Shift (The Disciples' Daughters #2) (21 page)

“Emmy, this is Doc,” I introduced my girl to the oldest standing Disciple.

“Hello, doll face,” Doc greeted her.

Emmy took him in, then said in a very serious voice, “You look like Santa.”

I barked out a laugh. Oh man, that was brilliant. Anyone else said that to Doc, they’d learn a lesson. Emmy said that to him and she got a grin beneath the scraggly beard that was getting more white all the time.

“And you’ve got a dwarf name,” Emmy went on.

Doc and I were both laughing then, causing Emmy to giggle. “Does that make you Snow White?” he asked.

“Yes,” she agreed.

“Then who does that make me?”

“Dopey!”

Damn. “That’s cold, sweetie.”

I set her down on the couch with a game I’d downloaded on my phone and motioned with my head for Doc to step into the other room with me.

“You get what you need?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he answered. “I think I know why this is necessary, but I’m wondering why you couldn’t go in and do this?”

“Ash doesn’t want to have her tested. She’d rather not know. I can’t really get Emmy there and back without Ash finding out, or without Emmy telling her about it after,” I explained.

“Then I gotta ask, you think maybe you oughta not do it?”

I had thought that. I thought I’d just let it lie, and then I thought I shouldn’t. I’d gone to bed next to Ash every night and woke up with her every morning to get Emmy out of bed. I’d spent the time I could with them when club business and work didn’t take me away. Since the night I’d dropped the argument about paternity testing, I’d rethought it more times than I could count.

Then, I’d seen Ash’s face when she heard Emmy call me daddy. There was something subtle in it I didn’t understand until hours later.

We were in bed, nearly asleep. Emmy had been fussy getting to bed and Ash was worried. So, as much as I wanted to get her naked and pleading for me, we’d kept the clothes on. It was a good call, the kind a good mom like Ash would make.

A few hours later, the door creaked open.

Both of us sat up. Emmy was coming in, her lower lip plumped out and quivering, her skin looking pale and her arms crossed over her stomach. I was on my feet in a second, but Ash was already at her.

“Tummy hurts,”
Emmy had muttered.

Like some kind of fucking superhero, Ash scooped her up and got down the hall to the bathroom. I followed after them. Ash barely got her there before Emmy was sick. I’d gone through a lot of shit over the years, been in fights I lost, but that shit didn’t hold a candle to watching my little girl get sick. She started crying, and I swear to God, I would have killed to make it stop.

Once it was over, Ash cleaned Emmy up and brought her back to the room. I got everything set in case my princess was sick again, then tucked them both in. My plan was to leave them, even though it destroyed me. Before I could, Emmy reached her little arms out.

“No, Daddy. Need you.”

Christ.

There was no fucking way I could deny her that. I lay down, pulling both my girls into my arms. Emmy snuggled into my chest, but didn’t move out of her mother’s hold.

“Love you, Mommy. Love you, Daddy,”
she’d said in a small voice as she fell asleep.

That’s when I saw it. In the light drifting from the closet we left on for Emmy, who was afraid of the dark, I saw longing in Ash’s eyes, the kind of longing I knew. It was the longing you felt when you were sure you’d never get what you wanted. I felt like that for four and a half years. Seeing that expression gave me the answer I had been looking for.

So, I called Doc and set it up.

“Ash needs this,” I explained to Doc. “She can say whatever she wants, but she isn’t really accepting Emmy is mine. She isn’t letting this go. She wants so badly for Emmy to be my daughter, but she’s caught up in this idea that it’s about the DNA.”

“What if you don’t find out what you want to?” he asked.

“I won’t tell her. I don’t give a fuck what that test says. Emmy’s mine, either way. If it were about me, we wouldn’t be doing it. This is about seeing if I can help her. I want her to be able to move on. Maybe she can do that without knowing, but I think part of her will always struggle if she has this doubt.”

Doc measured me, the way he always did. “You really sure you can live with that knowledge?”

At the surface, no, I wasn’t sure. I wanted to find out Emmy was mine. A few weeks ago, the first night Ash was back, I might not have been able to deal with it.

Now, I knew Emmy. I loved her. She was my daughter and nothing could change that.

“Yes. I’m sure.”

“Alright then,” he said.

He turned his back to me, snapping on gloves and getting out what he needed. Doc was an actual doctor. Well, he had been. No one knew the story of what took him away from the practice. He didn’t talk about that shit. Didn’t talk about himself much at all. What we all did know was his medical knowledge made him a fucking blessing. He could patch us up, and he could literally dismantle a human being.

