. "But I
am
sure that I trust you. And I don't trust a lot of people in my life, especially men, but you somehow managed to make yourself an exception to every rule I've ever had."

"I ain’t never been the kinda motherfucker to follow rules anybody ever set for me, babe, intentional or not. In case you couldn't fuckin' tell that shit already--"

"I could tell." She laughed. "I could tell." She pressed her hand in the center of his chest and curled her fingers into him as she watched it descend. "Come back to me," she told him. He blinked once and narrowed his eyes. That goddamn cage around his heart started to loosen and it was like every cloud in the sky had instantly parted and found another universe to darken. But once Mia realized what she had said to him, thanks to his reaction to her, she attempted to save face. "Come back to your mother. And your daughter. And
my
daughter. Come back to this club and everything that you know, love and respect. Find out what you need to find out about Ricky and what the hell he has going and then come back here, to us."

Shit
.

She was already acting like his Old Lady without the goddamn title, and every other fucking thing about what it meant, making it official. He closed his eyes to keep from grabbing her, to keep from sliding a hand around her goddamn throat and tilting her head back as he slid his tongue between her lips and owned that fucking mouth, just fucking owned it.
Jesus
. He just wanted to fucking taste her; he wanted to taste her so goddamn bad that he wasn't even sure he could continue to function without having even a drop of her for himself to hold onto.

"I'll be back," he finally said. "Don't you fuckin' worry about that shit either, don't fuckin' worry about me or what'll happen out there. You put all that goddamn focus in Avery and in yourself. I'm good with this motherfucker." He nodded over at Blue, who finished off his beer and quickly joined him at his side. "I'll be back before you even realize I've been gone for too goddamn long," he told her.

And within just a matter of seconds, he was.

Chapter Twenty-Four

The minute I walked back through the front door of River's house, I wanted to burst into tears; then I started to wonder what the hell kind of good would it do aside from possibly making me feel marginally better about the entire situation at hand.

Ricky somehow managing to escape from prison didn't exactly surprise me nearly as much as it seemed to surprise River and Wolf; the fact that he hadn't come for me or Avery yet didn't surprise me all that much either. I learned even before knowing who he was that he was a planner, and always,
always
methodical, staying ten steps ahead of someone who usually only took five. Even if River and Blue had managed to show up outside the prison before he escaped, chances would've been that he was still digging himself a hole right through the tunnel or walls and would've still gotten away, with the results being much worse than how they ended.

As I stepped through the living room, I heard someone laughing from the kitchen and when I walked inside, I found Jolene sitting at the kitchen table with a giant smile on her face and the phone tightly held inside her hand and placed up to her ear. Her face was so red as if she had been blushing or flushed for more than even just a few minutes, her legs were tightly crossed and wound around each other as if whatever the person was saying to her on the other end had gotten to more than just her heart or mind, and her giggles were so loud and piercing that I sort of feared she was going to wake the dead.

"Well alright," she said. "You take care and I'll see you then. Bye." Once she clicked the off button on her phone, she placed it down on the table and outstretched her arms and legs, which told me she had been sitting in that same position for quite a while.

"You're in a lot better mood than you were this morning at the club," I told her.

"I'm always in a better mood when I'm away from that place." She swung her jet black hair from side to side and leaned back in her chair. "But I'll say that it often helps when there's someone on the end of that equation to help move that 'better' in your mood along." She winked.

"Who was that you were talking to on the phone?" I asked her.

"A man."

"I gathered that much. Who was it?"

She leaned forward and grinned. "Just someone I met at the grocery store when Styx stopped me by there on the way home this afternoon. He works at one of the banks downtown as a teller."

"So you met a man with a legitimate job who can actually make you laugh like that before you've even gone out on your first date with him?" I sighed. "Must be nice." I dumped my purse onto the table and sat down. "Is Avery asleep?" I asked.

She nodded. "Out like a light before we even picked her up."

"Where's Madison?"

"She'll be over at Lily's for the rest of the day and into the night. So with all of us out of the house and your little girl spending time with Alisha, I guess it'll just be you and my son here tonight." She grinned. "
Alone
."

"More like, me, myself and I," I told her. I fell back against the chair and folded my arms.

She glowered. "What do you mean?"

"River didn't want to tell you this because of the past incident involving Madison, but, the man who left me for dead outside the club eight years ago? It was Ricky Fontaine."

"Oh my God," she snapped. "How the hell did you ever get mixed up with a man like him, Mia?"

"It's a long,
long
story that I don't really want to get into right now."

"Does River know everything about it?" she asked me. I nodded. "Why the hell won't he be here with you tonight?"

"Because Ricky somehow managed to break out of prison, and Wolf wants River and Blue to head back out to Tampa to see how the hell it happened."

"Back," she started. "So that's why they were out there this morning; that 'club business' River said he needed to take care of was about Ricky."

"Yes. I'm sorry... I'm sorry, he didn't want you to know. He didn't want Madison to know -- he
still
doesn't want her to know that this has all been about him."

"She won't," she replied. "You can trust me on that, honey; I'll do everything I can to help and protect my baby girl, and yours." She dipped her head a little and arched her brows. "Is Avery his?"

I sank down even further in my chair and sniffed. "
Yeah
. She's the reason he's coming after me. Part of it."

"So you weren't just 'some woman' in need of help from my son. This shit is personal for both you and River in more ways than one." She cut her eyes to the corner and I got the feeling that she wanted to say something else, but instead, she asked another question. "Who is he having to watch you tonight?"

"Slim. Trucker's going to keep an eye out at Meghan's."

"We might wanna have him send somebody to LuAnn's to look out for the girls too, just in case." She reached for her phone and began dialing while I pulled together every piece of strength I had and began praying.

Chapter Twenty-Five

"Alright, yeah." With the phone pressed firmly to his ear, River looked over at Blue and shook his head. Blue dragged a freshly lit cigarette up between his lips and fell back in his seat, chuckling. "Yeah, I'll send one of those other motherfuckers over to LuAnn's to look after the girls. Look, do me a favor and put Mia on the phone.... I'm not pissed at her for sayin’ shit to you about Ricky bein’ the motherfucker, I just need to talk to her about some shit." As he heard the phone shuffle from his mother's hand over to Mia's, River straightened in his seat and cleared his throat. "Hey."