He came back to me. “Test is simple. Gotta swab the inside of your cheek, then Emmy’s. I can’t do the actual test here. Don’t have the lab. Friend of mine is gonna run it so we don’t have to deal with the turnaround time on a lab meant just for running these tests. Also eliminates a paper trail if this doesn’t turn out well. No records. Your names won’t even be attached.”

“Good.”

I had no idea how the information could get back to Ash, but I wanted to avoid that at all costs.

“Open up,” Doc instructed, then ran the swab inside my cheek. He put the swab into a vial with some liquid in it. “That’s it, just need to do the same to the little one.”

We got Emmy swabbed, which she did without any question. I wasn’t surprised, but I was glad. If she’d been more curious, she might have said something to Ash. I didn’t need that, at least not for a few days, until I could get the results back.

I was planning to get us out of there and head back to the farmhouse when Stone stopped me.

“Sketch, need a minute.” He knelt down to accept the hug Emmy was reaching her arms up for. “How you doin’, honey?”

“I’m good. I get to be with Daddy today,” she replied.

“Oh, yeah? Where’s your mom?”

“At home,” I supplied. “Someone got sick last night and Ash didn’t sleep well worrying. I made her take it easy, brought Emmy with me.”

Stone looked away from me the second the word “sick” left my mouth. “You not feelin’ well, little one?”

Her head tilted, her curls spilling to the side. “I had tummy trouble.”

“You’re okay now, though, right, baby?” I asked.

“All better,” she agreed.

“Good,” Stone said.

“Can you hang out for just another minute, princess?” I asked Emmy.

Her hand came up right away. “Game?”

At some point, I was going to stop being such a pushover with her. “What do you say?”

She brought out that damn pout in retaliation. “Pease?”

She was messing with me. I didn’t care. Fuck it, her mom could be the one who laid down the law. I handed over my phone.

Stone and I stepped a few feet away before he spoke fast in a low voice. “Roadrunner checked in. No sign of Jackson or Penelope at the address. They sat on it for a day, then got in. No one’s there. Definitely Penelope’s place, though. Mail and shit all addressed to her, food recently restocked. They’re keeping eyes on it now while Jager tries to get more intel. He just managed to get into her accounts from the info he found in the apartment. That’s why he called to update. She does anything on credit or debit, he’ll know and be able to get her.”

“Any sign Jackson’s been there?” I asked.

“Men’s clothes and shit around, but nothing they could find with his identification. Could be him, could be she’s got another guy shackin’ up there. Jager’s still researching Jackson to see if he can catch a break. Most likely, getting a hold of the bitch will have to be step one.”

I hated the fucking waiting game. Jackson was a ghost if Jager couldn’t find him. If he wasn’t the one staying with Ash’s bitch cousin, I was starting to worry we wouldn’t find him.

“Alright, brother. Thanks for updating me. Just keep me posted when they find that bitch.”

“You’ve got it,” Stone promised.

“Emmy and I are gonna roll out,” I said as a goodbye.

While I carried her to the car, Emmy kept her attention on the game she was playing. The couple times I checked, I was pretty sure she just kept dying and popping back up. I chuckled. She had no clue what she was doing.

As I was getting her in her car seat, my phone started ringing in her hand. She reached out with it, saying, “It’s for you.”

“You going to be my secretary now?” I asked, but she had no idea what I was talking about. Shaking my head, I answered the call. “Hello?”

“Hi, honey,” Ash’s sweet voice came through the line.

“Hey, Firefly.”

“Where are you guys?”

“At the clubhouse. I’m just getting Emmy into her seat so we can head back to you.”

“Is she doing alright still?” Worry colored her tone.

“She’s just fine,” I said. I turned the phone toward Emmy. “Say hi to Mommy, princess.”

“Hi, Momma!” she yelled.

When I returned the phone to my ear and shut Emmy in the truck, I heard Ash laughing. “Love that sound, babe.”

She changed the subject rather than answering that, like always. “Well, I just wanted to check in with you two. I just got out of the shower and wasn’t sure when you’d be back.”

I stopped before I opened the driver’s door. “You took a shower without me?”

“Yes, Sketch. I usually do.”

“You shouldn’t. I’m a good shower buddy, and it’s important for the environment and shit.”

“
The environment and shit
?” she teased. “A shower with you won’t save any water. It’ll take three times as long.”

“Hey, I just like to be very thorough. You can’t fault me for wanting to get you very clean.”

Fuck, I was starting to get hard thinking very dirty thoughts about cleaning her off.

“Only after you get me dirty.”

Yeah, that was too much. I was rock hard. Ash didn’t talk like that often, and it was enough to shatter my restraint.

“Tonight,” I warned, “you’re going to pay for getting me hard when I’m about to get in the car with our girl.”

Ash let out a muffled gasp and I could picture her biting her pink lips. That image was not helping. I needed to get off the damn phone before I lost control of myself.

“We’ll be home soon. You and I will discuss your payback later.”

“Okay,” she replied, breathy.

I took several deep breaths after we hung up, trying to get my hard-on under control before I got in the car. Once I got it to start going down at all, I climbed in.

“Alright, princess. Let’s get home to Mom.”

“Momma!”

At least I wasn’t the only one excited.

“I told you I’d be back,” I said, placing another bundle of flowers down on Dad’s grave. “I’m sorry. I didn’t bring Emmy this time. Deni is watching her. I want to wait so we can have Gabe with us, but he couldn’t today. I’m not sure she can comprehend this yet. It’ll be good for both of us to have him around.”

I glanced over at Ace, my guard. He got stuck with me a lot. I guess just because he lived in the farmhouse with us. He was around, so he got the job.

“Things have changed a lot. Emmy calls Gabe daddy now. He’s so good with her. He loves her. He loves both of us,” I laughed. “I don’t know how we got so far from where we were last time I visited.

“This is where I’m supposed to be. I get it now. Gabe got it the whole time. You always said I thought about things too much and let my head get in the way. You were right. You were always right.”

A harsh whistle interrupted my train of thought. I swung my head Ace’s way to see him pointing down and making a shushing motion. He reached behind him, pulling out a gun, I was sure. He moved, swift and careful, toward a wooded area at the edge of the cemetery. I couldn’t see anyone in the direction he was heading, but I didn’t take chances. Doing as he’d said, I ducked and moved around behind the tree next to Dad’s grave.

It was probably just Ace being over-protective. Still, he thought there was something wrong. Was that reason to call for backup? I didn’t know. I couldn’t exactly ask Ace either. I debated on it for longer than a situation where a gun being pulled probably warranted before I got my phone.

I doubted the Disciples would mind if I was extra cautious.

I dialed Sketch first, but he didn’t answer. He hadn’t told me that morning what he was doing. He said he had work to do, but not whether that was club work or if he had a tattoo appointment. I tried a second time, just in case he hadn’t heard it, then dialed Stone.

When he didn’t answer either, I left a message. “Um…hi.”
Hi?
God, I needed to get it together. “Ace brought me to the cemetery to visit Dad’s grave. He just signaled me to get down and started heading off. He was taking out his gun. I don’t know—”

A hand wrapped around my wrist, yanking the phone away from my ear. It squeezed until the pain forced me to release my hold. A sharp tug had me facing an older man I’d never seen before. He looked disheveled, though not in a prominent way. His hair was out of place, but the gelled texture said it had been styled. Beneath his unbuttoned suit jacket, his shirt was partially untucked, yet he looked very much like the type of man who did not usually look that way. More terrifying, there was a crazed look shining through an otherwise collected expression.

He smiled at me in a way that made my skin crawl. “Well, hello there. I think it’s time we met. You look so much like your whore mother.”

Barton.

Crap.

I looked for the phone, but it was in his other hand. He noticed my eyes move to it.

“Oh, looking for this? It really is a shame you sent that message, Ashlynn. I would prefer not to be interrupted. Now, my associate will have to dispatch with your guard in a hurry so we can depart before your company comes.”

Ace. Oh, god. I really hoped he was okay.

Barton threw my phone to the ground, producing a gun from within his suit jacket and firing a single round into the screen. I jumped back, and he turned the barrel on me.

“Now, dear, I sincerely hope you don’t have illusions of doing anything foolish. If you run, I will shoot. I won’t hesitate.” He was serious, it was obvious from the way he spoke the warning, like he was informing me of a simple fact rather than threatening my life. Even had I not known what he did to my mother, I would have taken his words to heart.

There was a disturbing sort of clarity that settled in when a man like Barton turned a gun on you—a man deranged and unfeeling enough to pull the trigger without thinking twice. I became extremely aware of everything. There was no shake to Barton’s hand, no likelihood that attempting to run would work. He wasn’t a panicky would-be killer who would miss a moving target.

I also became aware of a minute quality to his presence that made him seem unsteady. Something about him reminded me of the adage “still waters run deep”. With the exception of the slight flaws to his appearance, nothing visibly gave me that impression. Still, I knew it to be true. Whatever he was showing me, there was something entirely unsettled at the heart of him. Stone had told me his infrastructure was crumbling and he was becoming desperate. I wondered if that was what I was seeing.

Finally, I was aware that I could not pick out any sound that might be Ace. I was terrified Barton’s man had hurt him—or worse.

I needed to find a way to buy myself time. I didn’t know where Stone was, or when he’d check his phone. Hopefully, it would be soon. I’d managed to tell him where I was. I needed to keep myself there until the Disciples could make it.

“Won’t you shoot me either way?” I asked. I had no idea whether it was the right question. I barely knew the right thing to say when my life wasn’t on the line. In that moment, I’d take anything my brain spit out.

“It had been my thought,” Barton explained. “Now that I’m seeing you, I’m rethinking my position.” He stepped in close, his gun pressing right against my stomach. I could smell his cologne, and it made me gag. His free hand went down my arm, purposely touching the side of my breast. “I had to dispose of your mother before I had my fill. Perhaps, now I’ll get another chance.”

Oh, god.

No. I’d rather die.

“I imagine you’ll be even more pleasing than she was.”

Unable to contain it, my mind flashing back to that horrible night when Jackson forced himself on me, I retched violently.

Barton flew backward several steps. “I swear to you, bitch, if you throw up on me, I will make you fucking pay.”

If I didn’t stop it, he was going to make me pay either way.

“Why are you doing this?”

“Retribution, darling,” he answered. “Retribution on those filthy fucking bikers who thought they could come after me without consequences. I thought they would learn when I put that bastard father of yours in the ground,” he gestured with the gun toward Dad’s grave, “but it seems they were more dense than I believed. Perhaps they’ll finally understand when I deliver you back to them, piece by piece.”

“They won’t let you take me. They’re probably already on their way.”

He raised the gun until it was level with my forehead. “Shut your mouth. Now. I won’t play games with you.”

I did as he said.

“We’ll be long gone before they arrive, as soon as Jones is finished preparing the gift we’ll be leaving them.” I didn’t ask, mostly because he still had the gun aimed at my head and I was afraid to speak. Barton supplied me with the answer anyway. “We’ll lay the pieces of your guard down on your father’s grave. They are brothers or whatever nonsense, are they not?”

Ace.
God, Ace, please be okay,
I begged in my mind.

Barton lowered the gun to aim it at my torso again. Long seconds ticked by without a word, without a sound.

The silence was broken by an electronic ping. Barton unearthed a phone from his pocket, checking the display while his gun arm stayed steady. He looked to me with a smile the Devil himself would cringe at.

“Time to move,” he told me. He swept out a hand like a proper gentleman—as if that negated the fact that he had me at gunpoint—and said, “Ladies first.”

I did as he said, walking in the same direction Ace disappeared, though I did it with slow steps. Every second counted.

“Faster,” he demanded, jabbing the gun into my back.

I increased my pace a bit, but dialed back again as we went on. When he eventually did note I was slowing down, he snapped at me to speed up again. I repeated the cycle.

We made it to the line of trees and I hesitated. Barton didn’t like that. His hand slashed out, grabbing onto my hair. With a vicious tug, he pulled my head back, then settled the gun right at my jaw.

“I did not tell you to stop. You will fucking walk or I’ll find a place to put a bullet in you that won’t interfere with me getting inside of you later.”

Crap. Crap. Crap.

The trees were dense enough, it took a few moments for my eyes to adjust to the shadows. Up ahead of us, there was another man in a suit. He seemed to be leaning against a tree behind him. On the ground at his feet, a body lay face down. A body in a black leather vest.

“No!” I screamed.

My knees gave out. It couldn’t be. They couldn’t have taken Ace. He’d been innocent in all this. He had barely been a full Disciple long. He hadn’t been a part of the war with Barton. He’d only had the rotten luck of being the one to guard me.

Barton kicked at my side as he walked around me.

“What the fuck took so long, Jones?” he snapped. “We need to get out of here before those motherfuckers—”

He stopped speaking abruptly, but I didn’t look to see why. My eyes were on Ace, whom I could swear just moved. It was only a bit, just his arm. Maybe he was alive. Maybe, if the guys got here soon, we could get him to a hospital and…

I cried out when Ace was suddenly on his feet, charging at Barton. He wasn’t fast enough. Barton wheeled around, gun raised, and fired. Ace didn’t even slow. I couldn’t see where the bullet went, but I saw the recoil of his upper body as it hit. He threw himself at Barton either way.

The two of them started grappling with Barton’s weapon, Ace’s hand around Barton’s on the gun, their arms raised upward. It was then I saw the blood on Ace’s shirt. Some seemed to be Jones’ while some was seeping out from slashes in the fabric. With his injuries, they were evenly matched, but I was terrified Barton might soon have the advantage.

Ace reached behind his back, revealing a gun beneath his cut. He whipped it out and turned it on Barton, but he was too late. Barton managed to pull free of Ace’s hold and turn the gun on him.

I screamed for Ace just as the gunshot rang out and he fell to the ground.